Читать книгу I Predict a Riot - Catherine Bruton - Страница 6

It’s been a year since everything happened, but I still have bad dreams. Dreams of last summer – of me and Tokes and Little Pea – in the park, under the arches, racing through burning streets on the night the city was in flames. It’s like a movie running through my head – the same one night after night. Then I wake up to the sound of the waves and I remember how the story ends.

We live by the sea now, my mum and me. In a house with a long garden that runs down to a pebbly beach, far away from where it all happened. I can see the water from my bedroom window, hear the waves lapping on the pebbles. And there’s nothing to do here but remember how one of my friends is dead and the other one might as well be. All because of me.

I think he has a new name now which would make Little Pea laugh because he always reckoned it was a stupid name. He’s got a whole new identity too: new home, new life – new start. A witness-protection programme. The police had to make him and his whole family disappear so Shiv and the Starfish Gang would never find them. And that means they can’t tell me where he is and I can never contact him. Ever. No phone, no text, no email, no Facebook. Nothing. It’s for his own safety, I suppose, but he probably never wants to see or speak to me again anyway.

Most days I watch the film we made last summer. I’ve had a long time to try and finish it, but it still feels like something is missing. Even though I’ve cut and edited bits, changed angles, altered the soundtrack, I can’t ever seem to change the story it tells. Just like in my dreams.