This place has its own kind of map and everyone knows which territory they belong to. Everyone knows you don’t screw with the boys who sit on the steps on the way into the courtyard: the ones with the fat arms and legs whose uniforms are always tearing apart where the stitches are. Anyone with any brains knows you don’t ask them to move even if they are always in the way. Eli Hanssen disappeared for three days once after he asked one of them to let him past, everyone knows that.
On the other side of the yard: there is the fat group who spend their whole lunchtime eating, the maths losers reading their textbooks and the emo retards who play Dungeons & Dragons. They’re all only slightly better than the Year Sevens who play handball against the back wall and scream ‘Yes!’ every five minutes like they’re at an Eels game and actually watching something exciting.
In the alcove outside the science block – that’s where people do things they want to hide like smoking cigarettes and looking at the magazines they stole from underneath their father’s closets. That’s where you go if you want to act like you don’t give a shit about anything and if you dyed your hair black and pierced your own ear.
Me and my best friend Shadi, we spend most of our time at the edge of the football field. Dom’s group and also Shadi’s cousin’s group sit not so far away and because of this we’re allowed to sit close but not too close to the area where all the Year Elevens and Twelves are even though we’re still only in Year Ten.
Shadi’s cousins sit with the Lebs. The Islanders sit a little further away than that on the other side of the field and Dom sits with the everything elses. Shadi and me, we watch everyone for most of lunchtime in between some eating and talking, but mostly we’re just watching. When they leave next year we’ll take over the spot. Then it’ll be me and Shadi eating meat pies and chucking the wrappers at the birds, and me and Shadi chucking footballs across the field, and me and Shadi drumming, and me and Shadi talking crap and rolling each other down the hill when there’s nothing more doing.