White Crow by Marcus Sedgwick Read Free Book Online Page A

herself up a bit more as they come by. They make a few blunt remarks about the girls, and what they’d like to do with them, but soon get bored when neither shows any sign of reacting.
    ‘Idiots,’ mutters Ferelith from under her hat. ‘Is there any more water?’
    ‘All gone,’ Rebecca mutters dreamily. She’s been thinking about her life in London, feeling sorry for herself, enjoying feeling sorry for herself, and marvelling at how different things feel in Winterfold. Until Ferelith spoke she’d been imagining that it was Adam lying next to her on the beach, talking to her about music as he often did, tracing the line of her eyebrows with a fingertip, and the line of her lips.
    The spell is broken.
    She sits up and gazes out to sea. It shimmers in the heat haze, and she can taste that her lips are salty from the sea water.
    ‘We could go to that café,’ she nods her head back to the beach car park.
    ‘No way,’ says Ferelith. ‘It stinks in there. Let’s go to the pub and have some chips.’
    ‘The pub?’
    ‘Yeah, the pub. Haven’t you been there yet? It smells too, but in a better way.’
    ‘You’re really selling it,’ Rebecca says.
    They pull their clothes back on lazily, and saunter back into the village and into The Angel and The Devil. Ferelith chooses a quiet corner away from the bar, and a dumpy girl comes over, notepad in hand.
    She clearly knows Ferelith, but also clearly has no intention of saying any more than is necessary to her.
    ‘Two Cokes and a bowl of chips,’ Ferelith says, and the girl scribbles on her pad, not troubling to hide her scorn. She stomps off and Ferelith adds, ‘Think you can remember that?’
    ‘Shhh!’ hisses Rebecca. ‘She’ll spit in your Coke or something.’
    ‘She wouldn’t have the brains to even think of that.’
    ‘Doesn’t she like you?’
    ‘She was in my year at school.’
    ‘Was? Did she get excluded for being too grumpy?’
    ‘No, she didn’t leave. She doesn’t like me because she’s still there and I’m not.’
    ‘What do you mean? Did you get excluded?’
    ‘No, I left.’
    The dumpy girl returns with the Cokes and pretty much slams them onto the table top, spilling some.
    ‘Thanks, Melanie,’ Ferelith says, insincerely.
    Melanie has already plodded away and is trying to flirt with some boys at the bar, maybe even the ones who’d passed them on the beach earlier. They look over from time to time, one of them catches Rebecca’s eye.
    ‘What do you mean, you left?’ she asks, looking away.
    ‘Just that. Two years ago.’
    ‘You left school when you were fourteen?’
    This raises so many questions in Rebecca’s head that she doesn’t know which one to ask first.
    ‘I’d had enough of school. I did my A-levels, I couldn’t go to university, I came home, my mum went mad, Dad left. That’s all there is to know.’
    ‘Wait, wait, you did your A-levels when you were fourteen?’
    ‘Yes. After that I couldn’t be bothered any more.’
    ‘And you said, your mum . . .’
    ‘My mum went mad. Listen, I don’t want to talk about it, okay.’
    She sips her Coke and looks out of the window.
    ‘Then maybe you shouldn’t have mentioned it in the first place,’ Rebecca says quietly, wondering why she feels the need to be tetchy. Maybe it’s just the heat that’s got to her.
    Melanie brings the bowl of chips over, and slopes off again. They’re undercooked and soggy and Ferelith fetches lots of ketchup and vinegar.
    ‘The Angel’s finest fare,’ she says, drowning the chips. ‘Enjoy.’
    They start eating slowly, thoughtfully.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Rebecca says. Then, ‘But where do you live? Who do you live with if you don’t have any parents?’
    Ferelith shrugs.
    ‘I live with this bunch of losers. It’s sort of a commune type thing. Big house at the end of the village, in Long Lane. They’re all drop-outs of one kind or another. Nobody has any money, everyone gets by somehow.’
    ‘Sounds great, really…what’s