I had some good stuff there waiting to be sold on. Vintage clothes are a big thing. The older the better. You turn them from jumble into vintage by sending them to the cleaners and putting a label on them saying 50s dress, or 70s retro, or even 80s if it’s really crap. I bought most of it from charity shops and jumble sales, but some of it was liberated from Mum and Dad’s wardrobe and drawers. Mum in particular has some sort of shoe and dress fetish. She never wears most of them. Other people do. I call them customers.
They freeze my assets, I liberate theirs. Who started it? That’s all I ask.
There’s some other bits and pieces. Some of my stuff I hadn’t got round to flogging yet. My old Scalextric. My bike – it’s a good one. I try not to use it much in case I scratch it and affect the resale value. Dad’s bass guitar’s down there too. That isn’t mine, but it will be one day. The way I see it, they’re going to leave it all to me in their wills anyway, so it’s just, you know, getting a preview.
There’s my old drum kit too. I got it a couple of years ago. Christmas present. I fancied the idea of being in a rock ’n’ roll band, pulling loads of girls and getting off my face all night, but once I actually had the drums I realized – that’s not the same thing as sitting for hours on end practising hitting things with sticks.
The gear I wanted today was hidden behind a heap of plywood. Camping gear. There was a reasonable-sized four-man tent and a two-man that I bought off eBay to resell. It was a bargain. There was also a gas camping stove, plastic mugs and stuff like that from when we used to go on camping holidays years ago. No one had used any of it for years.
I took the four-man. The two-man was lighter, but it might end up a longish holiday.
That was about it. Oh – money. Yeah, I had to take that out of the food kitty. They don’t usually notice if you just get a few quid. This was different – I took forty, which was fair – they put in a hundred a week and it takes more to feed one.
I had it all worked out. You’d never guess. I was going to camp out – actually on the school grounds. Genius, eh? No one was ever going to think of looking for me there. Our school has acres and acres of land. A load of it is footie and rugby pitches, most of which never get used. It all dissolves round the edges where there’s a river and it turns into woodland and bushes and stuff. I’d found a great spot, hidden away among some bushes.
It was perfect. I’d go to school, hang around with my mates in the evening, kip in the tent overnight – and that’s me. Just until the heat dies down, you know?
Round two to Mum and Dad. They had made me do homework for the first time in four years. But was I broken? Was I giving in? I don’t think so.
Round three to moi.
Rob
It wasn’t the beating. A kid like me gets beatings. It was the T-shirt. What they’d done to that.
They’d spat on it; they’d rolled it in the mud. They’d stamped it into the puddles and the shit and the grass. One minute it was perfect – the next, it was a hopeless mess.
At least I still had it on. They’d done everything they could to get it off me but I hadn’t let go. The harder they kicked, the harder I curled up round it. I hadn’t bothered protecting myself. I didn’t matter – it was the T-shirt that mattered. I just curled up and clung on while they kicked and spat and ripped at it.
I went straight to the toilets when I got to school. I could have cried. I did cry, as it happens.
It was trashed. Filthy. Someone had tried to rip the skeleton off the front and the wheel of his bike was flapping about. I’d only had it a few hours and it was ruined. Why do people always go for the things you care about? Why do they want to hurt you where it hurts the most?
And it was then, at the lowest moment of my life, that the miracle happened.
If you’d have been standing there, you’d never have known. It wasn’t the kind of miracle where something unbelievable happens while you’re stood there watching, like the lame walking or that sort of thing. It was inside. I suddenly realized …
Me mam’s left me to be looked after by a man who hates my guts – the man who stole my dreams off me when I was small and who turns me into shit every day. I’ve got no friends. I’ve been rolled in the mud, I’ve been spat on, I’ve been abused, I’ve been treated like dirt, and my T-shirt, which was about the only good thing in my life, has been torn, muddied and spat on. But you know what? All they’ve done is make it better! Because this is no ordinary T-shirt. This is a heavy-metal T-shirt. This is Metallica. This T-shirt doesn’t want to be nice and new and clean. It wants to be torn. It wants to be covered in blood and sweat and tears and snot. It wants to be rolled in the shit. This T-shirt, it needs to be ripped about and nearly torn off your back before it’s even born.
See what I mean? All they’d done, Riley and his gang of chavs – they’d christened my T-shirt. They’d made it better. They’d made it real.
Isn’t it amazing how just thinking something can change your whole life? That’s what a miracle is. Not flashing lights and choirs of angels and people coming back to life. It can happen in a moment and no one would ever know but the person it’s happening to. It was like that.
For the first time in my life, I wasn’t just a fan – I was living the dream. I was metal. Suddenly, from being the worst day in my life, it was the best. I had this crazy feeling; things were never going to get better than this.
‘Thank you!’ I shouted. ‘Thank you for beating me up. Thank you for rolling me in the dirt! Thank you, thank you. You made my day!’
Behind me the bell went. It was time for lessons. I felt great. I turned to go. A little kid was standing in the doorway staring at me with an open mouth. What that kid must have thought he was looking at, I don’t know.
He was seeing me being reborn.
‘Thank you for hating me!’ I yelled. I pushed him out of the way and I ran past him into the corridor. I felt like I’d just died and gone to heaven.
I was tested that day. I was tested hard. Word got about, see. Everyone knew what I had on underneath my school jumper. I got beat up again at break, but I didn’t care. I just put my head down and hung on to the T-shirt and took it. It went on all day. I got pushed around in the corridor, people jeering, making threats. It didn’t even bother me. There was nothing they could do to me that they hadn’t already done. I knew something they would never know – that the very worst things in this world can turn into pure beauty, just by a single thought. It was a religious experience, a vision. Suddenly I understood what it was like to be a saint. Yes, I know the saints see God and all I’d seen was a Metallica T-shirt, but so what? This was Me. This was who I was.
I tried to find Billie to tell her what was going on. I didn’t know if she’d understand, but if anyone would it’d be her. She wasn’t in that morning, though, so I just had to hug it to myself.
Davey came and found me at lunchtime. I was in a right state by then – covered in muck, tears in my eyes, my face all red from where I’d been slapped around.
First thing was – he’d found out who spat blackcurrant over me at the bus stop that morning.
‘It was that kid, the one who was on at me about the snails yesterday. Him.’
Snailboy! That nosy little bog-wiping, smart-arsed snail-loving creep.
He was dead. It wouldn’t be bullying, now – it’d be justice. Even a pacifist can only take so much.
Davey was staring at my face. ‘You’ve still got it on under your jumper, haven’t you? Take it off, Rob, take it off, won’t you? You’re going to get killed.’
‘This is what I am, Davey,’ I told him. Then I remembered. I had something to tell him. I’d decided – I was never going to let my brother down again. Now was as good a time as any.
‘Mum gave it to me,’ I said. He looked at me, like, he must have known. But I said it anyhow. ‘She’s gone, Davey, she’s left him.’
Davey’s little face just crump
led up. ‘She can’t have gone,’ he said.
‘We should be glad for her,’ I told him. ‘She’s safe now. Remember, Davey – it’s not us she’s left. It’s him. Always remember that.’
‘You should have stopped her. You should have told her not to go!’ he yelled suddenly, and before I could say any more he rushed off. I took a couple of steps after him, but he was too fast.
There was nothing I could have done. We both had to live with it from now on. I went off into the dining hall. Not much gets in the way of me and my dinner.
That’s where it all came to a head.
I was standing by the sandwich stand when someone gave me a shove that sent me staggering into it – I almost knocked it down.
‘I’m gonna have you, you pervert,’ he sneered.
I just cracked. I’d had enough. You can’t blame me. I mean, what was the point in hiding any longer? It was out – who I was, what I was and what I thought of all the idiots there with me. I was through with hiding. Hiding hadn’t done me any good. People just see straight through it.
I ripped the jumper off over my head and stood there in all my Metallica motherfucking, fudge-packing, crack-smoking, Satan-worshipping glory. The T-shirt was ripped and filthy, I was covered in sweat and red-faced, tears in my eyes – I was crying like a little kid.
‘Who wants a piece of me?’ I bellowed. ‘Come and get it, you bastards. Who wants it?’
And they did. They came at me in waves – kids and staff all together. The first wave hit me. I lifted up my arm to fend them off.
‘Thank you! Thank you …’ I started to yell, but someone’s elbow got my mouth and I went down in a blaze of glory.
Billie
The respite was OK. Mrs Grear. I’ve never been with her before. It was late by the time I got there. She just fed me and then I went to bed. The food was good – there was loads of it. Some of those places, they give you nothing, but this one was all right. She did me a big plate of beans and sausages, even though it was late.
‘Keep you fed, anyhow,’ she said.
I asked her if I was to come back to her the next night.
‘As far as I know, love,’ she said.
So it was all up in the air.
I had a long row of messages from Hannah when I turned my phone back on, asking me to call her, but I didn’t answer. I wasn’t in the mood for her. All I wanted to do was close my eyes and go to sleep, and send the world out of my mind.
I was hoping for a bit of a lie-in the next day, but it didn’t happen. Mrs Grear woke me up at half seven. For some reason I was expecting to be out of school, but I wasn’t. They can’t have found out about the fight.
‘Do you know the way from here?’ she asked. I had no idea where I was, but it turned out I wasn’t all that far from home. Shortcut through the park and I’d be on the main road.
It was good walking through the park that morning. Nice day, bit of sunshine. I was thinking it was a good thing I was out of Barbara and Dan’s. It was always going to happen. And the school hadn’t found out so far. You never know. Maybe I’d get to stay there.
I was just thinking maybe it was all going to be OK when I got jumped.
They knew what they were doing. There were four of them. The big one got me in a head lock and the others grabbed my arms and legs. They hauled me off into the bushes by the wall. The big one let go and pulled my head up by the hair to look in my face. I say big, I mean it. She was built like a sawn-off tree stump. She had a horrible snotty green cold, the skin all red around her squashed pig’s nose, and her hair pulled back tight off her fat pig’s face.
‘I’m the queen now,’ she said.
‘What do you mean? There’s no queen – it’s just me, fatso,’ I said, struggling. But they held me fast. Four of them. What can you do?
The big girl frowned. Perhaps I’d made it too complicated. Then she started to walk up and down, hawking. Did I mention she had a cold? She took her time at it, hawking and grieking, making sure she got a good load. Then she bent down, opened her mouth and coughed it at me.
Right in my face.
The next thing I know, I’m still in the grip of the sidekicks, but I must have nearly got out because some of them were the worst for wear. One had a bloody nose where I’d got her with my elbow or something.
‘Get her, Betty, sort her out, quick, she’s gonna get away!’ someone was screaming.
Betty was standing there watching with her mouth open as if she couldn’t believe it. Finally she closed her mouth into this hard little line, walked up, swung back her fist, which was about as big as a small dog, and hit me in the stomach.
I doubled up. All the air went out of me. They pulled me back upright and she did it again. Then they let go of me. There was that grim old bit when you’re on the floor trying to catch your breath and twisting this way and that and the feet are going bang bang bang. Then they ran off.
They really did me. I thought I was going to suffocate. I must have looked as if I was having a fit, thrashing about on the grass trying to find some air. It felt like about half an hour before I got my breath back. It could have been worse. Sore ribs. Big red mark down one side of my face where someone had got me. My ear was bleeding where one of the bitches had stamped on my head, and I had one really sore tit. Like I say, it could have been worse. But not much. A little bit of my brain told me to get in touch with Hannah, but I was well past all that. She’d only talk me out of it and I wasn’t having anyone talk me out of this.
No one jumps me like that.
I picked myself up and went back to Mrs Grear to get cleaned up. She was great – gave me a bath, rang the school telling them I was going to be late, and didn’t mention that I’d been in a fight. I had the morning off in the end. I could have had the whole day, but I had business now, hadn’t I?
I don’t know what was going on at school that day – it was crazy. They’d already had one huge bundle in the hall, something to do with Rob. I told you, a kid like that, he just attracts trouble. Apparently he was wearing some kind of T-shirt he wasn’t supposed to. They’d excluded him for bullying. Rob, bullying? They got that one wrong there.
I had a go at my form teacher, Mr Miles, about it.
‘Rob doesn’t bully – he gets bullied. What’s going on?’
‘He was wearing a T-shirt with some … inappropriate writing on it,’ he said. ‘The head asked him to take it off and he refused.’ He shrugged, like that was an end to it.
‘Oh, right, I get it,’ I said. ‘So what really happened is he gets beaten up for wearing the wrong clothes and then he gets excluded by you lot for wearing the wrong clothes. D’ya know what? You’re no better than the kids.’
‘Billie, I don’t make the rules. It was really inappropriate.’
‘Yeah, but you don’t exclude someone for … oh, I can’t be arsed with it.’
He yelled at me, but he was yelling at my back by then. He knew better than to try and take it any further. The fact was I wasn’t going to be there long, either. I was thinking, See you at the Brant, Rob – if they let me back in, that is. One thing for sure – they weren’t going to have me back at Statside by the time this week was over.
Chris
It was Thursday. We were doing chairs. Wikes was drawing on the whiteboard again, a frog’s kidney this time. I was planning on sneaking back in at break and writing ‘Self Portrait’ underneath it. I was looking forward to that. Pathetically, it was going to be the high point of my day.
I’d been in the tent for two nights so far. I had fish and chips the first night – that was OK. The night after, I went home with this kid Terry. He’s a bit of a geek. I offered to let him show me his Wargames stuff. I was only going in for after-school snacks, but his mum asked me to dinner. It was weird, but it got me fed.
I was feeling good. I was on top of my game. I was sticking to the rules – my rules. I was going to school.
I might have been prepared to bend that one if there was anywhere else to go to, but there never is, because everyone else is, well, at school. I was sitting tight, doing my work in class, not doing my homework at home. Perfectly reasonable.
It’s just a pity they can’t be reasonable as well.
Chairs is fun, though.
What you do is, while Wikes draws on the board, you and your mates stand up, grip the table in your hands and tiptoe off with it. You don’t need to go far, just a metre or so to start with. The point is, when he looks round, the room has been rearranged. All done in total silence.
It’s really funny.
The first time he didn’t react at all. We’d all just tiptoed backwards with our tables a couple of metres, so we were all jammed up against the back wall. He might not have even noticed consciously. He just looked mildly surprised and got back to picking which colour pen to use next.
The second time we’d moved all the tables forward so we were all right up close to him. He spotted that all right. You could see him twitch.
The third time we were really subtle. We just turned our tables round so that we were all sitting there with our backs to him, staring at the wall opposite.
Wikes let out a terrible cry and flung his pen at us – it got Alex on the shoulder.
‘Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I don’t know what’s going on? You’re going to stop this right now. Now! Now! I said NOW!’ he screamed, and he banged his hand so hard on his desk it hurt him.
It was hilarious. Wikes was dancing around shaking his hurt hand. People were almost literally falling off their stools laughing. Even the good kids, the ones who like to pretend they’re learning something from all his board dribble, even they were laughing. Wikes stopped dancing and just stood there looking at us falling about. Then he must have decided it just wasn’t worth it and turned away and got back to doing his drawing on the board.