Six by Karen Tayleur Read Free Book Online Page B

me and Nico, an uncomfortable secret.
    Cooper once asked me about YouTube and video blogging, but I didn’t know much about it except for the music videos or crazy cats playing pianos that Poppy insisted I watch. He seemed disappointed, but smiled and led me onto another subject as if it didn’t matter. I found it hard to read Cooper. Sometimes he could be so warm, sometimes he flattered or confided in me. But all the while I felt like there was another Cooper underneath that facade. A Cooper with an agenda I could not even guess at. Even when he punched his mobile number into my phone one night, just in case I ever needed it. I never had any intention of using it.

8
COOPER
    Georgie Porgie
    puddin’ and pie
    kissed the girls and
    made them cry
    When the boys came
    out to play
    Georgie Porgie
    ran away

    OKAY, TOM COOPER here. Vid blog 17 — A Day in the Life of a Legend. Today’s topic is…um…success. By the time I upload this series of vid blogs at the end of Year 12, things will have changed a lot. Maybe I’ll make more sense to all of you — the ones that I leave behind in good old Silver Valley.
    Ummm, so, today some guy asked me how I do it. How I’m always hooked up with a gorgeous girl. I gave him a look that said, ‘I dunno what you’re talking about,’ and walked away, but he followed and tapped me on the shoulder.
    ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I really want to know.’
    ‘Word of mouth,’ I said and left him with that.
    So this is the truth about my success with girls. And listen well.
    I chat up the girls’ mums, and they love me.
    Hey Ash and Mez, if you’re watching this you know that it’s true. You get past the mums and it’s all smooth sailing from there. I smile a lot. It’s not hard to get on their good side. I use my manners. I hold the door open for them; they like that. I make myself useful.
    You might wonder what makes it so easy to sucker them in. Their daughters aren’t always so…what’s the word…trusting. That’ll do. Maybe you forget stuff when you get older. I’m sure you do, ’cause my olds always bang on about these being the best years of my life.
    It must be good to have amnesia.
    I can’t wait to leave behind the ‘best years of my life’. Have my own car. Get out of here. Living at home is like living in jail.
    ‘When are you going to be home?’
    ‘Have you done your homework?’
    ‘Tom, where have you been?’
    (Laughs)
    Get your own life, I want to yell. Instead I smile. I smile a lot. I tell them what they want to hear. I mark the days off the calendar.
    Two hundred and eleven days to go.
    That’s when I finish school. They think I’m going to uni. They’ve got it all mapped out for me. A nice steady job. Living in the ’burbs, maybe somewhere near them. Oh yeah. That’s what I want to do.
    As if.
    I’ve got my own plans. I’ve got some money tucked away. Money they don’t know about. It’s gonna do their heads in when I leave, but maybe they should have thought of that when they only had one child. It’s too much. The pressure. Maybe they should have had a whole bunch of kids so they could spread their attention more thinly.
    I don’t think you get how hard it is living like you’re some kind of…you know…small thing that lives on a microscope slide. I didn’t do science, so sue me for not knowing what it’s called. A microbe? An atom? Whatever. Anyway, there you are minding your own business and you feel something peering down at you, poking you to see what you’ll do next. If they don’t stop soon I’m gonna poke back. I’ve gotta get out before that happens.
    Two hundred and eleven days to go.
    I’ve got money. Got enough to get me out of this state, maybe even overseas. You might wonder why I just don’t leave. Leave now. Yeah, well, I’m not stupid. I didn’t hang around school for thirteen years just to blow it all near the end. I can keep it together. Get my piece of paper. Get some marks that might help me later on.