The Crane Wife by Patrick Ness Read Free Book Online Page A

feel so bound up in girly competitiveness. She was a proper
mate
, she was.
    In this, apparently, they were mistaken.
    ‘Oh, look!’ said (to select one among many) her newest best friend in college, Karen, who also read Geography and also didn’t see the point of Bristol and also thought that the failure of each and every political philosophy throughout history could be boiled down to the simple, basic truth that People Are Dumb. ‘
The Wizard of Oz
is on!’
    ‘Really?’ Amanda said, flopping down on the couch beside her. They’d had a hot night out. Her best clubbing clothes were stuck to her from the evening’s sweat, her feet were killing her in these shoes – women this calcium-dense were not natural matches for high heels – and though she and Karen had danced and drunk and laughed and smoked all night, neither of them had managed to pull or even catch a boy’s eye. To be fair, Karen had a nose issue. And an eyebrow issue. And, well, a limp, but you could hardly see it while they were dancing. Still, they’d had fun. It was all very promising.
    With some help from her mother and stepdad Hank – her father was paying the tuition fees and she knew he could barely afford those, so she always lied when he asked if she ever needed anything more – Amanda had just about enough to rent half a two-bedroom near the university for her final year. Karen had responded to Amanda’s notice on the college room exchange site. They’d had coffee, they’d hit it off, they’d moved in. Two weeks and no problems so far.
    ‘I didn’t even think they bothered showing this on TV any more,’ Karen said enthusiastically, tucking her uneven feet beneath her on the couch. She inhaled deeply, readying herself to join in on the next chorus of ‘We’re Off To See–’
    ‘I
hate
this fucking movie,’ Amanda said.
    Karen choked on what could only have been the air she just breathed in. ‘You
what
?’ she coughed, looking like Amanda had just punched her. Actually
punched
her.
    Amanda ploughed on, oblivious. ‘None of it’s real, even in terms of the story. In order for the plot to work at all, everyone has to act like a complete moron, and then they get to the end and not only is there no magic, the wizard is just some show-off loser who’s tricked everyone into following him, and before they can try his ass before the International Courts of Justice, he escapes in a balloon. He’s practically Miloševi [ć] .’
    She stopped briefly, because she could see the whites around every part of Karen’s eyes, but she hoped it was from the dodgy tablets they’d bought from the overweight boy by the toilets, who’d said they were Ecstasy he’d found in his older brother’s old bedroom, so they could have been up to twenty years expired and were probably, in the end, Panadol.
    ‘You’re joking, right?’ Karen said.
    ‘And then she goes back home,’ Amanda sailed right on, thinking, somehow, that this was encouragement, ‘and we’re supposed to be
happy
that she’s returned to her old, small, black-and-white horizons? That dreams are all well and good, but don’t forget that you’re actually trapped on the farm forever? Same reason I hate the Chronicles of fucking Narnia. Oh, God, and don’t get me started on
him
.’ The Cowardly Lion minced onscreen. ‘The stuff of nightmares.’
    Karen looked incredulous. Or rather,
more
incredulous. ‘The Cowardly Lion?’
    ‘Oh, come on.
Look
at him and tell me you don’t see every paedophile you’d warn your daughter away from. I always think he’s about to whip it out and lay down on top of Dorothy.’ She put on a frankly hideous version of the Cowardly Lion’s voice. ‘
Come on, little Dorothy, sit on your Uncle Lion’s lap and he’ll show you
why
he’s king of the jungle, uh-huh, uh-huh.
And then he pushes her to the ground and pulls her panties right on down to those ruby–’
    Amanda stopped because the look on Karen’s face was, at last, unmistakeable.