‘This group …’ he muttered, quietly. I was quite close to him. I think that’s what he was saying. ‘This group …’ He had the pen up to the board, but he wasn’t doing anything. Then, just for a moment, he rested his forehead against the board and it suddenly occurred to me he was hiding his face. Poor old Wikes, he was crying.
And then it wasn’t funny any more.
It’s one thing getting revenge for him being such a lazy arse, but I didn’t want to make him cry. I hate bullies. It was the first time I thought to myself – maybe I was being one. Just because he was a teacher didn’t mean he couldn’t be bullied.
No one else had noticed. They were all hooting away like monkeys.
‘Leave it out,’ I hissed. ‘He’s upset – leave it.’
Alex and Jamie on my table went quiet and flapped their hands at the others so the noise died down. But Wikes must have heard me too, because he turned round, cool as anything. His eyes were red, so I knew I was right.
‘Chris Trent,’ he said to me in a quiet voice. ‘I’ll see you outside. Now. Go on.’
I got up and went out, with him right behind me. He was so quiet he scared me. I thought, What now?
Outside in the corridor, he came right up to me, so I had to step back to keep my distance. He stepped further forward and put his hand on the wall so his arm was over my shoulder and leaned in close.
‘You’re the ringleader, Trent,’ he said. ‘Don’t think I don’t know.’ He gulped a couple of times, trying to catch his words; he was still upset. ‘School’s wasted on the likes of you,’ he said.
He was so close I could feel his breath on my face. I tried to move sideways, but he stepped round so he blocked my way. It was really uncomfortable.
‘I was trying to stop it,’ I pointed out, but he wasn’t listening.
‘Proud of yourself, I expect,’ he said. ‘Nothing better to do than make a mess for other people to clean up.’
‘Sir …’
‘Spoiling it for everyone else. You’re just a little shit, Trent, aren’t you?’ he said.
I couldn’t believe my ears at first. He said it so clearly there was no doubt, but I still couldn’t believe it.
‘What, sir?’ I said.
‘What, sir?’ he mimicked. He pulled a face and shook his head. ‘Your sort make me sick. A selfish little bastard, that’s what you are. Your mother must be a right bitch to bring up something like you.’
‘What?’
‘You can stay there. I’ll report this to the head.’
He turned to go. But – he can’t say that! He can’t get away with that!
I grabbed his shoulder. ‘What did you say? What did you call my mother?’ I hissed.
Wikes looked down at his shoulder and smirked. ‘Assault is it now? I’ll tell you what I said, Trent. Nothing. It’s my word against yours. And we both know who’ll be believed, don’t we?’
I was so shocked. I just stood there staring at him. Where were the rules? Why was he doing this?
‘If you don’t get your grubby little hand off me right now, I’ll get you done for assault. Because do you know what, Trent? There are plenty of other people in this school who’d like to see the back of you. Aren’t there? Aren’t there, Trent?’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said automatically, and I dropped my hand and looked away – just because I was ashamed at him speaking like that, I think.
Wikes nodded, and then he turned and walked back into the classroom. I stood and watched him like an idiot, because he’d treated me like scum and I’d still said yes sir no sir three bags full sir, like a good little boy. He closed the door quietly. Then I turned and went.
I was trying to stop it! All right, I do start it sometimes. If he wants to call me names, that’s up to him – but he can’t call my mother a bitch and get away with it, no way!
I was so angry. I stormed off down the corridor. I thought, That’s it. I’ve had enough of this crap now.
I was going to go straight back to my tent, but I was taking a shortcut across the hall in front of the stage, and a teacher was coming in at the back and, you know what, I didn’t want to explain myself, so I ducked up the stairs and behind the curtain and went to hide backstage.
It was Mrs Connelly. I heard her pause – she’d seen me go in – but she went on her way. Thought I was running an errand for someone, I expect.
I went to the little room backstage and sat down on the wicker costume basket. I had tears running down my face. It’s funny, with me and school. It just goes on day after day. I get bored and I skive and I do what I can to avoid the work and punishments and things, and I get on with my life as much as I can. But really, it does my head in. I don’t realize until something like this happens and suddenly there it is, right in my face.
I wanted to go home. I wanted just to forget about it. But what I wanted, more than anything, was to just tell someone how unfair it was that my crimes get pinned against me all the time while an idiot like Wikes, who makes so many people suffer every single day of his life, can call my mother a bitch and get clean away with it.
I started to have a look through the hamper of costumes. It was mainly panto stuff. The tutus were tiny – they must have been for Year 7s, I reckon. I had to split one up the sides to get it on and it only came down to just below my ribs. I have a hairy stomach. It looked ludicrous. I was starting to feel better.
Long stripy socks. Good. There was this pair of sequined pants, they were a bit small too, so I left my boxers on underneath. They left little to the imagination as it was. A tiara. A Superman cape. Then I raided the make-up table, spiked up my hair with gel, whitened out my face, did big blue eyes and a fat, smeary, ugly red trannie mouth.
Perfect.
I had to cover myself up with a coat on the way back to class – the last thing I wanted was to be hoiked off before I made my point.
I knocked on the door …
‘Come in,’ called Wikes.
I banged the door open and stood there in what I think is called a plié. Then I minced across the room, doing two or three turns as I did, and dived under Wikes’s table.
The place exploded. Everyone was hooting and yelling. Wikes went mad. He tried to drag me out, but I’d got hold of the table legs.
‘Get out! Get out! What do you think you’re doing, boy? Get out!’
‘I’m protesting,’ I yelled back. ‘I’m protesting against you calling my MOTHER A BITCH!’
The whole room went quiet when I said that. Wikes stood there, licking his lips for a moment. Then he nodded.
‘Lying won’t help you, Chris,’ he said quietly. ‘We’ll see what the head has to say about it, shall we? Marion,’ he told one of the girls. ‘Go to fetch the headmaster, will you, please?’
He sat down on his chair and looked out of the window. The girl ran off out of the class. A minute or so passed, then I got out and went to sit on one of the desks while we waited for the head to show up.
Billie
I found out who the big girl was soon enough. Betty Milgram. She and her mates go to Langram High School, up the road from us. I knew what I was going to do before I’d finished wiping the snot off my face. She wants to play Queens. What does a queen do? She has an army, right?
This was war.
They get out at three at Langram’s, earlier than us. So at half past two I got up and walked out the class. Mr Carradine can’t do much.
‘Where are you off to?’ he said.
‘It’s time,’ I called over my shoulder, not to him, to my mates. A bunch of them got up and walked out after me.
Carradine was standing there bleating, ‘But it’s not going-home time – the bell hasn’t gone yet.’
‘Just let them go, sir,’ said one of the other kids. No one came after us. Glad to see the back of us, I expect.
I went down the corridor yelling, ‘It’s time!’ I was only after a
handful of kids from my year, but other kids were leaving too. Word had got about. It was great, better than I ever expected. People started diving into other classes shouting, ‘Fight! Fight at Langram’s. Billie’s having a fight.’ Even classes that weren’t anything to do with it came out. By the time we got out into the road we must have had at least fifty and there were more behind us running out of the gates. There were teachers trying to head them off, but by then it was a stampede.
We were going to war. I was expecting the police to turn up at any time – I thought someone’d ring them – but they never showed till later. We lost a few on the way, but there were still twenty or thirty of us by the time we arrived. I was out in front. It was my fight. I took off my school tie and wrapped it round my head. I didn’t plan it. It was only later I thought – Rambo. You know, the bandanna round his head? I used to watch those films with Mum on the TV when I was little.
As we got close to the gates and spotted the Langram uniforms we broke into a run. My lot – my army – they were right behind me. I turned and waved my hand. We charged. Yea! The Langrams turned and ran for it. We let out another yell and speeded up – yeeee-hay! Oh, man! I was so full of it. All that crap, school, home, sod that. This is what it’s all about.
We closed in, howling and yelling. The Langram kids were getting jammed in the gate where they’d all tried to run back in at the same time. Trapped like rats, nowhere to run. We ran right up into the wedge in the gate and started on ’em straight off. We were shoving and kicking at them for a few minutes before some of the bigger ones, my age, came round the back and then the battle started proper. I remember someone coming behind me and pulling my hair. I spun round and smacked her hard round the earhole. Down she went, yelling and clutching her ear, silly cow. I could have had her nose all over her face if I wanted.
You should have seen it! It was fantastic. Everyone jumping on everyone else. And it was all mine. My own private war. I had a group around me, the hard ones, Jane O’Leary and Sue Simpson, my deputies. There were fights everywhere, little groups of kids all over the playground and spilling out the gates. Then I saw her – Betty, with her little group of thugs. They’d just turned the corner by the front entrance. I let out a whoop and went running with Sue and Jane after me. Three against four – good odds.
Betty screwed up her big ugly face when she saw me coming. She clenched her fists and her little piggy eyes swivelled from side to side. Nowhere to run, fat girl, trapped by your own friends clustered up behind you. She was going to get spanked and she knew it. I was going to teach all four of them a lesson.
‘Kill the bitches!’ I screamed, and Jane and Sue let out a yelp by my side. We went in, I had to jump up at Betty to get my head anywhere near her fat snotty nose, but I felt it crunch lightly, that soft crunch you get, when you know you’ve broken something inside.
PART 2
The Brant
Chris
I was held in custody by the head until my parents arrived, so they could all ‘discuss’ my future. Not one of them believed a word I said. They swallowed the Wikes version hook, line, sinker, rod, fisherman, the lot.
He lied. He stood there and lied and lied and lied. He avoided looking at me the whole time, but I finally caught his eye at the end of it, and the two-faced old toad gazed straight back at me. Not a flicker. As if it was me who was full of poisonous bullshit – as if it was me who’d insulted his mother and got away with it.
‘And even if we did believe you,’ said my dad after, ‘my sympathies are still with Mr Wikes.’
I was excluded for two weeks and sent to the PRU – the Pupil Referral Unit. If it happened again, the head said, I’d be out permanently.
‘See where he’s headed?’ said my father to my mother on the drive home. ‘It starts off with refusing to work; it ends with him shoving teachers around in the corridor.’
‘I’m amazed at you, Chris,’ said Mum. ‘It’s not like you at all. What’s got into you?’
‘I told you – he was lying. He called you a bitch,’ I said. ‘I stood up for you. Don’t you even care?’
‘Just – stop it, Chris. I can’t bear this deceit.’ She shook her head and scowled in the mirror.
‘They won’t stand for any of your games at Brant PRU, I can tell you that now,’ declared my dad triumphantly.
See what you’re up against? It’s like a police state. If you think for yourself, every man’s hand is against you. I told them exactly what was going on, clear as a bell, but I might as well have been blowing bubbles for all the attention they were paying me.
You can trust no one. Your teachers, your parents – they’re all just gagging to turn you in just for the hell of it.
Even your best friend.
This is going to be a nasty shock to anyone who believes in such concepts as ‘friendship’, and ‘loyalty’, and so on. I was planning to hang around for a few hours, then slip out back down to my camp site. But my supposed best friend, Alex Higgs, revealed the whereabouts of my tent to his mother that evening. Apparently she convinced him it was for my own good. That was a bitter moment, when they told me that.
Result? I was trapped at home over the entire weekend where my parents could do exactly as they liked. It was a relief, to be honest, when Monday morning came and I had to go to Brant PRU. Or, as my dad put it, ‘the educational rubbish tip’.
I had both of them drop me off in the car. Double supervision. I think it was finally dawning on Mum that I wasn’t ever shifting on the homework front, whereas Dad was still going mad with rage at the thought of having an academic under-achiever in the family.
‘What is it with you about doing well at school?’ I asked him. ‘You did well at school and where did it get you?’
‘What about me? I’ve got a good job, haven’t I?’ he said.
‘Yes, but you hate it,’ I pointed out.
‘That’s not the point,’ he spluttered. ‘I had the option.’
‘The option to be miserable? No thanks.’
He’s so convinced he’s right that he is honestly unable to imagine that I might actually believe what I say. I. Don’t. Want. To do well. At school. What part of that is hard to understand? Is that what education does to you? Makes you stupid? Thanks, I’d rather hang on to my native gifts, if it’s all the same to you.
He was that angry with me. I wish I had a camera – it would have made a great reality TV show, except no one would believe it. As they dropped me off at the Brant, he started banging his head histrionically, but lightly, against the steering wheel.
‘My son. In with the losers,’ he groaned hollowly.
‘The kids here aren’t losers,’ my mum snapped at him. ‘They just have problems, the same as other people.’
‘Problems?’ Dad glared at her. ‘What problems does he have?’ he said, jerking his head to the loser in the back of the car. ‘Broken marriage? Poverty? He’s not disadvantaged – he’s just lazy.’
‘That doesn’t make him a loser,’ said Mum tensely.
I could only see the back of her head so I never saw the danger signals, but I sensed them anyway. I reached gently over to open the door. ‘I’d better –’ I began, but she began lift-off before I finished.
‘How dare you speak like that in front of your own son?’ she yelled suddenly at Dad. ‘A loser … I can’t believe I’m hearing this.’
‘I don’t see why not,’ snarled Dad. ‘It’s been staring you in the face for long enough. And now look at us. You’re letting him undermine our whole marriage.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Let’s get some perspective on this. Am I the one who’s failed my education?’
‘Don’t call him failed!’
‘What else do you want me to call him? Succeeded?’
‘He’s fifteen years old! How can he be failed, you idiot?’ roared Mum back at him. But I’d heard enough. I opened the door.
‘Bye,’ I called softly.
‘Wait there,’ snapped Mum, but they were both at it so hard they hardly noticed me stepping out. I closed the door quietly – best not to attract attention from the ravening beast when it’s in the middle of its, its what, its anti-mating display. There were a group of rough-looking kids smoking just a few metres away, looking at me as if I was made out of pure, undiluted, grammar-school nerd. I was. To make matters worse, they had their ordinary clothes on and I was in uniform. Did that mean … no! It was your own clothes here … ?
I was going to be the only one in school uniform. It wasn’t going to be nice.
Well, I thought, if they want a punch-up, they can have one. I’d give them some fat grammar-school fist to taste if they liked.
I walked smartly up to the door, and I was just reaching out to press the button to get attention when Mum noticed I was gone. I heard the car door go behind me and her feet on the pavement. I tried to dodge out of the way, but she seemed to teleport or something. She had hold of me in a bosomy embrace before I could even turn round. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the crowd of smoking kids watching with interest.
‘Darling!’ she bellowed.
NO, I silently begged … please not ‘darling’! She squidged me into her heaving bosom and gave me a huge hug. Right there. On the pavement. In front of Brant PRU.
‘I don’t care what your father says. You’re a star. You’ll always be a star to me,’ she said breathlessly. ‘This is just a temporary setback, that’s all. Fifteen years old and a loser. As if!’ she said, giving me a brave smile.
I glanced over at the kids who had started smirking as well as smoking. Mum kissed me once more for luck, then hurried back. I stood and watched as the car began shaking as she climbed in. I could hear them shouting at each other before he got the engine going again, and proceeded to jerk, stall and grind the gears all the way up the road and out of sight.
And there he was, not five minutes before, telling me I didn’t come from a disadvantaged background.