Read Zelah Green for Free Online Page B

washed it in some special stuff for me and I carried on wearing it, but I never felt right in it after that.
    The girl in the window seat is swearing and wrapping her long sleeves round her wrists.
    I pull out a tissue and pass it to her. As she lifts her sleeve to apply it I catch a glimpse of her arm.
    The skin is raised in bumps and ridges of angry red. All up her arm are criss-crossed lines, some weeping and sore, others healed and white.
    ‘Get lost,’ says the girl. ‘You’re not supposedto be in here anyway.’
    I bend down, wrap a tissue round my hand and pick up a metal nail file from the floor.
    I hand it back to her.
    ‘I didn’t realise you could do such a lot of damage with a nail file,’ I say. It sounds crass, but what else am I supposed to say?
    I like what you’ve done to your arm.
    Is it fun, hacking holes in your own skin?
    You really should put a plaster on that.
    The girl pulls her sleeves down again and slumps forward with her head on her knees.
    ‘Do you want me to get someone?’ I say.
    She lifts her head up and regards me with cold eyes.
    ‘You some kind of do-gooder?’ she says. She’s older than I first thought – fifteen or so. Her body is tiny, but there are worn blue shadows under her eyes.
    ‘No,’ I say. ‘I’ve just got here. I’m in the roomnext door.’
    ‘Oh yeah, the OCD,’ says the girl, disinterested. She turns away, gazes out of the window.
    I feel a flash of anger.
    ‘I have got a name, actually,’ I say. ‘Zelah Green.’
    That gets her turning back round sharp.
    ‘What kind of a weird name is that?’ she says. ‘Your mum got issues with you?’
    ‘She’s dead,’ I say.
    The silence is charged with several things. I can see the girl trying to backtrack, apologise even, but she’s gone too far.
    I feel sick at the mess on the floor. Embarrassed. Awkward.
    There’s only one thing to do.
    I walk away.
    ‘Yeah, catch you later, OCD,’ she says. Her voice is loaded with disgust.
    She puts on a Marilyn Manson CD as I shut the door to my own room. The savage roar of the music bursts through the wall and casts a black shadow of menace over my white furniture.
    I rip my earrings out and chuck them back in the box. I have to scrub my hands sixty-two times each to get rid of the feeling of the blood.
    I check my phone for a message from Fran.
    Nothing.
    The Doc whacks an old gong in the hall to summon everyone down to lunch.
    She’s changed into a sleeveless orange summer dress with roman sandals and a gold ankle chain. Her curly grey hair is as wild as ever.
    Josh is already in the kitchen in shorts and a white shirt, dishing up some sort of rice concoction and buttering soft brown rolls. Heis mock-conducting an imaginary orchestra in between ladling the steamy, starchy risotto on to plates. Radio Three has won the battle of the airwaves again.
    ‘Zelah, can you pour the drinks?’ he says. He waves in the direction of three cartons of orange and apple juice.
    The table is only laid for six.
    ‘Sol’s gone home for a day or two,’ says the Doc, reading my mind as usual. ‘He’ll be back.’
    ‘Not that you’d notice he’s gone,’ says Lib, twirling into the room and grabbing a bread roll from the basket Josh is putting on the table. ‘He’s a man of few words, our Sol. And that’s an exaggeration.’
    ‘Lib,’ says the Doc with a reproving frown. ‘You should let Zelah make her own mind up about people. And you shouldn’t tease people who aren’t around to defend themselves.’
    ‘Ooh, sorry,’ says Lib, but her plump featuresare spread in a wide grin. She’s wearing a hooded black sweatshirt and grey tracksuit bottoms. Her feet are still shoeless but her socks have changed from baby pink to fuzzy white. She’s run some sort of hair gel through her peaky blonde fringe so that it stands to attention like a line of rigid white ferrets.
    ‘Sit down, you lot,’ says Josh. As he’s putting mushroom risotto in front of us, Alice drifts into