WORDS OF THE WEEK

Melvin Burgess, right, proved a shocking

winner of the Carnegie Medal for children's fiction with his book Junk. It meets

head on the excitement and tragedy of

drug culture. Here is an extract.

Lily and Rob were sitting at the table. Rob was shaking something on to a strip of foil.

"Oh, yeah," said Gemma.

Rob handed the foil to Lily. She lit a match and held it under the foil. There was this thick, sweet smell and a curl of white smoke. Lily held the foil to her mouth and "Glop!" she said. She sucked down that curl of white smoke and clamped her lips down. And held her breath for ages. Then she breathed slowly out. She smiled like a snake.

"Now I feel good," she said.

"What is it?" I asked.

Lily waved her fingers in the air like it was spooky and magic and she said, "Heroin, yeah!"

"Is it? Is it really heroin? Is it?" I said. I was horrified. Rob was doing another lot. I was thinking, She's a junkie, she's a junkie, she's a junkie ...

You know those stories. You take one little sniff and that's it, you're hooked for life; you end up on the streets robbing old ladies and putting your hands down old men's trousers for a few quid for the next fix. Rob held out the foil for Gemma and she grinned at me and struck a match and "Glop," she said. I watched her letting the smoke ooze out of her nostrils. But she must have been doing it wrong because Rob and Lily jumped up and shouted at her, "Don't let it go, don't let it go ...!" And Gemma chased the smoke she'd let out with her mouth.

"That's pretty important smoke," said Rob.

I was thinking, Oh my God, oh my God ...

Then he did one for me but I shook my head. Rob laughed and sucked it down himself.

"Hey!" Lily was angry. "Hey, that's Tar's, what're you doing?" He just smiled and opened his mouth to let the smoke out. He looked like a ghost. Lily was getting seriously annoyed, but then he got out the little packet and shook it at her.

"Plenty more where that came from," he said, and Lily grinned.

"Go on, try it, it won't hurt," Gemma told me. "It doesn't do you any harm, it just feels good."

"I don't want to," I said.

Lily was amused. "Aren't you gonna be a junkie with us?" she teased. "Are you a junkie, Tar?"

"No."

"A little heroin isn't going to change you into one. YOU have to think like a junkie if you want to be a junkie."

"Yeah, you don't need smack to help you." Gemma sighed and leaned back in her chair. I looked into her face to see if I could see anything different. She looked ... happy.

"It's all right,Tar, try it. You don't have to do it ever again if you don't want to. But try it once. Try everything once. All that stuff you hear about one little hit and you're a junkie for life is just stories, you know."

"Stories to scare the kids, stories to keep you in your place," said Lily.

Rob had done another one. He held it out for me. "Junk's the best. That's why the doctors keep it for themselves." He gave me a slow wink.

"I know what's better for me than any doctor," said Lily. I looked at the foil and I thought, God, I don't know what to do ...

"Look, he's actually going to miss the chance to feel better than anyone else in the whole world," said Lily.

"More for us," said Rob. Then I thought - what did I have to lose? Rob held the lighter to me, I lit it up and held it under the foil and I watched the white powder turn to a little blob of brown running up and down the crease in the foil. Then I went "Glop" and ...

Sometimes maybe you need an experience. The experience can be a person or it can be a drug. The experience opens a door that was there all the time but you never saw it. Or maybe it blasts you into outer space. This time it was Lily and Rob and Gemma spending all that time to make me feel one of them, but it was the drug too. All that crap - about Gemma leaving me, about Mum and Dad, about leaving home. All that negative stuff. All the pain ...

It just floated away from me, I just floated away from it ... up and away ...

I leaned back and I looked at the book and I looked at them and Gemma smiled at me, a big soft smile, and her eyes were like marbles.

"Better?" she said.

I just nodded. I didn't feel incredibly wonderful or anything, but it was gone. All the hurt. She came over and sat next to me and sort of wriggled under my arm.

"Tar," she said. "Will you go out with me?"

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, I will."

"I nearly blew that, didn't I?" she said.

"You're gonna live here now, with us," said Lily. "Yeah, both of you. Aren't you?"

What could I say? I felt I was just beginning to learn how to live.

"Yeah!"

`Junk' is published in hardback by Andersen Press, pounds 12.99 and in Penguin for pounds 4.99.