Read Lottery Boy for Free Online Page B

in her mouth.
    He was about to put Jack on it when there was a
beep, beep, beep
from the emergency exit at the back of McDonald’s. One of the burger boys was dumping the trash. It was twenty-four hour opening and this went on through the night. The alarm used to wake him up when he first moved in but nowadays most of the time he slept through it. Sometimes early in the morning he went looking for food in the bins, but he didn’t like climbing in there with all those black bags bobbling about and maybe rats trapped in there in the darkness with him too.
    When the door shut and the alarm stopped Jack settled down and the rat was gone. Bully got out his Top Trumps. He’d remembered to bring them with him when they left the flat. He went through them most nights, working out what Jack was from the pictures and descriptions of the different breeds. The categories were
height
,
weight
,
guard-dog skill
,
rarity
and
lovability
. Jack didn’t do so well on height or weight, losing out to the big hounds, but she made up for it in the other three categories. Though Jack’s breed wasn’t exactly in the pack, Bully was sure there were bits of her in among all those pedigrees and most nights he went searching for exactly what mixture of dogs she was. A bit of red setter, maybe, around her neck, and the way she sometimes pointed like a gundog with her long nose. Or … maybe Jack was crossed with something much, much bigger and she was just the runt of the litter. This was the first time he had thought this up. Maybe she was part English mastiff or Great Dane. They were big dogs, bigger than men and real breeds too, with proper
ancestors
and
lineage
. The dog magazines said so. It was something to think about.
    A while later, he put the pack of dogs away and tried to get to sleep but he was too excited. Every time he drifted off, thoughts started frothing up about what he would buy with his cash. Somewhere to live first of all. A penthouse flat right at the top of a block where you could scout everything out, nice and quiet with a swimming pool all to himself and no screaming kids. But would a penthouse be big enough for all his stuff? Maybe he’d just get a house, then, not joined up to next door but one on its own with a garden. A big, big house with lots of windows so he could see what was coming from miles away. And the roof would be made of glass too so that when he looked up he could see the planes and the sky. And it would have security alarms and razor wire and an electric fence to electrocute the scumbags who deserved it. And it would be where all the footballers lived. And all the rooms would have fridges full of cold cans of Coke. And it would have beds. Just normal-sized beds though, like the one he had back at the flat. That would do him. And Jack could have her own room full of squeaky toys and sticks and cans of food without
any
ash in them at all. He’d pay someone to pick it out.
    He got out his lottery ticket to look at it again, to make sure it was still real. He read the numbers. Then he turned the ticket over to read the back.
    Game rules
…
    The tiny red print was difficult to read in the shadows. He got out a cigarette lighter and scanned the print through the top of the yellow flame. Some of the words sounded foreign – what were
aspects
? Was
amended
something that had been mended? It didn’t matter. He had the numbers. And he still had five days. He would phone them up tomorrow. Camelot at Watford. Get some credit or use a payphone. And then he would go get his millions. The drawbridge would come down and they would let him into Camelot, this castle place, and the knights would show him the money. He knew it wouldn’t really be like that but he liked to think of it that way all the same.
    He was down to the second-but-last one of the rules and the flint of the lighter was beginning to hot up his fingers.
    It is illegal for any person under sixteen to buy tickets or claim prizes
.
    He’d never thought