The Accidental by Ali Smith Read Free Book Online

darker. It went away after he slept. Then it came back again the next week in the café. Then it went away. Then it came back, darker. There is no warning. It is like when you are at a cinema waiting for the lights to go down. Something inside your brain knows that at any moment the lights will dim. So sometimes you feel them go dim when they haven’t done anything, haven’t changed at all. It keeps happening to him. It is caused by causal effects. He has caused it. He has changed the way the world is. They played about with her head until they were happy. They shifted it about on the neck. Then they delivered it. Then she killed herself.
    Forty people in the upper sixth probably saw that picture. Twenty-six people in the lower sixth probably saw it. Magnus can’t calculate how many other people possibly saw it, or can still see it. There was a lecture about it at Assembly, after. Milton said the people who sent it should come forward. It would come to light, he said. When it did it would be worse for them then if they didn’t come forward now. But it can’t be traced. There is no way the email can be traced back to them. Anton found a zipcode from somewhere in the States. He got it out of the back of the magazine. The message was sent from ‘Michael Jackson’. When Magnus checked his mail that Tuesday night that’s the name that came up. He had laughed. He had thought it was well cool, to be part of it. He was in the common room when Jake Strothers first came in with the photo. Jake Strothers stole it from the school office. Jake Strothers had been sent to deliver a note but when he got there the office was empty. The filing cabinet was wide open. Jake Strothers looked in it. He found the photo on her file. She was in the lower sixth. She was near the front of the Ms. Jake Strothers came into the common room, showed it to Anton. Anton had the magazine in his locker. He fetched it out, folded the photo on to it. Jake Strothers went crazy. Don’t for fuck sake you’re bending it. Jake Strothers had wanted to go out with her. That’s why he stole it. He didn’t want a phone photo. He wanted a photo taken unsneakily. Then Jake Strothers actually looked at the composite Anton made by folding it. They both laughed. He asked them what they were laughing at. They wouldn’t tell him or show him. They knew he hadn’t ever done it yet. They could sense it like it was written on his forehead. Anton said: I’m not responsible for what happens to homosexuals. Magnus said he wasn’t. Anton said: I believe you, honest. But I’m not responsible either for what happens to innocents who see things they’re not ready for yet. Anton was right about that. Hologram Boy was so fucking pure. Hologram Boy noted his own stiffs like interesting science experiments. At this point he was still Hologram Boy. At this point Hologram Boy was still under the illusion that he was Magnus Smart. It was still an ordinary Tuesday. Magnus Smart knew something they didn’t know. A child could do it for fuck sake. Anton, Jake Strothers, hadn’t a clue. They were computer illiterates. Magnus Smart told them there was something he could really show them. It was after school hours. There was hardly anybody about. They walked along the corridor past the cleaners. They went down the main stairs. The school was empty, hollow, big as a whale. They walked through it like they were inside its ribs. But now Magnus is bigger, more bloated than the school. He knows more than the whole school does. They pushed the door open. What is it you see when you see a photo of someone? There was an article in the paper. It said: the tragedy of the loss of Catherine Masson who went to Deans. A happy generous well-loved person a polite bright girl a good friend whose friends would all miss her a keen member of the Lapidary Society. The photo in the paper was the school photo. It was the same one. Magnus knows more than she knew. Magnus knows more than her family knows,