Luka by Sarah Anna James

Author:Sarah Anna James [Sarah Anna James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sarah Anna James
Published: 2024-02-23T00:00:00+00:00

Nine

Ray ignored me for three days. He has the uncanny ability to make you feel like you’re not in the room, not sitting on the chair underneath you, not eating the breakfast cereal that is cold and crunchy in your mouth. It doesn’t matter if there are other people in the room who know you’re there, people talking to you and looking directly at you; if Ray’s there, and ignoring you, then really, you’re not there at all.

The wounds on Ray’s face were impressive. His left eye was so swollen that you couldn’t tell whether there was an actual eyeball underneath the puffy mess or not. His eyelid was a dark, dark purple, almost black. His other eye, the one he was pretending he couldn’t see me with, was fine, making the damaged one look that much worse. His top lip was fat, looking like a wasp or bee had stung it, and the scratches that ran down the side of his face were nasty.

The three days that Ray spent trying to make me invisible, I spent staring at him, enjoying his wounds and the fact that if you’re pretending someone doesn’t exist, you can’t go mad on them for staring.

Three days was enough for Ray, though. On that third morning, when Ray sat down at the breakfast table, the swelling in his eye had gone down enough so that he could open it, his upper lip was completely back to normal, and the scratches down the side of his face had started to scab up. Instead of looking straight through me, he looked at me. ‘Dad and Scott decide not to lock you up in the nutter?’

I kept eating my cereal.

Ray watched as I shovelled in mouthful after mouthful. ‘Your lucky week, I guess.’ He was quiet for a while, eating, then he looked up at me again. ‘What’re you doing this arv?’

‘Nothing’.’

Neither Ray nor I had thought about going back to school. Dad seemed to have forgotten that school existed, which suited me fine. Uncle Scott hadn’t been game enough to bring it up yet, although you could see him hinting around the subject. Just last night he’d asked us if we were getting bored, asked us if we were missing our friends. Both Ray and I ignored him.

‘I need you to come with me.’

‘Where?’

‘Somewhere.’

‘Where?’

‘Why do you need to know? I need you, so you come. Simple.’

‘Is it something to do with Leah Jacobsen?’

‘Why would you think that?’

‘Oh, I dunno, Ray.’

‘It’s nothing to do with nothing. I just need your help for one afternoon, that’s all. I’ll meet you back here at quarter to three, okay? You’ll be here?’

Quarter to three? Ray must have thought I was thick: school got out at three; he was intending to hound Leah Jacobsen again.

He pushed his chair back hard from the table and stared down at me. ‘You owe me, buddy, big time. I could have smashed your little head up against the windscreen so hard that you never opened those sparkly eyes of yours again, but I didn’t, did I? You owe me.

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