The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon Read Free Book Online Page A

sad. And a murder is usually committed by someone known—”
    Father banged the table with his fist really hard so that the plates and his knife and fork jumped around and my ham jumped sideways so that it touched the broccoli, so I couldn't eat the ham or the broccoli anymore.
    Then he shouted, “I will not have that man's name mentioned in my house.”
    I asked, “Why not?”
    And he said, “That man is evil.”
    And I said, “Does that mean he might have killed Wellington?”
    Father put his head in his hands and said, “Jesus wept.”
    I could see that Father was angry with me, so I said, “I know you told me not to get involved in other people's business but Mrs. Shears is a friend of ours.”
    And Father said, “Well, she's not a friend anymore.”
    And I asked, “Why not?”
    And Father said, “OK, Christopher. I am going to say this for the last and final time. I will not tell you again. Look at me when I'm talking to you, for God's sake. Look at me. You are not to go asking Mrs. Shears about who killed that bloody dog. You are not to go asking anyone about who killed that bloody dog. You are not to go trespassing in other people's gardens. You are to stop this ridiculous bloody detective game right now.”
    I didn't say anything.
    Father said, “I am going to make you promise, Christopher. And you know what it means when I make you promise.”
    I did know what it meant when you say you promise something. You have to say that you will never do something again and then you must never do it because that would make the promise a lie. I said, “I know.”
    Father said, “Promise me you will stop doing these things. Promise that you will give up this ridiculous game right now, OK?”
    I said, “I promise.”
    83. I think I would make a very good astronaut.
    To be a good astronaut you have to be intelligent and I'm intelligent. You also have to understand how machines work and I'm good at understanding how machines work. You also have to be someone who would like being on their own in a tiny spacecraft thousands and thousands of miles away from the surface of the earth and not panic or get claustrophobia or homesick or insane. And I like really little spaces, so long as there is no one else in them with me. Sometimes when I want to be on my own I get into the airing cupboard outside the bathroom and slide in beside the boiler and pull the door closed behind me and sit there and think for hours and it makes me feel very calm.
    So I would have to be an astronaut on my own, or have my own part of the spacecraft which no one else could come into.
    And also there are no yellow things or brown things in a spacecraft, so that would be OK, too.
    And I would have to talk to other people from Mission Control, but we would do that through a radio linkup and a TV monitor, so they wouldn't be like real people who are strangers, but it would be like playing a computer game.
    Also I wouldn't be homesick at all because I'd be surrounded by lots of the things I like, which are machines and computers and outer space. And I would be able to look out of a little window in the spacecraft and know that there was no one else near me for thousands and thousands of miles, which is what I sometimes pretend at night in the summer when I go and lie on the lawn and look up at the sky and I put my hands round the sides of my face so that I can't see the fence and the chimney and the washing line and I can pretend I'm in space.
    And all I could see would be stars. And stars are the places where the molecules that life is made of were constructed billions of years ago. For example, all the iron in your blood which stops you from being anemic was made in a star.
    And I would like it if I could take Toby with me into space, and that might be allowed because they sometimes do take animals into space for experiments, so if I could think of a good experiment you could do with a rat that didn't hurt the rat, I could make them let me take Toby.
    But