What I Did Read Online Free Page A

and, look, here are some more next to these worm-casts. Tracks. Worm-casts aren’t like plaster casts at all because for one you can crush them very easily between your fingers and for two they are all the same color. Perhaps these tracks were not made by Year Threes playing football but sand people from Star Wars . There’s only one way to find out and it’s a good thing I thought of it because it means that instead of going away from Dad, which is really what I want to do, I can think no I’m actually following some tracks in search of my very own prey. Don’t bother with praying, Son, he can’t hear you because he doesn’t exist. That said, there’s nothing wrong with sitting quietly for a think from time to time.
    It’s windy on the football-pitches bit of the park and my coat has somehow come undone which gives me two choices. Actually it’s just one choice with two bits to it: common mistake, Son. First I could try to zip it up, or second I could run to keep warm. Zips are a right pain. Even when your fingers have come straight out of a nice warm bath zips will defeat them. So two seems the obviously best option, doesn’t it? If I run like this, following the tracks by keeping my eye on them, then quite quickly my heart will start pumping blood from the hot bits of me like my knees and ankles to the incredibly cold bits like my ears. And I’ll also be faster at hunting down my prey, and this is excellent, because it is called a wing-wing situation.
    The football pitches are quite big and empty like Canada.
    Canadian wolves are tireless like prairie dogs.
    I wish Mum was here but she is working tirelessly.
    Prairie dogs, wolves, and Mum. They all use the tireless method of hunting their prey. It is called loping. And since I am a wolf with my nose to the ground loping tirelessly onward it is no problem to cross one pitch and then the next and then cut through the line of popular trees that stand like soldiers at the top end of the big flat bit, with their leaves all shedded off by the wind, so that they’re naked soldiers in a way, which is quite funny, or at least it will be when I tell it to somebody, somebody being Ben. Ben laughs the whole time, except when he doesn’t, but mostly he does, particularly if you mention naked things, or things that have done a poo, or even a wee. Ben may find it funny, Son, but surely you don’t? You’re not a baby anymore, are you?
    No! I’m not! So why does he have to say that in front of my friend, because he might as well tell Ben he’s being a baby, only he can’t do that because he only ever says things like that to me. Why? I don’t know. But I do know I am not going back there even though back there is a long way away now. You can’t even see it because of the popular trees.
    I switch off my loping tirelessly which is called calling a halt, and I’ve run quite a long way. There aren’t any stud marks here, or if there are they are covered by all these shedded gray leaves. Don’t go too far, Son. Stay within sight. He likes saying that but he’s not here to say it now and it’s a silly thing to say in any case because you could stay really close and hide behind something or go miles and miles away and still be in sight if you were on a salt pan. And I’m six. And there are cars over that side of the park. You can hear them. Their tires on the damp road make a sound as if they are tearing cardboard lids off Cheerio boxes, and I’m hungry.
    I reach into my pocket for the chocolate coin. It’s there and I pull it out and look at it and notice that it has gone a bit sticky along one edge; you can actually see the melted chocolate grinning out of the gold seam. Go on, it says, lick me but I won’t. I won’t!
    And it’s all his fault for making us come out before breakfast.
    And I can hear him in the distance, calling my name, and there’s something odd