The Kneebone Boy by Ellen Potter Read Free Book Online Page B

road. Maybe he’d tattooed his face to take people’s attention off the smashed frog in the center of it.
    “That’ll be a fiver,” the man said, hopping off the car and heading toward them while holding out his palm.
    “Five pounds? What on earth for?” Lucia said. Her brothers were simply staring with their mouths open.
    “Well, I ain’t a bloody penguin in a zoo,” he replied as though he were genuinely offended. “Tourists pay five pounds for my picture.”
    “Ridiculous,” Lucia said firmly, and she grabbed Otto and Max by the shirtsleeves and stalked off, not paying any attention as the man yelled after them, “Oi, oi!”
    Lucia’s impressive eyebrows squinched together. “That’s nerve to make people pay for his photo.”
    Secretly, though, she was not so much offended by the five pounds as by the fact that he had called them tourists.
    “Anyway,” she said, “it’s about time we had some dinner. I’m starving.”
    Otto suggested trying back at Angela’s again, just in case her neighbour was wrong and Angela had returned, but Lucia refused. She said it would be a shame to leave the streets of Camden just yet, now that they could do whatever they damn well pleased. Max agreed and Otto did too in the end. All in all they were in that gorgeous state of mind in which they felt free and unafraid and sharply aware of how large and exciting the world was.
    In other words, it hadn’t gotten dark outside yet.

Chapter 4
     
In which Lucia reveals a secret and the Princess Uzima narrowly escapes from a lion
     
    Casper always gave them some spending money when he went away, and now they considered what sort of dinner they should buy with it. There were so many choices here! In Little Tunks there was only a tiny fish-and-chip shop, a pizza parlour, and the Pig & Pony Pub, where they served a dried-out disk of brown substance that the menu called a burger.
    The Hardscrabbles peered through the windows at a good many food shops and were tempted by some. But they couldn’t all agree on a place until they passed the open door of a curry shop and smelled the earthy tangle of spices, so strong that the odor oozed down the back of their throats and made them feel all spitty. In a good way. They went in and ordered at the counter, each choosing something different so that they could try a bit ofeverything. They sat at a table by the window, so as not to miss a thing on the street. After several minutes, the shop owner brought them their food, along with small silver pots of gem-colored sauces.
    “Careful,” he warned, pointing to a pot of red sauce. “This one is veerry, veerry spicy.”
    So of course the red sauce was the first pot that the Hardscrabbles dipped their spoons in. After a few minutes, their noses were dripping and they were making some strange
chockety
sounds in their throats until the shop owner brought over some yoghurt to cool them down. After they were done, Otto wanted to leave for Angela’s but Lucia insisted that they sit and digest. This should have struck her brothers as strange, since she’d never cared about their digestion in the past, but they didn’t notice. They all sat and digested until the shop owner started to give them filthy looks.
    With their bellies full and their heads feeling strangely light, they walked back to Fishtail Lane and climbed the steps to Angela’s flat. Their rap on the door provoked the usual fit of barking from Dr. Jekyll, but this time they also heard the approach of footsteps on the other side of the door.
    “There, you see!” Max said, smiling. “She
is
here after all.”
    But when the door opened, it wasn’t Angela at all. It was a stocky teenage girl with a wide, flat face and a badly chapped lower lip. Dr. Jekyll ran between her legs and flew out into the hall, barking wildly.
    “He bites,” she shouted in order to be heard above the barking.
    “It’s okay, boy,” Max said to Dr. Jekyll. “It’s just us.” He put his hand out and the