Noah Can't Even Read online

  For Sarah

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  Noah clung on for dear life. One slip and that would be it. He wasn’t sure how much longer his fingers could hold out. If he let go … instant death! Maybe that would be the best option now. Was this how it would end? Three weeks before his sixteenth birthday. Had he achieved enough in his short life that there would be headlines in the papers? Sure, he had his spelling bee medal (second place, thanks to that villainous word dodecahedron), twelve Scout badges and a certificate for making the best apple crumble in Food Technology, but would it be enough for them to describe it as a “tragedy”? Would they print things like “He had so much to offer the world” and “His death is a huge loss not just to society, but mankind”?

  He sighed. Probably not. Damn it, why hadn’t he donated his liver to a dying child or raised millions for blind, orphaned puppies in Peru? On the other hand, did he want a newspaper article at all? They would only go and illustrate it with a photo from his Facebook profile, and knowing his luck it would be the one of him crying at his thirteenth birthday party when his mum hired a stripper because she thought it would be funny. It wasn’t at all funny. All he’d wanted was pizza, bowling and a sleepover with Harry. Instead, she’d invited a load of her own mates over, along with “Bambi Sugapops” and her terrifying, medically unfeasible breasts.

  At least in his young death, there might be a certain kind of glory. At least he would be immortalized, never growing old, forever young and…

  “Get the hell down, you skinny little runt!” shouted Ms O’Malley from the bottom of the climbing frame, blowing her whistle at him. “Now!”

  Noah felt his knees weaken as he glanced down at her. Ms O’Malley had a hard, craggy face that had clearly never seen a drop of moisturizer, and a body so ravaged with physical exercise it was a solid, rectangular block of pure muscle. She wasn’t just the PE teacher from hell; she was Satan in a tracksuit.

  “I can’t, I’m stuck!” Noah lied, readjusting the stupidly small shorts that his mum had bought him in Year Eight and had point-blank refused to upgrade ever since. If this debacle could just end swiftly and quietly, he would totally reconsider his atheism.

  “If the Year Sevens can climb to the top, then so can you!”

  “They’re smaller. More nimble!” He shifted about, hoping a combination of distance and angles meant she couldn’t see what he was hiding.

  “Get down!”

  Running out of options fast, he decided to play the health and safety card; having a kid die on school premises never looked good. “Miss, I am up here, without the protection of a safety harness, and I’m in grave danger of falling and sustaining a catastrophic injury.”

  “No one cares!” she yelled, because apparently student welfare was of no interest to PE teachers. She grabbed a medicine ball and hurled it at the base of the frame. “STRIKE!” she shouted, like she was playing some massive ten-pin bowling game. Then she strode off, probably to hang crosses upside down and sacrifice a goat.

  Noah gritted his teeth and watched her go. It was only a strike if the pins were knocked down. He was still very much … up.

  He glanced despairingly across the expanse of the sports hall. The boys were in one half, engaged in an assortment of crap gymnastics; the girls were in the other half, enjoying the genteel and cultured pursuit of badminton. In the far corner, Eric Smith was secretly filming the girls on his phone from behind some crash mats, undoubtedly so he would have something to get off to later. Eric looked up and, clearly startled to find Noah staring at him, dropped the phone into the pocket of his shorts and ambled towards the exit, flipping Noah off as he pushed through the double doors on his way out.

  “Aww,” Noah whimpered, as the frame rattled and his best mate started climbing up towards him. This was all he needed.

  “I’ve been told to get you down,” Harry explained, clambering up opposite him so their noses were almost touching.

  Noah glanced down to see Jordan Scott, a brute of a boy who was six feet tall and nearly three feet wide, looking back up at him and saying “Dickhead!” whilst pretending to cough, much to the merriment of his assorted lackeys.

  This had been an error of judgement. Noah’d created a spectacle, and he would never live down the now-inevitable finale. He would have to move schools. After this, it wouldn’t be worth going on. “Just leave me here to die, Harry. Save yourself.”

  “Noah! Man up and stop being a wuss. You put one foot below the other. And repeat. I’ll do it with you, take your mind off the height.”

  “That’s not the problem!” he snapped, feeling his cheeks starting to glow bright red.

  “Right, well, what is, then?”

  Noah looked away, desperately willing himself to spontaneously combust.

  “This is ridiculous. I’ll have to perform a fireman’s lift!” Harry said.

  “Haz, no!”

  “No choice,” he said, trying to swing round, the frame lurching dangerously as he did so.

  “A boy-type issue has come up!” Noah bleated, deftly avoiding Harry’s grasp.

  Harry looked at him blankly. “What?”

  “A boy-type issue has come up,” Noah repeated, “which makes it hard for me to come back down. Right? Very hard.”

  A grin spread across Harry’s face, and he looked down at Noah’s shorts. “Oh yeah.”

  “There was no need to look.”

  “Wowzer.”

  “Stop looking!”

  “Well, what caused it?”

  He felt his stomach flutter. “What?”

  “Is it ’cause I’m looking fine in my new polo shirt?”

  Noah rolled his eyes. “Shut up.”

  “Sophie!” Harry grinned, face lighting up with realization.

  “No!”

  “Yes! Oh, YES! I knew it! I knew—”

  “Shut up! It’s not!” Noah scowled at him. One comment. He’d made one stupid, ill-conceived comment in Year Nine. Loads of the boys had been talking at lunch about girls and boobs and sex and stuff. It had been awful because everyone else seemed to have watched loads of porn and knew all about different types of sex. And he’d never really … he didn’t think about that. He didn’t know why, he just didn’t. Probably it was becau
se he was nice and respectable and not a sex maniac like everyone else. But, in any case, he’d confided in Harry, as they walked home that afternoon, that he’d thought Sophie had “a pleasant manner” and “good bone structure”. That was all. And then it went:

  HARRY: Oh my God, you lurrrrve her!

  NOAH: No! I mean, she’s nice, but—

  HARRY: She’s nice! Oh my God! Coming from you, that’s basically saying you want to do bow chicka wah wah all night long. Yeah, baby, I lurrve your pleasant manner! Your pleasant manner is so hot! Pleasant manner, baby! Gimme your sexy, pleasant manner!

  NOAH: Go home, Harry, you’re drunk.

  And, honestly, he really had just admired her polite tone and pleasing facial symmetry. Sophie was an amazing girl. She had this indie-cool thing going on, wearing stuff that she liked – not what the latest popular-culture craze was. She had awesome hair – or more specifically, shiny, bouncy black ringlets that cascaded down to her shoulders and smelt of peaches, or sometimes other nice fruits. She also had the most radiant golden-brown skin – either by good fortune, genetics or witchcraft, she had never suffered from acne. Yes, she really was perfect. But what Noah liked most was the fact she was intelligent and didn’t try to hide it. If you’re predicted good grades, it’s normally best to keep a low profile because of the crap you get from other kids. But Sophie didn’t care. She hung around with her small set of intelligent girls, reading books and having proper conversations that didn’t include petty gossip or salacious rumours about who might be getting with whom. He’d walked past them once at lunch and distinctly heard “I would read Dostoyevsky, but the text just feels so dense, you know?” And Noah had sighed, and wished he could one day be considered for membership to their friendship group. That’s all he wanted. A discussion about Russian authors over smoked salmon sandwiches and freshly squeezed juice. He didn’t think about doing … other stuff with her. It wouldn’t be right. She was too sophisticated, cultured and elegant. Something as base and animalistic as sex was surely beneath her.

  “Noah, give it up,” said Harry, shaking his head and readjusting his footing on the climbing frame. “She’s entirely out of your league.”

  Noah huffed. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Sure, he would never be considered the hottest boy in the school; that accolade would be given to Josh Lewis. (To be fair, Josh had the unfair advantage of being nineteen, as the school had apparently asked him to stay on for an extra year to help out the sports teams. Noah had his doubts about the story, but a young man with such an athletic build and soulful eyes wouldn’t be a liar, so it was probably true.) But Noah did have a number of points in his favour: good teeth, feet that didn’t smell, and a relatively new pair of black-rimmed spectacles that definitely made him look like he worked in advertising in London. Yes, there was work to do. Other boys had more muscle tone and looked bigger, whereas he was skinny and a bit awkward. Other boys were more hairy in unexpected (and sometimes alarming) places, whereas he was quite … well, smooth. And he was still shorter than most of the girls – with the exception of Maisie Andrews, who was currently in a wheelchair, having broken both her legs in a riding accident. But assuming she got better and could one day walk again, she’d be taller too. But, and this was his ace card, he was top set for everything.

  He narrowed his eyes at Harry. “What exactly do you mean?”

  “Let’s put it this way: what are you wearing for Melissa’s party tomorrow?”

  “I’m not going to … oh, funny. You’re funny,” Noah grimaced. OK, there might be some slight issue in the popularity department, but who cared? Even if he did want go to her stupid party for cool people, which he didn’t, there wouldn’t be anyone else going whom he liked. And even if he did want to go, which he totally, one hundred per cent didn’t, he didn’t have anything remotely suitable to wear. And even if he did want to go, and he absolutely could not think of anything more vile than spending any time in Melissa’s cursed company, he would probably need to bring alcohol to get in and there’s no way he could buy any because he still managed to look about twelve, even though he definitely wasn’t. No, he would actually prefer to spend a night at home, munching his way through a family-sized bag of cheesy Wotsits. In fact he would pay money to do that.

  “Some people like geeks!” he exclaimed. “Some people know it’ll be us who will one day get the top jobs and the big salaries. We’re good long-term bets!” Anyone with a bit of foresight would see that and date him now.

  “It doesn’t matter. We don’t look like we’d be a good shag.”

  “Geeks can get a bit of bow chicka wah wah too. It’s not unheard of!”

  Harry screwed his face up. “Er, I think it is pretty unheard of. Anyway, if someone wants to do bow chicka wah wah, they’d probably want to do bow chicka wah wah with someone who does bow chicka wah wah really bloody well.”

  “What sort of person is good at bow chicka wah wah?” Because he had a nagging doubt it wouldn’t be him. He’d seen diagrams in PSHE and it seemed unduly complicated.

  “I dunno – maybe he has pecs and abs. Maybe he has a tattoo…”

  “I’m not getting a tattoo. I’m not a manual labourer.”

  “These are the things people go for.”

  “Are you planning on getting a tattoo?”

  “No. Maybe.”

  “What?” Noah squealed. “It’s illegal until you’re eighteen!”

  “Rule breaking. It’s very attractive. Everyone loves a bad boy.”

  “I’m telling your mum. You can’t trust those places. They don’t have medical training, you know? They stick all these dirty old needles in people and they haven’t got so much as a first-aid badge from the Cubs. It’s disgusting.”

  “Chill out, I’m not getting a tat.”

  “A tat? A ‘tat’?” What had Harry become? Why was he speaking in slang like some drug-dealing street urchin? “You can’t become cool. If you become cool, I’ll be the only uncool person left!”

  Harry grinned. “There’s no danger of me becoming cool, innit?”

  “Don’t push it. Knob.”

  “Speaking of which, how’s yours?”

  “It’s worse than ever. If you have a … boy-type issue for more than an hour you have to go to hospital. I read it on the internet. I can’t be hospitalized with a boy-type issue! My mum would have a field day.” He closed his eyes and pictured the scene: the doctors consoling his sobbing mother. We’re sorry, Mrs Grimes, there was nothing we could do… It just exploded. The operating theatre is carnage.

  “What’s happening up there?” Ms O’Malley shouted up, rattling the frame again at its base. “This isn’t a mothers’ meeting! This is Year Eleven physical education! I don’t see anything physical happening!”

  “You would if I came down,” Noah muttered, making Harry snigger.

  “Naomi Grimes – get your bony little arse down here – NOW!” Ms O’Malley bellowed.

  “My name’s Noah!” he shouted down indignantly. “She knows damn well my name’s Noah!” he hissed at Harry.

  “I think it’s clear she’s taking the piss.”

  There was a sudden flurry of excitement at the entrance to the sports hall as Jess Jackson ran in, clutching a fistful of A5 pages in her hand.

  “OH MY GOD YOU GOTTA SEE THIS!” she squealed. “YOU ARE GONNA PISS YOURSELVES!”

  Noah watched as the entire class swarmed around Jess, grabbing papers from her like she was giving out free Starmix at a Year Seven disco.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Noah asked.

  “Who cares? It’s probably nothing.”

  “Why’s everyone pointing at us?”

  “Umm … I think they’re pointing at you.”

  It was then that Jordan Scott held one of the sheets aloft, affording Noah a razor-sharp view, as the gym erupted in hysterical laughter and piss-taking cheering.

  Noah swallowed hard. They were flyers. And he knew exactly what those flyers were. In fact, he had already destro
yed a stack of them, hoping – he had even prayed – that they would never see the light of day.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Noah sat in the furthest corner of the classroom, watching a solitary fly repeatedly hurl itself at the window, and bravely ignoring the fact everyone was still looking at him like he’d accidentally come to school completely naked.

  Seven years! He had kept this quiet for seven years! And then the stupid cow decided to “up the ante” (his mother’s words) and get some flyers made. He had binned the ones he’d found in the house last week, but she must have made more. And now everyone knew; she might as well have just printed some little cards advertising escort services and Blu-Tacked them up in the phone box.

  Officially his mum was on the dole. Unofficially, she toured pubs and clubs with her blisteringly shite act “Ruby Devine – A Tribute to Beyoncé”. She wasn’t actually called Ruby Devine. That was a stage name to “enhance the magic and glamour” (his mother’s words), but also to put any investigators from the jobcentre off the scent. To date, her act had only been performed in larger nearby towns and a few coastal holiday camps, meaning the true horror of what she did remained a secret to the locals. But in a misguided attempt to break into the Little Fobbing market, she’d had ten thousand A5 flyers produced, and, for reasons known only to her idiotic self, had clearly left a bunch of them on reception at the front of the sports hall, most of which had now been stuck up all over the school. His mother, in a catastrophic Primark leotard, pouting at the camera like she actually thought she was an internationally acclaimed superstar. He might have got away with it, badly disguised as she was in false eyelashes and a wig, had it not been for the details in the bottom right:

  “For bookings contact Lisa Grimes.”

  And the small personal biography she had added in an attempt to big herself up:

  “Lisa has performed at many of the top and most glamorous establishments for over two decades. Proud mum of Noah, she splits her time between New York, LA and Little Fobbing.”

  None of this was remotely true. She’d never even been to LA or New York, plus proud mum?! Was she having a laugh? Noah clenched his fists, fingernails digging into his palms. Why did she have a complete inability to be a normal mum? Why couldn’t she be a top lawyer or businesswoman or even just quietly accept dole money and lie low? At the very least, why couldn’t she try, just once, not to totally embarrass him and ruin his already appalling life?