Ostrich Boys by Keith Gray Read Free Book Online

said.
    Kenny turned round in his seat. “What d’you mean by that?”
    “It’s not exactly camouflage, is it?”
    “It’s designer.”
    “It hurts your eyes if you look at it for too long,” I said.
    Sim asked, “Did someone give it to you?”
    “No, I bought it.”
    Sim acted amazed. “With your own money?”
    But Kenny refused to bite. He stroked a hand across his chest, smoothing rumples. “It’s my favorite. And you’re so jealous I can smell it.”
    Neither Sim nor I had a clue what that meant. We burst out laughing.
    Kenny grinned at us, pleased that he’d been funny. He pushed his messy blond fringe out of his eyes and said, “Come on, Blake. Get the map out. I want to know where we’re meant to be going, exactly.”
    But Sim shook his head. “No. Get Ross out first.”
    We cleared up the newspaper and half-eaten sandwich crud left by the passenger before us; Kenny even scrubbed away a dried coffee splot from the tabletop. We didn’t want our mate sitting in litter. Then, checking to make sure we weren’t being watched by the old lady across from us, I carefully took Ross out from where he’d been wrapped up in myjumper at the bottom of my rucksack and placed him on the table. I had to keep hold of him because of the rattling and swaying of the train. And just like it had been with Caroline, we couldn’t take our eyes off him.
    “This is the closest I’ve ever been to someone who’s dead,” Kenny said.
    “I can’t get over how small it is,” Sim said. “Ross was as tall as me, and now he fits in
there.”
    “How do we know it’s all of him?” Kenny asked. “How could you tell if they’ve missed some?”
    “Can you believe somebody even has that job?” Sim was incredulous. “How did work go today, darling? Well, it was a bit slow; I only collected four burned-up dead people.”
    “D’you reckon they’d fit you in there?” Kenny asked me.
    I looked at him to make sure he wasn’t taking the piss. “Maybe,” I said. “If they tamped me down a bit, you know?” With my fist hitting my palm, I made the action of squeezing a dead chubby kid into a confined space—or something similar. And Kenny laughed.
    Sim reached for the urn’s lid.
    Kenny blocked him. “What’re you doing?” he said, shocked.
    Sim’s hand hovered. “I want to have a look inside.”
    “No, you can’t. That’s wrong, that is.
Disrespectful.”
    “Says the one who was going to put him in a lunch box!”
    Kenny looked to me. “We can’t … can we?”
    I knew what he meant. But when I’d been with Caroline,hadn’t I also wanted to look? “Aren’t you just a little bit curious? If you’ve never been this close to a dead person, you’ve definitely never
seen
one before.”
    Kenny thought about it. “I don’t know,” he said. “What if you spill him?”
    “I’ll keep hold while Sim takes the lid off, okay?”
    He still wasn’t keen. “Okay. But we’ve all got to cover our noses too. Because I’m telling you: we’re really shittered if anybody sneezes.”
    Sim pushed his sunglasses up on top of his head, stretched his neck to look around, double-checking that none of the other passengers were paying us any attention, then took hold of the urn’s lid. Kenny watched me to be sure I kept a tight grip on the base. Sim struggled at first, before realizing the lid was meant to be screwed off. He waited for the clattering train to get over a bumpy section of track. Kenny and I leaned as close as we could. And finally he lifted the lid away.
    We peered inside.
    It was ash.
    Of course it was. But we’d been expecting … I don’t think we knew what we’d been expecting. And none of us knew what to say. We didn’t know whether to feel disappointed, humbled or just that little bit stupid. We were all quiet.
    Then I remembered what Caroline had told me about the weird memories that kept popping into her head. “It’s what
can’t
be fitted in there that counts,” I said.
    Kenny nodded hard,