you can hear, your credibility is bloody bankrupt.
‘Ready,’ called out Mr Inkberrow from the back, ‘set – go!’
Clive Pike’s chalk went smartly to work.
I wasn’t going to solve this equation and it knew it. I don’t even know what equations’re for.
‘Sir!’ called out Gary Drake. ‘Taylor’s spying on Pike. That’s not very sporting, sir, is it?’
‘I d—’ (Hangman put the boot in, too, on ‘didn’t’). ‘Isn’t true, sir.’
Mr Inkberrow just rubbed his glasses with a handkerchief.
Tasmin Murrell risked a snickerycockery ‘Naughty naughty, Taylor!’ Tasmin Murrell! A bloody girl.
‘Such a sense of fair play, Gary Drake,’ remarked Mr Ink berrow. ‘You should consider law enforcement as a career option, hmm?’
‘Thanks, sir. Might just do that.’
I’d made only a few half-hearted scratches with my chalk. Clive Pike stood back from the blackboard.
Mr Inkberrow let some moments pass. ‘Excellent, Pike. Sit down.’
My answer’d died in the second line of xs and ys and squareds.
Muffled giggles began breaking out.
‘Silence, 3KM! I see nothing amusing about spending a week of my life teaching anyone quadratic equations when the result is this…dog’s dinner. Everyone, page eighteen. Sit down, Taylor. Let us see if your woeful ignorance is shared by the rest of the form.’
‘Spazzo,’ hissed Gary Drake, as I stepped over the foot he’d stuck out to trip me. ‘Maggot.’
Carl Norrest didn’t say a word when I sat back down at our desk. He knows how it feels. But I knew this was just the beginning. I’ve memorized our new Third-year timetable and I knew what was coming up in the third and fourth periods.
Mr Carver our usual PE teacher’d taken the fifth-year rugby team to Malvern Boys’ College so this student teacher, Mr McNamara, was taking us juniors on his own. This was good news ’cause if Carver scents you’re unpopular, he joins in. Like the showers after winter football when Carver sits on the gym horse calling out, ‘Off with your cacks, Floyd Chaceley, or are we deformed?’ and ‘Backs to the wall, lads, Nicholas Briar’s coming through!’ Of course, most of us laughed like this was the funniest thing on earth.
The bad news was, my form (3KM) and Ross Wilcox’s form (3GL) do PE together and Mr McNamara can’t discipline a class of boys to save his life. Or mine.
The changing room stinks of armpits and soil. It’s divided into zones. The hard kids’ zone’s farthest from the door. The lepers’ zone’s nearest the door. Everyone else’s in between. Normally that’s me, but today all the pegs there’d gone. The traditional lepers, Carl Norrest, Floyd Chaceley and Nicholas Briar, acted like I’m one of them now and made space. Gary Drake, Neal Brose and Wilcox’s lot were busy with a bumflick battle so I changed quickly and hurried out into the cold morning. Mr McNamara got us doing warm-up exercises before starting us on laps. I jogged at a careful pace that kept Ross Wilcox’s lot on the far side of the track from me.
Autumn’s turning miserable, rotting and foggy. The next field along from our sports field was burnt flapjack brown. The field after that was the colour paintbrush water goes. The Malvern Hills were rubbed out by the season. Gilbert Swinyard says our school and the Maze Prison were built by the same architect. The Maze Prison’s in Northern Ireland, where Bobby Sands the IRA hunger striker died last year.
On days like today, I believe Gilbert Swinyard.
‘So you reckon you’ve got what it takes to be centre-forward for Liverpool? For Man U? For England?’ Mr McNamara paced to and fro in his black-and-orange Wolverhampton Wanderers tracksuit. ‘So you reckon you’ve got the guts? The grit?’ Mr McNamara’s Kevin Keegan perm bounced. ‘Clueless! Look at you! Want to know what Loughborough University taught me about sweat and success? Well, I’m gonna tell you anyway! Success in sport – and in life, lads, yeah, in life – equals SWEAT! Sweat and success’ (Darren Croome belted out a loud fart) ‘equals success and sweat! So when you get out there on that pitch today, lads, show me some sweat! I wanna see three hundred per cent sweat! We’re not gonna nancy about choosing teams today! It’s 3KM stick 3GL! Brain versus brawn! Real men can go up front, ponces in midfield, cripples in defence, nutters in goal – only joking, I don’t think! Move it!’ Mr McNamara blasted his whistle. ‘Come on, lads, keep it flowing!’
Maybe the sabotage’d been planned in advance, or maybe it just happened. Once you’re a leper you’re not let