Mrs Cartwright, maybe sensing that something was going wrong with her precious Talent Night, stood up as if she were about to step on to the stage and introduce the next act.
Sam slowly turned his eyes towards her. ‘Hit it, Zed,’ he said into the microphone, and Zia struck the face of her guitar like she was something out of a heavy-metal band. It was a hard, banging beat – angrier and faster than the last song.
It was also very, very loud.
Zia
We had worked on the songs, but none of us had thought about how we should get from ‘Private Cloud’ to ‘Bad Girl’.
Looking back now, I can see that Sam’s broody staring act was better than any lame intro, but at the time we were all sweating with embarrassment and nerves. What the hell was Sam doing?
During the awkward silence I must have fiddled with the volume knob on my guitar because, when I played the opening chords, the noise almost blew us off the stage.
I was aware of two things – that the audience was looking up at us, wide-eyed and scared, and that there was no way that I could stop and start again.
So ‘Bad Girl’ was coming at them like a runaway train – and that was before Sam started singing.
Matthew
A strange vibe had kicked in by now and everyone in the hall was aware of it.
Sam stepped forward a couple of paces, planted his feet a few inches apart as if he were squaring up for a fight, fixed his eyes a few feet over the audience’s heads and began to sing.
No, come to think of it, sing is the wrong word. It wasn’t a shout either. The sound that Sam made was something else, something beyond music and beyond the words that he sang, something that felt like pure, beautiful rage, something that had been gouged out of his soul with a rusty knife.
‘My momma says be pretty, girl
My poppa’s on my case.
Like, am I a doll or a member
Of the freakin’ human race?
Everyday they come on like
I’m the family disgrace.
Hey, Mummy, Hey, Daddy
Just get out of my face.’
Mrs Cartwright
Frankly, it was not what Talent Night was meant to be about, this bloodcurdling noise coming from the stage. I’m almost sure I heard the Lopez child say ‘freaking’. Was this a swear word? It sounded very much like one. I turned to Mr Brownlow, the town councillor who was on my right, and tried to apologise. Of course, he couldn’t hear a word I was saying.
Elena
We knew what was happening was different from rehearsals. This was a new Sam, a Sam that was lifting us, pulling the music along. It was scary but amazing.
Matthew
Don’t ask me how the audience reacted during the song. I couldn’t take my eyes off Sam. I was mesmerised by him, and my guess is that everybody else was mesmerised too.
This was true rage, a musical version of what every kid in that place had felt at some time but most of us had never dared to say, let alone sing out loud, in public.
Fists clenched by his side, Sam hit the second verse.
‘Me, I’m just me
Not some crazy kind of creature
But when I go to school
I get hassle from the teacher
She says that when there’s trouble
She just knows I’m gonna feature
She’s, “Heaven knows, I try my best
But I just cannot what I call reach her”!’
Whoa, this was dangerous. Sam spat out the lines in a perfect, unmistakable imitation of Mrs Cartwright. A sort of unbelieving cheer came from the kids who knew just what was going on.
Mrs Cartwright
I was aware that at the end of the second verse a few heads turned in my direction. I smiled and kept tapping my hand on my leg in time with the beat. Clearly the girls were not referring to anyone in particular but to teachers utterly unlike those we have at Bradbury Hill – old-fashioned authority figures. I was not pleased by their general attitude, but decided to smile through it.
Matthew
The joke on Carthorse seemed to snap the audience out of its trance. Suddenly, we were no longer afraid or embarrassed by what was happening on stage. We could enjoy it – for the first time in history, an act on Talent Night was telling it like it really was, rather than like parents and teachers would like it to be.
When the three girls came in on the chorus, shouting it at us, we started clapping in time to the beat.
‘Bad girl, bad girl.
With a bad kind of fame.
For being the baddest of the bad
Bad girl is my name.’
Charley
We had a choice to make. Either to sing the chorus in the tight, neat way that Zia had written it and we had practised it, or to follow Sam into whatever place he had gone.
We followed. The result may have sounded more like a football chant than a song, but it worked. By the end of the first chorus, the audience was going wild.
Matthew
The Pandas were well into it now. Charley and Elena were doing their dance, Zia was going at her guitar like a mad axe-man. But the greater the mayhem all round him, the stiller Sam stood. It was funny but frightening, because no one – maybe not even Sam himself – knew how seriously he was taking it all.
‘The boys all try to hit on me
“Let’s go clubbin out tonight”
They tell me I’m a babe
I’m such a pretty sight.
But when we hit the High Street
They find out too right
This baby ain’t for dancin’
This baby wants to fight!’
Mrs Cartwright
Enough. Enough. I stood up, looking for the caretaker to switch off the sound, but then to my horror I realised that the audience had stood up too. They actually thought I was giving the girls a standing ovation.
I had no alternative but to go along with it, sway and clap with the rest of them, but I swore to myself that this would never ever be permitted to happen at a Bradbury Hill Talent Night again.
Ottoleen
Hey, rock and roll, baby! I’m screaming at Crash that suddenly this is like the best gig since I caught the New York Dolls at CBGBs, but he’s still sitting down like Mr Straight from Straightville, Arizona, while all around him these kids are going totally wild.
So eventually Crash slowly gets to his feet, raises his big, muscular arms above his head and screams, ‘Yay, Bad Girls, go for it!’ and I’m laughing like I’m fit to bust.
I tell you, those kids are really good.
Zia
I was kind of chuffed by the way it was going. ‘Bad Girl’ was my song and, on its first performance, it was lifting the roof off. There was one more verse – the one about us all being bad girls coming good. Then there would be a chorus, replayed once; a shock staccato ending and we were out of there.
I hadn’t reckoned on any surprises from our lead singer. When we reached the last verse, Sam did something weird with the vocals – he went up a third as if harmonising with himself so that his voice was now high and strained and angry.
There was something else. He replaced my words with his.
Matthew
I noticed a change in Sam. He seemed to relax as the song progressed. As they were singing one of the choruses he looked down at me squarely, then at Mum and Dad, and gave the merest hint of a smile. Then his eyes moved down the line and fixed on Crash Lopez. There they stayed until the song came to its spectacular end.
‘I’m a dawg, all you people
I’m danger on the prowl
On the street, in the heat
In the gutters mean and foul
Hear my bark, feel my bite
Hear my wolverine growl.
Smell my dawg-breath,
Daddy, And listen to me—’
Crash
And as the kid said ‘dog-breath, Daddy’, she pointed her finger straight at me. I was like, hey, what is this?
; Matthew
‘Hoooooooo—’
As Zia, Charley and Elena and some of the audience hit the ‘Bad girl, bad girl’ chorus, Sam’s voice soared up and up.
‘Ooooooooooooo—’
It was unlike anything I’ve heard – wilder than Scooby-Doo, spookier than the Hound of the Baskervilles, beyond the scariest wolf noise you ever heard. Now and then he took a quick breath, then carried on howling.
There was laughter at first. But when the Pandas reached the end of the chorus, they looked at one another and their uncertainty reached the audience. Now there was tension in the air. The clapping and chanting died down, Zia’s rhythm guitar faltered, then stopped.
Sam kept going. He took one more deep breath and hit an even higher note as if he were trying to push his voice to breaking point.
And suddenly I knew what was going to happen.
Tyrone
There was a sort of catch in Sam’s voice, a violent croaking in the throat. He hesitated, coughed, took a deep breath and—
Jake
Uh-oh.
Elena
Oh…my…God.
Crash
What the—?
Matthew
It wasn’t a howl that came from Sam now but a roar – deep, throaty and unmistakably male.
There were mutterings, the sound of nervous laughter in the hall.
But Sam wasn’t finished. He walked to the front of the stage. Staring deep into the eyes of his father, he raised the microphone to his mouth and growled, slowly and deliberately in his brand-new, masculine voice, the words, ‘Bad guy is my name.’
‘It’s a boy.’ The word spread like a bush fire through the audience – ‘a boy…a guy…she’s a he…a boy.’
I glanced over at the head teacher, but, for the first time in living memory, she was completely lost for words, as stunned as the rest of us.
Elena
Somebody had to take control of the situation and at that moment I decided it had to be Elena Griffiths. We needed to get off stage somehow, so I stepped forward, took the microphone from Sam and said, ‘Thank you, everyone. We were the Pandas. Let’s hear it for guitarist Zia Khan and our lead singer—’
Jake
No.
Tyrone
No!
Matthew
No, Elena!
Elena
‘—Sam Lopez!’
Jake
The audience was about to start applauding when there was this mighty roar from the third row.
Crash
‘THAT’S MY SON!’
Matthew
A few yards away from me, Crash Lopez was blundering towards the stage, pushing past other members of the audience, pointing at Sam, bellowing out the truth.
Sam looked down at him and, for a moment, I saw an expression on his face that I had never ever seen before. It was one of fear.
He turned and made for the exit at the back of the stage.
As pandemonium broke out in the hall, I turned to my parents, who were staring, spooked and ashen, at the door through which Sam had just disappeared.
‘I think it’s time we did some explaining,’ I said.
Mrs Cartwright
It was what I call a crisis situation. After a hurried discussion with Mrs Sparks, the teacher coordinating Talent Night, I announced that the rest of the event was abandoned and that the remaining two acts would perform at our Christmas play.
The audience was dispersing, but I still had an irate American to deal with. My first reaction was that the man was delusional, but, when he produced a wallet with a number of brightly coloured credit cards, each bearing the name ‘Lopez’, I had to accept that there was the possibility of a family connection with the girl – who now turned out to be a boy – Sam Lopez.
I took the American couple and Mr and Mrs Burton to my study, leaving Matthew to sit outside.
There I told them in no uncertain terms that this was a family matter and that it was not for Bradbury Hill School to become involved in what was thoroughly what I call inappropriate.
Ottoleen
‘In a what?’ goes Crash, standing in the middle of the principal’s study. She’s behind her desk looking like someone made a smell under her nose. The Burtons are sitting nearby, all nervous and pale and English.
‘Inappropriate,’ goes the starchy old bird, who’s looking kind of freaked now on account of Crash leaning on her desk, fists down, giving her the eyeball. ‘I do not wish the school to become involved in this issue.’
‘Oh, the school is involved, believe me, lady,’ says Crash, more quietly now. ‘When you have my son at your school, on stage, dressed up as a girl, you are most certainly involved.’ He points a finger. ‘You fetch my son right now, we take him back where he belongs and maybe, just maybe, I won’t tell the cops about this.’
Mrs Cartwright
Frankly, it seemed a sensible suggestion, even if the threatening tone was not something I welcomed. The last thing I needed, just when my career was going so well, was a scandal involving an American child who had been taken from his home and didn’t know whether he was a boy or a girl.
‘I’ll ask my secretary to fetch him,’ I said quietly, picking up the phone.
Mrs Burton
Suddenly David did something which I never would have expected. He stood up, placed a finger on the telephone’s receiver and said in a voice that was really quite manly, ‘No.’
Sam’s hooligan father continued staring at Mrs Cartwright, ‘Make the call, lady,’ he said.
‘No.’ My husband stood his ground. ‘We have been given responsibility over Sam and, if this is his father, he should take his claim to a court of law.’
Mr Lopez turned his head slowly so that his nose was almost touching David’s. ‘Maybe the kid should decide about that.’
‘Maybe he should,’ said David.
Mrs Cartwright looked at the two men, then down at her telephone, on which David was still holding his finger. Sighing, she stood up and went to the door. She opened it and said, ‘Matthew, would you be so kind as to fetch Sam Lopez?’
I heard Matthew saying, ‘Yes, Mrs Cartwright.’
The head teacher returned to her desk and sat down.
‘This is all very unfortunate,’ she said.
Matthew
There was quite a crowd when I walked into the classroom. Jake and Tyrone, with Mr Smiley and Mrs Sherman, were there, so were Mr and Mrs Khan and a couple of the younger Khan children. Elena was with her mum, who was standing near to Mr and Mrs Johnson, Charley’s parents.
For the briefest second, I forgot about the whole Sam drama. Here they all were, mixing and chatting, not like parents on the one side, kids on the other, boys against girls, Sheds v Bitches, but just…families. Weird.
Then I saw Sam.
He was still in a skirt, but someone had lent him a white school shirt to put over his bare shoulders and his hair was hanging over his face in true hippy fashion. At that moment, he looked neither entirely boy nor girl – just sad, confused and lost.
‘They’re in Carthorse’s, office,’ I said to him. ‘They want to see you.’
Sam stood up. Zia muttered, ‘Good luck,’ as he made his way to the door, walking like a man going to his execution. He raised a weary hand in acknowledgement.
‘So much for Operation Samantha,’ he said, his voice hoarse, as we reached the corridor.
‘Yup,’ I said. ‘It looks like your girly days are over.’
‘I couldn’t help it,’ said Sam. ‘I saw him, sitting there, the big smile on his face, just like it used to be when we were all together. And I knew, in my gut and in my heart, that I had to stop running away. The moment had arrived. It was time to be me.’
‘You want to go back to your father?’
Sam shrugged. It seemed that he wasn’t in the mood for conversation. We had reached the door to the head’s study and, without knocking, he pushed his way in.
I hesitated for a moment, then f
ollowed.
Ottoleen
Crash checks out who’s walked into the office and sees that the English boy Matthew is standing behind Sam. ‘Lose the kid,’ he says.
‘This involves Matthew as well,’ says Mrs Burton. ‘Sam?’ says the principal. ‘Do you want Matthew here or not?’
Sam has been staring at the ground like he’s looking for the answer to his problems in the pattern of the carpet. Now he looks up. ‘Sure I do,’ he says.
Elena
We tried to behave normally, chatting about this and that in the classroom. One of the parents – Tyrone’s mum – suggested that we might all go out for a pizza together, but there was no way that we could leave Sam and Matthew battling it out with Psycho Dad and his girlfriend in Carthorse’s study.
So, after a while, we drifted out to the school lobby and waited for them outside the head’s study.
Mrs Cartwright
I addressed the rather peculiar gathering that was now in my study. I explained that in no way was Bradbury Hill responsible for any family misunderstandings or conflicts that occurred outside school premises, but that I had agreed that it would be sensible if some kind of resolution was found so that, at the very least, the child Lopez knew who she (he) was going home with tonight.
Boy2Girl Page 19