Read Lucky Bunny (9780062202512) for Free Online Page B

you blow hard, this nose bit, the duck’s beak, flaps around and makes farting noises. He looks for his friend Archie Markham to show him and they make the noise together. That cheers him up.
    It made me feel panicky, too, the first time I put it on, like I couldn’t breathe. And the smell was rubber and chemicals, bleach. I threw it down, and Nan was there, watching me. She’d been sewing something. When I did that, she got up.
    â€œLook what I made your little rabbit, gel. Look see what I been and made Bunny. Because we all got to wear one, even him, you know . . .”
    Nan showed me what she’d made: a black-material gas mask, a tiny one, with ribbon at the back, to tie on my rabbit. I tied it on him; Nan winked at me. She didn’t make anything like that for Bobby, even though he’s the youngest. It’s our secret, something just for me. Bunny is safely in my bag now. Miss Clarkson’s watching us, and we’re in line with all the other children and she’s checking that we’re standing straight and not poking the person in front.
    â€œ These are the actions I must do: salute to the king and bow to the queen, and turn around to the boys in green ,” Peggy Burchwell sings, under her breath.
    I wonder if Peggy remembered her skipping rope. I haven’t got one. I use Nan’s washing line.
    â€œRub some soap on your finger, and run it along the mask, that’ll stop it misting up,” Miss Clarkson says to Archie, who is putting his mask away.
    â€œI ain’t got any soap, miss . . .” Archie says, but she’s already way down the line, clicking and snapping at Peggy Burchwell.
    â€œ Mabel, Mabel, set the table. Do it as fast as you are able . . .” Peggy sings. Peggy is the best skipper. “ Salt mustard vinegar pepper . . .”
    â€œHas Mum got a mask?” Bobby asks now. “What if she gets gassed, in hospital?”
    â€œYeah . . . oh, I don’t blinkin’ know . . .”
    Does Mum have one? What about Nan? We were given ours in the schoolyard a week ago, but I don’t know where Mum is, and I haven’t seen her since the day Vera went to heaven. All I knew is what Nan said to me that morning: “You look after Bobby now, gel. You’re the smartest, you know he’s a few currants short of a teacake. And he’s only little. Stick together and don’t let anyone split you two up, ever , you hear?”
    Last night was the first night of the blackout. Nan did it, she drew her curtains and taped up the brown paper, in case the glass all shattered. But later that evening we went outside, me and Bobby, and the streetlights were on, so we could play Knock Down Ginger. Then everything went black. I stood still and looked around me. I put my hand out. There was a sooty blackness and I didn’t dare to step into it. I heard Bobby—he’d been running, and now his footsteps skittered up beside me. If only I’d been quick! I could have pinched something. I didn’t know what, but we were hungry again and Nan had only given us bread and drip for tea. There would have been milk bottles, but I was like a blind man. (I’d have got better at it though.) We stumbled towards Nan’s flat. The darkness was a different kind of dark, and Bobby was scared of it.
    He told me he thought he saw Vera’s little head, floating in the stairwell like a pumpkin. We both ran up the stairs howling.
    Nan didn’t sleep well last night—I felt her huff and puff in the bed beside me, and at one point she climbed out, and I heard her pick herself a paregoric sweet from a packet she has hidden in the bottom of her drawers, amongst her bloomers, all so big they can “Keep the sun out of her eyes,” she says, and then laughs, and I know it makes no sense but it is funny.
    I heard her climb back into bed, putting her dentures—in a glass by the bed—back in her