Acid Rain by R.D Rhodes (ebook reader txt) 📕

and were giving him high fives and applauding wildly.

“What do your parents do?” I asked Megan.

“My mum works in an office and my dad works in a bank.”

I might have known. Fatalists, I thought. “You got any brothers or sisters?”

“Just one brother.” she said.

“And is he the same?

“Well, not really, his grades are far worse than mine. But they still let him go to football training twice a week and play games on Saturday.”

“AW-OH! HERE SHE IS!”

Two girls were striding towards us from the side of the pond. They both had on tiny, matching denim skirts with their long bronzed legs on show. One girl had blonde hair and the other jet black, but both hairstyles were straightened and shining and swishing and bouncing back and forth like girls in a L’Oréal advert. Their tight little t-shirts revealed quite a lot. It was about two degrees. And I had complained about the cold.

“Legend!” Someone shouted.

The blonde one smiled.

“Your mum let you out already?”

The blonde girl laughed. “She didn’t have a fucking choice.”

I turned to Megan. “What happened to her? What did she do?”

“Oh. Got her stomach pumped last week. Downed a litre of vodka.”

There was nothing to her, she was all skin and bone and chest and legs. “Is she suicidal or something?”

Megan shrugged as if it was no big deal.

The L’Oréal girls stood before everyone, in the middle of the shelter. The guys snuck peeks at them and the other girls exchanged jealous and pissed-off glances.

“Give me a drink!” the blonde one screeched.

“Way-hay!” a guy shouted. He handed her a bottle of schnapps. She held it bottom-up and I watched the pulse of her throat as she gulped it down.

“WAY HAAAYY!”

She smashed the bottle to the ground and smiled and raised her hands in the air.

“That girl can drink.” someone said.

“Sure can.”

“I wish I could drink like that.”

“Your little sister can handle a drink more than you can, Bobby.”

A few people laughed.

“No, she can’t. Fuck off!”

The atmosphere was picking up. Girls and guys coupled up and walked off to the golf course. More kids got up and danced. The screams got louder. The noise got louder. Girls screeched and guys roared. The shelter was full to bursting and the kids who couldn’t fit in were standing around outside. The music was jacked up high and Kesha was belting out Party don’t stop.

Harry emerged from the crowd and stood before me with a wicked smile and delight in his eyes. He had been playing cards about forty minutes. “You wanna get going?” he shouted.

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

I picked up my bag and said goodbye to Megan, and repeated, “Do what you want to do. Fuck your parents.” I shook her hand and Harry and I walked away round the side of the pond.

“Look what I got.” He pulled out a small wad of notes and pound coins.

“You win all that!? How much is there?”

He counted it up and shoved it back in his pocket. “Fifty-one pound fifty. Not bad for a night’s work.”

“You little bastard. You not feel guilty?”

“Look at them, they’re only gonna spend it on drink. I won it fair anyway, and they enjoyed the show.”

“Where did you learn that, card tricks?”

“What do you think I did in solitary all the time? Played hopscotch?” he laughed. “And I’ve read all of Derren Brown’s books. Who was that you were speaking too?”

“Megan. Poor girl. It pisses me off.”

“What does?”

“Wait. Stop. Wait a second.” He stopped moving too and I tightened his scarf which was beginning to slip down. “Just how parents raise clones. They don’t want a human being to care for, they want a living, breathing replica of themselves. A puppet. I don’t understand it. Why would you want that?”

“Thanks.” Harry said. We walked past the trees on our left. “I dunno. They probably think they’ve failed in their lives somehow and feel the need to live it out through someone else. Or else they’re just bored.”

“You see it all the time.” I said. “Parents who get upset with their children cause they’re not normal or don’t do sport, or don’t do whatever it is that they want them to do. Why can’t they see that every soul is an individual? I’d have a test. You want to have kids? Why? Because you’re bored? Because you don’t know what else to do? Because you need to live your life through another person? Just..because? No! Sorry. That’s not a good enough reason. No kids for you.”

Harry sniggered. He brought his scarf up a little higher so it was over his mouth.

“What? Too much for you?”

“No no. I agree. Who would make those decisions, though? That’s the thing.”

We reached the park and slowed. “Where will we go?” I wondered.

“I dunno. I’m knackered. Want to see if we can get a few hours sleep till morning?”

“Yeah. What about those bushes over there?”

We walked over to the bushes and wondered alongside them. In the pale moonlight, I noticed a little opening inside, from which ran a little trail- probably used by kids as a den. I rolled up my sleeves and spread apart a few branches of the jagged gorse. They reminded me of our escape from the hospital.

I stepped into the bushes and straining my eyes made my way along the trail. It was pitch black in there but whoever had created the path had beaten it out well. Most of the branches were above our heads and we only had to squat slightly. But as the trail went on the roots got more knarled and bent, and the needles poked and prodded from the un-cleared spaces. I pushed back the wayward branches and held them there till Harry could catch