We looked at one another, each of us kind of embarrassed by what had happened.
‘It was worth a try,’ said Jake.
‘Yeah, really great idea of yours, Matthew,’ said Tyrone.
‘To be fair, it does look a bit iffy,’ said Jake. ‘Getting a bloke to dress up as a girl.’
‘All right,’ I snapped suddenly. ‘So maybe I made a mistake.’
‘I hope he’s not trashing the bathroom,’ Tyrone muttered. ‘My mother will go mad.’
It was at that moment that the door opened. It was Sam. ‘Gimme the bag,’ he said, with an impatient, beckoning gesture of the hand.
Jake walked over and passed him the bag.
‘No promises, right?’ said Sam.
‘Of course,’ said Jake.
‘I’m just thinking about it.’
‘Right,’ said Jake. ‘Oh, and there was something else.’ He fished in his pocket and took out a coloured band. ‘My sis uses one of these.’
Sam held the band between two fingers and gazed at it with a look of total, unbelieving disgust, and for a moment I thought Jake was on the way to getting his other eye blackened.
‘It’s for keeping your hair out of your face,’ he explained.
‘I know what it is, doughbrain,’ said Sam. Then, to my surprise, he laughed. ‘You guys have some serious issues.’ And he was gone.
We waited. After a couple of minutes, we heard footsteps on the stairs. The door opened and Sam walked in. The silence in the room stretched for seconds.
‘So?’ said Sam eventually.
‘Oh…my…God,’ Jake murmured.
‘That is just freaky,’ said Tyrone.
‘Wow,’ I said.
Sam stood there, hands on hips, hair swept back in a ponytail. ‘What?’ he said. ‘What is it?’
Something about the tough-guy voice of Sam, coming from this new person, this girl, got to us all at the same time.
It was Jake who started laughing first. ‘It’s ridiculous,’ he gasped.
Tyrone covered his face with his hands, then took a peep between them as if not quite believing what he had seen. ‘Incredible,’ he said.
‘What exactly are you guys talking about?’ Sam asked angrily.
For some reason, the situation seemed to have made me blush. ‘Sorry about this, Sam,’ I said, trying to keep the smile off my face. ‘But there’s no getting round the fact that you are just perfect – you’re one hundred per cent girl.’
With a hard, dangerous look in his eye, he ambled forward. When he reached the middle of the room, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the fireplace and turned to study his reflection.
‘Yup,’ he said grimly. ‘I’m a babe all right.’
Tyrone
Suddenly it wasn’t a joke any more. The fact was that Sam looked so good as a girl that what had seemed like a funny idea a few seconds ago had taken on a deadly seriousness.
He slumped down on the sofa and picked his nose in an aggressive, showy way, as if to reassure himself that, even dressed up as a girl and with his hair in a neat ponytail, he was still the same old Sam.
‘So what’s the deal then?’ he asked. ‘Apart from trying to make me look kind of dumb, that is.’
‘We don’t want to make you look dumb,’ said Matthew. ‘We just need to get our own back on the Bitches. Show them up. Get to know some of their sad little secrets.’
‘Hey, come on, guys, all this to put one over on a bunch of chicks?’
‘They’re not chicks,’ I muttered. ‘Just because we hate them it doesn’t mean we have to be sexist about it.’
‘Hey, who’s wearing the skirt around here?’ said Sam. ‘From here on, I decide what’s sexist, right?’
Sitting there, playing with his ponytail, Sam seemed weirdly at ease, as if, now that he was the centre of attention, he could relax – as if, in a skirt, he was more himself. ‘It’ll take a bit of nerve. New school and all.’
‘We’ll be there to help you,’ I said.
Sam thought for a moment. ‘We’d be in this together, right? I’ve never been a girl before.’
‘Of course,’ said Jake. ‘We’re the Sheds. We’re a team, equal.’
Sam hitched a leg over the arm of his chair.
‘OK, count me in,’ he said coolly. He scratched his thigh and there was an alarming flash of his blue Jockey shorts. ‘And will you guys stop looking up my skirt.’
Mrs Burton
At about this point, I noticed a change in little Sam. He became less defensive and leery. The inappropriate comments became less frequent. He shared jobs with Matthew. I was pleased. I thought we had cracked it.
Matthew
Life was easier after that fateful afternoon when the four of us agreed that, when Bradbury Hill returned, there would be a new pupil in Year Eight called Samantha Lopez.
Another month remained of the holidays. Jake went on a camping holiday to France with his mother and sister. Tyrone and Sam discovered that they had a shared craze for video games. Sam asked me to take him to a game of what he still insisted on calling ‘soccer’ and he delivered his inevitable verdict: it was a game for wusses.
It would be an exaggeration to say that my little cousin was no longer irritating – his talent to annoy was a perfect, unbreakable thing – but the knowledge that he would be soon sacrificing his precious masculinity in what I had taken to thinking of as ‘Operation Samantha’ calmed him down. He no longer seemed to need to prove himself cooler, smarter and more experienced than the rest of us. He still made the occasional aggressive, smart-arse remark, but the rest of us were able to laugh it off and, as often as not, Sam ended up laughing too.
Although the shadow of his mother’s death still hung over him – he would drift off now and then into a numb, blank-eyed trance when something occurred to remind him of his past – my parents and I found that we could reach him in a way that had been impossible before. Mum had taken to referring to Galaxy in her everyday conversation as if she was no longer this great unmentionable thing, and to my surprise the tactic took some of the tension out of the atmosphere at home.
In the last week of the holiday, I noticed that Sam grew quieter and spent more time in his room. He had taken possession of Chrissie Smiley’s bag of clothes after our meeting. I imagined him alone in there, dressing up, preparing for his debut as a girl as if he were some kind of actor just before his first night, which, I guess, in a way he was.
I would have liked to talk things through with him, to reassure him that, although he was the one who had to wear a skirt, we were all in this together, but, since the plan had been hatched, he had hardly made reference to it.
Somewhere along the line he had seemed to have decided that Operation Samantha was going to be – a one-man – a one-girl – show.
Mr Burton
It seemed to me an appropriate gesture to take the boys out for a slap-up meal on the eve of Sam’s first day at school. I selected La Trattoria La Torre, a local Italian hostelry with a decent menu and cheerful service, which Mary and I like to frequent on special occasions.
Sam, I noticed, had been somewhat reserved over the past few days – doubtless his debut at Bradbury Hill was somewhat on his mind – and Matthew seemed a bit subdued too.
So it was not the easiest of social occasions. Sam’s restaurant manners, to put it mildly, left a little to be desired. La Torre, he informed us, was ‘phoney’. Luigi, the manager, was ‘no way Italian’. He pushed his prawn cocktail away, announcing rather more loudly than was necessary that it was ‘gay’.
The Burton family smiled through it all and behaved as if this kind of talk caused us absolutely no problem.
Matthew
Sam was the biggest nightmare ever that night. I know that the guy had a lot on his mind, what with having to turn into a girl the next day and all that, but did he really have to get the whole restaurant looking at us? I swear that the way he ate his pasta was one of the most truly disgusting sights I have ev
er seen in my life.
Mr Burton
I elected to ignore Sam’s feeding-time-at-the-zoo impression.
Halfway through the meal, Mary nodded to me. I cleared my throat and raised a glass.
‘A toast,’ I said, ‘to Sam’s first day at Bradbury Hill. And to the start of Matthew’s first term of his second year.’
‘Gimme a break,’ muttered Sam.
Matthew stared into his pasta as if it contained the secret of the universe.
‘I just wanted to say,’ I continued, ‘that I have been extremely impressed by the way you both have conducted yourselves over the past few weeks. The situation in which we have found ourselves has not been easy, but I think both Sam and Matthew have been absolutely brilliant. Don’t you, Mary?’
‘I certainly do,’ said Mary.
Sam made a sucking, grunting noise without looking, and I noticed a small, dangerous frown appearing on Mary’s face. My wife is a wonderful woman in many ways, but she does have something of a short fuse.
‘Do you have anything to say, Sam?’ she asked in a strained voice.
Sam looked up, a truly stomach-churning sight with meat and red sauce spread widely around on his cheeks. ‘Nope,’ he said.
‘I’ll drive you both to school tomorrow,’ I said. ‘First day of term and all that.’
For some reason, this casual remark caused the boys to stop eating. They both stared at me with what appeared to be alarm.
‘That’s OK, Dad,’ said Matthew. ‘It’s only ten minutes’ walk.’
‘I think it would be appropriate,’ said Mary.
‘No,’ said Matthew, with a rather surprising degree of firmness. ‘You know how schools are. It’s better if I take him in on his first day.’
‘Maybe Sam should decide that,’ I said firmly.
We all looked towards Sam, who seemed actually to be burrowing into his spaghetti.
‘Sam?’ said Mary.
He looked up slowly, chewing, open-mouthed. When he had finished, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then, noticing a couple of bits of meat on his knuckle, he frowned, then licked them off.
‘Walk,’ he said finally.
Jake
Matthew sent me a message later that night. It read ‘OFFICIAL SAM NOW BOY2GIRL.’
5
Matthew
It was the moment of truth. The next morning, with Sam in the new uniform my mother had bought him, we set off a few minutes earlier than usual, saying goodbye to my parents at the door as if we were just normal school kids rather than soldiers of fortune setting out on a daring mission of revenge.
We walked in the direction of school. When we reached the corner, we looked back and gave my parents one last wave. We turned out of sight. Then we doubled back to the park.
Tyrone was already at the shed. Jake, as usual, was late.
We nodded a greeting to one another. Without a word, Sam reached into the new shoulder bag my father had bought him for school and took out the plastic bag containing his change of uniform.
‘Time for the new me,’ he said in a matter-of-fact way, then disappeared into the gents lavatory, at the back of the shed.
Two minutes, three. Jake arrived, his shirt hanging out, his hair a mess.
‘Overslept,’ he said. ‘Where’s Sam?’
Tyrone nodded in the direction of the locked door. ‘Changing into a girl,’ he said.
I glanced at my watch. We had eight minutes to make the ten-minute walk to Bradbury Hill. ‘We’ve got to go,’ I called out, as casually as I could manage.
‘All right,’ Sam snapped. ‘I’m fixing my hair, OK?’ Jake sighed. ‘Women,’ he muttered.
The lock drew back and Sam emerged, stuffing his old clothes into the plastic bag. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.
Jake stood in front of him. ‘Final check-up,’ he said.
We gathered in a semicircle, inspecting the new Sam. My first impression, frankly, was that he was a bit of a disappointment. Back in the sitting room, when he had made his debut in a skirt, he had looked the real thing. Now he was more like a boy in clumsy disguise. His hair was tangled. The skirt looked a bit long. Worst of all, the white shirt seemed to be billowing outwards like a sheet in the wind.
‘Isn’t there anything you can do about that?’ I tugged at the shirt. ‘Like, tuck it in at the back?’
‘It’s way too big,’ Sam said. ‘What was it with your sister, Jake?’
Jake looked embarrassed. ‘She was kind of well-developed for her age,’ he said.
‘Great,’ Sam muttered as he tried to cram the shirt into the waist of his skirt. ‘Trust you to have a sister with out-size gazungas.’
‘I know what we could do,’ said Tyrone. ‘I’ll bring a couple of pairs of socks tomorrow. You can shove them down your front.’
Sam’s eyes flashed dangerously. ‘You know what, fat boy, you can shove them where the sun don’t shine.’ He raised a warning finger, then seemed to hesitate, shifting his attention from Tyrone to something behind us.
An old woman with a small dog on a lead was standing on the path, looking at us, an expression of busybody concern on her face.
Miss Wheeler-Carrington
I remember the days when this park was nice. No litter, no dogs roaming like wolves, no swearing. It was a pleasure to come here.
Some people think that one shouldn’t worry about such things as bad behaviour and nasty language, but I’m afraid that I’m a bit old-fashioned about that sort of thing.
That morning, when I saw this young girl, surrounded by boys, clearly frightened and pale-faced and angry, it made my blood boil. I knew I couldn’t just walk by. It’s not in my nature.
Jake
The old biddy stood there, with this terrier, both of them looking at us really defensively, as if we were criminals or something.
‘Are you all right, love?’ she called out.
We looked at one another, confused.
‘Excuse me?’ said Matthew.
‘I’m not talking to you boys,’ she snapped. Craning her neck like some kind of bird, she looked beyond us to where Sam was standing. ‘Are these boys bothering you, dear?’ she asked.
It took a moment for Sam to understand. Then he smiled. ‘Nah,’ he said.
‘That’s all right then,’ said the woman. Darting one more hostile look at us, she walked on. Trouble was, Sam, being Sam, couldn’t leave it there.
‘Lady, I could whop their sorry asses any time,’ he called out.
The woman glanced back, startled, then scurried on, tugging her little dog behind her.
Matthew
Sam was swaggering ahead of us, hands in pockets, skirt swishing aggressively, like no girl ever did, or ever will.
We followed, each of us with the same thought in our mind. Since no one else was going to say anything, I decided that it was down to me to have a word with Miss Samantha.
‘Hey, Sam,’ I hit a casual, this-just-occurred-to-me tone. ‘Maybe it would be a good idea if you kind of acted the part too.’
Sam started whistling through his teeth – another thing I had never heard a girl do.
I tried again. ‘I mean, for instance, you didn’t exactly behave like a normal girl back there when you talked to that woman.’
Sam laughed and kicked a tin can that was on the pavement into the road.
‘That’s because I’m not a normal girl, doofus,’ he said.
‘The thing is, Sam, if you don’t go with this thing, we’re all going to be in deep trouble,’ said Tyrone. ‘There’s no point in dressing up female and acting more male than ever.’
‘It was your plan, guys,’ said Sam. ‘It’s kind of late to be wimping out.’
‘It’s not that,’ I said. ‘It’s just that, if this is going to work, you’re going to have to be a bit…I hesitated, groping in my mind for the right word. ‘A bit…girly.’
Sam stopped and turned to face us, chewing all the while. ‘I agreed to wear a skirt, right?’ he said quie
tly. ‘Nobody said nothing about acting girly.’
Before any of us could reply, he was walking on. ‘This is just the way we modern girls are,’ he called out. He jabbed the air in front of him, as if punching some invisible enemy out of the way. ‘If you can’t hack it, that’s your problem.’
Charley
On the way to school that first day of the new term, we made a big decision. No, actually, check that – it wasn’t a big decision. It was pretty small.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Zia said suddenly. ‘I think I’m through with the Sheds.’
‘Tell me something new,’ said Elena. ‘We’re all through with the Sheds.’
‘I mean, I’m not going to give them a hard time any more. It’s my good resolution for the term. Those boys have suffered enough.’
‘Diddums,’ said Elena.
As it happened, I had been thinking the same thing. The whole Burger Bill, police thing had made me feel bad.
‘I’m with you, Zed,’ I chipped in. ‘I heard that poor old Tyrone got grounded for a week.’
‘You don’t mess with the Bitches,’ Elena muttered. ‘Think about it, the Bitches versus the Sheds,’ said Zia. ‘How sad is that?’
Elena looked at us. ‘OK, we’ll just ignore them,’ she said. ‘Let them get on with their miserable little lives.’
‘Or,’ said Zia patiently. ‘We could actually apologise – draw a line under the whole thing.’
‘Cool with me,’ I said.
‘No way.’ Elena shook her head decisively.
Zia and I glanced at one another and said nothing. The fact is, El was never quite as tough as she liked to pretend.
After no more than thirty seconds, she shrugged moodily. ‘Whatever. Maybe it’s time for a new chapter.’
She walked ahead of us with the air of someone who had sorted out a problem all on her own.
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