When Dogs Cry by Markus Zusak Read Free Book Online Page B

come out, but secretly, I stood on the front porch and watched her disappear.
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ I whispered.
    I figured that was the last time I’d ever see Rube’s girl Octavia.
    I was wrong.

    Â 
    walk on
    I’m cold now.
    Jacketless.
    Somehow, I left my jacket in a back alley, and now I wander around with this dog, shivering as we walk.
    For the first time, I feel anger.
    â€˜What is this?’ I bark, but no answer is given. Only the sound of his paws and claws on the road find my ears. And his breath. His smoky breath.
    It feels like we’re going nowhere
—
just rambling through the streets in the dark.
    My heart is bleeding.
    With aloneness.
    The blood lands on my feet and hits the ground.
    Pain from the alley overcomes me and I stumble.
    I fall.
    Now I’m sprawled out, motionless on the cold city floor.
    Bleeding.
    Falling apart.
    Soon the presence of the dog comes back to me. I feel him settle and lie down next to me. He rests his snout on my arm and I feel his breath on my skin.
    I open my eyes and get a look at him from the edge of my vision. He’s asleep, but waiting.
    He’s waiting for me to stand up and keep walking.

7
    J ULIA WAS, OF COURSE, AN ABSOLUTE SCRUBBER. T HERE’S not a whole lot more I can say about her. A scrubber (in case you don’t know) is a girl that might be described as kind of slutty or festy, yet still without being a complete prostitute or anything like that. She chews gum a lot. She might drink excessively and smoke for show. She’ll call you a faggot, poofter or wanker with a lovely smirk on her face. She’ll wear painted-on jeans and good cleavage and she won’t care too much if her headlights are on. Jewellery: moderate to heavy, maybe with a nose ring or eyebrow ring for rebellious originality. Then there’s the make-up. At times it’s
bucketed
on, especially if there’s a bit of acne involved on her face, although more often than not, a scrubber isn’t too bad looking at all. She just has a tendency to make herself ugly, by what she says and what she does.
    And Julia?
    What can I say?
    She was beautiful. She was blonde.
    And she was a scrubber and a half.
    â€˜So this is Cameron,’ she said when she first saw me. She was chewing that low sugar gum that dentists highly recommend.
    â€˜Hey,’ I said, and Rube winked at me. I knew what the wink meant. Something like,
Not bad, huh?
or
You wouldn’t knock her back, would y’?
or even simply,
Pretty good handfuls, ay?
The bastard.
    As you can imagine, I got out of there pretty quick smart, because that girl annoyed the crap out of me very bloody fast. My only hope was that Rube wouldn’t take her to see me staring at that Stephanie girl’s house. Octavia, I could handle, because she at least had a bit of class about her. A bit of niceness. But not this one. She’d most likely call me a bit of a lonely bastard as well. Or maybe she’d say something like ‘Get a life’ or repeat something Rube had previously said, hoping his charisma would rub off on her. No way. I wouldn’t give her a chance. Not this one (even though
Christ!
I thought at one stage.
Take a look at her.
She had an
Inside Sport
body if ever I’d seen one).
    But no.
    I’d made up my mind.
    Rather than hang around them like a bad smell, I decided to go to the movies and hang around like a bad smell there instead.
    On a cold, windy Saturday, when Dad didn’t need me, I saw three movies in one day before going over to Glebea while, and then home. In the night, I went down to our basement and wrote for a few hours, feeling everything that was me shift and turn inside me.
    I was in bed for quite a while when Rube came in and slumped down on his own bed across from me. He laughed for a while and I had to turn the light off, when he said, ‘Well Cam?’
    â€˜Well what?’
    â€˜What are your thoughts?’
    â€˜On