Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey Read Free Book Online

looks exhausted. He has a bottle in his lap. It’s full. It doesn’t have a label. His eyes are glassy. He looks up and slowly rolls his head side to side.
    He takes a quick swig. Then glances down and tilts the bottle my way. I am sorely tempted, but I shake my head and show a palm.
    Jasper runs his hand roughly down his face and pulls at the skin on his chin. He lights a cigarette. Rests his arms on his knees.
    “Give us a smoke?” I ask.
    Jasper smiles. He strips one from its pack and straightens it. I purse the cigarette hard between my lips as he offers me a light. And I lean tentatively toward the flame, like I’m moving in to kiss a horse on the arse, waiting to be kicked.
    “Waitwaitwait!” Jasper interrupts, still smiling. “Other end, Charlie. That’s the filter, see?”
    He steals it from my mouth and lights it himself, then hands it back.
    I expected to cough, but not as much as this. One breath of it wrings my lungs like a washcloth. I splutter and spit. I try for composure and fail.
    “It’s the … asthma and that. All the … humidity. Yeah. Usually I’m …” I squint down my nose at the cigarette in my hand, as though it has just said something to confuse me. I needlessly tap ash from its hood, singe the tip of my index finger, and drop the cigarette. Of course, my instinct is to reach and catch it, which, to my surprise, I manage to succeed in doing, and so I burn the inside of my left palm. I hate this cigarette. And now I have to smoke it.
    I tear at the soft grass between my legs. It feels like we’ve weathered a storm and we’re sitting among the wreckage. We sit under that blanket of quiet for a long time.
    Jasper keeps pulling at his bottle. I don’t know what to say. It is sounearthly quiet I can hear the crackle of the paper when he inhales his smoke. The slight puck of his lips. I let my cigarette burn out discreetly between my fingers.
    “It feels like I’m dreaming this whole thing,” I say.
    Jasper raises his eyebrows. “Yair. I know it. This whole night. This whole crazy night. Fuckin hell, I wish it were a dream, Charlie. I can’t tell you. It’s like somethin’s bin ripped right out of me.”
    He grinds his cigarette and pockets it. I take the opportunity to do the same. He lights another and goes on.
    “Laura, she were the only person I ever felt like I
knew
. Like I dint even have to ask questions. I just felt comfortable. She was like my girl and my mum and my family all at the same time, you know. Everything was always easy. I mean, she would sometimes get in these moods where she just sat there quiet and never said nothing, but for some reason I understood that too. And I get like that anyway. But most of the time, she was real funny. And smart, Charlie. Like I said.”
    Jasper is sucking down that bottle. It’s half gone already. I frown. I worry that should he get too drunk, we may not make it back through the bush.
    Jasper reads my mind.
    “It’s orright, Charlie. I can hold my licker. Not like my old man, and he’s the whitefella. You want some? Here, garn.”
    I reach tentatively for the cold, wet bottle, more to slow him down than to quench my own desires. I sniff the lip and recoil.
    “What is it?”
    “Bushmills. Tastes like piss and oil.”
    I take a small incendiary pull. Of course, it attacks my mouth and burns down the length of my throat. I gag immediately, wiping my lips, trying to keep my lungs at bay. I slant my head and pretend to read a label that isn’t there through my clouding eyes. This shit is poison. And I realize I’ve been betrayed by the two vices that fiction promised me I’d adore. Sal Paradise held up bottles of booze like a housewife in adetergent commercial. Holden Caulfield reached for his cigarettes like an act of faith. Even Huckleberry Finn tapped on his pipe with relief and satisfaction. I can’t trust anything. If sex turns out to be this bad, I’m never reading again. At this rate, it will probably burn my dick