A Monster Calls Read Free Page A

lessons with red, puffy eyes and a scowl you could hang meat from. When the final bell went, Conor had rushed out fast, feeling the burden of school and of Harry and of Lily drop from his shoulders as he put one street and then another between himself and all of that.
    Stories
, he thought again.
    “
Your
stories,” Mrs Marl had said in their English lesson. “Don’t think you haven’t lived long enough to have a story to tell.”
    Life writing
, she’d called it, an assignment for them to write about themselves. Their family tree, where they’d lived, holiday trips and happy memories.
    Important things that had happened.
    Conor shifted his rucksack on his shoulder. He could think of a couple of important things that had happened. Nothing he wanted to write about, though. His father leaving. The cat wandering off one day and never coming back.
    The afternoon when his mother said they needed to have a little talk.
    He frowned and kept walking.
    But then again, he also remembered the day
before
that day. His mum had taken him to his favourite Indian restaurant and let him order as much vindaloo as he wanted. Then she’d laughed and said, “Why the hell not?” and ordered plates of it for herself, too. They’d started farting before they’d even got back in the car. On the drive home, they could hardly talk from laughing and farting so hard.
    Conor smiled just thinking about it. Because it
hadn’t
been a drive home. It had been a surprise trip to the cinema on a school night, to a film Conor had already seen four times but knew his mum was sick to death of. There they were, though, sitting through it again, still giggling to themselves, eating buckets of popcorn and drinking buckets of Coke.
    Conor wasn’t stupid. When they’d had the “little talk” the next day, he knew what his mum had done and why she had done it. But that didn’t take away from how much fun that night had been. How hard they’d laughed. How anything had seemed possible. How anything good could have happened to them right then and there and they wouldn’t have been surprised.
    But he wasn’t going to be writing about
that
either.
    “Hey!” A voice calling behind him made him groan. “Hey, Conor, wait!”
    Lily.
    “Hey!” she said, catching up with him and planting herself right in his way so he had to stop or run into her. She was out of breath, but her face was still furious. “Why did you do that today?” she said.
    “Leave me alone,” Conor said, pushing past her.
    “Why didn’t you tell Miss Kwan what really happened?” Lily persisted, following him. “Why did you let me get into trouble?”
    “Why did you butt in when it was none of your business?”
    “I was trying to
help
you.”
    “I don’t need your help,” Conor said. “I was doing fine on my own.”
    “You were not!” Lily said. “You were bleeding.”
    “It’s none of your
business
,” Conor snapped again and picked up his pace.
    “I’ve got detention
all week
,” Lily complained. “
And
a note home to my parents.”
    “That’s not my problem.”
    “But it’s your fault.”
    Conor stopped suddenly and turned to her. He looked so angry she stepped back, startled, almost like she was afraid. “It’s
your
fault,” he said. “It’s
all
your fault.”
    He stormed off back down the pavement. “We used to be friends,” Lily called after him.
    “
Used
to be,” Conor said without turning around.
    He’d known Lily forever. Or for as long as he could remember, which was basically the same thing.
    Their mums were friends from before Conor and Lily were born, and Lily had been like a sister who lived in another house, especially when one mum or the other would babysit. He and Lily had only been friends, though, none of the romantic stuff they got teased for sometimes at school. In a way, it was hard for Conor to even look at Lily as a
girl
, at least not in the same way as the other girls at school. How could you when you’d both played sheep in