Cold Boy's Wood by Carol Birch (best books to read for students txt) 📕

kitchen doorway holding a carton of yogurt and a spoon, and they were all there, some in our room, some in the kitchen, people gathering, talking, Pedro carrying the coffee pot, Barry the ferret with his noose and skull t-shirt, a couple of his Class War mates, Keyvan, small and handsome, jiggling about as if he had worms, big Els whose hair dominated rooms, little Shiv I knew from a terrible weekend at Greenham Common. And what’s her name Polly, with her big face and lank fair hair, and the dandruff in her parting. The little press had been running nobly all day. Piles of skimpy flyers littered the table. I was thinking how nice it would be when they’d all gone and I could flop out in front of the telly. The bedrooms in that flat opened straight into the main room. Lily came out of the girls’ room wearing ripped black fishnet tights, a leather miniskirt and a pair of shiny pull-on black boots with ridiculously high heels. She’d been obsessing over her face at the mirror, loading on makeup till she looked like a badly painted doll.

‘Christ’s sake,’ Johnny groaned. He was good with kids. But with teenagers? Lily’s one aim in life at this time was to make herself common as muck, as my mum would have said, and drive him mad. She was perfecting her flounce.

‘Y’all right, Lily?’ said Shiv.

‘OK,’ she said.

‘Where you off?’ I asked. ‘Round Jude’s?’

‘Meeting them in town,’ she said, trying to seem casual but steeling for the fight.

‘You mean town town?’

‘Where else?’

‘Why didn’t you tell us if you were planning on going out? You never tell us anything. It’s not a good night, Lil.’

She hated being called Lil.

‘Why not?’

‘It’s the demo tonight,’ said Johnny. ‘Where you going anyway?’

‘Leicester Square.’

‘No.’

‘What?’

‘No, Lily, it’s a bad night.’

Wouldn’t have been so bad if there hadn’t been everyone sitting there as if they were watching a play.

‘I’m only going to see a film,’ she said. ‘I’m meeting Jude and Sage down there.’

‘Sage?’ said Johnny, ‘Sage! What’s her brother called? Onion?’

‘What’s the film, Lily?’ asked Pedro.

Her face was tight. ‘Romancing the Stone,’ she said faintly.

Johnny turned upon me a familiar look. Back me up, it said. Aren’t you going to say anything? Am I the only responsible adult in this family?

‘It’s a school night anyway,’ I said, ‘you should have told us.’

‘We only decided this afternoon.’ That look on her face, bravado, insulting disdain, not meeting our eyes.

‘It’s not a good idea to be around where the demo is,’ I said. ‘These things can turn.’

‘Bit too close to the action for comfort,’ said Johnny.

‘We-ell,’ said Maurice, ripping the top off the yogurt, ‘not that close.’

‘Close enough.’

‘Definitely.’ I looked at him: there see, backing you up.

‘You’re being completely unreasonable,’ Lily said loftily, her voice shaking a little. She cried easily.

‘Not tonight,’ Johnny said. ‘This isn’t a discussion.’

She glowered upon us all.

‘Anyway, look at you,’ he said.

‘Rebel rebel,’ said Barry the ferret.

‘Give them a call,’ I said. ‘Say you’ll go tomorrow instead.’

I caught a look at Polly, who was raising her eyebrows and making a face at Els. When she saw me, she winked and smiled sympathetically.

‘He said it was OK.’ Lily nodded at Maurice, who was wiping out the yogurt pot with his index finger.

‘I’m saying nothing,’ he said with a faint smile.

‘Well, he’s not your dad,’ said Johnny, and though she didn’t say neither are you, she gave him that look.

‘People should be allowed to go and see a film in peace if they want to,’ she said, tears forming.

‘And they can,’ I said, ‘every other night. It’s this one…’

Johnny did about the worst possible thing he could possibly have done then.

Since the Melvin Morgan thing, he’d been disconsolate. For a while after the pamphlet appeared, people had occasionally stood outside Phoebe Twist’s house to shout Murderer, murderer, come out murderer. Her neighbours chased them away. She herself never appeared. The outrage simmered on for a few weeks then evaporated, but Johnny never let it go. He wouldn’t talk about it, and he sat up late night after night after I’d gone to bed, stiff jaw, sweet lips, stern brow, the look of a man struggling with some profound emotion eating at the pit of his gut, staring into the fire and brooding over the waters like God almighty. To be honest, he was driving us all up the wall, but Lily in particular, who had no patience with it all. So when he became stern and stood in front of her and said seriously into her burning face, ‘People are suffering, the government is rotten at the core, everything decent is threatened and are you really only bothered about going to see some crappy Hollywood film?’

It was tough for her, in front of them all. Tough for me, seeing so clearly how much he was doing this to impress Maurice with his high concerns. Trivial. He’d said the word so many times before it didn’t need repeating. She liked boy bands and Grange Hill and Smash Hits, poured scorn on Shakespeare and Mahler and Marx.

‘So?’ she said.

He let out a massive sigh through his teeth. ‘Love,’ he said, ‘I don’t mean to be horrible, I really don’t, but you’re only fourteen. There’s this big demo taking place right near where you’re going, and I don’t want to have to worry about you. Look at your shoes.’

Everyone looked at her shoes.

‘You definitely can’t run in those.’

‘I don’t want to run in them.’

‘It’s too last minute, Lily,’ I said. ‘It’s not fair to just spring it on us like that.’

‘It’s ridiculous!’ she suddenly yelled.

‘Oh, can we just not have this tonight please, Lily.’ I closed my eyes. ‘Just for once can you not please—’

‘Fucking stupid,’ she said, kicking the side of the sofa, ‘fucking pointless.’

The talk had stopped and she was the focus of the room. The TV quacked on, and little Harry, oblivious to everything, bounced her loosely socked foot on and off the coffee table, and