About a Boy

She laughed. ‘That’s what life is, Marcus. You have to work out what you believe in, and then you have to stick to it. It’s hard, but it’s not unfair. And at least it’s easy to understand.’

There was something wrong with this

Why aren’t I old enough now?

I know what I’m doing.’

Marcus had never thought of his mother in that way before, as someone who knew what she was doing. He had never thought that she didn’t have a clue either;

‘Marcus is doing fine,’ his mother said. At first he didn’t believe she’d said it, and then, when he’d had a chance to listen to the words ringing in his ears, he tried to find a different meaning for them. Maybe there was another Marcus? Maybe there was something else he was doing fine at

being taken to pieces

‘I don’t wear anything I hate.’

‘What do you do with the stuff you hate, then?’

‘I don’t buy it, do I?’

‘Yeah, because you haven’t got a mum. Sorry to say it like that, but you haven’t.’

wasn’t about to embroil himself in the sorry dog’s dinner that was Marcus’s life

as a source of shame, but as a cause for wild and raucous celebration;

reality was not in his genes.

he could see he was serving some purpose in the kid’s life at the moment, and as he served no purpose in anybody else’s he was hardly going to die of compassion fatigue.