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  This time I stayed silent. I didn’t say no and no and no. They didn’t seem to notice that difference. I was waiting for Waggoner to do something. The others were laughing until they had to hold each other up. They were laughing deliberately, laughing hard.

  Drake kept trying. He was taking care to look me in the eye. ‘Didn’t she like the shape of your new cock? Did she think you were a girl? Or does she like you licking her fanny better now you’re a girl?’

  He was actually referring to it.

  But Selway was looking serious, like worry was lurking nearby. ‘Come on, let’s test him.’

  ‘Little fucker, he won’t pass. I’ll shake your fucking hand, and I’ll have to wash it afterwards, mind, if you get in the gang, like, but you fucking won’t.’ He kept them laughing. Me being here was making it all right for them. Me still going along with it.

  Drake got out his tin of tobacco and started rolling a cigarette. ‘This is the test,’ he said. ‘You’re so tough now.’

  Two years before, I’d been in the woods one break time, and had walked into Drake and Blewly smoking together. I’d walked away, but Drake had caught up with me. ‘Want one?’ he said.

  ‘No. Thanks. No, ta. Cheers.’

  He’d pulled one from the packet and stuffed it in my mouth, had stopped me from taking it out again, then lit it up. I’d started coughing, tried to spit it out, but Drake had grabbed the end of it and shoved it back into my mouth, while Blewly held me there. ‘Are you Superman?’ Drake had laughed his head off. ‘Are you fighting the evil Nick O’Teen? You’re going to be so cool. Fucking go on. Long drag.’ He’d finally pulled it out of my mouth. ‘You’ve fucking ruined it. A good fag!’ He’d rolled it up into a little ball, then popped it into my mouth, stuffed it in with his fingers, and told me to chew.

  I couldn’t. I’d swallowed, and missed, and swallowed and swallowed and started throwing up. They’d let me go and ran off as I vomited into the bushes.

  Was Drake going to do that again? No. Looking over his shoulder, to make sure nobody was coming, Drake lit the cigarette. He blew on it, and the end glowed red. “Roll up his sleeve,” he said.

  Rove and Selway grabbed me.

  I almost laughed. They expected me to be scared of this? After what they’d done before?

  “It’s going to be okay,” said Waggoner.

  I stayed still. I did not fight them.

  Selway nodded approvingly. He didn’t know what he was nodding at. He was looking more and more worried.

  Rove’s big fingers were fumbling with my cuff. Blewly grabbed it and pulled the sleeve right up. Lang laughed. ‘Look at his arm.’

  ‘Lang,’ said Waggoner in my ear. ‘Lang will be the first.’

  I considered that.

  ‘Question one,’ said Selway. ‘Who’s the captain of Liverpool?’

  Should I even answer? ‘Kenny Dalgleish,’ I said.

  ‘No!’ said Selway. ‘Graeme Souness. Dur!’

  Drake pressed the cigarette against my upper arm and held it there. I felt the sharp heat, and then it suddenly got worse. I could feel the burn blistering. I didn’t cry out. I locked my legs still and remembered the other pain that still held me up and down my body. Drake took the cigarette away again and spat on the ground. ‘Graeme Souness. Fucker.’

  ‘Question two,’ said Selway. ‘Who’s Mary Millington?’

  The pain wasn’t going to be any worse than last time. I saw the look Waggoner had on his face and mimicked it, letting my jaw go slack. ‘Dunno. Is she in the second year?’

  ‘She’s in fucking porn. She gives blow jobs.’ Selway sounded like I’d let him down.

  Drake applied the cigarette again. He kept it there longer. I opened my teeth and let my gaze dance up and down all over them. They looked back, uneasy now. But Drake wasn’t.

  ‘Question three,’ said Selway. He waited a second for Drake to take the cigarette away, but he didn’t. ‘Question three–’

  Drake took it away. I let my jaw work some of the pain away on the air.

  ‘What is Flogging a Dead Horse?’

  I knew from what I’d heard from other kids that that was an album by the Sex Pistols. But I saw it again in my head: that line on the football pitch. I pushed my teeth together.

  ‘It’s an album by the Sex Pistols,’ said Waggoner.

  I looked at him, horrified.

  Selway’s face lit up. ‘Correct!’

  He smiled at the rest of them. They smiled at him. They didn’t quite know what this meant, but they liked it, they found it was freeing something in them, letting them off from their guilt.

  Drake looked between them, furious. ‘Fuck it.’ He stuck the cigarette back into the burn and shoved it in all the way, poked the pieces with his finger and then let the mess fall down my arm onto the ground. He turned and walked away.

  The others looked in his direction, then back to me. As one mass, they ran off after Drake, but they kept looking back, uneasy now.

  I blew the remains of the cigarette off my arm, and started covering up so the traces wouldn’t tell. I rolled my sleeve down carefully. That might need another trip to the washing machine. I was shaking, but not for the normal reasons. ‘Why did you tell him?’ I asked Waggoner.

  ‘Because I could,’ he said.

  Mr. Land, the history teacher, walked round the corner as I was buttoning my cuff. ‘Waggoner,’ he said, ‘what is going on here?’

  I slipped the button into place. ‘Nothing, sir.’

  ‘Don’t think I didn’t see,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry, sir?’ A sudden hope, from a direction I thought had been denied to me.

  ‘The thing about bullies is that they’re cowards at heart. You give them a good old thump on the nose and they’ll never bother you again.’

  I managed to keep my expression neutral.

  ‘But there’s a sort of boy,’ he continued, stepping closer to me, ‘who’s always going to get picked on, no matter what. In those cases it’s often more the fault of the bullied than the bullying. You take my advice. You don’t want to become one of them.’

  I couldn’t be silent. ‘What did you see, sir?’ Maybe it sounded a little accusatory.

  He blinked at me. The light in his eye went out. I would never learn. ‘Horseplay,’ he emphasised, straightening up. He headed off round the corner, and glanced back only once.

  Waggoner watched him go. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘at least he got that right.’

  Twelve

  Across that week, I heard what had really happened to the football pitch, from a lot of different kids. A gang of skinheads had broken in. It was Melmbury who’d done it, who were at the top of the Wiltshire schools football league. The police came. We didn’t see them. A tarpaulin was put over the field. For the next couple of weeks, Double Games was volleyball. Mr. Rove took it, and didn’t make us run or shower.

  * * *

  Next Sunday, Mum and Dad took me and Waggoner to tend the graves of the dead aunts at St. Swithin’s Church in Compton Bassett. It’s on the spur of a slope. You get there through a maze of lanes. The dead aunts were bunched in a corner under some trees. The grass was long there, and Mum and Dad brought heavy gloves to pull it out in clumps. There was a side of the church that, because of the trees, was in permanent shadow. I wandered off around the corner. I didn’t know what to do with my hands without my sticks. Waggoner followed. I didn’t know how to deal with him when we weren’t at school. The shadowed side of the church didn’t have so many graves. You could only hear the calling of the rooks. It was colder than in the winter sunlight. The ground was covered in moss, and there were ferns. I put my hand to the top of my arm, and felt the weirdness of the scabs and blisters there.

  I sat down on an abandoned wooden wheelbarrow with grass growing through it. I touched a blister and felt the small pain, lost amongst the bigger one. I looked at Waggoner, and saw him only as a sort of mirror. I raised my arm, but he didn’t move his. I couldn’t see another person in thos
e eyes. He seemed to realise I wanted something from him. He reached into his pocket, and took out a 50p piece. He turned it on its side to show me. I’d seen him, over the last few days, scratching it now and then against any available hard surface. Now one side of it was sharp.

  * * *

  One Tuesday towards the end of November, Double Games was swimming instead of volleyball. Fasley’s swimming pool was a square pavilion that formed part of one wing of the building, open to the air at the sides, but closed in above by the weight of the house. We hadn’t often been swimming before. Mr. Rove probably didn’t have the money to keep the pool chlorinated, or perhaps he used it himself and didn’t like the idea of it being filled with children. It must have once been quite spectacular, with its hundreds of tiny ceramic tiles, black and white, arranged in chessboard fashion apart from where they alternated black or white strips to show where the lanes were. There were measurements in green, formerly golden, lettering, that showed distances in feet and inches. It was an Art Deco ruin.

  I’d thought I’d gotten away with it, but swimming meant being naked in front of the others, and there were always showers afterwards.

  There was no way to get to the swimming pool from the changing room corridors, so we had to change, then run, and it always was run, usually with Mr. Rushden exhorting us to go on, go on, right out of the changing rooms and around the corner of the building. Previously, this had only ever been done in the summer term. The night before, I looked down at myself in my underpants. The shape was different. It would look strange in trunks. I could have asked Mum for a note, but that would have meant an explanation.

  In the changing rooms that afternoon, the boys were singing ‘Beat Surrender’ by The Jam. They sang it in a piss-take way, because none of them, not even the football kids, could risk trying to sing anything properly. Then that turned into, to the tune of ‘Farmer Bill’s Cowman’: ‘Kermit the Frog, sat on the bog, having it off with Miss Piggy.’ Even under that I heard Drake’s lot laughing, their specific laugh, sent to me. I’d taken off my shirt quite calmly, and Drake had said things that made them laugh about the spectacular scar on my upper arm. The football kids were looking in my direction, surprised, noting it. I pulled off my underpants and struggled to get my trunks on quickly. Waggoner did the same thing in one quick movement.

  I felt Drake’s lot moving to try and see. Someone wolf-whistled. It was Lang. He was looking around at the rest of Drake’s lot, merry on their attention.

  ‘Do you fancy me, Lang? You a fucking queer?’ It was Waggoner. His voice sounded a bit like my voice, but it was my voice on tape, someone who seemed to have a character. Everyone shut up, looking at Waggoner. It hadn’t burst out of him. It had been deliberate.

  Drake was cool as always, Rove pouting, Blewly looking incredulous and up for it, a touch worried, but amazed at what this allowed to happen next, and how suddenly, and how good this was going to be. Selway was anxiously weighing things up. Lang spluttered with laughter. Where had this sudden impossibility come from? ‘Takes one to know one.’

  Waggoner dropped the towel from round his shoulders and walked towards Lang. ‘Queer boy. Queer-o. Do you want to see what I’ve got down here?’ He grabbed his trunks and waggled what was underneath, which in his case was smooth and strong. ‘You love it, don’t you? Like you love having Drake’s cock up your anus.’

  Lang went red with rage. ‘You fucker!’ He jumped at him with a trill in his voice, like the first line of some sort of spastic musical, like this was still comedy. But that was automatic. He failed in his kung fu kick to the balls and battered Waggoner with his fists.

  Everybody started shouting as Waggoner went under. Fight! Go on, get him! Get into him boy! Kermit the Frog! Waggoner had said Lang would be first.

  Waggoner slapped aside the pummeling. Suddenly he hit Lang very hard on the side of his head. Lang staggered. Waggoner did it again, in exactly the same place, sending him rolling again. Then once more.

  Lang’s smile vanished, and he fell sideways.

  Cheat! Fucking foul! Goh! Fucking ace! Kermit the Frog! They rushed in to look down. Lang was twitching. There was an actual lump on the side of his head. Kids were looking at each other, right on the ‘go for a teacher, macho bit of sensible, gone too far, get in trouble for this’, axis. Then Lang’s eyes focused, and he spat blood, and he swung to be helped up by Selway and Rove.

  Go on! Kick his head in!

  But he still wasn’t right. He had trouble standing. ‘Cunt. We’ll fucking have this fight later,’ he said, loudly, but sounding like his teeth were falling out.

  In walked Mr. Rove and blew his whistle. A few of the football kids looked at him like they should say something, but nobody did.

  * * *

  The boys made exaggerated yells and cries as we ran out into the grounds. Our breath was one great cloud. There was frost on the grass. My skin stung with the shock of the air. I was exulting, full of it. Yes! It was like I had a bodyguard now! But was what he’d done to Lang really worse than what had happened to me? If that was all he was going to do, that was both annoyingly slight and a relief. I did and didn’t want him to do more.

  Waggoner ran with me, grinning like I was. His teeth shone in the low winter light. I suppose now that he was more attractive than me. He was free in the way he stood, not curled up. He took advantage of the fact that he was free in his choices about his hair and clothes.

  Ahead of us was Drake. He had a big red mark between his shoulder blades. Kids said it was where he’d been kicked by a horse. He never made any effort to conceal it.

  We ran fast round the corner of the house, Mr. Rove yelling at us to go on, go on, don’t slow down, and now straight into the pool! It didn’t seem for a moment like he’d never done this before. We ran up the steps and into the pavilion area, which at least cut us off from the wind. Led by Goff, the football kids leapt, bombed or even dove straight in, their cold splashes going over the rest of us who were in assorted levels of awkwardness trying to climb slowly down the ladders or over the sides. I stepped in carefully but relieved, proud to see Waggoner leap in beside me. Goff’s head broke the surface. He laughed and started splashing for the far side. Mr. Rove started calling again, made another whistle. The noise of boys shouting. Fiesta had his mouth wide open, his arms held above the surface of the water like a puppet, in shock. Waggoner ducked his head straight under the water, astonishing me, who couldn’t do that. He was underwater and in charge! David Wilkie!

  A series of whistles, and everything died down. I couldn’t see where Drake’s lot were. I joined Fiesta and Surtees and Cath at the edge of the bigger group. Waggoner swam leisurely beside me. There was something odd about the shape under his trunks. I’d got used to looking because I was always comparing myself to him. It looked like he was hiding something in there.

  There was a noise from outside the pool. The girls were on their way. They ran with their towels wrapped around them. Mrs. Parkin was with them. They were talking, shrieking. Amongst them, I was stunned to see Angie. She was wrapped in a huge red towel. She had her three friends around her, one on each side, as always: Louise and Jenn Jennings and Netty Lauter. Angie had a determined expression on her face. She wore a blue regulation swimming costume. It looked odd on her, newly bought. The girls were herded to the other end of the pool from the boys, the shallow end, carefully making their way down into the water. Angie dipped straight under, and appeared beside her friends to look at us. I looked straight back at her by accident. Then I realised and turned away. I’d been glancing at the very white legs and glimpses of bottoms that they tried to hide as they got in. The zits on backs and shoulders. I was hard in my ugly, misdirected way.

  We were sent to swim a few lengths, then organised into a number of races: breast stroke; backstroke; freestyle. I couldn’t turn properly, because I didn’t like to get my head under. Waggoner smoothly glided and spun. He was a shadow under the surface, when I could see him amongst the splashing and the limbs. />
  Then everybody had to tread water. I could do that. Beside me, Surtees took hold of the rail to do it. I was just about okay with being in the middle. Someone started shouting. There was a sudden heave of bodies. I went under.

  I saw under the water. There was Lang, pounded under by the thrashing legs above. There was a missing look on his face. He was surprised. He floated in the middle, at half pool height, jerking.

  Then Waggoner was beside him, pulling something out of his trunks. The coin caught a shaft of sunlight. A tiny puff of red bloomed in the water.

  I got my head above water and shouted. I saw Angie, with her girls, right at the side of the pool, not screaming, but looking.

  Mr. Rove, fully clothed, broke the surface, with Lang in his arms.

  Then we all fell sideways.

  Thirteen

  It snowed heavily that winter. Snow thinned out the population of Fasley Grange School. It closed down bus routes. I watched the footsteps that Waggoner was making in the snow beside me as we walked from the bus one Friday. There had been no Games since the incident in the swimming pool. Today, with only four days until the end of term, was the day Lang was coming back to school. In assembly, we’d heard about what had happened. A terrible accident, a brilliant group of doctors and nurses who deserved a round of applause, and, yes, step up Mr. Rove, the swift action of the Head. He’d applied artificial respiration, even held closed the shallow wound in Lang’s throat that nobody could understand.

  Nothing had been mentioned about the bruises and other small injuries of the kids who’d been smashed against one side of the pool, falling impossibly sideways as the water fled up and out.

  I thought now that that had been the moment of the big change being made. The big change that was still in place.

  I had been worried that Lang had seen who’d attacked him. But if he had, a policeman would have arrived at our door before now. I was more worried by how Lang was going to react to the change. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I saw Mr. Rove getting out of his car. Maybe for him the low turnout caused by the snow was a vision of what his school would be like if parents starting taking kids away. He’d held that wound shut until his own hands were white. But he looked steady and certain as always.