Candy by Kevin Brooks Read Free Book Online Page B

said. “Most of these guys are all mouth. They don’t want any trouble.”
    “They won’t get any from me,” I said, trying to sound casual, trying to ignore the sudden image in my mind—the image of a darkened cave, glinting with gold, a death-mask grin…
    I stood up.
    “Well,” I said, “I’ll leave you to it, then.”
    Gina stifled a yawn. “G’night, Joe.”
    “Yeah,” said Mike. “Take it easy.”
    Upstairs, I went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, then trudged wearily into my bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed. It was two-thirty in the morning. My body was exhausted and my head felt drained, but my mind was still buzzing with thoughts: What’s Dad going to say about Gina and Mike getting married? What’s it going to be like when Gina moves out? What if Mum and Dad get married again and Mum moves back in?
    I was thinking about these things, but I wasn’t really thinking about them—they were just there, just floating around like dead leaves drifting on the surface of a pond. They didn’t really mean anything to me. Below the surface, though, down in the icy black depths, I could see things that meant something. Moving things, living things, formless shapes, darting and flickering in the darkness, stirring up the silt, whirling in the gloom, forming a narrow black tunnel, with me at one end and a death mask at the other and a pale white ghost floating somewhere in between…
    Shit, I said to myself, shaking my head. I’m too tired for this.
    I got up and started getting undressed.
    Shirt off…
    You probably won’t even remember her in the morning.
    Shoes off…
    She’ll just be another lost dream.
    Socks off…
    You’ll meet some girl at the bus stop and forget that Candy ever existed.
    Trousers off…
    What’s that?
    I was checking my pockets before I took off my trousers, just emptying out the loose change and stuff, when my fingers closed on something unfamiliar. You know how it is with the stuff in your pockets, how you pretty much know what’s in them, and even if you don’t know, your fingers do—that’s a £1 coin, that’s a train ticket, that’s a plectrum—and that odd little feeling you get when you put your hand in your pocket and your fingers close on something out of place, something that shouldn’t be there?
    Well, that’s how I felt at that moment. My fingers had closed on something that shouldn’t have been there. It felt like a little piece of card, rolled into a tube, and at first I thought it was a train ticket. But it was too small to be a train ticket, and I wouldn’t roll a train ticket into a tube, anyway.
    I pulled it out.
    It was a tube of card—white card, rolled tightly into a tube, about two inches long, folded in the middle, smudged with damp fingerprints…
    My heart flipped.
    I knew what it was.
    I could see it in Candy’s hands as she fought back the tears and apologized to Iggy. I could see her rolling it, unrolling it, twisting it, folding it…and then, just a couple of minutes later, I could feel her slipping it into my pocket, her hand brushing my thigh as she leaned across and reached for my chair as Iggy was moving toward me.
    I knew what it was.
    It was in my hands.
    A moist and grubby jewel.
    I sat down on the bed and slowly unfolded it, then carefully unrolled it, revealing the creased remains of a plain white business card. CANDY, it said, in neat black script. No other words, no messages, no details, just CANDY —with a cell phone number printed underneath.

chapter four
    I almost called her straight away. I can still see myself sitting there—two-thirty in the morning, half-naked, perched on the edge of the bed, holding my cell phone in my hand, my finger poised over the buttons, a voice inside me saying, Go on, ring her, just press the buttons, ring her right now…
    But then I started thinking about it— What are you going to say? What if she’s asleep? What if Iggy answers? —and that was that. The moment had gone. I