Lottery Boy Read Free Page B

Bully. He laughed – not nasty like he had done at the skateboard park because the lady had her long brown hair in a ponytail, like his mum used to wear it when she was working.
    He started pulling out the usual bits and pieces he had on him all the time: sugar packets, salt packets, paper serviettes, tape measure, Jack’s metal spoon, plastic spoons, two cigarette lighters, penknife, extra elastic bands, sauce packets, towel scrap, Jack’s holdall (bigger and tougher than a plastic bag), plastic bags, biros, crisp packets (empty), Jack’s lead (a
proper
one too, not a tatty bit of string), chewing-gum (chewed and unchewed), a pack of dog Top Trumps (best of breed) and his receipts. They weren’t
his
receipts. He just collected them, went looking for them on the ground, sometimes fished them out of bins. He read them out of curiosity to see what it was that people bought in shops, but the reason he kept them was in case he was ever caught
outside
a shop with something he hadn’t paid for. And then if the guard marched him back inside he could say, “But I’ve got a receipt, mate.” And see how long they spent looking through that lot before they let him off. That was the idea, anyway.
    He examined his plastic spoons and threw away some with splits in, flicking them all into the road and a couple of the biros too. One of the zombies gave him a backwards glance, twisted her mouth a bit and then looked away. He got out his Oyster card from the little pocket near the collar of his coat. He’d found it by one of the machines when the cold had driven him down into the tunnels to ride the Circle line. It was a while since he’d used up the credit and he looked at it as if it was no longer his. He put it back and got his red penknife out. It was his prize possession and he held it in his palm to admire it. Inside were two blades: one big, one small. On the outside was a compass that told you where you were going. And it didn’t matter how fast you turned round trying to trick it, it always went back to pointing north and never let you down. He’d robbed it from a climbing shop. The small blade he used for little odd jobs like cutting up plastic containers for Jack to drink from. The big blade he saved to keep it sharp. He’d never done anything with it except to wave it at an older boy as he was running away.
    He put his penknife back in his jeans and carried on looking, hoping to find a coin, a note, anything with a face on it, and he was almost finished now, pulling things out and putting them away. Finally then, to wrap things up, he got out his card. All the corners were bashed in so that it didn’t look like a card any more but he could still see what it said on the front. There was a picture of a face – a lady’s face, he’d decided, though it had just a squiggle of hair – whispering to someone inside the card. It made you want to open it. But he didn’t, not yet. He read the words on the front first, like you were supposed to. He always read the words.
    I’ve got something to tell you…
    He moved away from the railings, further back from the road, and opened it up. The face on the front was the same face inside but much bigger with a real-looking mouth cut into the card and a red paper tongue. And he concentrated on the words that were going to come out of this mouth.
    … I love you … I love you so much … I love you more than … more than anyone … more than anything else in the world… Happy Birthday, Bradley! Happy birthday, love… Lots and lots and lots of love from your mummy…
    And then the best bit, the bit he always waited for at the end: the kisses.
    Mmpur, mmpurrr, mmpurr… Mmmmmrrr…
    Her voice was beginning to sound a bit Dalek-y, like the batteries were starting to go, and he wondered if he should stop doing this every time he went through his pockets.
    Bully looked around and one of the zombies waiting at the lights was smiling at him with pity eyes. He gave her a murderous look