Runaway by Peter May Read Free Book Online Page B

year to sit our Highers, but the fact that Jeff was out there working made him seem older than us, more mature. Although nothing could have been further from the truth.
    But Jeff enjoyed coming back to the school. Lording it over us. We were mere schoolkids, and he adopted a worldly air of superiority. We all smoked in those days, except for Luke. The new Player’s No. 6, small and rough and cheap in their blue and white striped packs. But Jeff had arrived that night with something a little different. Pot. Or marijuana, to give it its proper name. Or dope, as it’s known these days. Jeff called it ‘grass’ because that’s what the American kids called it. But it wasn’t. It was cannabis resin. A little chunk of it wrapped in silver paper, dark and pungent.
    It was the first time any of us had taken anything stronger than beer. We went round to the sheds at the back of the school before the dance and gathered in a huddle as Jeff ‘cooked’ the resin in its silver paper, held over the flame of a match. Then he crumbled it into some loose tobacco in a cigarette paper and rolled it into a joint. You heard all sorts of things in those days about how ‘reefers’ could make you lose your mind, and we were all a bit nervous. Jeff said he’d smoked it often, and I thought that wasn’t a particularly great recommendation.
    Luke declined, and watched in consternation as the rest of us passed the joint around, and were reduced within minutes to helpless giggling idiots. I can’t ever remember having been so hopelessly amused by nothing at all.
    Fortunately, the worst effects had worn off by the time we took to the stage, and we were just feeling mellow and relaxed.
    We had a forty-five-minute break at the interval, and I begged Jeff to give me a piece of resin. I wanted to smoke with Jenny. And I suppose that somewhere in the back of my mind was the thought that the pot might lead us to more than the heavy petting that we’d indulged in up until then.
    There were lots of kids milling around outside, so we went to the boiler room where I knew we wouldn’t be disturbed. I had a big furry coat in those days, which my mother had bought me in Copeland’s department store in Sauchiehall Street. It wasn’t real fur, of course, just some kind of coarse, shredded polyester that melted if you burned it with your cigarette. But it went down to my knees, had a big collar, and was as warm as anything in the winter.
    I laid it down on the concrete floor and we squatted on it, and I fumbled my way through the cooking ritual, then managed to spill both the crumbled resin and the loose tobacco into the lining.
    Which was when the door burst open, and the janitor stood there in his dark blue uniform, glaring at us in the light of the single yellow bulb that lit the room, and foiling my plans to lose my virginity.
    ‘What the hell’s going on here?’
    We both scrambled to our feet.
    ‘Nothing,’ I said.
    But he sniffed the air, and there was a knowing look on his face. ‘You kids have been smoking pot, haven’t you?’
    ‘No, sir,’ Jenny said truthfully.
    He nodded towards my coat on the floor, the contents of the joint along with a cigarette paper and a piece of silver foil scattered over the lining. ‘What’s that, then?’
    ‘Just a cigarette,’ I said, stooping to pick up the coat.
    But the edge in his raised voice stopped me short. ‘Leave it!’ He made us stand back as he crouched down to fold the coat carefully over on itself, so that the remains of the unsmoked joint were gathered inside. He stood up again, holding the coat to his chest. ‘I know you two,’ he said. ‘You’ll be hearing about this in the morning.’ He jerked his thumb towards the door. ‘Out!’
    ‘What about my coat?’
    He gave me a dangerous look. ‘You’ll get it back tomorrow, son.’
     
    I don’t remember much about the second half of the dance, and I know I never slept a wink that night. And it was with a sick feeling in my gut