Читать книгу Skin Deep - Laura Jarratt - Страница 10

You have to scrub really hard to get splattered flies off windows. Especially when there’s a week’s build-up of suicide bomber insects mashed on the glass. Maybe if insects could talk it’d be different. Maybe they’d warn each other in hushed whispers about the danger of Light. Don’t go there, one would say. My cousin went chasing Light. Always a fool, he was. Always after a new thrill and one day he never came back.

Then again, maybe not. The ability to talk didn’t seem to make humans less stupid.

A girl’s voice called out somewhere down the bank and I glanced up. Then a small ginger mutt came hurtling towards me out of the trees, barking like crazy. He slammed into my bucket, sending it into the canal, and then he cannoned into me.

‘Ouch!’

His paws scrabbled at my legs as he bounced up and down, yipping for attention. I crouched down and he leapt on to my knee. ‘Watch it, short stuff. Those are sharp claws.’ His tongue slobbered over my face. ‘All right, calm down. Where’ve you come from?’

‘Raggs! Come back!’ That voice again, sharper, panicking.

I rolled my eyes. What did she think I’d do with him? Wring his neck and throw him in the canal? Psycho narrowboat dog-murderer arrives in sleepy village – shock horror! We’d only been here two days. I’d expected longer before the locals found us and worked out we weren’t on holiday. But that’s villages for you. News travels fast and everybody knows each other’s business. So much for Mum thinking here’d be different.

The dog wanted to stay in my lap and get his ears stroked, but even if he hadn’t, I’d have hung on to his collar just to piss the girl off, stuck-up cow. Besides, he was a mad little pup and he might run into the canal. ‘Can’t have that, Shortie. We’d never find you in there. You’re the same colour as the water.’

‘Raggs! Raggs!’

‘Dead obedient, aren’t you?’ I said to him as he paid no attention to the voice and tried to hook his stumpy front legs over my shoulders so he could wash my hair too.

The girl appeared from out of the willow trees and stormed towards us. There was something odd about the way she walked – head down, hair over her face, shoulders tense. From what I could see, she had potential though – medium height, slim, sort of graceful even though she stomped along with her shoulders round her ears. Shiny hair the colour of a wheat field.

‘Hey, she’s hot,’ I whispered to the dog. ‘Stay here.’

She stopped about halfway, shouting ‘Raggs!’ again, not that it did any good. Her voice hitched on the name like she was close to crying and guilt pricked at me. Maybe she was a stupid up-herself bitch, but she was a girl on a deserted canal bank with a stranger . . . I didn’t like the idea I scared her.

‘Nice dog,’ I called out.

She didn’t come any closer.

‘He just wants to play,’ I shouted, but she still stayed close to the treeline. I gave up and pushed the dog down. ‘Go on, go back.’ He paid as much attention to me as he did to her, jumping straight back on to my legs. I nearly picked him up and took him over to her, but I reckoned I was less threatening crouched down. She started towards us again.

‘Raggs, come here!’

‘Who trained him?’ I said, grinning. ‘Cos you should ask for your money back.’

‘Raggs! Now.’

‘I think you’ll have to come and get him.’

‘I’m sorry he bothered you,’ she muttered when she got close enough for me to hear. I opened my mouth to say, ‘It’s all right, no worries,’ but the words choked in my throat when I saw the face behind the curtain of hair.

Jesus, her face . . .

The right side was chewed up by a wide scar running across her cheek, down her jaw and neck and disappearing into the collar of her T-shirt. Fuck, that was a mess. Not an old scar – still purple-red angry. But not brand new either as it was all healed up. The skin there wasn’t smooth like it should be, but rippled and puckered, especially on her neck.

What in hell had happened to her?

I didn’t see the rest of her face at first. The scar was all I could see, my eyes drawn to it like a driver rubbernecking at a crash scene.

She bent down and snatched the dog from me. That broke my trance and I caught a flash of her eyes springing tears before she turned away with the dog under her arm and hurried off.

I scrambled up. ‘Hey, no harm done. He was only playing . . .’

She all but ran down the path away from me.

No wonder she didn’t want to come over and get the dog. She must get that all the time – idiots staring at her with their gobs open, like Frankenstein’s monster had just lumbered into view.

You utter, utter dick! Why did you have to stare like that?’

Should I run after her and apologise? But what would I say . . . ‘Hey, I’m sorry I stared at your face’ . . . Hardly.

She disappeared into the trees.

I felt like shit. She only looked about fourteen and I’d made her cry. I should be ashamed of myself.

And I was.

I fished the bucket out of the canal. She’d gone and there was no way of making it right even if I had a clue where to start.

‘Ryan, I’ve got some tea for you here. Take a break,’ Mum called.

I went inside and Mum handed me tea in an enamel mug. I examined it. ‘What is it?’

‘Nettle.’ She beamed at me. ‘Very cleansing.’

Urgh! Gross. Reminded me of green piss. Not that I’d ever tasted green piss, but I reckoned nettle tea was how it would taste.

‘Did you finish the windows?’

‘No, I knocked the bucket over. I’ll go back out and do it.’

‘Drink your tea first. And you can tell me what you think of some of my new designs.’ Jewellery kit was spread across the table: stones, beads, silver wires and torcs and catches, leather cords.

I sat down on a floor cushion. No chance of chucking the tea in the canal then. Mum held up a silver torc with a jade stone carved into the shape of a dragon.

‘It’s great, Mum. You should make more of those. They’ll sell for sure.’

‘Good. It took me ages to get that right. Very delicate job, especially the tail. What’s wrong with your face?’

‘Nothing. Why?’

‘You keep rubbing it.’ She put her fingers on her right cheek. ‘Here.’

I flushed hot. ‘I do?’

She poked her tongue between her teeth in concentration as she threaded red beads on to a leather thong. ‘Mmm.’ Her hair was piled up in a scrunchie on top of her head. She looked like a pineapple.

‘Mum, if you get injured, like an accident, they can do plastic surgery to take the scars away, can’t they?’

‘Yes, but I don’t think they can make them disappear. Sometimes perhaps, but not always.’

‘What would give you really bad scars?’

‘I’ve no idea. I once saw a child with a terrible scar from pulling a hot pan off the cooker. Why?’

‘Just wondered. I’ll go and finish the windows.’

I filled the bucket again at the sink and managed to chuck the nettle tea away at the same time.

As I scrubbed the rest of the insect debris off the windows, I couldn’t get the puckered skin on the girl’s face out of my head, or the look in her eyes when she’d turned away. She’d have been pretty before that. Nothing incredible, just normal average pretty like a lot of girls are. Kind of cute in a quiet way. If I ran into her again, I wouldn’t stare. After all, I used to hate it when kids stared at me and Mum.