Noughts and Crosses, Malorie Blackman [types of ebook readers .txt] 📗

I’d get a decent job after it. No Cross would ever employ me for more than the most mundane, menial job, so why bother? But I wanted to learn. A yawning hole deep inside me was begging to be filled up with words and thoughts and ideas and facts and fictions. But if I did that, what would I do with the rest of my life? What would I be? How could I ever be truly happy knowing that I could do so much more, be so much more, than I would ever be allowed?

I was trying so hard to understand how and why things were the way they were. The Crosses were meant to be closer to God. The Good Book said so. The son of God was dark-skinned like them, had eyes like them, had hair like them. The Good Book said so. But the Good Book said a lot of things. Like ‘love thy neighbour’, and ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. If nothing else, wasn’t the whole message of the Good Book to live and let live? So how could the Crosses call themselves ‘God’s chosen’ and still treat us the way they did? OK, we weren’t their slaves any more, but Dad said the name had changed but nothing else. Dad didn’t believe in the Good Book. Neither did Mum. They said it’d been written and translated by Crosses, so it was bound to be biased in their favour. But the truth was the truth, wasn’t it? Noughts . . . Even the word was negative. Nothing. Nil. Zero. Nonentities. It wasn’t a name we’d chosen for ourselves. It was a name we’d been given. But why?

‘I DON’T UNDERSTAND . . .’ The words erupted from me in an angry rush, heading for the sky and beyond.

I sat there for I don’t know how long, furious thoughts darting around my head like bluebottles, my head aching, my chest hurting. Until I suddenly snapped out of it with a jolt. Someone was watching me. I turned sharply and a shock like static electricity zapped through my body. Sephy was further up the beach, standing perfectly still as the wind whipped around her, making her jacket and skirt billow out. We were about seven metres apart – or seven million light years, depending on how you looked at it. Then Sephy turned around and started to walk away.

‘Sephy, wait.’ I jumped to my feet and sprinted after her.

She carried on walking.

‘Sephy, please. Wait.’ I caught up with her and pulled her around to face me. She pulled away from my grasp like I was contaminated.

‘Yes?’

‘Don’t be like that?’ I pleaded.

‘Like what?’

I glared at her. ‘Aren’t you going to stay?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Why not?’

At first, I thought she wasn’t going to answer.

‘I don’t stay where I’m not wanted.’ Sephy turned around again. I ran to stand in front of her.

‘I did it for your own good.’

A strange expression flitted across her face. ‘Did you? Was it my good or your own you were thinking about?’

‘Maybe a bit of both,’ I admitted.

‘Maybe a lot of one and none of the other,’ Sephy contradicted.

‘I’m sorry – OK?’

‘So am I. I’ll see you, Callum.’ Sephy tried to walk around me again, but I moved directly into her path. Fear tore at my insides. If she left now, that would be the end. Funny how a few hours ago, that’d been exactly what I was wishing for.

‘Sephy, wait!’

‘For what?’

‘H-how about if you and I go up to Celebration Wood this Saturday? We could have a picnic.’

Sephy’s eyes lit up although she tried her best to hide it. I breathed an inward sigh of relief although I was careful not to show it.

‘Celebration Wood . .?’

‘Yeah. Just you and me.’

‘Are you sure you won’t be ashamed to be seen with me?’ Sephy asked.

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

Sephy regarded me. ‘What time shall I meet you?’ she said at last.

‘How about ten-thirty at the train station? I’ll meet you on the platform.’

‘OK.’ Sephy turned away.

‘Where’re you going?’ I asked.

‘Home.’

‘Why don’t you stay a while?’

‘I don’t want to disturb you.’

‘Sephy, get off it,’ I snapped.

‘Get off what? You’re a snob, Callum. And I never realized it until today,’ Sephy snapped back, just as angry. ‘I thought you were better than that, above all that nonsense. But you’re just like anyone else. “Crosses and noughts shouldn’t be seen together. Crosses and noughts shouldn’t be friends. Crosses and noughts shouldn’t even live on the same planet together”.’

‘That’s rubbish!’ I fumed. ‘I don’t believe any of that, you know I don’t.’

‘Do I?’ Sephy tilted her head to one side as she continued to scrutinize me. ‘Well, if you’re not a snob, you’re a hypocrite, which is even worse. I’m OK to talk to as long as no-one can see us, as long as no-one knows.’

‘Don’t talk to me like that . . .’

‘Why? Does the truth hurt?’ asked Sephy. ‘Which one is it, Callum? Are you a snob or a hypocrite?’

‘Get lost, Sephy.’

‘With pleasure.’

And this time, when Sephy walked away I didn’t try to stop her. I just watched her leave.

fifteen. Sephy

There’s a proverb which says, ‘Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it!’ I never really knew what that meant – until now. All those months helping Callum with his work so he’d pass the Heathcroft entrance exam. All those nights wishing on every blazing star that Callum would pass so we could go to the same school together, be in the same class together even. And now it’d all come true.

And it was horrible. Everything was going wrong.

I sighed, then sighed again. I couldn’t hide in this toilet cubicle for ever. And who was I hiding from anyway? I was hiding from all those people who’d been pointing and whispering as I walked past them in the school corridor – but mainly from Callum. After what had happened the previous evening, I was afraid