The Bombs That Brought Us Together by Brian Conaghan Read Free Book Online Page A

maker and manky dishes. And his dad was still getting hassled by thugs at the hospital. No one ever had anything good to say about these poor Old Country people.
    As if they knew any proper Old Country refugees.
    As if they knew what it was like to live in Old Country where their top brass pestered you every day.
    As if they knew what it was like for refugees to live in Little Town without properly knowing the lingo.
    As if they knew that living in Little Town with rubbish lingo skills was akin to being a deaf mute.
    As if they knew all that.
    Talk about being slow. These people were slower than coastal erosion. That’s why I kept telling people at school to read books.
    I thought that if I could just help Pav to speak the lingo a little bit better, he’d be able to help his folks, and the world of Little Town would get a bit easier for all of them. The bookshop mission turned out to be a disaster.
    Reason One:
    I hung about the Teenage Reading Section: Boys far too long, scanning through all these books I couldn’t afford to buy. Who could? Regime workers and their supporters, that’s who. I had to make do with second-hand ones at school and home, sometimes third, fourth and fifth hand-me-downs. Here I loved nothing better than to feel their spines and geta good whiff of new book covers. I worshipped the tang of new books. It’s not like I needed to be on some deviants’ register or anything, I just thought the reek of a new book screamed out information and knowledge. If something took my fancy, which it always did, I’d try like a desperate man to speed-read a first chapter so I could then speed-read the following chapters on my next visit. That was the only way I could get my hands on a proper new book. Far too much time wasted in the Teenage Reading Section: Boys.
    Reason Two:
    I almost died. Properly died. Heart attack material! A heart attack so massive that it could’ve resulted in a triple or quadruple bypass, maybe even a transplant. A heart attack so titanic that the moment it started pounding away I thought it was going to explode from my body and splat on to the wall behind the shop assistant, leaving a red mess dripping behind her head. I’d never felt that way before.
    Reason for this Major Organ Malfunction:
    Guess who I spied flicking through the books at the Teenage Reading Section: Girls ?
    Eh?
    None other than the amazingly stunning and utterly gorgeous Erin F.
    YES, THAT ERIN F.
    I moseyed into the Learning Section and plucked a book from the shelf, a book big enough to cover my face. A4 size.I didn’t care what it was just as long as it kept me incognito. Elevator Engineering throughout the Years: The Ups and Downs made it possible to sidle up and get a good glimpse of Erin F. It was nice to see her out and about, away from her infirmed mum for some quality her time. I couldn’t see what she was reading. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because I was sharing her air space, seeing how her tummy went up and down to the rhythm of her breathing, which I then copied. Seeing how she stood with one foot crossed over the other, which I then copied. How her hair hung over her face, which she would occasionally place behind one of her ears. The right one. Why do boys have to have such short hair in Little Town? I was close enough to see how her jeans were turned up, revealing sockless ankles. Skin. To see how her flowery blouse was cut at the shoulders, revealing her long, slender arms. No hair. Smooth skin. More skin. Lovely skin. Erin F’s skin. My body shuddered because I was in the vicinity of Erin F’s skin, being able to stare at it without being told off or being laughed at by her friends. She looked so alive and radiant.
    With one foot in the Learning Section and the other in the Teenage Reading Section: Girls , the nerves were going ninety because of the possible danger this one foot could bring. It wasn’t that boys weren’t allowed in the Teenage Reading Section: Girls area, it was