‘Afternoon, kids,’ I said. ‘Is everything all right here?’ The girl answered. She said everything was very all right.
I mentioned that I had received a complaint of inappropriate behaviour from a group of four kids of about their age.
‘Inappropriate behaviour?’ said the tall, skinny boy with the big nose. ‘What sort of inappropriate behaviour?’
‘Messing around,’ I said. ‘Upsetting ladies walking their dogs.’
‘OK, officer. We’ll look out for those kids,’ said the girl, who seemed to be American.
‘All right then,’ I said. ‘On your way.’
All in all, I think I handled the situation in a satisfactory manner.
Tyrone
It was not exactly a normal end to the school day. First of all, Sam coming on all romantic about Mark Kramer, then the very same young police guy who had warned us after the Great Burger Bill Disaster turning up in the park. I got the weird sense that somehow things were just about to go seriously wrong.
At the park gates, we decided to split up. Jake and me would go home and Matt and Sam would take a couple of turns around the block before doubling back to the park for Sam to change back into a boy. With a bit of luck, PC Stickybeak would have moved on.
Matthew
Sam was flipping. Two days of being a girl, being given a new pair of falsies and winning the heart of Mark Kramer had done nothing for his sanity, and the tangle with the law had wound him up still further.
‘Let’s go check out the park!’ He danced ahead of me, punching the palm of his hand with his fist. ‘Let’s make a little mayhem here – let’s go kick some ass.’
I told him that personally I didn’t need any more trouble on account of the fact that whenever a little mayhem was made, it was me that got the blame.
‘Whoa, there.’ Sam laughed crazily. ‘Is my little cousin losing his nerve here? Maybe Operation Samantha turned out to be a little hot for him.’
‘You might be right,’ I said. ‘It’s getting sort of messy, isn’t it – all this girlie stuff? I’ve been thinking that perhaps we should just fess up and get on with our lives. What can they do? Kill us?’
Sam had stopped dancing. ‘Easy, Matthew,’ he said. ‘You asked me to do a week at Bradbury Hill. We’ve still got three days to go.’
We turned the corner towards the park. I was just about to tell Sam that the joke was meant to be on the girls but that somehow nothing had changed, when I saw something that made me stop in my tracks.
My mother was driving towards us. She had been looking for a parking space and had found one fifty metres from where we stood. As she stepped out of the car, she saw us.
‘Don’t say a word,’ I murmured. ‘Just do what I say.’
‘What?’ said Sam, then noticed my mother. ‘Uh-oh.’
‘Turn round slowly and naturally,’ I said. To my surprise, he did so without a murmur of complaint. ‘Here we go again,’ I said, then slung my right arm casually around his shoulders. Briefly, he tried to wrestle his way free, but I held him firmly and he relaxed.
‘You are going to pay for this big time,’ he muttered.
‘Just stay like this until we turn the corner,’ I said.
We were almost there when I glanced behind me.
Mum was standing beside her car, staring after us.
We turned the corner. I released my grip and Sam jumped away from me.
‘You are sick, Matthew Burton,’ he said. ‘How come you’re always hitting on me these days?’
I smiled wearily. ‘Now who’s losing his nerve?’ I said.
Mrs Burton
As if the day hadn’t provided enough shocks, it seemed that Matthew had discovered girls. As I watched him scurry away, a little ponytailed blonde under his arm, I experienced the sort of feeling that every mother knows when her child makes its first step into adulthood – a little sad, of course, but relieved too.
Matthew with a girlfriend. I laughed quietly.
When I reached 23 Somerton Gardens, David was in the kitchen – no surprise there. He has this theory that, at times of crisis, it is important for family unity that we all have a good meal together. Tonight it was going to be paella. As I entered, he scooped some red sauce stuff onto a spoon and held it up to me.
‘Has this got enough flavour, do you think?’ he asked, his face a picture of anxiety.
‘Matthew has a girlfriend,’ I said. ‘I’ve just seen them. I don’t think they noticed me. Some little long-haired blonde.’
David stood there, still holding out the spoon.
‘Matthew? It’s not possible. I mean, isn’t he a bit young?’ I told him kids started early these days. Maybe it was a good thing, I said. It would give him confidence.
‘Who was she?’ he asked.
‘Probably someone from his class.’ I tasted the sauce and told him it needed more salt. ‘Have you ever…talked to him?’ I asked.
David stirred something in a saucepan, looking worried. ‘You mean talk as in…talk? The talk?’ He shook his head. ‘Not exactly.’
I told him it was time for the talk. He nodded miserably. It was only when we heard the boys at the front door that I realised we had completely forgotten to discuss the imminent arrival of Sam’s father.
Matthew
I had assumed that there had to be some kind of crisis for Mum to leave her office so early and, when I saw both of them standing looking worried in the kitchen, I thought we were in for some heavy news.
But it turned out that something else was on their minds.
‘Oh, was that you I saw near the park? Mum had a weird half-smile on her face that I have learned is a sign that she’s trying to be playful.
‘Park?’ I said. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘I could have sworn I saw you with a girl.’
I shrugged guiltily. ‘Nah,’ I muttered. ‘Must have been someone else.’
‘So you were with Sam?’ my father asked.
I glanced across at Sam and in that instant, I knew what was coming. Ever since I had put my arm around him, he had been waiting for his revenge.
‘Nope. I was with Jake and Tyrone,’ he said. ‘I wanted to give ole Matt a little,’ – he winked at me – ‘quality time, know what I mean?’
‘There’s no need to be embarrassed,’ said my father. ‘It’s quite natural. Who is she?’
‘Yeah,’ said Sam. ‘Who’s the babe?’
I panicked. ‘Sss…Sss…Simone,’ I said. ‘She’s in my class.’
My mother smiled. ‘I never heard you mention a Simone in your class.’
‘I hadn’t really noticed her before,’ I murmured. ‘I don’t want to talk about her.’
‘We do,’ said Sam, really enjoying himself now. ‘Tell us what she’s like, Matthew.’
My parents were both looking at me expectantly.
‘Well, she’s quiet and reasonably bright and maybe a bit shy.’
‘And a great looker, ain’t that a fact?’
I narrowed my eyes. If it was the last thing I ever did, I was going to get Sam back for this. ‘Yes,’ I said coldly. ‘She’s quite pretty – in a very girly, feminine sort of way.’
At this point, Mum nudged my father. ‘Well, I’ve got a couple of calls to make from upstairs,’ she said, giving him this meaningful glance, and walked quickly out of the kitchen.
Mr Burton
I have always regarded myself as something of a communicator but, between you and me, that birds-and-bees chat with Matthew and Sam was not a great success. Certain words and phrases, of an intimate nature, came out sounding peculiar – as if somehow they had never been used before.
Matthew kept on trying to interrupt me, telling me that he knew it all, that there wasn’t any need to go into any of this, but unfortunately Sam seemed very innocent in these matters and asked questions that frankly I found increasingly difficult to answer.
Matthew
No no no no NO! Not that! Not in the kitchen! Not from my father
! Please stop!
As Dad tried in his desperate, fumbling way to tell us all about sex, he looked increasingly miserable. There were long, awkward silences. Whenever he had to use words that he found embarrassing – ‘condom’, ‘erection’, ‘sperm’, ‘vagina’ – he sort of winced as if just saying the words was causing him physical pain.
Sam, I don’t have to tell you, was having the time of his life. On and on he went, asking questions that made me want to hide under the kitchen table.
‘You mean the guy gets his…And the girl…Explain that to me again, Mr Burton.’ On and on he went. ‘So what exactly is safe sex?’
That was it, I decided. That…was…it. War had been declared – officially.
After the Great Sex Talk, we went upstairs, Sam frowning to himself as if still turning over in his brain the fascinating but troubling new things he had just discovered about boys and girls and their bodies. We went into my room, closed the door, and he fell on my bed, face in the pillow, hammering the mattress with delight.
‘Sam!’ I grabbed the back of his shirt and yanked him up. When he looked at me there were tears of laughter in his eyes.
I couldn’t help it. I wanted to be angry, but soon I was laughing too.
Poor Dad. If only he knew.
10
Crash
It was one helluva flight. Ottoleen had never been on an aeroplane before and, in one of those crazy magazines that she gets every week, she had read that flying at altitude can have a serious effect if you happen to have silicone implants in your body.
Ottoleen has silicone implants in her body. Up top, if you know what I mean. In fact, she probably has more silicone in her body than body.
For nine hours, she sat beside me, arms across herself. ‘They’re gonna burst, Crash,’ she whispered. ‘That’s what happens, you know. Bang! All over everybody. I just know they’re going to pop.’
I gave her a drink. Then another. By the time we started our descent into London, we were, shall we say, feeling no pain.
Ottoleen
‘Jeez, Crash,’ I’m saying over and over. ‘This had better be worth it.’
To take my mind off the flight, I try to think of what we were going to do with the reward, inheritance, whatever.
We’ll have this big, classy ranch-style mansion with huge bathrooms and gold taps, just near Hollywood, so I can pursue my acting career. We’ll have land and horses and loads of maids and stuff, and they’ll treat me real respectful, like, ‘Morning, Mrs Lopez’ and, ‘Will that be all, Mrs Lopez?’
I guess the brat Sam will have to be around seeing as he was the reason we hit pay-dirt in the first place, but I imagine him as a kind of sassy, bright, zany kid who says all those wacky teenage things without ever being a total pain in the you-know-what – kind of like Macaulay Culkin before he went all weird and got married and stuff.
It’s going to be worth it, I say to myself, holding on tight – to my chest (these things cost money!). It’s all going to be totally worth it.
Zia
I was a bit disappointed to hear that Sam was falling for Mark Kramer. It was just so corny – I mean, everyone fell for Mark Kramer.
Sam, I had thought, had more taste. For instance, when we had talked, it hadn’t been about the usual stuff but about music. She wrote down the names of guitarists that I should check out – not just Hendrix, Clapton, Plant, the people I had read about, but others like Albert Lee, Jeff Beck, Scotty Moore, James Burton. She wrote out a list of sixties bands I should listen to and promised to share her music collections with me.
It was weird. She seemed so totally modern, yet, if I talked about trance, techno or drum ‘n’ bass, she shook her head as if she just didn’t want to know about any of that.
Musically, she was about a zillion years old, yet totally up to date. I didn’t mind – in fact, when I got home, I got out my phone and listened to the Doors again.
Somehow none of this squared with her going all goo-goo over Mark Kramer. How could someone so cool, so different, be such a cliché when it came to love?
Tyrone
That was the night when life at home became even more complicated.
My mum had become obsessed with the idea that she had to do something about me before it was too late. As far as she was concerned, I was a walking collection of everything that’s ever been wrong with a teenager. I was overweight, I was underperforming at school. And she wasn’t too keen on the friends I hung out with either.
She had come up with this idea that I needed private tuition a couple of evenings a week. After supper, she rang Matthew’s mum, assuming that she would have the names of some tutors – parents of ‘problem children’ should stick together, right? Instead she got an ear-load of stuff about Matthew’s new girlfriend.
There’s something about the parents in my area that seems to make them dead competitive. They have to compare their precious kids all the time – when they first walk, when they talk, how they are doing at school, what really interesting hobbies they have, the cute things they have said, how they are doing at sports or music, how many friends they have, the exams they have passed. On and on and on it goes.
This is a game that my mother feels she has to play and, tragically, it’s one she always loses. Sometimes I hear her talking to another parent on the telephone. ‘He gets on with everybody, does Ty,’ she’ll say desperately, or, ‘What he doesn’t know about the Internet just isn’t worth knowing.’ In the world of parents, this kind of thing spells out one message, loud and clear: I’M DOING MY BEST, BUT THE FACT IS MY SON IS A COMPLETE AND UTTER LOSER.
That night, talking to Mrs Burton, she was introduced to yet another area where she could feel bad about her son.
Girls. Matthew Burton had a girlfriend. I listened from the first floor, not believing what I was hearing.
‘Quite smitten?’ Mum laughed in a fake-jolly, ha-ha-ha-ha, dying-inside way. ‘Funnily enough,’ she dropped her voice. ‘Tyrone has been showing an interest in the daughter of friends of mine, the Laverys. He’s a successful barrister, you know.’
I sunk my head in my hands, then wearily made my way back to my room to await the visit that would surely come.
Mrs Sherman
Tyrone is slightly young for his age. That’s why he has difficulty losing weight. It’s puppy fat. I’m sure it will just fall away when he reaches sixteen.
I decided to have a chat with him – or rather a chat with the back of his head while he played a game on his laptop.
‘I hear that Matthew has a girlfriend,’ I said casually.
‘First I’ve heard of it,’ said Tyrone.
‘She’s very pretty, apparently. And bright too. Simone. D’you know her?’
I noticed that Tyrone had stopped playing the game.
‘Nope,’ he said.
‘I’m just worried about your falling behind, Tyrone. You’d be so much happier if you were spending time with a girl.’ Tyrone played on, ignoring me. ‘Perhaps I should arrange that tea with the Laverys,’ I said. ‘Juliana’s always asking about you.’
Tyrone made one of his usual, unhelpful grunting noises.
‘Girls are fun,’ I said encouragingly. ‘You could, you know, go to the cinema together. I’m sure Juliana has a lot more to offer than those boys you spend all your time with.’
Tyrone switched off his game, sighed heavily and turned in his seat. ‘Mum, I don’t want a girlfriend,’ he said. ‘I’ve got nothing to talk about with girls. I’m not interested.’
‘Be interested.’ I spoke more firmly. ‘I’d be a lot happier if there were at least some sign of early dating in your life. I don’t know what I’d do if you turned into one of those men who sit all alone in their bedsits in front of a laptop and eat TV dinners and don’t wash as often as they could. That would make me very, very sad as your mother, Tyrone.’
He groaned, long and low.
‘Will you just try?’ I said. ‘Meet Juliana. She might be the one. And if she’s not
, you can keep an eye out for another one. Will you? For me?’
He nodded.
I smiled and kissed him on the top of his head. He’s all right, Tyrone. He just needs a little motherly help to bring him out of his shell.
Tyrone
Simone? It could only be Sam. Now what had he done?
Mrs Cartwright
I had a quiet word with Steve Forrester in the staffroom. It was just what I call a pre-emptive warning.
‘The Year Eight girls,’ I said. ‘How are they doing?’
He replied that it was early days but that he was pleased by the way his class was behaving. The girls he said were ‘lively and interested’.
When I mentioned the ball game in the play area, he actually smiled.
‘There’s a difference between lively and loutish,’ I said, retaining my good humour with some difficulty. ‘Miss Fisher reported that while she was rebuking young Katie Spicer, another of the girls actually broke wind – quite noisily too.’
Steve said he would make sure that Year Eight understood the importance of discipline.
‘The American girl, Sam Lopez,’ I said. ‘She’s rather what I call full of herself, isn’t she?’
Steve said that Sam was fine – a little feisty, but basically a good kid.
And I believed him. Twenty years’ experience as a teacher and I actually believed him.
Matthew
By now Operation Samantha had gone belly up. The Shed Gang was history, the Bitches forgotten. Everything had changed.
But nothing changed more than Sam Lopez. In class he was at the front, his little ink-stained hand in the air with the other swots and pencil-pushers. Some of the teachers – Ward in maths, Fisher in art – became impatient with him on the grounds that he often put up his hand when he had no idea what the answer was. He just wanted to talk.
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