Girls Out Late Read Online Free Page B

stained-glass windows in the hall—I went into the living room expecting pews and an altar. Some of the grandest houses surrounding the park certainly seem as big as churches and induce a similar feeling of reverence. And I’m hand in hand with a Halmer’s boy who lives there.
    “A big house?” I say.
    “It is, but we just have a basement flat. Well, it’s called a garden flat but the garden is outside and we only have a fifth of it. The house is all split up. So are my family. I live with my dad now and my sister lives with my mum. There is also my dad’s girlfriend, but the less said about her the better. I hope she fades out of the picture soon. I certainly don’t fancy her as a stepmother.”
    “I’ve got a stepmother. She’s OK, though. We didn’t used to get on but now we’re friends.”
    Anna won’t be friends anymore unless I go home
now.
She’ll worry.
    “I’m never ever going to be friends with Cynthia. Honestly, what a classic name—my stupid besotted dad is sinning with Cynthia. I don’t know what’s up with him. We used to get on great, Dad and me, sort of us two guys together—but now she’s there all the time. It’s pathetic. So I try not to hang out too much at home now. Who wants to be cooped up in the living room with his dad and his dad’s girl snogging on the sofa like teenagers?”
    “In front of you? That’s a bit gross.”
    “Well, whenever I go out of the room. Then they spring apart when I go back in. It’s like I’m the parent. So I mostly clear off to my bedroom, draw and do homework and stuff. But sometimes it really gets to me, stuck there like someone in solitary confinement—so I push off by myself.”
    “Don’t you have any friends?”
    “Oh, yes, heaps. No, don’t get the impression I’m this poor sad guy without a social life.”
    “I didn’t mean that!”
    “It’s just, well, I’m OK at school, there’s this little mob I go around with. But out of school— well, there’s two types at Halmer’s, there’s the really intense anoraks and they just swot away and come top in everything and their idea of a big social thrill is accessing some porn on the Internet. Then there’s the other really hip set, the ones that go to all the parties and get all the girls and drink and take drugs—and I’m a bit too wet and weedy to join in.”
    “You’re not a bit wet or weedy,” I say.
    “But it’s kind of different for boys anyway. You have mates, but you’re not really
close
to them. Unless you’re gay, which I’m definitely not, in spite of all the tales you hear of infamous encounters behind the Halmer’s bike sheds.”
    I giggle. Magda was once chatted up by this Halmer’s boy in Year Eight and he swore half the Year Elevens were at it—behind the bike sheds.
    “It must be great to have friends to go round with, like you and those two girls.”
    “Nadine and Magda. Yeah, they’re both my best friends.”
    “Which do you like best?”
    “Both.”
    “You don’t ever fall out?”
    “Well, we have arguments sometimes. And last year Nadine had this ultra-creepy boyfriend so we didn’t see much of her then—but we’re like this now.” I cross my fingers on my free hand.
    We are still clasped, albeit a little sweatily. We’re nearly at the park now. A minute or two, then maybe one quick swing and then
home.
    “Does Nadine have a boyfriend now?”
    “No.”
    “I bet the other one does, the bubbly one with the red hair.”
    “Magda? No, she doesn’t have a boyfriend either.”
    “And what about you, Ellie?”
    I pause. I shake my head.
    Russell smiles. “Great, so . . . will you come out with me sometime?”
    “I
am
out with you.”
    “No, I mean for a pizza or to see a film or something.”
    “OK.”
    “Tomorrow?”
    “If you like.”
    “Seven o’clock. I could meet you at that shopping center place. I’ll be the guy sketching in case you forget what I look like.”
    “Yeah, so I had better be going home now. It’s ever so