Big Brother's Little Sister

by Mike Bursell

  This felt like it was about to turn into one of those embarrassing “I remember when I was young” conversations that adults have – though Denise was pretty good at not heading down that sort of route – but I was surprised by Denise's next statement.

  “It's not like it used to be. They want to set us all against each other, you know,” she concluded, sadly and thoughtfully.

  This was so close to what I'd been saying to Mo the night before that I nearly spilled my tea down myself. “I know,” I ventured.

  “Don't let it happen. I worry. But there are enough good people around that we can stop it happening, you know. Not just young people. There are some good older ones, too.” Another bite of biscuit.

  “Yeah. I know.” It was all I could think of to say.

  Denise nodded. “This, by the way,” she said, sitting back in the chair but at the same time changing her manner to sound a little more formal, “is what we call, in the vicaring 'biz', pastoral care. I suspect that's what Ms Martin's looking for from me. For the school, probably, not her, but it's interesting that she didn't feel she could come directly to me, yes?”

  I was a bit flummoxed by the change in tone, because now she seemed to be treating me more like an equal – an adult, almost – than a child. “I suppose,” I managed.

  “Care to guess why?”

  “She was embarrassed to come to you for help?” I tried.

  “Maybe. I'm not sure Ms Martin's the type, though, to be embarrassed. To be honest, I think she's probably a bit scared.”

  This really surprised me. First, that Denise would talk to me about my head teacher like this, but second, the thought that Ms Martin might be scared of anyone: even the Enforcers. “She didn't act like she was scared when they were around – in the school, I mean.”

  “That's because she's brave when she needs to be. She’s a good head, she really is. But coming directly to me would be different. But let's leave the guessing for now, and find out what the real reason is. You ready to head home?”

  I gulped the rest of my tea down, took another biscuit to munch on the way, and we headed down the hill back to home.

  Mum opened the door before I had a chance to turn the key. She seemed genuinely pleased to see Denise, and I realised that she must have been missing spending time with her and Si, given the extra shifts that she was having to do at the moment.

  We came in, and Denise launched right in. “So, Carrie wants me to do an assembly? Am I right?”

  Mum glanced at me accusingly, but I raised my hands in defence.

  “No, no,” said Denise, bustling into the kitchen, “Lena didn't say anything, other than that Carrie came round, and had asked about me. She wasn't listening into your conversation.” She looked at me, and grinned: “Not as far as I'm aware, anyway.”

  “I wasn't,” I insisted. “I was doing homework. I can show you the...”

  “Oh, don't worry,” said Mum, waving my outrage away. “I believe you. Denise has always been good at guessing this sort of thing.” She turned back to Denise. “Yes, she does – Carrie does. Can you?”

  “Post-Enforcer visit? That kind of assembly?”

  Mum nodded.

  “Sure. I'd like to invite a couple of other people, though, might take a couple of days, maybe a week, to arrange. Will that be OK?” Denise asked.

  “As far as I know.”

  Mum pulled up a couple of chairs near the one she'd been sitting at by the kitchen table, and Denise and I sat ourselves down. It felt almost like it had before things had got bad: just sharing time with my godmother and Mum.

  “Fancy a glass of wine, Denise?” Mum asked.

  Denise glanced at the clock. “Oh, go on then.”

  I knew my cue, and got up to open a bottle for the two of them.

  “Why didn't Carrie come to me directly?” Denise asked, as I got two glasses out and started opening the bottle.

  I saw Mum glance pointedly at me, but I also saw Denise shake her head, as if to let Mum know it was OK to talk. “I think she was worried. Worried that if she asked you straight out, it might look like she was trying to undermine the Enforcers directly.”

  “Fair enough,” Denise said.

  “Yeah, I thought so,” agreed Mum. “Has there been much local activity from the Enforcers that you're aware of?”

  This time, it was Denise who glanced at me. I raised my eyebrows at Mum, tacitly asking if I could stay, but she shook her head, and I left them to start the bottle of wine and went off to do my homework, desperate to know what they were going to say, but just too honest to listen in.

  Chapter 11 – Just get him

  “You should have listened in!” insisted Mo, exasperatedly.

  “I just couldn't,” I insisted. “It wouldn't have been right. They trust me. And I don't want them to feel that I don't deserve that trust.”

  “They wouldn't ever have felt that if they didn't find out!” he pointed out, quite fairly. We'd been over this a couple of times already, and we weren't getting anywhere with it.

  “Well, I didn't want to, and I decided not to, so that's that,” I said, trying to inject a note of finality into my voice.

  “Just think of the intelligence we might have missed...” he went on, despairingly.

  “Well, hotshot, you're just going to have to gather it yourself. Anyway, what I think is interesting is that my Mum and Denise were talking about that sort of thing at all.”

  “Maybe it's what adults talk about anyway – about the Government, Enforcers and stuff. When we're not around, at least. And you just caught some of it this time,” Mo suggested.

  “I don't think so. But what about your parents?” I asked, realising just too late that this was a really bad question for Mo.

  He took it pretty much in his stride, though, as far as I could tell. “They don't talk much around me,” he said, somewhat evasively.

  “Yeah. OK.” I didn't want to labour the point. I decided to change the subject. “So, how are you doing on that French homework, then?”

  He groaned, and we spent the rest of the call chatting about that, instead, and although the conversation had become a little strained after my question about his parents, the tone did feel like it had relaxed a bit by the time it was getting late and we put the receivers down on the phones, ending the call.

  The very next morning, one of the boys in the year above me came into school wearing an Enforcer armband. It was Ryan Tunley, who Mo had spotted: the one who he thought didn't seem like the type to become a Y.T.

  It started at assembly that morning. As we filed in, I saw him standing at the front of the hall. He seemed to be having an argument with Ms Martin. I didn't immediately see the black armband that he was wearing, until Elodie pointed it out to me. The argument with Ms Martin got quite heated, but they kept their voices down, and after a few more moments, she shrugged and pointed at a chair at the front. He shook his head, and motioned at the row of chairs that the staff normally sat on. There were further words, and in the end, Ms Martin seemed to give up on the discussion and just walked off. He looked pleased with himself, and went to sit in a chair at the end of the staff row.

  “What does he think he's doing?” I asked Elodie. The staff were filing in now, and taking their usual chairs. One of them seemed to ask why he was sitting there, but moved away quickly when Ryan said something and pointed at his armband. The last member of staff to arrive, one of the art teachers, had to pull up another chair, and sat at the opposite end of the row to Ryan, fuming quietly.

  “I don't know,” Elodie replied, “but I don't think he's making himself any friends with the staff.”

  He didn't do further anything during the assembly, other than just sit there, looking smug and self-important. When it had finished, he filed out with the staff, not the pupils, and someone started up a slow hand clap until Ms Martin glared in their general direction and it petered out fairly sharply.

  It didn't get any better in the days after that. He would walk int
o lunch, and everyone would go quiet. He would join the food queue, and everyone would turn away from him. If he had thought that his joining the Youth Enforcers would buy him respect and gain him authority with the pupils, he had it completely wrong. I overheard a couple of girls in his year saying what a fool he was making of himself, and that seemed to be the extent of it, at least for the first couple of days.

  But then he made the mistake of starting to throw his weight around. It was the usual things that a low grade school bully might try: pushing to the front of the queue, demanding that people give up their seats for him, taking food from people's lunch boxes. There was a strong culture against bullying in the school, which Ms Martin had instilled over the past few years after a nasty couple of incidents before I'd started there. Anyway, it went down very badly with the pupils: particularly those in our year. A group of people – mainly the “cool kids” – got together and just kind of decided that we – the whole school – should ignore him, and after a few chats in break times and over lunch that's what happened. There was talk of “further action” and “what we should do” if he went too far, but it seemed like people just over-reacting to the situation. I ignored it, and though when I spoke to Mo on the phone, he seemed concerned that some people might take matters into their own hands, it didn't seem like a big deal.

  The teachers, it appeared, had been given instructions from Ms Martin just to treat him as any other pupil, but not to get in the way of him if he demanded special treatment. But school isn't all about the teachers, and it's not easy to get along if nobody else will speak to you at all. I don't think there was an actual plan to upset him beyond ignoring him, just that people rather hoped he'd get over himself, stop with his little gestures of authority, make a few apologies and start coming into school without his Young Enforcer armband on. Ryan, though, didn't take being ignored well, and rather than things sorting themselves out, it went the other way. The little bullying events multiplied – nothing major, but too many of them – and there was more and more muttering along the lines of “sorting things out”, to the extent that I started to get a little worried, too.

  The first I heard of it when things started to go bad was on a Thursday afternoon. Jenny Taylor's sister, who's two or three years younger than her, came running over to where Jenny and a group of her friends were chatting outside one afternoon, near the gym. None of them were my favourite people: they weren't bullies, but I really didn't get on well with “the cool set”, and that's definitely what they were. Not exactly a gang, but definitely what you'd call a clique: very focussed on the group, and if not exactly antagonistic towards the others outside the circle, then at least pretty dismissive. Best left alone if you wanted an easy life, and I was the only near them: they had realised years ago that I was boring and not worth bothering with, so they ignored me, and I ignored them.

  I was sitting on the grass, reading a book – which had already prompted a couple of derisive comments from the group – when Jenny’s sister came round the corner from the front of the school, looking scared. At first, Jenny blanked her – it's never cool to have your little sister come and interrupt when you're hanging with your friends, apparently – but she was very insistent, and also started trying to talk to Danni McLean, one of the other girls in the group.

  “He kept hitting him,” she kept saying, I edged closer, risking the displeasure of the group, but keen to find out what was going on.

  “Who?” demanded Jenny, deigning to stand up and pay some attention.

  “He did. Ryan did,” her sister managed to get out.

  My interest was really sparked now.

  “Tunley?” asked Danni.

  “Yes! He kept hitting Joe until he fell over. Joe was in his way and wouldn't move aside to let him past or something. So he just hit him. Again and again, until he fell over. And then he kicked him. And kicked him. Then Ms Martin came out, and she took Joe inside and...”

  All the girls were standing up now, attention focussed on Jenny's sister.

  “Where is he?” demanded Danni, suddenly looking really concerned. I remembered that she had a brother in Jenny's year, and realised that this must be the “Joe” she had been talking about.

  “I think Ms Martin took him into her office,” she said.

  That moment, one of the other teachers emerged from the main school building, spotted Danni, and started walking over, looking concerned. Danni started towards him, but then stopped and turned to Jenny and the other girls. “Get him,” she said, quietly, but fiercely. “Just get him. I don't care what you do to him, but if he's hurt my little brother, I'm going to...”

  “On it,” said Jenny. “That Youth Traitor's not getting away with this.”

  I was getting worried, but when I overheard one of the others – Alisha Baptiste – saying the word “hockey sticks”, and the rest of them heading determinedly into the gym, I realised that things were about to get serious.

  I thought quickly, and moved away to the railings at the side of the school grounds, getting my mobile phone out. Please be home, please be home, I was silently praying as I called Mum.

  Mum took a few rings to answer, as I kept my gaze fixed on the door to the gym. “Hi Lena, what's up?”

  “Are you at home?” I asked.

  “Yes, I am...” she replied.

  “Are you in uniform?” I asked, quickly.

  “No. I've got the day off. I was planning to make...”

  “I think something bad's about to happen. Really bad.”

  As I spoke the last few words, the girls – six or seven of them – emerged from the gym. Each of them was holding – no, wielding – a hockey stick, and they clustered in front of the door, suddenly unsure what to do.

  I was hopeful, for a moment, that things might calm down then, but Danni came out of the main building, running towards them, a look of hate and fury on her face.

  “Why, what's...?” Mum started.

  “Wait. One mo.” I commanded. She waited, silent, and I was briefly surprised that my tone of voice must have stopped her in her tracks.

  When I heard the siren of an approaching ambulance and saw Danni take one of the hockey sticks, I knew they weren't going to stop. As they marched in the direction of the front of the school, each tied a school sweater over their faces. So they can't be identified, I realised. This could be awful. They could really hurt him. They could kill him.

  “You know you said you'd come. If I needed you? I need you. Now. Just come. There's no time,” I said, the words tumbling out, one over another.

  “On my way. Keep yourself safe, Lena.” With that, Mum hung up, and I started wondering if there was anything I could do to stop them getting to him before help arrived.

  I didn't fancy trying to get in their way myself – I didn't want to end up a casualty, and was quite happy to take Mum's advice on that score – but what could I do? Mum's going to turn up – hopefully in time to stop things – and what's she going to need to do? Got it! I turned and walked the back way towards the school office: fast, but trying not to look conspicuous. This turned out to be quite easy, because everybody was either watching the girls who were stalking their way across the tarmac to the front of school, or was huddled in bunches discussing what had happened between Ryan and Joe.

  When I arrived at the office, they nearly turned me away. Mr Rudge came to the desk as I approached, “Lena, now's not the time: we've got an ambulance here...”

  “I know,” I replied: I could see people in high viz jackets clustered around someone lying on the floor across the way near Ms Martin's office, and was hoping they'd never need to attend to me or anyone I loved like that. “My Mum's on her way,” I urged, “Let her in, OK? And show her through.”