Skeletal Read Online Free Page B

that my mum is violent by nature; she’s not. But if she’s in pain she lashes out, and nothing caused her pain during the day more than sunlight and noise. And me. Being present. Even quietly.
    If I were a romantic I could try to pretend that she was a vampire. The sunlight would spell her death, so she drew the curtains as a barricade against mortality.
    That would be the romantic version.
    I tried not to make too much noise as I walked through the room and out the side. The stairs up to my room on the second floor creaked at my every step. I’d tried in the past to step at the edges, at an angle, at alternate sides, but there was no way around it unless I walked super, super slow. So I just got up them at top speed. The noise was pretty much the same, but at least it wasn’t stretched out, and my nerves with it.
    When I sat down on my bed I could hear the distant rustle of movement. I breathed slow and even through my mouth so I didn’t make a sound, and listened as though it was a participatory sport.
    The thump of my heartbeat, but little more. Five minutes, ten minutes. I stopped concentrating on how much noise my breathing made. I stretched out on the bed even though the slumped springs squealed with the change of pressure.
    My stomach grumbled with hunger, but I was too tired to be worried about it now. I couldn’t think what there’ll be to eat anyway – I’d been counting on getting the money out of the bank to go grocery shopping.
    Maybe some jam, with nothing to spread it on. Maybe some margarine. I was sure the eggs had run out. Too tired.
     
    ***
     
    I came fully awake all at once. There was a deep thump of a bass beat issuing from downstairs. Oh great. Another one of mum’s parties, and I was sure she’d remember that I need my beauty sleep on a school night.
    I pulled off my uniform and had a look at the tear in my kilt. I’d need to fix it up before I wore it again the next day. It was already starting to spread further. If I didn’t fix it straight away, it’d be unfit to wear by the next week, and there was no money to buy another one. I could only get this one by trading in another school’s and pretending it had never been worn. Well, it had only been worn for six weeks, and that hardly counted.
    The song shifted, and the volume increased. There were cries of admiration. A favourite, no doubt.
    The neighbours’d be round soon to complain about the noise. If they did they’d probably be on the receiving end of a fight rather than gracious compliance.
    I pulled on a sweatshirt and some sweatpants. If I was lucky, someone’d have brought some food along with them. Fish ‘n’ chips or Maccy Ds to soak up some of the alcohol. I trotted downstairs, taking no care about the level of sound. The bass beat had some audible notes now. And the cracked voices of people joining in without any true appreciate of tone, or rhythm, or melody, or the right words. It probably sounded great in their own heads. And they were unlikely to care about anyone else’s.
    Just as I was about to push the door open, there was a tinkle of breaking glass, and I paused, head to one side, trying to identify the sound.
    A bottle. Definitely just a bottle.
    Someone was out near the street deciding that what Christchurch needed now was broken glass strewn across the road for the morning traffic to appreciate.
    I continued on through, and winced against the smoke in the room. From biology I’m aware that I should breathe through my nose when I’m confronted with pollution – the nose hairs help filter, or something – but stuff that for a joke. The smell’d make me retch.
    ‘Love, you’re home. You’re home. Come and give your mother a hug. Mmmmmm.’
    I was enfolded into the loose and fume-filled embrace of my mother.
    ‘Caw, love – you’re too young to have a grown girl, aren’t you? Sisters, are you?’
    My mother burst into appreciative laughter, and my insides groaned. She’d been turning on the flirt