Boy2Girl

by Terence Blacker

  He ignored me as he walked into the kitchen.

  ‘I’m starved,’ he muttered as he opened the bread bin, took out a couple of slices and rammed them down into the toaster.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Matthew asked.

  ‘Sure? Why not?’ said Sam.

  ‘We’ll talk about this tomorrow.’ I spoke quietly, darting a warning look at David and Matthew.

  ‘Talk about what?’ he said.

  The toast jumped up. Sam grabbed a piece and started buttering it without bothering to use a plate. He took a large mouthful.

  ‘So,’ he said aggressively, taking us all in with a withering glance. ‘That was soccer, eh?’ He chewed for a moment. ‘Tell you what – I like it.’

  17

  Mrs Cartwright

  It was not a good day. Within moments of my arrival at the office, Mrs Burton had rung to tell me that Sam Lopez had been in what she described as ‘a spot of trouble’.

  The spot of trouble turned out to be participating in a full-scale riot at a local football match. I was concerned to learn that Sam had been at the game in the company of Mark Kramer, one of the less reliable boys in the Lower Sixth.

  I explained to Mrs Burton that, while it was important to stress that Bradbury Hill had no responsibility for what pupils did in their spare time, I would speak both to her and the boy, Kramer.

  I put down the phone. Frankly this was all I needed. We have always come down very hard on any form of hooliganism at this school and I had thought that it was a problem that we had under control. It seemed I was wrong – even Year Eight girls were likely to go off the tracks and start behaving like boys.

  I thought back to the day last week when I had caught a group of girls playing American football in the playground. The look that Sam Lopez had given me that day, cold and insolent, had set off alarm bells and, as is depressingly usual, my instinct was right. That young girl had always been particularly vulnerable – no wonder that the older boys were able to pass on what I call their less-than-desirable habits to her.

  There was a knock on the door. It was Karen O’Grady, my secretary. She was carrying a newspaper.

  ‘Sorry to bother you, head teacher,’ she said. ‘But I think you should see this.’

  She laid the newspaper before me. Beneath a oneword headline, ‘HELLCAT’, a photograph filled most of the page. It showed a scene of utter confusion – policemen, football fans, fists and feet. There, in the very centre of the action, lunging out with her foot, her face concealed by swirling blonde hair, was a small doll-like figure who would have seemed completely out of context were it not for the fact that her foot was about to make contact with a figure crouched on the ground.

  ‘Journalists have started calling,’ Karen said. ‘They aren’t allowed to name her, but someone from the police must have tipped them off that she goes to Bradbury Hill.’

  I felt a lurch of dread from within. The years of work that I had put in at this school were in jeopardy. My whole career, my reputation as what I call an educational high-flyer, would be shattered by this kind of publicity.

  ‘Tell them I have no comment to make,’ I said. ‘Remind them that the school has no responsibility for what its pupils do in their spare time.’

  ‘Yes, head teacher.’

  ‘And, I’ll need to see Mark Kramer and Sam Lopez after assembly.’

  ‘Yes, head teacher.’

  ‘And, give me five minutes, will you?’

  Karen nodded. ‘Cupboard, head teacher?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Cupboard.’

  Elena

  I couldn’t believe it. When Charley and I arrived at school that morning, the word was out about Sam and Mark getting caught up in the football riot. There were little knots of people in the playground, each gathered around a copy of a newspaper with Sam’s ‘HELLCAT’ shot on the front.

  ‘She’s here,’ someone said.

  We turned to see Sam making her way through the school gates with Matthew. Even from a distance, I could see that one of Sam’s eyes was black and swollen. They walked slowly, and as Sam became aware that heads were turning towards her, a hard little smile appeared on her lips. One of the Year Seven girls called out, ‘Way to go, Sam.’ She lifted a hand like she was some kind of all-conquering hero acknowledging her fans.

  If there’s one thing that I don’t like it’s a show-off. ‘She’s lapping it up,’ I said to Charley. ‘Anyone would think it was clever, taking part in a riot and appearing in the papers.’

  Sam had stopped to talk to Jake and Tyrone. She exercised a sort of kicking movement, as if showing them exactly how it had all happened, then laughed in a showy kind of way.

  ‘So how do we stand on this?’ Charley asked. ‘Is she a friend or an ex-friend?’

  ‘She’s a hooligan, that’s for sure,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Charley. ‘I don’t approve of violence.’

  ‘Nor me.’

  Sam was walking towards us, the way clearing before her and, seeing that look of triumph on her face, complete with a black eye that a panda would have been proud of, I just had to smile. Charley turned to me and gave a kind of resigned shrug.

  ‘Hi, Sam,’ we said in unison.

  Matthew

  Sam loved it. He made another of his entrances. The guy was a natural exhibitionist and this was his big moment – yet another big moment.

  And the people at school – older, younger, boys, girls – actually thought it was cool what he had done. When it became known that a picture of Sam Lopez brutalising some football fan had appeared on the front page of a newspaper, he became this big star. ‘Hey, Hellcat!’ people would call out as Sam swaggered by, skirt swishing proudly.

  I was thinking to myself, Hang on, we’re talking about someone kicking and punching a stranger here. Is that really a good reason to turn them into a celebrity?

  But no. Sam had been touched by fame. It didn’t matter how he’d done it. The fame was what mattered.

  And when Mrs O’Grady marched up and told him that the head wanted to see him right now, he seemed even more pleased with himself.

  Mrs Cartwright

  It’s a wonderful release, the cupboard. Other head teachers use therapists or perhaps even take a tranquillising pill now and then, but I prefer to what I call let it all out by having a good scream in the privacy of my cupboard.

  My secretary, Karen, a marvellous woman who has been with me ten years now, understands the importance of having these moments of privacy, and I do not for a moment blame her for what happened on this occasion.

  I was in the cupboard, eyes closed in the cool, welcome darkness. I went through my usual routine. For a moment or two, I allowed my brain to fill with what I call stress sources. I gathered them together as if they were little more than a pile of dust that could be blown away, one by one, by the sheer force of screaming. I took a deep breath.

  I thought of…football hooligans.

  ‘Aarrgghh!’

  I paused, panting slightly. Then I thought of…gutter journalists.

  ‘Aaaarrrrgggghhh!’

  I was feeling better now. One more scream and I would be healed, cleansed.

  I thought of…Sam Lopez.

  ‘AAAARRRGGGHHHH!’

  It was an excellent scream – long, loud, healthy, one of my very best. When I had finished, I felt a new person. I was in control, a head teacher once more. I shook my head briskly, squared my shoulders, opened the cupboard door – and found myself staring into the face of Sam Lopez.

  ‘Feeling better, Mrs Cartwright?’ she said, lolling in my guest chair, a big smile on her impertinent little face.

  ‘I was, um, looking for some stationery,’ I said.

  ‘Sure you were,’ she said. ‘It’s good to get things off your chest now and then, isn’t it?’

  I sat down behind my desk and held up the day’s newspaper. ‘Would you care to explain this?’

  She shrugged and touched her right eye, which was dark and swo
llen. ‘I guess I was letting off a bit of steam too.’

  I took a deep breath and began to give her a lecture about responsibility, but I was not exactly at my best after what had just happened. After a minute or so, I told Lopez to fetch the boy, Kramer.

  ‘You don’t want to worry about old Marky.’ She stood up. ‘He’s clean.’

  I told her that I would be the one to decide who was ‘clean’ or not.

  ‘Sure you will,’ said Lopez. She winked at me with her good eye. ‘Sure you will.’

  Zia

  I was a bit late that morning. By the time I arrived everyone was talking about Sam and Mark Kramer and the big bust-up at the game.

  I didn’t talk to her, but I could see she was happy. It was as if she were a princess who had assumed her kingdom, a bad girl come good.

  Throughout the day, I had only one thought.

  Bad girl. A bad girl come good. Bad girl, bad girl, with the baddest kind of fame. It was going to be a terrific song.

  Ottoleen

  By now Crash is getting kind of antsy about waiting around. It’s getting to him that we’re spending money on the hotel and the Nissan with no sign of a return on our investment. Now and then he talks about making some kind of small hit and earning himself some more – with Crash, earning means taking and it’s never a problem – but in the end we decide to lie low until we can get to the school.

  It’s fair to say that England is not exactly impressing old Crash. One day that week, as we’re eating one of the hotel’s totally barfsome breakfasts, he shows me the page of a paper he is reading.

  It’s some kind of yak-yak piece headlined ‘NOW EVEN OUR LITTLE GIRLS ARE YOBS’, but it’s the picture underneath that is bothering him. It was a little blonde kid, kicking the you-know-what out of an older boy during some kind of sports bust-up. She must be twelve – thirteen, tops.

  ‘That’s a child, for pity’s sake. A girl too.’ He shakes his head. ‘What a country.’ Then he looks a bit closer at the paper. He goes, ‘Where have I seen that face before?’

  Crash

  I’d seen enough to know that it was time to make our move. This was no place for a son of mine to be raised in. I rang the principal that morning.

  We needed to see the school pronto, I said. We were going away for a while. It was kind of urgent.

  She sounded distracted, like she had other things on her mind.

  ‘Maybe Talent Night would be a good opportunity,’ she said. All the children and teachers would be there, and some of the parents.

  Talent night? I was thinking. What would I want to go to a kids’ talent night for? But then, maybe, with all sorts of stuff going down, it occurred to me that we could check out the place and find my boy.

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘That would be really nice.’

  I hung up the phone and frowned.

  Really nice? Did I just say that? We had to get out of here before it was too late.

  Steve Forrester

  I had a decision to make that week. The new girl, Sam, had become involved in unpleasant scenes at a football game, albeit I suspected that an older boy, Mark Kramer, was primarily responsible for what had happened – Sam, for all her bravado, was essentially a very impressionable young girl – but clearly violence is violence, whatever the circumstances.

  I decided to make no reference in class to what had happened that evening, but to make it quite clear from my attitude towards Sam that I disapproved of her behaviour.

  I think that taught her a useful lesson about the way we do things in this country. She settled down and spent more and more time with Zia Khan. Together they seemed to be involved in some kind of musical project.

  Zia

  It turned out that my timing was perfect. When I gave Sam the lyrics and melody for ‘Bad Girl’ she was in precisely the right mood to give it the kind of edgy vocals that I was looking for.

  The day after I had written it, we practised back at the Burton house. Even before she had completely mastered the tune, she was giving the song a kind of brooding menace that made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.

  There was a small problem. The chorus, which went into a short Latino hip-hop riff, needed more voices, singing – or rather shouting – across the lead vocal. I could do it myself, but we needed a crowd, gang-like, girls-against-the-world feel. I’d need to think about that.

  Sam had been hard-eyed and surly since her date with Mark Kramer, but, as we sang together in her bedroom, she seemed to loosen up. In fact, she even came up with a dramatic musical idea herself.

  She was singing the final verse, driving the vocals hard, when something odd happened. When she went for the high note on the last line, her voice, instead of going up the scale, suddenly went down into a sort of dog-like growl.

  I stopped playing. ‘What was that?’ I asked.

  Sam looked embarrassed. She cleared her throat. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Is the key too high for you? I could modulate there if you like?’

  ‘Nah.’ Sam cleared her throat again. ‘I just figured that maybe we could use a howl at that point in the song.’

  ‘A howl?’

  ‘Yeah. Like the Warren Zevon thing in “Werewolves of London”, you know the Warren Zevon thing?’ she said.

  I shook my head. Sam was always coming up with bands and songs from ancient history that I had never heard of.

  ‘Yeah, the Zevon howl would be good,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to get the howl in.’

  We tried it again, changing one of the chords, going slow so that she could hit the right note, only this time I went up with her, following her with a descant harmony, but dragging it so that there was a kind of weird and scary dissonance to it.

  The third time, we really went for it. The door burst open and Matthew stood there, hands over his ears.

  ‘Are you guys torturing cats in here?’ he said. ‘That sounds terrible.’

  Sam looked at me and gave me the big smile that I liked so much.

  ‘I think we’re in business,’ she said.

  Elena

  It was on Thursday when Zed and Sam came ambling up to Charley and me during breaktime. I could tell that from the grins they were trying to keep off their faces that they had something on their minds.

  ‘Here’s the thing,’ said Sam. ‘Our little resident musical genius here has come up with a killer song that we’re going to play at the concert.’

  ‘I thought Zia was doing a solo act,’ I said suspiciously.

  ‘Not any more,’ said Zia. ‘Sam and I are doing a song called “Private Cloud”. Then we were thinking of doing a band number.’

  ‘Band?’ said Charley. ‘And who exactly is the band?’

  Charley

  Forget it. This was the craziest idea I had ever heard. First of all, we had a day – two, max – in which to rehearse it. Second, Elena’s got a voice like someone scraping their nails down a blackboard.

  Elena

  Luckily I’ve got quite a good voice (though I say so myself) and a really excellent stage presence. I was a bit worried about Charley – she’s not exactly showbiz material – but the way I saw it, the rest of us could cover for her.

  Charley

  That night, back at my place, Zia played us a tape of the song. It was kind of strange, but catchy too.

  ‘So what do we do?’ I asked.

  ‘You shout that chorus line, just as loud as you can,’ said Zia.

  ‘Shout?’ said Elena. ‘I thought you wanted us to sing.’

  And Zia went into this routine about how the timing was really subtle, and how the shouting bit was the most important part of the whole song.

  ‘How about if I sang the second verse?’ said Elena.

  There was a moment’s pause and, for an instant, it seemed as if someone was going to have to tell her that Elena Griffiths singing anything solo would clear the school hall in ten seconds flat. To my amazement, it was Sam who saved the day.

  ‘There are a lot of lyrics to
learn,’ she said. ‘And we were really hoping you could do a kind of funky dance – like, add a bit of sexy glamour to the whole thing.’

  Elena gave the matter serious thought for a couple of seconds. ‘Sexy glamour? Yeah, maybe I could do that.’

  Jake

  There are some things you can’t talk to people about. Matt and Tyrone knew that I was having a tough time at home – I could see it in their eyes, hear it in their voices. These days when they said, ‘All right, then?’ it was more than just a greeting. But talking about that sort of stuff is just plain embarrassing.

  All the same, my problems were weighing on my shoulders like a bag of cement. In the past, when I still had a real family, I could have opened up to my mum, or even my sister Chrissie, but now it was different.

  Within seconds, the discussion would have become an argument which would have developed into a row with all the same old stuff spilling out like dirty laundry. How I didn’t help. How I never talked. How I was a lump. How I was useless.

  ‘Typical man,’ Mum would say.

  ‘That is such a male attitude,’ Chrissie would join in.

  And there would be laughter, hard and brittle, although each of us knew in our hearts that none of this was even slightly funny.

  That Friday lunchtime, I was enjoying a bit of quality time on my own in the yard when Sam Lopez, hellcat and school hero, noticed me and wandered over.

  Casually, he started chatting about this and that – about things that were going on in his life, how he was going to appear at the school concert with Zia Khan, and so on. I responded with polite grunts. To tell the truth, the life and times of little boy2girl Sam were beginning to get on my nerves.