Bus CXXVII

Jack: God, Scott, have you been drinking? You stink of rum.

Louisa: How d'you know what rum smells like?

Jack: My dad uses rum-scented bath salts

Louisa: How the other half live, eh, Scott?

Jack: You're the one who holidays in New York. I've never even been to old York. And when I asked my mum for a new phone, all she gave me was this lollipop.

Louisa: So is it true, Scott? Have you been drinking rum? What would your sister think?

Scott: She's the one who gave it to me

Jack: So let me get this straight. Your father went bankrupt and fled the country, your mother checked into a psychiatric hospital and nobody even seems to mention her anymore, and now your unemployed sister is sending you to school drunk. Here, you need this lollipop more than I do.

Scott: It's not like that. We can't drink from the taps at the moment cos there's been a chemical leak on our estate. And our mum was buying so much alcohol before she went in the asylum that we're not gonna run out for months. By then the water supply will be fixed, and we won't have risked putting any dangerous toxins into our bodies.

Louisa: But you can't just walk around drunk all the time

Jack: Why not? It works for the school caretaker.

Louisa: That's different. Scott's too young to give up on life.

Jack: I dunno. Might as well get it over with.