Black Rabbit Summer by Kevin Brooks Read Free Book Online Page A

up and gave Pauly a friendly pat on the arm.
    ‘See?’ he said casually. ‘That wasn’t so hard, was it?’
    Pauly grinned, not quite so nervous now, but still a little unsure.
    Campbell gave him another reassuring pat on the arm. ‘We’ll see you later then, OK?’
    ‘Yeah… where’re you going to be?’
    But Campbell didn’t answer him. He’d already turned round and was heading off down the pathway towards the wasteground, the three Greenwell kids following along behind him. He wasn’t smiling any more. His friendly face had shut down as soon as he’d turned away from Pauly. I’d seen it disappear – click – like a light going off. And now, as I watched him go, it was hard to believe he’d ever smiled in his life.
    I turned to Raymond.
    He was watching Campbell too.
    ‘Are you all right?’ I asked him.
    He nodded.
    ‘Are you sure?’
    ‘Yeah…’ He looked at me, his brow furrowed. ‘He’s weirder than me, isn’t he?’
    ‘Who – Campbell?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    I laughed. ‘Yeah, I think he probably is.’
    ∗
    The den in Back Lane is hidden away at the top of the bank, about three-quarters of the way along the lane. You can’t see it from ground level, and unless you know exactly how to get there, it’s almost impossible to find. And even when you do know how to get there, it’s still pretty tricky.
    ‘It’s up there,’ Raymond said, pointing up the bank.
    ‘Where?’
    ‘There… you cut through those brambles over there –’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘There, by that tree stump.’
    I couldn’t even see any tree stump. It was getting on for nine thirty now and the sun was starting to go down. It wasn’t really dark yet, and the air was still hot and sticky, but the light in the lane was beginning to fade to a dim and shadowy blur.
    ‘He’s right,’ Pauly said, muscling in between Raymond and me. ‘It’s there, look.’ He pointed up at the bank. ‘You go round the back of that stump, then along that little ridge and up through the brambles –’
    ‘Shut up, Pauly,’ I said.
    He gave me his hurt-little-boy look. ‘I’m only trying to help.’
    ‘Yeah, right,’ I said. ‘Pauly Gilpin – Mr Fucking Helpful.’
    ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
    ‘It means you’re bad,’ Raymond said.
    We both looked at him.
    ‘Bad?’ Pauly grinned. ‘You mean baad like Michael Jackson?’
    Raymond couldn’t help smiling then, and that was all the encouragement Pauly needed. He put down his carrier bag and started dancing around, singing loudly in a stupid American accent: ‘ Your butt is maaan, gonna take you raaaght… shit!’
    Raymond laughed as Pauly moonwalked into the bank andfell over, and I found myself smiling too. I didn’t want to, but it was pretty funny.
    That was the thing about Pauly – no matter what you thought of him, no matter how much you wanted to hate him, he could always redeem himself by making you laugh. But I knew it was all part of his act. Make them laugh, make them smile, make them forget about everything else…
    I looked at him now, rolling around on his back, wiggling his arms and legs in the air, whooping and shrieking like Michael Jackson in pain.
    ‘Come on, Raymond,’ I said, stepping up on to the bank. ‘Let’s go.’

Four
    We used to have dens all over the place – down by the river, along the lane into town, in the little woods at the back of the old factory car park. Most of them were pretty ramshackle things – a few wooden boards jammed into the ground, a couple of old pallets stuck between a gap in some trees. Sometimes we’d fix it all together with bits of old rope or something, maybe throw some plastic sheeting over the top… but they weren’t really made to last. We’d just pick up whatever we could find, stick it all together, and that was that.
    But the den in Back Lane was different. I can’t remember why we decided to put so much effort into it – I expect we were probably just bored and didn’t have anything else to do