CHAPTER 8

VICTORY

‘What. On earth. Is that?’ Florrie’s face was a Kit Kat length away. ‘I can’t. Believe. My eyes.’ They were gleaming like glaciers. ‘You will. Remove it. Immediately.’

What Brian didn’t say:

‘Yes, of course, Mrs Florris. What was I thinking? I’m so very sorry. I’ll take it out at once.’

What (very quietly) he did say:

‘Only if the girls remove theirs.’

Florrie gasped. The class gasped. The cactus on the front desk gasped.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Florrie’s knuckles went white, pressing into Brian’s desk.

‘I said.’ He blew upwards, sending his fringe flying. ‘Only if–’

‘I HEARD YOU!’

And then he was squashing against the back of his chair, blinking at her reddening face and wondering how her mouth could move so fast while her eyes stayed so still, and noticing that each hair on her chin wore a little trembling jacket of powder, and finding that by staring at those jackets he could ignore the words that were spilling from her mouth like pins from a box, and imagining what Dulcie, uncharged but conscious in his ear, must be making of all this hullabaloo.

Florrie paused for breath.

‘He’s right.’ Broadbean Barry, whose dad was a lawyer, didn’t even put up his hand. ‘If the girls are allowed to wear them, so’s he. Otherwise it’s discrimination.’

There were murmurs. Most of the girls had pierced ears.

When wise people like you, and occasionally me, are annoyed by something that’s not dangerous or cruel or in need of a good scratch, they do the wise thing and ignore it. But despite her sensible heels and the rain hat she carried whatever the forecast, Mrs Florris was not a wise person. She stood by Brian’s desk and shrieked about the nerve, the mouth, the cheek, the lip, until she’d almost described a whole face. Then she moved down the body to screech about the kick in the pants of decency, the shot in the foot of order and the slippery slope from earring today to hooligan tomorrow to prison next Thursday blahdy-blahdy-blah.

At last she ran out of words.

Now what? Broadbean was right. And everyone knew it. There was nothing she could do except stand there, stiff and silent with rage.

After eight seconds she sniffed. After twelve she wiggled her shoulders. After twenty-three she wheeled round and strode to the front.

She sat behind her desk. ‘Homework.’ She spread her palms on top. ‘Geography.’ She licked her teeth. ‘On page forty-eight of Don’t You Know Where That Is? you’ll find a map of Europe. For every country I want you to learn,’ she took a deep breath, ‘the mountains the lakes the inlets the outlets the imports the exports the main sports the highways the holidays the rainfall the snowfall the crops the shops and the,’ she smiled, ‘favourite. Types. Of cheese. Got that?’

Only Alec nodded. He alone had written it all down.

‘Because if you haven’t, too bad.’ Her eyes were ice pops. ‘There will be a test tomorrow. And your mark will go on your final report.’

Brian’s heart punched like a fist. Victory! His plan had worked: the girls-wear-earrings argument had stumped her. She was powerless, helpless, piling on homework because that was all she could do. His report would be rubbish anyway. He had nowhere to fall. A chain snapped inside him – of fear and control. He was free to soar into the limitless sky of rebellion, to fly where he liked, do what he wanted – eat chips off page forty-eight, or fold it into a paper crab, or use it as loo roll. He didn’t care how she punished him. He’d beaten her in front of the class and that was all that mattered. He knew it, she knew it and so did they.

In the silence of Maths, he drew Florrie’s face as a pie chart and cut her into twenty-five slices, one for each pupil. Reading Peter Pan in English, he made her walk the plank and jump to the mercy of twenty-four crocodiles. And in history he could almost hear the classroom court crying, ‘Bravo!’ as he sentenced Witch Florribus to fifty years tied to the back end of a cow.

So when Clodna Cloot said, ‘Well done, Braino,’ on the way out to break, it took him a moment to work out that she didn’t mean it. And when Broadbean added, ‘Yeah, thanks for ruining my TV tonight,’ Brian thought for a second that he was truly grateful.

But when a football slammed into his back and Kevin Catwind yelled, ‘That’s for the map, Brainless,’ Brian began to suspect that the class wasn’t wholly on his side. And when Skinny Ginny shouted across the playground, ‘How d’you spell nightmare? B–r–i–a–n,’ he finally understood that he had twenty-four fewer school friends than the none he’d had before. Or, to put it more positively, twenty-four devoted enemies. Dodging the tennis ball that was rushing to greet his shoulder, he ran across the yard to the lawn. He sat down behind the rockery.

Twenty-four enemies. And one new friend.

Grabbing the edge of his sleeve, Brian brought it to his ear and rubbed the amber. The sting-ache made him hiss. He rubbed again.

‘Of all the –!’ A voice exploded minutely in his ear. ‘How dare she speak to you like that!’

‘I told you she hates me,’ said Brian with a grim kind of triumph.

‘What about me?’ piped Dulcie. ‘A kick in the pants of decency, am I? A shooter in order’s foot? A hooligan-maker, a prison-pusher? Why the dandelion didn’t you charge me up? I’d have given her a taste of my tongue. She’s an insult to bee-manity … to humanity … to me-and-you-manity! Ooh, if only my butt was free, I’d sting her where the sun don’t shine.’

Brian couldn’t help smiling. He didn’t doubt it for a minute.

‘Oh no.’ His smile vanished. Three figures had appeared on the left. He hunched against the rockery wall as Alec, Tracy and Pete crossed the lawn in front of him. He could do without more sarcastic comments.

He needn’t have worried. They didn’t notice him as they headed towards the row of cypresses that marked the end of the school grounds.

The trees were where you went to share gossip or homework: a dark, private borderland, officially out of bounds. But if you managed to creep in without being spotted by the teacher on yard duty, you were safe. On the far side of the trees a narrow path ran along the school fence. Anything messy or broken was dumped there, out of Florrie’s failure-hating sight: the school dustbins, the gardener’s tumbledown shed, old benches and broken desks. Brian had only once plucked up the courage to creep through. He’d stood on the path and gazed into Finn McCool Lane, where graffiti and dog poop reminded him that there was life outside school, even at one o’clock on a Wednesday.

Brian watched the trio disappear into the trees. Pete and Tracy must be going to copy down the geography homework from Alec, and probably pay him for the favour. Teachers’ pets couldn’t afford bad marks.

‘They’ve gone,’ he whispered, dropping his hand from his ear.

‘You know, you’ve got more guts than the rest of that class put together,’ Dulcie squeaked.

‘I have?’ Apart from the ones that sometimes twisted inside him, he wasn’t aware of any.

‘And brains.’

‘Really?’ He’d often doubted he had any of those at all.

‘Making a fool of her without breaking the rules. “Only if the girls do” – brilliant!’ Dulcie cleared her tiny throat. ‘I must say, it’s an honour to be your earring.’

Brian tried to smile. But he was so unaccustomed to compliments, it got tangled up and came out as a kind of wriggle across his face. ‘Thanks. And it’s an honour to be your ear, I mean your home, I mean–’

‘What you mean, young bud, is my friend.’

Brian nodded so hard his wriggle untangled. ‘Yes.’ He grinned. ‘I do.’

‘You do what?’

Brian jumped up. He hadn’t noticed Mrs Muttock creeping across the lawn from the trees. Smoking was banned in school, of course. But Brian had often seen the cleaning lady sneaking off with a hand in her pocket or caught the bitter whiff as she slunk down the corridor.

Now she smiled. ‘Talking to yerself, eh? First sign of madness.’ She gave a wet cackle. ‘Still, I s’pose there’s no choice, if no one else will.’ The cackle turned into a rattling cough. Pressing a fist to her mouth, she slithered away.

Brian cupped a hand to his ear. ‘You couldn’t be more wrong,’ he thought, ‘you slimy old stink bomb.’