A word about Steve – not Mr Forrester, mind, not sir; but Steve.
He was cooler than any teacher had a right to be.
He liked the right music. He understood jokes. He watched the right TV programmes. He was kind of good looking in an overgrown schoolboy sort of way and had played tennis for the county. He was the only teacher in the history of education who could wear jeans without looking a prat. If the government wanted to run an advertising campaign to show just how great working as a teacher could be, Steve would be their man.
The Shed Gang had seen right through Steve Forrester. We clocked early on, when he was our English teacher in the first year, that he was just too nice to be genuine, too obviously normal to be a teacher. He must have sensed that we weren’t taken in by him because sometimes, when he talked to us, I noticed the faintest flicker of disdain cross his face. One of the girls – Zia, it was – picked up on this and played along with it. By the end of the year, the three of them were firmly in place as the aristocrats of the class during English lessons, while Jake, Tyrone and me were down among the dead men.
It would not be true to say that Steve actively disliked boys, more that he preferred girls, found them easier to talk to and understand – which, of course, was excellent news for little Miss Lopez.
That first morning, as the Shed Gang claimed its usual position at the back of the class, I watched Steve as he chatted to Sam, who was seated between Elena and Charley. It was clear from the teacher’s expression that he already approved of the new girl. She may have looked slender and vulnerable, yet she had stood up for herself, made her mark, in assembly. She was the sort of person he could relate to, that he enjoyed teaching. She had, to use one of his favourite words, ‘character’.
There had been a situation assembly. The new year had not started as smoothly as one would have hoped. Already there had been a hint of trouble outside class – inevitably involving the appalling Gary Laird. I knew from experience that we would be sailing on choppy waters through that first lesson, and beyond.
One way of dealing with this kind of potential problem is to ignore it, to pretend that all is normal. Personally, I prefer a more direct and honest approach.
The new girl, Sam Lopez, had upset the inbuilt interpersonal dynamic within Year Eight. I was glad to see that within an hour of being at Bradbury Hill, she had distanced herself from her cousin, Matthew Burton, and his friends – an unhelpful influence, in my experience – and aligned herself with Charley, Zia and Elena. The four of them occupied a table near the front of the classroom while the Matthew trio skulked at the back, as is their habit.
But no one is going to settle down until the new girl had been assimilated into the herd. A certain amount of sniffing round each other’s bottoms (I am speaking figuratively here) needed to occur, so that morning I suggested that we all got to know one another. I said that being in Year Eight was different. We were all changing. It was a good moment to make a new start. Some of us – I may have darted a quick glance to the back of the class – could do with a new start.
I invited each of the class to stand up and, for a moment or two, tell the rest of us what had happened to them during the holidays.
It was a typical bit of Steve touchy-feeliness – sometimes he’s that close to being a hippy.
Elena stood up to tell us how she had learned to surf in Cornwall. A girl called Julie followed her. Julie hadn’t been away at all, as per usual, so she had just messed around. Dave had been given a dog. Kofi had been mugged for his phone. It was all pretty much the usual stuff.
Until Steve wandered over to a table near the front and, with a special you’re among friends smile, said, ‘Your turn, Sam. How have your holidays been?’
The American girl stood up and faced the class.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘First of all, my mom died, which kind of sucked.’ She looked around, paused, then broke the silence with a casual, ‘But you know what they say. Shit happens.’
All eyes turned towards me. I may have a relaxed style, but it’s well known that I take a firm line on language. On this occasion, though, I judged it prudent to give Sam Lopez the benefit of the doubt. It was a tough moment for her. We could go over the rules about swearing later.
‘So I left my home,’ Sam continued. ‘Said goodbye to my town, to my posse and to the whole good ole US of A and came over to stay with my cousin, Matthew Burton.’
Heads turned towards Matthew, who raised a hand in acknowledgement.
‘Since then, there’s been good stuff and bad stuff,’ said Sam. ‘I got me some new clothes. Several times I nearly got run down on account of the weird side of the road you people drive on. I hung out with Matthew and his’ – she gave an odd little smile – ‘gang.’
‘Bad luck,’ said Charley, just loud enough to hear.
‘Thank you, Charley,’ I said.
‘That’s about it,’ said Sam.
‘You’ve had quite a summer, Sam.’ I smiled down at her. ‘We all hope you’ll be very happy at Bradbury Hill.’
‘Yeah, cool.’ Sam sat down.
We went on with the session. At one point, Jake – inevitably – tried it on, saying he had been involved in a bit of trouble at a burger bar, but then he grinned in that peculiar, irritating way of his and said, ‘You know what they say, shit happens.’
So then we had the swearing discussion. Jake protested that I hadn’t said anything when Sam had sworn. There was a free and frank discussion in which I pointed out that any more swear words from anyone, including Sam, would result in a detention.
As I said this – I’m pretty sure I’m right here – the new girl looked up at me and winked.
I had the brief, alarming suspicion that she had somehow set the whole thing up.
Something strange happened during that lesson. We sat at the back, the Sheds, tense at first, worried that Sam was going to crack – say or do something that was so obviously make-believe that Operation Samantha would be exposed, leaving the three of us in the deepest doo-doo in the history of deep doo-doos.
But, as the lesson went on, and Sam did his Little-Orphan-Annie speech, it became clear that he was a natural actor and now he was getting into character.
Another thing. What had been so irritating about him when he was a boy – his confidence, his drawling accent, his need to show off and shock people and generally draw attention to himself – seemed almost charming now that he was a girl. Starting out at a new school in a new country should have been tough, but Sam, the female Sam, was making it look easy. Already, he was Year Eight’s new cutie.
‘I think this might just work,’ I murmured to Jake as Sam talked on.
Jake shook his head. ‘Not when he’s flashing that boy’s watch, it won’t.’
Ah. I looked closer. On Sam’s wrist, occasionally showing under the sleeve of his jacket, was a watch that was straight from his male past – flashy, big and sporty.
At the end of the lesson, we were due to take a twenty-minute break. As Sam approached, chatting to Zia, I tried to attract his attention but, almost as if he had forgotten who I was, he walked straight past me.
In the playground, when the two of them had been joined by Charley and Elena, I tried again.
‘Everything OK, Sam?’ I asked.
The four of them looked at me coolly as if my interruption was profoundly unwelcome.
‘Sure,’ Sam said. ‘Why shouldn’t it be?’
‘I just thought I’d watch out for you.’ I glanced in the direction of his wrist. ‘I wanted to watch how you were getting on. I didn’t want you to lose it.’
‘What’s he talking about?’ Sam asked the girls.
‘I think he’s trying to get you to look at your wristwatch,’ said Charley.
Sam flicked his wrist, carelessly revealing the evidence. ‘Hey, you’re wearing a boy’s watch,’ said Elena.
‘I lent her mine,’ I said quickly. ‘I…I didn’t want her to be late for lessons on her first day at school.’
‘What you talkin’ about?’ Sam laughed. ‘This is my watch. In the States, all the girls are wearing sports watches. It’s the hot new fashion statement.’
‘Really?’ Elena, who lives to accessorise, took Sam’s wrist and looked more closely at the watch.
I stammered something about the watch looking rather like mine, but no one was listening to me. As the three girls fussed over Sam’s left wrist, he looked over their heads in my direction, smiled happily, then jerked his head in an eloquent gesture of dismissal.
I walked across the playground to where Jake and Tyrone were standing.
‘How’s she doing?’ Jake asked.
He glanced back at the group of girls. Zia was actually touching Sam’s blond hair admiringly. The four of them made a picture of girly togetherness.
‘She’s doing great,’ I said.
Face it, we took our eye off the ball. We were so hung up on how Sam had managed to get in with Elena’s crew within, like, seconds of arriving at Bradbury Hill that we forgot one crucial fact.
The guy was trouble – always had been, always would be. Even at that moment when it looked like he was the Miss American Pie of Year Eight, some kind of bother would be heading his way like a heat-seeking missile.
Gary Laird has a brain the size of a small, dried pea – getting to the end of the simplest thought is sometimes beyond him – but, like an elephant, he has a memory. If someone has annoyed him in even the slightest way, that person will be added to Gary’s private shopping list, the one headed ‘People I Must Hurt Very Badly Today’.
Right now, Sam was top of that list. Gary had seen the American girl making herself the centre of attention in assembly. He had sensed a weird lack of respect or fear when he had spoken to her in the playground. All through the first lesson of term, that small, dried pea of his was filled with thoughts of violent revenge.
I didn’t want to get involved. Keep your nose clean, that’s me. But have you seen Gary? Have you met him? He’s not the sort of person you say ‘no’ to – not if you fancy keeping your looks, that is. So when Gary asked me to get the new girl to the science block, I wasn’t about to ask any questions. I guessed that he wasn’t exactly planning to talk sweet nothings to her but I was like, hey, not my problem. That’s the way it is at Bradbury Hill – at least when Gary Laird’s around.
It was my moment. I’d been thinking about it all through the lesson. I was focused, ready. I felt very, very good.
Sam was telling us all this crazy stuff about her life in America when Jim Kiley, one of those nervous, invisible types from Year Ten, came up and told her that Mr Smart, the deputy head, needed to see her for registration in the science block.
It was only after she was making her way across the playground that we began to be suspicious.
Mr Smart in the science block? He taught geography. And why should Sam need to register right now? If it was some kind of joke or set-up, then it wasn’t exactly subtle.
‘Gary!’ It was Charley who got there first. ‘It’s a trap.’ Sam had turned the corner. The three of us started walking after her.
It was at that precise moment that this sound – a yodelling, deafening bellow – echoed around the playground. It was coming from the science block.
For a few seconds there was this ‘What the—?’ moment in the playground. Then everyone began to move in the direction of the noise.
When we turned the corner, there was already a crowd of people gathered near the entrance to the science block. We pushed our way to the front.
There a weird and amazing sight greeted our eyes. Gary Laird was bent double. His face, flushed a dark red, was at a painful angle to his neck, and from his gaping mouth there came an agonised lowing sound, like a cow giving birth. Standing over him, looking, if anything, smaller than usual, was Sam. She was holding Gary’s left ear in her hand, stretching it away from his Neanderthal skull.
It was astonishing, unnatural – funny but also scary – to see the Terror of Year Ten so completely and humiliatingly at the mercy of this small, blonde girl.
‘It’s the American kid,’ someone said.
‘Go for it, girl,’ someone else shouted to nervous, excited laughter.
Sam ignored us all and concentrated on her victim. ‘You wanted something, buddy-boy?’ She spoke in a voice of cold, controlled rage. ‘Was there something you had to say to me?’
‘Nooo,’ Gary moaned. ‘Nothing.’
Sam gave the ear such a savage tug that the boy in front of me winced and looked away.
‘Don’t get me mad now,’ Sam said through clenched teeth. ‘I just know you wanted to say something.’
‘Ssss.’ A noise like a punctured tyre came from Gary. ‘Ssssorry!’
Sam jerked the ear again. ‘Sorry, Sam,’ she said.
‘Sorry, Sam.’
It was at this moment of surrender that someone at the back of the crowd shouted, ‘It’s Forrester.’
As Steve Forrester pushed his way forward, Sam glanced up and seemed for a moment about to let Gary go. She released the ear but, at the very moment that her victim relaxed, she let fly with her right foot, catching him with a vicious force between the legs. Gary seemed actually to lift off the ground before landing on the tarmac, a hunched, quivery hulk of agony.
‘What’s going on?’ Steve asked.
Sam tucked a lock of blonde hair behind her ear and widened her eyes innocently. ‘I was attacked, sir.’ The voice was suddenly small and timid. ‘Someone told me the deputy head wanted to see me. Then, when I came around the corner, this guy jumped me.’ She briefly seemed to be about to cry. ‘For no reason, sir.’
Steve looked down to where Gary was still writhing in agony, both hands between his legs. ‘Is this true, Gary?’ he asked.
Gary was having difficulty breathing. ‘She’s a…psycho,’ he groaned.
‘Oh, yeah, and I suppose she attacked you,’ one of the girls called out from the crowd.
‘I saw what happened,’ someone else said. ‘Sam was just walking along, minding her own business, when he grabbed her.’
Gary heaved himself so that he was sitting on the tarmac. ‘I just wanted a quiet word,’ he said sulkily. ‘There was no need for’ – he rubbed his left ear – ‘all that.’
Steve Forrester laughed coldly. ‘It sounds to me that at last you’ve met someone who can stand up for herself,’ he said.
Gary tried to say something, but Steve had clearly made up his mind. ‘I’ll be reporting this to Mrs Cartwright,’ he said.
‘As for you, Miss Lopez…’ He turned to Sam, who was tucking her shirt into her skirt. ‘You’ve got to learn that violence solves absolutely nothing in this life. And kicking a boy where you did can be very painful for him. D’you understand?’
Sam nodded. ‘Yes, sir,’ she said quietly.
‘All right then. Go and tidy yourself up before the next lesson.’
The crowd parted as Sam made her way towards the main entrance, the victorious gladiator, the little girl bullfighter who had slain a mighty beast. There were mutters of congratulation. ‘Way to go, supergirl,’ someone shouted.
We watched her go, saw her push her way through the doors and into the toilets.
The boys’ toilets.
We were like, Huh? Then we saw Matt Burton making his way to the toilets too.
He had blown it. We were convinced about that. First of all, he had made Gary Laird beg for mercy – something which no one, boy or girl, had ever managed to do. Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, he had barged into the boys’ toilets, watched by half the school.
Trying to look casual, I followed him in. Sam was at the urinal, casually hitching up his skirt.
‘What are you doing?’ I hissed.
‘What does it look like?’
‘But you’re a girl.’
He glanced down and made a strange, snickering sound. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘You know what I mean. Operation Samantha.’
He finished peeing, then ambled over to the mirror. ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said, tugging his hairband off and shaking his hair out. ‘I’m a babe. It clean slipped my mind.’
He looked at me. My panic must have been obvious because he shrugged, almost apologetically, and muttered, ‘I was kind of preoccupied with mashing that guy’s face.’
I glanced towards the door. Any moment someone would come in.
‘Get your hairband on,’ I said. ‘Leave this to me.’
He gathered his hair and slipped the band over his head in a way which I have to admit was surprisingly expert.
‘Don’t get the wrong idea.’ I put an arm around his shoulders.
He jumped away as if I had an electric current running through my right arm. ‘What you doing, you freak?’ he said.
‘Getting you out of a mess.’ I stepped forward and put an arm around him again. ‘This won’t take long,’ I said. ‘Just act upset.’
I opened the door. Elena, Zia and Charley were waiting in the corridor outside.
‘Come on, Sam,’ I said in a gentle, nurse-like voice. ‘It’s all right. The girls will look after you now.’
Sam’s head was lowered. I felt him relax beneath my arm. The cute, vulnerable, female Sam was there once more.
‘What…what happened?’ he murmured in a stunned voice.
‘You went into the wrong toilet, didn’t you?’ I smiled at the girls. ‘She’s in shock.’
‘But…’ Sam looked around wonderingly. ‘In the States, the guys and the girls share toilets. I never knew…God, I’m so embarrassed.’
Personally, I thought this was pushing it a bit, but the girls fell for it big time.
‘Oh, poor Sam.’ Elena stepped forward, arms out-stretched. Sam allowed himself to be embraced.
After a few moments of sisterly cuddling, he was ushered away by the girls, who were making comforting, cooing noises.
As I watched them go, Sam flicked me the finger behind his back.
I allowed myself a little smile.
She caught me off guard. For a girl, she was surprisingly. strong. Mean with it too. I only wanted to teach her some manners, but at the end of the day it was me who had a throbbing ear and an appointment to see the head. She was trouble, that Sam Lopez. I could have sorted her out, no problem, but after that day I decided I had better things to do.