Junk - Melvin Burgess [52]
‘Better?’ she said.
I just nodded. I didn’t feel incredibly wonderful or anything, but it was gone. All the hurt. She came over and sat next to me and sort of wriggled under my arm.
‘Tar,’ she said. ‘Will you go out with me?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, I will.’
‘I nearly blew that, didn’t I?’ she said.
‘You’re gonna live here now, with us,’ said Lily. ‘Yeah, both of you. Aren’t you?’
What could I say? I felt I was just beginning to learn how to live.
‘Yeah!’
Chapter Fourteen
Lilly
YOU GET UNDER MY SKIN BUT I DON’T FIND IT IRR-I-TATING
YOU ALWAYS PLAY TO WIN BUT I WON’T NEED REHA-BIL-I-TATING
OH NO
I THINK I’M ON A-NOTHER WORLD WITH YOU… WITH YOU
I’M ON ANOTHER PLANET WITH YOU… WITH YOU-OO
ANOTHER GIRL
ANOTHER PLANET
ANOTHER GIRL ANOTHER PLANET
The Only Ones
Everything is free. That’s a secret.
The only thing that isn’t free is you. You do as you’re told: you sit in your seat until they say, ‘Stand.’ You stay put till they say, ‘Go.’
Maybe that’s the way you like it. It’s easy. It’s all there. You don’t have to think about it. You don’t even have to feel it.
I sometimes wonder how this planet keeps on sticking to my feet. They did everything they could to pin me down… my mum, my dad, school. They put me in homes with kind guys and they put me in homes with bastards. They did things to me you can’t even talk about. I’m okay.
What about you?
It’s mind control, see. You have to go to school, get those exams, get to university or college, get a job, get married, don’t miss the boat, do it now or you’ll shoot your life down the drain. Yeah. They got you as soon as you were born. They never risked a second of your life. When you have kids they’ll be telling them they have to wear a plastic mask and put a penny in the slot above their nose before they can breathe in.
Listen: Auntie Lily knows the way it really is.
Air is free. What, you know that? Good for you. Okay. Food is free. Ah, you didn’t know that one! Listen. This is how you do it.
First you gotta find the FreeFood shop. You go out of your front door and you walk down the road. Sooner or later you come to the FreeFood shop. You can’t miss it. It might be called Sainsbury’s or Tesco or Morrison’s if it’s a big FreeFood shop. It might be called Smith’s or Scholl’s or Singh’s if it’s a little one. It doesn’t matter what it’s called. The food’s piled up everywhere – on shelves, in great heaps and stacks on the floor, in boxes and bags and bins. You want it, you name it – it’s yours.
You go inside. You have a look around and see what food you want. You put the food you want under your coat or in your shopping bag and then you take it home and eat it.
Yeah. I expect you thought that you had to go to school, get educated, learn a job, do the job, get paid, take the money down the shop, give people the money before you could take the food home, huh?
You listen to other people too much.
Once you know how to do it, you look about and you’ll see FreeFood shops all over the place. The only thing you’ve got to worry about is that there’s usually someone about who thinks the food belongs to them, so you have to make sure you’re invisible.
That’s easy, too. Because you can be anything you want to be. It’s a big secret. You’re magic! You’re terrific. You’re anything you wanna be. Believe it!
Liberate the food! Yeah!
If one of those people who think the food is theirs catches you, it’s no use arguing; they’re too far gone. You better leg it instead. And once in a while – maybe your aura has got a few holes in it today – you may get caught. Then you get the police and you go to court. If you have money, they’ll fine you. If you have no money, you’ll get Community Service. That’s okay. It needn’t happen often. I know people who’ve never been caught in years. All that stuff about going in and out of prison, that’s just another form of mind control. But even if you do get caught, I’ll tell you… Community Service is maybe forty or a hundred hours. What’s the alternative? Going out