Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

And I take a ladder from Father’s van and I climb up onto the roof, and when I get to the edge of the roof I put the ladder across the gap and I climb to the next roof, because in a dream you are allowed to do anything.

And then I find someone’s car keys and I get into their car and I drive, and it doesn’t matter if I bump into things and I drive to the sea, and I park the car and I get out and there is rain pouring down. And I take an ice cream from a shop and eat it. And then I walk down to the beach. And the beach is covered in sand and big rocks and there is a lighthouse on a point but the light is not on because the lighthouse keeper is dead.

And I stand in the surf and it comes up and over my shoes. And I don’t go swimming in case there are sharks. And I stand and look at the horizon and I take out my long metal ruler and I hold it up against the line between the sea and the sky and I demonstrate that the line is a curve and the earth is round. And the way the surf comes up and over my shoes and then goes down again is in a rhythm, like music or drumming.

And then I get some dry clothes from the house of a family who are dead. And I go home to Father’s house, except it’s not Father’s house anymore, it’s mine. And I make myself some Gobi Aloo Sag with red food coloring in it and some strawberry milk shake for a drink, and then I watch a video about the solar system and I play some computer games and I go to bed.

And then the dream is finished and I am happy.

233.The next morning I had fried tomatoes for breakfast and a tin of green beans which Mother heated up in a saucepan.

In the middle of breakfast, Mr. Shears said, “OK. He can stay for a few days.”

And Mother said, “He can stay as long as he needs to stay.”

And Mr. Shears said, “This flat is hardly big enough for two people, let alone three.”

And Mother said, “He can understand what you’re saying, you know.”

And Mr. Shears said, “What’s he going to do? There’s no school for him to go to. We’ve both got jobs. It’s bloody ridiculous.”

And Mother said, “Roger. That’s enough.”

Then she made me some Red Zinger herbal tea with sugar in it but I didn’t like it, and she said, “You can stay for as long as you want to stay.”

And after Mr. Shears had gone to work she made a telephone call to the office and took what is called Compassionate Leave, which is when someone in your family dies or is ill.

Then she said we had to go and buy some clothes for me to wear and some pajamas and a toothbrush and a flannel. So we went out of the flat and we walked to the main road, which was Hill Lane, which was the A4088, and it was really crowded and we caught a number 266 bus to Brent Cross Shopping Centre. Except there were too many people in John Lewis and I was frightened and I lay down on the floor next to the wristwatches and I screamed and Mother had to take me home in a taxi.

Then she had to go back to the shopping center to buy me some clothes and some pajamas and a toothbrush and a flannel, so I stayed in the spare room while she was gone because I didn’t want to be in the same room as Mr. Shears because I was frightened of him.

And when Mother got home she brought me a glass of strawberry milk shake and showed me my new pajamas, and the pattern on them was 5-pointed blue stars on a purple background like this:

And I said, “I have to go back to Swindon.”

And Mother said, “Christopher, you’ve only just got here.”

And I said, “I have to go back because I have to sit my maths A level.”

And Mother said, “You’re doing maths A level?”

And I said, “Yes. I’m taking it on Wednesday and Thursday and Friday next week.”

And Mother said, “God.”

And I said, “The Reverend Peters is going to be the invigilator.”

And Mother said, “I mean, that’s really good.”

And I said, “I’m going to get an A grade. And that’s why I have to go back to Swindon. Except I don’t want to see Father. So I have to go to Swindon with you.”

Then Mother put her hands over her face and breathed out hard, and she said, “I don’t know whether that’s going to be possible.”

And I said, “But I have to go.”

And Mother said, “Let’s talk about this some other time, OK?”

And I said, “OK. But I have to go to Swindon.”

And she said, “Christopher, please.”

And I drank some of my milk shake.

And later on, at 10:51 p.m. I went out onto the balcony to find out whether I could see any stars, but there weren’t any because of all the clouds and what is called light pollution, which is light from streetlights and car headlights and floodlights and lights in buildings reflecting off tiny particles in the atmosphere and getting in the way of light from the stars. So I went back inside.

But I couldn’t sleep. And I got out of bed at 2:07 a.m. and I felt scared of Mr. Shears so I went downstairs and out of the front door into Chapter Road. And there was no one in the street and it was quieter than it was during the day, even though you could hear traffic in the distance and sirens, so it made me feel calmer. And I walked down Chapter Road and looked at all the cars and the patterns the phone wires made against the orange clouds and the things that people had in their front gardens, like a gnome and a cooker and a tiny pond and a teddy bear.

Then I heard two people coming along the road, so I crouched down between the end of a skip and a Ford Transit van, and they were talking in a language that wasn’t English, but they didn’t see me. And there were two tiny brass cogs in the dirty water in the gutter by my feet, like cogs from a windup watch.

And I liked it between the skip and the Ford Transit van so I stayed there for a long time. And I looked out at the street. And the only colors you could see were orange and black and mixtures of orange and black. And you couldn’t tell what colors the cars would be during the day.

And I wondered whether you could tessellate crosses, and I worked out that you could by imagining this picture in my head:

And then I heard Mother’s voice and she was shouting, “Christopher…? Christopher…?” and she was running down the road, so I came out from between the skip and the Ford Transit van and she ran up to me and said, “Jesus Christ,” and she stood in front of me and pointed her finger at my face and said, “If you ever do that again, I swear to God, Christopher, I love you, but… I don’t know what I’ll do.”

So she made me promise never to leave the flat on my own because it was dangerous and because you couldn’t trust people in London because they were strangers. And the next day she had to go to the shops again and she made me promise not to answer the door if anyone rang the bell. And when she came back she brought some food pellets for Toby and three Star Trek videos and I watched them in the living room until Mr. Shears came home and then I went into the spare room again. And I wished that 451c Chapter Road, London NW2 5NG, had a garden but it didn’t.

And the day after that the office where Mother worked rang and told her she couldn’t come back to work because they had got someone else to do her job for her, and she was really angry and she said that it was illegal and she was going to complain, but Mr. Shears said, “Don’t be a bloody fool. It was a temporary job, for Christ’s sake.”

And when Mother came into the spare room before I went to sleep I said, “I have to go to Swindon to take my A level.”