What I Was by Meg Rosoff Read Free Book Online

didn’t know it then, and Finn was both its subject and object. He accepted love instinctively, without responsibility or conditions, like a wild thing glimpsed through trees.
    At last I extinguished the lamp, though according to my watch it was still early. And then, divided from the night by nothing more than four flimsy walls and an idea of a friend, I fell asleep.

9
    Finn was gone by the time the sun woke me. I felt disconcerted by his ability to slip out without my hearing but there was no time to hang about. I dressed quickly, said a quick prayer of thanks for the low tide, and ran back to school, hoping to slip in to breakfast without anyone having noticed I was gone.
    At the school gates, my housemaster stood waiting with the police.
    My parents were phoned and informed that I was still alive, and a lifeboat search called off. I was punished for this extraordinary infringement of school rules by being placed under house arrest and losing all privileges. In a serious talk with my housemaster, I was threatened with expulsion, which for once bothered me.
    And yet, oddly, no one asked where I’d been when I failed to return to my room all night, or what I’d done. This I found puzzling, satisfying and hilarious, as if ‘off school grounds’ were a generic place that didn’t require further specification. This omission confirmed my faith in the imbecility of the so-called real world, the one in which I pretended to live most of the time. I ignored the glares of authority and the taunts of my room-mates, but most of all I ignored Reese, who lurked and lingered and buzzed round my head with his sticky friendship and his sly questions and the barest suggestion that he knew.
    Knew what, I wondered. Enough to tell?
    I was kept under lock and key for nearly a month, until our break-up for Christmas, allowed only to shuffle to and from meals and lessons. There was nothing to differentiate the days. I wouldn’t have minded so much if there’d been a way to tell Finn why I stayed away. Maybe he didn’t care, but I often sat gazing out of the window like a sea captain’s wife.
    At the end of term, my father picked me up from school, shaking his head.
    ‘I don’t have to tell you how disappointed I am,’ he told me. ‘Not only are your grades appalling, but this other business…’ He looked at me with an expression that was almost contempt. ‘What were you thinking? What if you’d died of exposure, been hit by a car? How would we all feel then?’
    How would we all feel, I wondered. I thought I knew how I’d feel. Dead and cold and stiff, my entrails twisted and septic in my decomposing body. Perhaps it would be a relief. I couldn’t muster up the emotion to mourn this imagined loss of myself, nor could I shake the suspicion that I’d be better off without a body, or at least without this particular body. For one thing, there would be far less opportunity for random betrayal. No more awkwardness, no more fumbles, no more strained lungs and blotchy cheeks. I felt infinitely cheered by this possibility of losing my physical self.
    ‘… your mother and I have had a long talk about the suitability of your continuing tenure at St Oswald’s –’
    ‘What?’ I tuned back in to the conversation with a start. ‘But I can’t leave!’
    My father looked at me, his expression puzzled and slightly disgusted. ‘Just come along,’ he said. ‘We’ll discuss it later.’
    It was late afternoon when we set off, and most of the drive took place in the dark. After the first few miles I turned my brain to neutral and stared out into the black night, counting the headlights that cast long bright shadows up my window. Mile after mile, I thought about the only thing capable of occupying my thoughts.
    Despite the late hour, my mother met us at the door with exclamations of welcome. She made cocoa, relieved me of my filthy clothes, and kissed me goodnight with nervy affection. There were neatly ironed pyjamas in my bottom