All the Rage by Kennedy A. L

Author:Kennedy, A. L. [Kennedy, A. L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary
ISBN: 9781770894631
Google: CBnNnQEACAAJ
Amazon: 1770894632
Goodreads: 19547811
Publisher: Astoria
Published: 2014-02-08T08:00:00+00:00

Takes You Home

HE WOULD HAVE preferred it if anyone else had been dealing with this, coping with this. This was the kind of stuff you dealt with and coped with when somebody died – somebody other than yourself. That was Mike’s opinion, although he had no one to hear it unless he started blurting out to strangers, which wouldn’t aid his case in most directions so he kept schtum.

I haud my wisht. I haud it tight.

He’d noticed these playground colours of speech nudging back in at him lately.

Like as if I was still wee, then I’d be fine. Because I’d no be worried. I widnae fash.

Mike didn’t quite know how to view this new interior development. He supposed it was vaguely reassuring, allowing in the ghost of his previous voice, a cosy accompaniment to his lists of tasks outstanding and general frets. But equally, the implications were all a bit sodding desperate if he really did want to be a boy again and helpless, because no one was going to take care of him at this point. No one was equipped.

And anyway a child couldn’t manage a serious worry, a child would be destroyed. That’s the reality on which to focus, probably.

Or not. Maybe not.

He stared out at how mean-looking his spare room was: grubby and with scrapes to the paintwork and dirty lines left on the walls since he’d taken down the pictures. It gave the impression he’d lived in a slovenly manner. The whole situation rendered more dismal by the yellowish frown of an eco-friendly bulb.

Bloody things are never that keen about turning on – have to ease themselves into the effort over a period of hours. They’re the elderly aunts of the lighting world.

He’d packed up the lampshades already.

Few things sadder than a shadeless lamp.

Unless it’s an unattended wean.

Which I am not and shouldn’t imagine that I am – it’ll make me depressed.

Still, though.

I can’t deny that folk take care of weans. They wouldn’t leave a child in cruel rooms, or jaggy circumstances.

He swiped up at the bulb, caught it with his fingertips and set it to swing and splash shadows against each wall.

This proving I’m a big wean.

Walks in as John Wayne, crawls out as a big wean.

That’s how they used to put it. In the youthful circles I was warned not to frequent, because then I’d learn how to speak in a style that was Not Nice.

Mum imagined the wind would change, or something, and I’d be stuck sounding inappropriate forever. Didn’t want me showing the household up as Common in her Nice Street. So I couldn’t say I was a wean, although I was a wean, unless I was away off with other weans and had no Nice adults around who’d get affronted and step in to adjust me. She didn’t appreciate that I could vary: I could sometimes be a wean and sometimes a child who lived in the west of Scotland and yet maintained an aspirational accent at some social cost.

Truthfully, I

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