Nosy Parker by Lesley Crewe

Author:Lesley Crewe
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781774710784
Publisher: Nimbus
Published: 2022-05-03T12:51:48+00:00

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On the last weekend before the start of high school, Mr. and Mrs. Papadopoulos invite all their children’s friends over for an outdoor celebration, with food and drinks and party games. Everything is colourful and fun and I suppose I’m having a good time, but I’m not feeling that great, and then Gloria’s brother George squirts me right in the face with a water gun, so that really helps. Gloria says it’s because he likes me.

Boys are obviously imbeciles. Blockheads.

I take off my glasses in the hope that he didn’t break them and go in search of something to wipe them dry, since the hem of my dress isn’t doing anything but producing smudges. Gloria’s mother points me over in the direction of the tables, where the men are setting up for the food. Once I grab a cloth napkin, I wipe my glasses and put them back on.

That’s when I notice a big barbeque and smouldering fire.

“Oh, Mr. Papadopoulos! Are we having marshmallows?”

He laughs and laughs and tells the men around him that this girl wants marshmallows! “Oh, Audrey, you do make me happy. No, my dear. We’re having a Greek favourite. Roast lamb.”

“Lamb?” I look at the charred shape turning slowly over the fire and realize it’s an actual lamb that’s stuck there, with the spit coming out of its mouth and hindquarters.

As in, Mary had a live one, but now she doesn’t anymore.

There’s a part of me that knows that you have to kill animals in order to eat them. When they are chunks wrapped in paper tied up with string at the supermarket, you don’t think about it. But now I see this dear little lamb who was only a baby, suddenly black and dead and stiff, with its mouth open as if still in pain.

It breaks my heart in two. I can feel it crack open.

All the dead things.

Kittens. Young mothers. Nice, smiling, handsome men. Lambs. Aunts? Fathers?

It’s too much.

Everything goes black.

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