A few times he’d admit it.

He’d say, “Hey, Rory, it was me.”

You don’t know what I’m capable of.

But Rory wouldn’t have it; it was easier fighting with Henry.

* * *

—

To that end (and this one), it was proper, really, that Henry was publicly infamous back then, when it came to sport and leisure—sent off for pushing the ref. Then ostracized by his teammates, for the greatest of footballing sins; at halftime the manager asked them:

“Hey, where’s the oranges?”

“What oranges?”

“Don’t get smart—you know, the quarters.”

But then someone noticed.

“Look, there’s a big pile a peels there! It was Henry, it was bloody Henry!”

Boys, men and women, they all glared.

It was great suburban chagrin.

“Is that true?”

There was no point denying it; his hands spoke for themselves. “I got hungry.”

The ground was six or seven kilometers away, and we’d caught the train, and Henry was made to go home on foot, and the rest of us as well. When one of us did something like that, we all seemed to suffer, and we walked the Princes Highway.

“Why’d you push the ref like that, anyway?” I asked.

“He kept treading on my foot—he was wearing steel studs.”

Now Rory: “Why’d you have to eat all the oranges, then?”

“Because I knew you’d have to walk home, too, shithead.”

Michael: “Oi!”

“Oh, yeah—sorry.”

But this time there was no retraction of the sorry, and I think we were all somehow happy that day, though we were soon to start coming undone; even Henry throwing up in the gutter. Penny was kneeling next to him, our father’s voice beside her:

“I guess these are the spoils of freedom.”

And how could we ever know?

We were just a bunch of Dunbars, oblivious of all to come.

“Clay? You awake?”

At first there was no answer, but Henry knew he was. One thing with Clay was that he was pretty much always awake. What surprised him was the reading light coming on, and Clay having something to say:

“How you feeling?”

Tags: Markus Zusak
Source: readsnovelonline.net