The Secret Dog by Joe Friedman Page A

like listening to it. Still, if they played reggae every night, I’d never have trouble falling asleep. It makes me feel my mother is still close.’
    As they went through the gate, Josh saw a group of boys clustered around Kearney at the other side of the yard. It looked like they were passing an object from hand to hand. When a boy got the object, he’d put it up to his eyes and swivel around to face a group of girls standing just outside the entrance to the school. Then he would hand it to another boy.
    Josh was reminded of his resolution the night before. He had to apologise . . . .  But surely he should wait until it was
just
Kearney  . . .  No, Josh told himself. You’re making excuses. Now or never.
    ‘I’ve got to talk to Kearney,’ he said to Yvonne. They walked towards the group. As they got closer, Josh saw the object being handed to Kearney, who swivelled and faced him and Yvonne.
    Binoculars. Kearney was watching him throughthem. Josh felt like a bug under a microscope, but he’d promised himself he’d do the right thing.
    The walk across the playground took forever. Kearney must’ve been given the binoculars as a present, and brought them to school to show them off.
    When he was just a couple of feet away, Kearney took them down from his eyes. Everyone was staring at Josh now.
    ‘I wanted to apologise for what I said the other day,’ he said.
    For the briefest of moments, Josh thought Kearney was taken aback, vulnerable even. Then his face reset into its normal sneer.
    ‘You? Apologise to me? What could you ever possibly do that would hurt me?’ Kearney laughed at the thought, and his gang, taking their lead from him, joined in.
    Josh stood there, paralysed. Yvonne gently put her hand on his back and steered him away.
    Angus said loudly. ‘He needs a
girl
to rescue him!’
    The boys laughed and made catcalls. Josh wished he could disappear into a hole in the ground. If this was what happened when you did the right thing  . . .
    Strangely though, Kearney didn’t join in with his friends – he
wasn’t
laughing, or shouting at Josh. He just watched as Yvonne led him away.
     
    * * *
    ‘There’s a lot of talk about immigration in the papers at the moment,’ Mr Sampson began theirhistory class. ‘Where did the people on this island come from?’
    ‘My family’s always been here,’ a blond boy asserted. ‘For hundreds of years.’
    ‘Mine too,’ several other dark-haired children chimed in.
    ‘In fact,’ Mr Sampson said, ‘Everyone on this island has come from somewhere else. There have been at least five distinct waves of immigration, including the Vikings. Today, I’d like to think about immigration and how it has shaped who we are.’
    Josh could hardly believe his ears.
Everyone
on the island had come from somewhere else? Then the only difference between himself and the people who saw him as a ‘blow-in’ was that they ‘blew in’ a few years earlier!
    He thought, ‘Thank you, Mr Sampson.’
     
    * * *
    As Josh headed home, his heart lifted as it always did, when he was about to see Reggae. He was walking alone this afternoon. Yvonne was at maths club. This meant he could go at his normal speed. Yvonne always struggled to keep up with him.
    Thinking about Yvonne reminded him of her MP3 player. He stopped, pulled it out of his rucksack, and put on the white headphones. He switched from the radio station he’d been listening to the previous night to ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. It was one of his favourite bits, in which Titania thefairy queen falls in love with the character called Bottom.
    As Josh emerged from the woods, he looked around to make sure he was alone. Then he headed up the hill to the boundaries of his uncle’s farm. On the player, the theatrical troupe were starting to rehearse their play. As usual, Bottom was being a know-it-all, telling everyone what to do.
    Josh glanced towards the woods below as he arrived at the shed. For a moment, he thought