Matthew
We were a couple of minutes late. The playground was already empty. We ran to the school hall and pushed the door. Everyone was in place, awaiting the arrival of Mrs Cartwright, the head teacher, and her staff. As the four of us made the long walk up the centre aisle to the remaining free seats in the front row, I was aware of a rustle of interest on each side. I glanced to my left to see Sam smiling this way and that, as if he were some kind of royalty.
There was no doubt about it – far from being embarrassed about the whole cross-dressing thing, he was enjoying his moment as the centre of attention.
Elena
I noticed Matthew walking between the rows of seats. I was just about to make some comment about how typical it was that they’d be late when I remembered that the boys formerly known as the Sheds were meant to be friends, so I kept shtum.
Then I saw this blonde girl striding ahead of them, cool as you like. My only thought then was – and who is she?
Zia
Notice her? How could anyone miss her? She walked through that hall as if she owned it.
Charley
She was chewing gum. That was the first thing I noticed. Bradbury Hill isn’t the strictest place, but there’s this big no-gum rule that all the teachers enforce as if sticks of gum were drugs or something. And here was this new kid, chewing away in assembly, on the first day of term.
You’ve got to admit, that’s attitude.
Gary Laird
I didn’t see her. I was probably asleep at the time.
Mark Kramer
She was a babe. All the guys looked, and most of them were thinking pretty much the same thing. Well now, what do we have here?
Matthew
We took our seats, Sam slumping down beside me with all the feminine poise of a boxer taking a break between rounds.
The teachers trooped in and took up their places on a double rank of chairs at the back of the stage and, moments later, Mrs Cartwright – better known as the ‘Carthorse’ – made her appearance.
When you first see the head teacher, it’s not the jet-black dyed hair, the broad shoulders or the brisk, quick-paced walk that you notice but the big, saintly smile on her face. Someone at teaching school must have told her that the best way to deal with kids is to grin your way out of trouble at all times, because Mrs Cartwright goes about her daily life at school with the goofy, happy air of someone who has some wonderful news that she just longs to tell you.
The effect, when she is dealing with what she likes to call ‘inappropriate behaviour’ is weirdly scary because, the deeper trouble you are in, the wider the smile on her face. As if playing up to her reputation as a grinning psycho, the head allows herself now and then to blow her stack, raging at the entire school in assembly when a particular bout of inappropriateness looks as if it might get out of hand. It is rumoured that, when the stress of school life becomes too much for her, she steps into a store cupboard in her office, closes the door behind her and screams her head off for a couple of minutes before emerging, calmer and with the famous smile back on her face.
So the Carthorse launched into her start-of-the-year speech. There was a bit of chat about the holiday, some guff about the school play that was due at the end of term. She introduced a couple of new teachers, a woman in her twenties and a porky, middle-aged guy who was taking over the first year. Then she did something rather unexpected and scary.
After she had introduced the new teachers, she gave us a big, all-inclusive grin and said, ‘There is someone else I would also very much like to mention at this point. A significant new arrival in Year Eight.’
Uh-oh.
To my left, Tyrone groaned quietly.
‘He’s joining us from his school on the west coast of America,’ the head was saying. ‘I’m sure you’ll all go out of your way to make him feel very welcome.’
I tried to swallow, but I found that my mouth was dry.
‘Sam Lopez.’ Mrs Cartwright peered into the audience, shielding her eyes with her hand like someone scanning the horizon. ‘Where is he?’
For a few seconds there was a restless stirring in the ranks as everyone looked around them for the new boy.
Then slowly, coolly brushing something from his skirt, Sam took to his feet.
‘I’m here, ma’am,’ he said.
Zia
We laughed. That first assembly is always a rather tense occasion and, when this Sam character turned out to be a girl, it broke the atmosphere. It’s good when something happens which makes a teacher look a bit stupid and, if that teacher happens to be Mrs Cartwright and she’s standing up in front of the whole school doing her Hitler-at-a-youth-rally act, it’s very good indeed.
The American girl looked round at us and grinned, which made us laugh even more. It took several seconds for the head to restore order.
Matthew
Mrs Cartwright’s smile became even more fixed and phoney than usual.
‘I was under the impression that Sam Lopez was a boy,’ she said.
‘Not this Sam Lopez, she ain’t,’ said Sam, and there was more laughter in the hall.
‘You’re Sam Lopez, as in Samantha?’ she asked. ‘Nope.’ Sam kept to his feet, now clearly enjoying the moment. ‘I am Sam, ma’am. Sam is what my mom called me.’
‘She, christened you Sam?’
‘She was a feminist, ma’am.’
The mention of Sam’s late mother, or maybe the reference to feminism, seemed to fluster Mrs Cartwright. ‘Ah good, interesting – well, that’s the first surprise of the term.’ She laughed in a tinkling, fake way. ‘Now that we’ve discovered exactly what sex you are, Bradbury Hill welcomes you, Sam Lopez.’
‘Thank you, ma’am.’ Sam sat down slowly.
Fifteen minutes into the new term and he had already made his mark.
Mrs Cartwright
It is an important occasion, that first assembly, and frankly I was not best pleased that an administrative error had caused a distraction. As I explained to Steve Forrester later, the fault was not entirely mine. Mrs Burton had called me during the holiday. I was not what I call switched on. The American child had moved schools so often that there were no records of his – of her – past education.
It seemed to me that Mrs Burton had been referring to a boy, but I assumed I had mistaken ‘he’ for ‘she’. There had been no reason not to assume that Sam was short for Samuel.
As for the child herself, I was vaguely aware that she was showing rather less respect than I would have liked but then, to be fair, this incident of gender confusion had been unusually public. I assumed that her apparent chippiness was a cover-up. Sam was a shy thirteen-year-old girl. I honestly believed that.
Elena
Normally I don’t like show-offs, but there was something about the new girl that made me want to get to know her. The way she went, ‘I am Sam, ma’am,’ when she said her mum was a feminist, like she was shocked that she had to explain it. I suppose it was just that she acted like most of us would like to act in that situation.
It should have been her that was made to look stupid. Instead it was old Carthorse. I was, ‘Hey, I could get to like this girl.’
Matthew
Sam was flirting with danger. Every kid in the hall knew that – every kid, that is, except for Sam Lopez. And it wasn’t the head teacher that was the problem.
Gary
I woke up in the middle of assembly and there was this brat, this new brat, behaving like she was totally it. Who did this skinny little ponytailed dork think she was exactly? It was time for her first lesson in the facts of life at Bradbury Hill.
Matthew
We were among the last of those emerging from the school hall after the head had finished her speech. Sam walked beside us, now and then smiling at those who stared at him.
‘Stick close to us,’ Jake murmured, but Sam was having too good a time to pay any attention. As we crossed the playground, the unavoidable, muscular presence of Gary Laird loome
d up between us.
It would be wrong to say that Gary hung out with a rough crew. He was a one-man rough crew. He hung out with nobody because he liked nobody and nobody liked him. Six foot and big with it, with cropped dark hair, he was like a cartoon version of teenage yobbery. When it came to spreading fear, Gary was top of Year Ten, unrivalled by lesser, smaller thugs. Others bullied out of fun or boredom – for Gary, it was a career, it was a vocation.
‘Hey, Yank chick,’ he called out.
Sam kept walking. Gary strode beside him across the playground, a towering, mighty figure.
‘Want a date, Yank chick?’ Gary taunted.
Sam stopped walking. ‘What exactly is your problem?’ he asked, his eyes narrowing dangerously.
‘I’ve heard all about American girls.’ Gary chuckled nastily.
‘Easy, Gary,’ said Tyrone. ‘She’s new.’
Gary ignored him. ‘Everyone knows about Yank girls.’
‘What do they know?’ Sam asked.
Either the question was too difficult for Gary’s apology of a brain to process or something in Sam’s manner gave him pause. He changed his line of attack.
‘Are you chewing gum, Yank chick?’ he said in a low voice.
‘Yup,’ said Sam.
‘I don’t like people chewing in my face. It’s not respectful, see.’
Sam chewed more openly. ‘Go blow smoke up it, loser.’
Gary made a sudden movement of his right hand but Sam hardly blinked. Jake and Tyrone closed in but, at that moment, someone else intervened.
Charley
‘Leave her alone, Gary,’ I said.
Slowly, he turned his horrible face in my direction, narrowing his eyes as if my words were slowly sinking into his brain like ink into blotting paper. I was aware of Zia and Elena on each side of me. It was an awkward moment – no one in their right mind, female or male, gets on the wrong side of Gary Laird – but at least the three of us were in this together.
‘What’s this – girl power?’ he snarled.
‘No, it’s just—’ I was about to say something reasonable and non-hostile about joining the human race or picking on someone his own size or violence solving nothing, when this Sam character spoke up.
‘That’s right, doughbrain,’ she said, eyeballing Gary like she was about to hit him, rather than the other way round.
‘It’s girl power. Girls together.’ She poked him in the chest with a finger. ‘Deal with it.’
Wow. Gary seemed actually to swell up with rage. His right fist clenched and—
‘Any danger of you people honouring me with your presence?’ Steve Forrester stood at the top of the steps.
Gary shuffled off, knuckles dragging on the ground, muttering revenge, and Sam made her way towards us. ‘Hey, thanks for that,’ she said, smiling at each of us.
‘No problem,’ said Elena. ‘Girl power, right?’
And Sam laughed as if this was the best joke ever cracked. ‘Yeah, right,’ she said.
Gary
She got lucky. Next time she was toast. She was a dead girl walking. End of story.
6
Matthew
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’.
Steve Forrester
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.
Tyrone
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?’
Steve Forrester
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.
Matthew
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.
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