“I'm not being very helpful, am I?” she said. “Well never mind, I believe we both need another cup of tea and I have some special biscuits which will cheer us up a little.”
She went into the kitchen and when she returned with the tea, she was carnying a worn hard-cover exercise book. “This was his diary,” she said.
The diary of Bart Cumberledge, 9B, TOP SECRET, was written in a faded ink on the inside cover. Jason started reading. At first, the diary was just an uninspired catalogue of things done, a schoolboy's idea of the sort of things you should write in a diary: went to swimming today, saw Batman and Dead Poets Society (lied about my age, but worth it), tore shorts (mum was cross); but when Jason flipped ahead, he saw that the texts had morphed into something else, an open and sincere record of Bart's emotional life, descriptions of guys he'd developed a crush on, things he wished, and the first stirring of the horrible school bullying which in the end killed him. When Jason read an entry, I WISH I WAS NOT GAY he snapped the diary closed and said to Eleanor, “May I keep this for a while? I'd like to read it properly.” Mrs Cumberledge merely nodded.
Jason took the diary up to his room and put it next to his bed. He would read it when he felt up to it. Not yet, not now. He had much to think about, and he spent the day oppressed and filled with sorrows.
No comments:
Post a Comment