Wild Boy by Rob Lloyd Jones Read Free Book Online

froze.
    Footsteps squelched through the grass. Someone was creeping up behind him.
    Wild Boy didn’t move. He didn’t know if it was Finch or the hooded man, only that he had to fight. His grip tightened around the stick. He had to time this perfectly. . . .
    He whirled around, waving the stick like a sword. “Get back or I’ll smash your skull!” he cried.
    Clarissa Everett sprang away, just dodging the swipe. Her freckles burned bright red. “Touch me with that thing and I’ll break your arms,” she said.
    “Break my arms and I’ll break yours too!”
    He wished immediately that he’d said something else. It wasn’t the best line he could have used before a fight. But Clarissa’s fists unclenched.
    “I ain’t come to fight,” she said. “If I had, I’d have won by now anyhow.”
    The wind brushed her hair from her face, and Wild Boy spotted a dark bruise staining her pale cheek. She must have seen him look, because she turned her head. “Got it practicing,” she explained. “I got a proper circus job, remember, not one in a freak show.”
    Wild Boy suspected she was lying. More likely the bruise was from her mother. Everyone knew that Clarissa and Mary Everett, the circus owner, didn’t get on. But he reminded himself that it was none of his business, and that he hated her anyway, so he shrugged like he didn’t care.
    “What do you want, then?” he said.
    Clarissa looked around the trees, as if she too feared they were being watched. Then she brought a crumpled slip of paper from her pocket. “Look,” she said.
    It was the letter from last night. Wild Boy couldn’t believe it — why had she kept hold of evidence of their crime? Unless . . . Was she setting him up for the police? He stepped back and raised his voice. “I got no idea what that is,” he said.
    Clarissa looked baffled. “Are you crazy? It’s the letter we pinched last night. Look at it, will you.”
    Wild Boy stepped farther away. “I never saw you last night, and I never pinched nothing in my whole life!”
    Clarissa realized what he suspected. She came closer and thrust the letter furiously at his face. “I ain’t no bloody snitch! This is important. It’s about murder.”
    Wild Boy was about to shout again, but . . . Did she say
murder
?
    The page trembled in Clarissa’s hands. “I’ll read it to you,” she said.
    “I can read it myself,” Wild Boy said, snatching it from her.
    It wasn’t easy. The letter was flecked with mud from last night, and the writing was badly smudged. But he finally made sense of what it said.

    A gust of wind rustled the trees, and the branches groaned.
    “It says murder,” Clarissa whispered.
    “I saw what it says!” Wild Boy said.
    “It was warning someone,” Clarissa said. “But they never got it cos we stole it first.”
    “
You
stole it.”
    “It was both of us! What are we going to do about it?”
    “Eh? We ain’t gonna do nothing about it!”
    “You could find out who it was written for.”
    “Me?”
    “I asked about you. That friend of yours, the posh bloke with no legs, he said you see things that other people don’t.”
    Wild Boy swore under his breath. “He ain’t my friend!” he said. He was furious at Sir Oswald — why had he spoken to Clarissa? “And he shouldn’t have been blabbing a bunch of lies,” he said.
    “They ain’t lies. I saw it last night. You knew that man was rich just from looking at him. And you knew that family wasn’t.”
    “I seen them before, I said.”
    “You’re a freak
and
a liar!”
    She snatched the letter back and they stood for a moment in silence. Wild Boy tried to think of a good insult, but really he didn’t want to fight. He wanted to look at that letter again. The truth was he’d already seen one or two intriguing clues on it, and he was keen to know more. . . .
    But whatever this was about, he had to stay out of it. “It’s none of my business,” he insisted. “I got other stuff to worry about. You do an’