Free Twisted Winter by Catherine Butler

ought to have done that, Bradley Williams.”
    Then he was off, hurrying up the hillside slope to the big metal gate.
    Brad brushed down his soaking hair, now feeling as if it was turning to ice. His fleece was soaking and covered with bits of weed, and stained down thefront where he’d thrown up. He could smell his own sick.
    He turned to look at the water, expecting to see thick ice, and the hole where he’d fallen.
    But there was no thick ice, only a thin wrinkled skin on the surface, unbroken. No girl’s face, no open mouth, no waving hair.
    Only, as he slowly tried to pull himself together, and make his way, trembling and shaking up the hill, dragging his school bag, he was sure he could hear the sound of someone, or something, laughing at him.

A Dog is for Life
    Catherine Butler
    â€œEvery misfortune is an opportunity in disguise,” said Lucy Wilkes.
    That’s Lucy all over. She’s bright and bonnie and bounce-back optimistic, like a rubber ball that misses the lampshade and hits you in the eye on the rebound. We’ve been friends for years, but I’m glad I don’t sit next to her in every class.
    When Lucy’s cat Fudge was killed last October she was upset, of course, but even while she was reaching for the Kleenex she was thinking how to turn the situation to her advantage. From that day on she started pestering her parents for a dog, quietly but persistently. She’s an expert at that.
    â€œIt will – it
might
– help put the bad memories behind me,” she’d tell them, her voice just shy of a whimper.
    By late November they looked about ready to give in, and I don’t blame them. Of course they wanted to make it right. What parent wouldn’t, after what happened to poor Fudge? It had taken days just to get the blood stains out of the lawn.
    In a way I admired Lucy, but I was a little sickened, too. It wasn’t just that she seemed a bit quick to forget Fudge (even if he was a scraggy old mog who spent twenty hours of every day asleep on the sofa). More important, wanting a dog had been my idea, my
thing
, and now Lucy was taking it over. It didn’t help that the chances of my parents buying
me
a dog were nil. When I mentioned it at breakfast one morning – weeks before copy-cat Lucy – they swung into their double-act as if they’d been rehearsing.
    â€œIt would need walking every day,” was Dad’s opening move.
    â€œIt would be alone in the house,” said Mum.
    â€œThe vet’s bills!” exclaimed Dad, looking to heaven.
    â€œI’d walk it! I’d look after it! I’d save all my pocket money!” I told them. “I always keep my promises, you know that!” But whatever promises I made they were ready with more objections, a never-ending supply.
    So, when I was at Lucy’s after school that day, and her mum started dropping hints about how Christmas was coming up, and Lucy shot me a smug look across her fish and chips – well, of course I felt hard done by. And when she went on about it afterwards, wondering what name to choose and whether she’d like a terrier or a spaniel better – well, of course there was going to be a row. And after that – Okay, it was childish to refuse her dad’s offer of a lift home, but I had my dignity to think of. I turned on my heel, and set off into the November evening alone.
    It was only eight o’clock, and the walk was along a well-lit road, but I felt foolish as soon as I turned the corner from Lucy’s. The sky was cloudless, and that made me feel more exposed, somehow, there in the empty street. I quickened my pace a little. A bigmoon bobbed along the sports centre roof as I passed. The moon is always bigger in winter, I’ve noticed. It comes into its kingdom then. It has fancy titles, too: the butter-yellow Harvest Moon; the Hunter’s Moon, wakeful and unblinking; and last of all the famished Wolf Moon, gnawing at