Read Gaudete for Free Online Page B

practice.”
    “Everything gets better with practice,” Jonah said. “I practice singing.”
    “I heard you sing,” Callum informed him.
    Jonah looked startled. “Really?”
    “Yes, really,” Callum said indignantly. “With the candles and everything. It’s why I made this.” Jonah sang, and Callum hadn’t realized until he listened just how good it was. He spent all his time talking about what he was going to do, it seemed, and Jonah had already started. He needed to catch up.
    Jonah smiled at him then, as if he’d just said the most perfect thing ever, and Callum wanted to hug him or something. He didn’t, because that would be pretty gay, but he did jump up and say, “Let’s do something.”
    “Okay,” Jonah agreed. “Like what?”
    “I don’t know,” Callum said, suddenly all twitchy, like his Ritalin had worn off. “Something!”
    So they went and joined in the game of Bulldog the rest of the choristers were playing in the gym, and it was a bit babyish for someone who was almost ten and a half, but Callum still enjoyed it, and he ran all his jitters out.
    Later that afternoon, over orange squash and scones, he told Jonah about the Ritalin, which was the best and worst thing ever.
    “You seem….” Jonah shrugged, as if searching for the right word. “Still you, but less splintery.”
    “I still want to do everything all at once,” Callum confessed. “But I’m not, y’know, angry under my skin all the time now.”
    “So it’s good.”
    “Yeah,” Callum said. “It makes me go faster too, though, and I can’t ever sleep properly. I miss sleeping.”
    “What do you do, then?”
    “Get up. Draw. Listen to music or audiobooks, which make me have to concentrate.” He cheered up. “I think I’m getting the Prisoner of Azkaban one for Christmas. Don’t tell me what happens.”
    “I haven’t read them,” Jonah confessed.
    “But you live in them,” Callum protested. It hadn’t occurred to him before, but now it seemed obvious. The choir school was like the nearest you could get to Hogwarts in real life.
    “We’re not allowed to read things which promote a pagan agenda,” Jonah said seriously.
    Callum wasn’t sure what that actually meant. “Not even in the holidays?”
    Jonah considered that. “Well, I suppose no one would know.”
    “Well, then,” said Callum.
    It bothered him, though, so he nagged Leanne into taking him to the charity shop in town the next day and bought copies of the first three books for 20p each, carefully picking out the least tatty copies he could find. Leanne, rolling her eyes, made him put wrapping paper on them, and he presented them to Jonah that afternoon.
    “You got me a present?” Jonah said, looking like somebody had tripped him up. “An actual present?”
    “Yeah. What do you normally get, fake ones?”
    “Auntie Carrie gets me a book token and my parents send money.” He must have seen Callum’s face, because he added hurriedly, “The choristers do a Secret Santa too.”
    Callum really hated Jonah’s family, so much that it was probably a good thing he was never going to meet them.
    He wasn’t expecting anything back, but Jonah shoved a parcel into his hands just before he went home. Callum ripped the paper off gleefully to find a CD, something classical looking.
    “I was going to give it to Auntie Carrie,” Jonah explained, “but she hasn’t taken the plastic wrapping off last year’s yet, and I thought you might like it to listen to when you can’t sleep.”
    “This is you singing?”
    “Not on my own,” Jonah explained. “Just with the choir.”
    “Brilliant!” Callum breathed and had to hug him hard, even if it wasn’t manly.

2013
     
    T HE C UCKMERE A RMS was right down the bottom of the High Street, beside the tiny millstream that was the start of the River Cuckmere. It looked a little scruffy at first, with the white plaster peeling off its half-timbered frontage, but then Jonah spotted the rainbow flag hanging