I am paid my stratospheric salary to uphold standards. Standards which you,’ he knitted his hands together and cracked the knuckles, sickeningly, ‘just trampled into the dirt. In a more enlightened age, a sound thrashing would have taught you a sense of decorum. But, as our masters at Westminster have deprived us of this tool, other more onerous techniques must be found.’ Mr Nixon reached the door. ‘The Old Gym. A quarter past twelve. Latecomers will receive a week’s detention. Absentees will be expelled. That is all.’
Old school dinners’ve been replaced this September by a cafeteria. A sign saying RITZ CAFETERIA OPERATED BY KWALITY KWISINE is bolted over the dining room door, though the reek of vinegar and frying hits you in the cloakrooms. Under the writing’s a smiley pig in a chef’s hat carrying a platter of sausages. The menu’s chips, beans, hamburgers, sausages and fried egg. Pudding’s ice cream with tinned pears or ice cream with tinned peaches. To drink there’s fizzless Pepsi, sicky orange or warmish water. Last week Clive Pike found half a millipede in his hamburger, still wriggling. Even worse, he never found the other half.
As I queued up, people kept glancing at me. A pair of first-years weren’t trying too hard not to laugh. Everyone’s heard it’s Get Taylor Day. Even dinner ladies witched at me from behind the shiny counters. Something was going on. I didn’t know what till I sat down with my tray next to Dean Moran on the lepers’ table.
‘Um…someone’s put some stickers on your back, Jace.’
As I took off my blazer an earthquake of laughter rocked the Ritz Cafeteria. Ten sticky labels’d been put on my back. On each was written MAGGOT in a different pen by a different hand. I just stopped myself running out. That’d make their victory even more perfect. As the earthquake calmed down, I peeled off the stickers and tore them to shreds under the table.
‘Ignore the wankers,’ Dean Moran told me. A fat chip slapped his cheek. ‘Funny!’ he shouted in the direction it’d flown from.
‘Yeah,’ Ant Little called from Wilcox’s table, ‘we thought so.’ Three or four more were lobbed over. Miss Ronkswood came into the hall, stopping the chip bombardment.
‘Hey…’ Unlike me, Dean Moran’s able to ignore stuff. ‘Heard the news?’
Miserably, I picked specks of dried-on food off my fork. ‘What?’
‘Debby Crombie.’
‘What about Debby Crombie?’
‘She’s only in the club, ain’t she?’
‘Netball?’
‘The club!’ Dean hissed. ‘Preggers!’
‘Pregnant? Debby Crombie? A baby?’
‘Keep yer voice down! Looks that way. Tracy Swinyard’s best mates with the secretary at Upton doctors. They went on the piss at the Black Swan two nights ago. After a drink or five she told Tracy Swinyard to cross her heart and hope to die, and told her. Tracy Swinyard told my sister. Kelly told me at breakfast this morning. Made me swear not to tell on our nan’s grave.’
(Moran’s nan’s grave’s littered with shredded oaths.)
‘Who’s the father?’
‘Don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes. Debby Crombie ain’t been out with no one since Tom Yew, has she?’
‘But Tom Yew was killed back in June.’
‘Aye, but he were in Black Swan Green in April, weren’t he? On leave. Must’ve pumped his tadpoles up her back then.’
‘So Debby Crombie’s baby’s dad’s dead, even before it’s born?’
‘Cryin’ shame or what? Isaac Pye said he’d get an abortion if he was her, but Dawn Madden’s mum said abortion’s murder. Anyhow, Debby Crombie told the doctor she’s havin’ the baby, no matter what. The Yews’ll help raise it, Kelly reckons. Bring Tom back to life, in a way, I s’pose.’
These jokes the world plays, they’re not funny at all.
I’ve never heard anything, said Unborn Twin, so hilarious.
I bolted my egg and chips to get to the Old Gym by 12.15.
Most of our school was built in the last thirty years, but one part’s an old grammar school from Victorian times and the Old Gym’s in that. It’s not used much. Tiles get blown off on stormy days. One missed Lucy Sneads by inches last January, but no one’s been killed yet. One first-year kid did die in the Old Gym, though. Bullied so badly, he hanged himself with his tie. Up where the gym ropes hang down. Pete Redmarley swears he saw the kid hanging there, one stormy afternoon, three years ago, not quite dead. The kid’s head flip-flopped ’cause of his snapped neck and his feet spasmed, twenty feet off the ground. Pale as chalk, he was, ’cept for the red welt where his tie’d burnt. But