Ostrich Boys (26 page)

“Nor me.”

I sighed. “I reckon it’s probably me and you from here on in. I hate to say it, but don’t be surprised if we don’t see much of Sim anymore. I hope I’m wrong, but …”

“But you’re probably not.”

I shrugged.

Kenny took the urn from me. “So what do we do with him?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been thinking it wouldn’t be fair to his mum or dad if we left him here, would it? We’ve been blaming them all along, but … but I can’t think of
anybody
who’s blameless anymore.”

“Maybe we should just leave a little bit here, but take the rest back. We can’t come all this way and then not do something.”

He unscrewed the lid and scooped a small palmful of ash into his hand. He passed the urn to me and I did the same.
It was gritty and dry. In the beginning, maybe I’d had plans for a speech or a ceremony, but so much had happened and neither of us knew what to say. We knew that this palmful wasn’t really our best friend.

We threw it toward the lighthouse. The beam swept round, and it might almost have looked as if it had carried the ash away.

There was nothing left to do but head back up and over the rise of the headland toward the bay. As we reached the top we saw two cars passing by the houses on the far side, tearing along the narrow road, hardly slowing when the tarmac stopped and the rubble track began. Even in the dark, from this distance, we could see that the front car was the police. As they both drew closer I recognized the second car as Ross’s dad’s.

“Someone’s grassed us up. D’you reckon it was Sim?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I doubt it. Maybe they just figured it out because someone local spotted us. We’ve left a pretty obvious trail all the way from Cleethorpes.”

The police car pulled up behind where Kat’s stepdad was parked. I wondered if it was Detective Sergeant Cropper himself. Ross’s dad’s car screeched to a halt and he was out in flash, pointing up the hill at us.

“Here we go,” I said. “Brace yourself. Good luck with your mum.”

Kenny had halted in his tracks. “We really are shittered.”

“Are you asking me or telling me?”

He almost smiled. Almost. “There is something I will tell you,” he said. “I’m not glad Ross is dead, okay? You know that, don’t you? But I can’t help being glad we came here. I wouldn’t have met Kat if we hadn’t.”

I nodded to prove I understood. “And I suppose when you think about it, that’s kind of the whole point, isn’t it?”

Kenny looked across at me. “How d’you mean?”

One of the policemen and Ross’s dad were clambering over the stile into the cow field. I reckoned they didn’t trust us to come down to them. Maybe they were worried we’d want to carry on running.

“Well, you never really know what’s going to happen, do you? At least, not until it actually does.”

Desmond, Eric, Jane and the students from Craigroyston here in Edinburgh; Angela, Claire and the BRAW boys from St. Andrew’s over there in Clydebank. Clare Argar; Anna Gibbons; Lucy Juckes; Jack Merriman; Sophie Nelson; Janet Smyth; Juliet Swann and Alan Thompson. Mum, Dad and John. Especially Charlie. For ever, Jasmine.

Keith Gray was born and brought up in Grimsby, England, and knew from an early age that he wanted to be a writer. Though the best tree climber in his junior high school, he never received top marks in English.

Since then, Keith has gone on to write seven books. He won the Angus Book Award and the Smarties Prize Silver Award. He was short-listed twice for the
Guardian
Fiction Prize and was short-listed for the Booktrust Teenage Prize and the Scottish Arts Council Book Award.
Ostrich Boys
was short-listed for the 2007 Costa Book Award and the 2009 Carnegie Medal. Keith was a judge for the
Blue Peter
Book Award, the
Guardian
Fiction Prize and the Booktrust Teenage Prize.

Keith is now an aspiring rock star and actual full-time writer living in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Visit him at his Web site,
www.keith-gray.com
.