Read Lottery Boy for Free Online

they agreed that the river would be better off without Janks – who didn’t even live on the streets but in a house, partying all night, and who didn’t need the money – giving the pavement a bad name, taxing for the fun of it, for the
laughs
.
    The other Sammy draped both her arms around Bully so that they were now like a little noose of bones and flesh around his neck.
    “Little boy I never had,” she said.
    “Get off him!” said Man Sammy but her arms stayed where they were.
    The last of the zombies left to go back inside, and no one said anything for a while. Bully could feel his news working its way out.
    “I won it,” he said.
    “Won what?” said the other Sammy dreamily. “What you won, love?”
    “The lottery. I won it!”
    “What?” Man Sammy’s voice sharpened up. “How much?”
    “All of it,” he whispered, almost to himself, so that he was surprised when he heard Man Sammy making fun of him.
    “You
ain’t
won it! You
ain’t
won nothin’! You’d be on the telly!”
    “In’t ’e
sweet
,” said the other Sammy.
    “I haven’t told ’em yet, have I? And I’m not having no publicity anyway!” This was something he’d just decided. He didn’t like having his picture taken since his mum had stopped taking it.
    “Course you did, love,” said the other Sammy, giving him another kiss. He tried to pull away without upsetting her because it was sore from where Janks had throttled him. “Where you going?” she said, giggling as if it was a game. And he ducked his head out from under her arms.
    “I got all the numbers!”
Man Sammy’s voice squeaked and crackled as he tried to make it go all high, making fun of Bully’s voice that was changing all the time.
    Bully stood up. “I have, I got all six! They scanned it and everything. And I’m going to Camelot to get it! In Watford!” he added, to show how true it was, because Watford was a real place.
    Man Sammy stopped laughing and his face closed down and his eyes searched Bully’s for a few seconds before he spoke. “Let’s have a little look-see then, at this little ticket of yours,” he said quietly. And Bully realized he’d said way too much.
    “I ain’t got it with me, have I? Got it stashed…” He tapped his little finger against his coat pocket to signal Jack he was ready to go. Jack was on her back though, still having her belly rubbed.
    “Where you put it then?”
    “Left it in the lockers…” Bully whistled softly with a bit of breath he was blowing out anyway and Jack rolled onto her feet, back on duty.
    “What lockers? There’s no lockers at Waterloo.”
    “What? Yeah, yeah, no. Not
there
.”
    “Where? Where’s the
key
then?”
    He made a show of patting his coat down like he was looking for it. “Dunno… Look, we gotta go. Got stuff to do. Yeah, laters.” And he was padding across the Strand, Jack at his heels, before either of the Sammies got to their feet.
    “Bully, love, don’t go!” shouted the other Sammy but he didn’t look back – ran straight in front of a bus, just making it across, Jack a little ahead of him, knowing the way. And they kept the pace up between them, across the footbridge, back past the guys still playing their trumpets and drums for money, back towards Waterloo where the sun was just beginning to think about bedding down for the night.

He didn’t like being out and about when the sun played hide-and-seek. He wasn’t one for roaming after dark. He liked to get organized, get settled for the night. A lot of the older boys liked the empty hours, owning the streets for a while before the day brought the zombies back to town. But Bully didn’t. It wasn’t the dark itself. There was plenty of light around at night in London. No, what he didn’t like about the night-time was the people who came out of it. The way they went nasty and did things they wouldn’t do in the day. So he always laid out his cardboard bedding and his blankets and sleeping bag on his doorway before