Read Shining On for Free Online Page B

in the middle of the night, and finds a little whirlpool of his own unflushed faces staring up at him. Maybe the author made that story up. I certainly hope so.
    And then there's Mick. We met on holiday last summer and mooched around together quite a bit. When his dad won the accumulator at the races, and Mick clapped him on the back, he made a flinchy little face and moved away. I bet a heap Mick wishes he'd kept his trap shut.
    So you can see why I kept putting it off. But we couldn't go on forever. I was sick of not being able to do the simplest things, like keep a proper diary, or snap at Grandpa when he makes remarks about the guys who live together on the corner, or leave the books I'm reading lying about.
    And that's how I told them. With a book. Not quite the way you'd imagine, but it worked. Mum and I were inReaderama a few weeks ago, and she was desperate not to let me out of sight because I was carrying most of the shopping. (She didn't trust me not to put it down. Mum's of the view that trailing half a step behind every single shopper in town is a villain just waiting to pounce on their Price-worthy bags, and make off down some dark alley.) “Have you got all the bags? You're supposed to have six,” she says to me every two minutes, and I've known her to have breakdowns just from my slipping one half-empty bag in-side another without sending her warning letters in triplicate first. She drives me mad. And she has the nerve to claim she feels the same about me when we're in town to-gether. But I still get dragged along, as unpaid porter, when-ever Dad's not available. It's my brute strength she's after, not my advice on broccoli versus sweet corn, or red versus green for the new lavatory brush holder or, as on this par-ticular morning, which cookery book to buy for Aunty Sarah's birthday.
    “Just take the cheapest,” I said. “It's not as if she ever gets round to actually cooking anything out of them, after all. She just flicks through them and then does chicken and chips.”
    “What if she has it already?”
    “Give her the receipt. Then she can bring it back and choose another. That way,
she
gets to be the one whose arms stretch down to the floor.”
    Mum took the hint. “All right,” she said unwillingly. “You can put down the shopping. But don't move away from it. Stay where you are.”
    “So what am I supposed to do?”
    “Browse,” said my mother. “That's what people do in bookshops. Have a little browse.”
    I browsed. I browsed a step or so to the left (Health Matters). I browsed a step or so to the right (Feminism). I browsed forward a couple of steps (Family and Society), and back a few steps (Cars and Mechanical). And all the time I swear to God I never let a soul get between me and the shopping bags.
    Then I got uppity. I browsed a little further away, past Holiday Guides, and round the back of Stamp Collecting. I ended up opposite Food and Drink and, copping a major glower from Mum, who was still choosing which of the eight million cookery books on display Aunty Sarah wouldn't change first, I doubled back through Computers.
    Fetching up back at Health Matters, where I'd begun.
    That's when I saw it.
Telling Your Parents: A Teenager's Guide to Coming Out in the Family.
You'd think the fairies might have put it there for me. I didn't do what you'd expect—slip it out and have a quick read while she was busy comparing
Feasts of Malaysia
with
You and Your Wok,
then creep back a few days later to read the rest. No. I sim-ply took it off the shelf and tucked it under my arm. Then I dribbled the shopping bags one by one over to Mum at Gluttons' Corner, and stood there growing a beard down to my feet until she'd chosen.
    “Right!” she said finally. “I think this one's nice. She can't complain about this one.”
    She waited for me to point out that Aunty Sarah can complain about anything. But I had bigger fish to fry.
    I trailed her to the pay desk.
    “Here,” she said, taking out her