Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,67
like a giant and the tiny, skinny-legged Debbie Mason look about as unstable as if she were walking on stilts. They all wore their hair in the “shaggy dog” style of the band whose members were obviously their idols, the Bay City Rollers, and each of the three had the image of a different tartan-clad pop star on a huge round badge worn on her school blazer.
“So, who do you like best, Les or Woody or Derek?” the diminutive Debbie Mason demanded almost as soon as she had told me her name. I frowned and looked over at Tracey, hoping for guidance. I had no idea what she was talking about. “Les or Woody or Derek?” she asked again. This time she nodded toward the badge on her chest, and I realized that she was talking about the members of the Bay City Rollers.
Since I really had not given this very much thought until that moment, I was genuinely bewildered. Certainly, it had been impossible to escape the Bay City Rollers—their pictures in magazines, the television footage of frenzied fans chasing them down the street, their songs on the radio or trilled by groups of girls at my last school—but I’d never actually looked at the faces of those band members to rank who might be better-looking, and I certainly hadn’t remembered their names.
“I’m not sure, I …” I stalled, made increasingly nervous now that the three Debbies were staring eagerly at me, wondering which of them would end up hating me when I picked the wrong name. It occurred to me that my future social success could rest on this one decision. I had no idea what to say. Fortunately, Tracey spoke up.
“God, are you three still going on about that bunch of Scottish morons? How can you think any bloke who prances about in trousers six inches above his ankles is sexy? Besides, their music is a pile of bloody crap.”
I looked from Tracey to the three girls, all of whom were glowering and gripping both ends of their tartan scarves so tightly that I could see blue veins pushing against the skin on the backs of their hands. For a moment, I was afraid they might explode at Tracey, pounding her with those veiny fists. Instead, Debbie Mason again turned to me. “So, who do you like best?” she demanded.
“Oh, David Cassidy,” I said, this time without hesitation. “I think he’s sexier than them all.”
The three girls scowled at me, but Tracey was grinning. “See, I told you she was all right,” she said. And, much to my surprise, all three girls shrugged an acquiescent agreement.
The Debbies, Tracey, and I were all in Form 2D, and our form-room teacher was Mr. Davies, a Welshman with a big, booming voice and an enormous belly that, if he hadn’t been a man, would have convinced me that he was pregnant. After he took registration, he handed out our new timetables, made a few remarks about the critical importance of quiet and orderly conduct when moving about the school, and told us to make our way to morning assembly. At that, there was the deafening shriek and clatter of thirty chairs pushed back and a rampaging rush to exit the room. Battered by swinging satchels and bags, I followed Tracey and the Debbies as they flew, with everyone else, toward the door.
By the time I reached the corridor, I found myself detached from Tracey and the Debbies, trailing at the very back of the crowd heading toward the assembly hall. Then, as I reached the corridor that led to the hall, I saw someone I knew. “Hiya,” I said.
“Hiya, Jesse Bennett.” It was Malcolm. He was standing in a little alcove away from the river of moving students, leaning against the wall, his face pressed into a book. It was much fatter than the one he’d been reading the first time I saw him, and it had a more mature title, too: Crime and Punishment. Something I might find in the adult section of the mobile library, I thought—if the librarian didn’t deem it pornographic.
“Aren’t you going to assembly?” I asked Malcolm, gesturing toward the crowd of students flooding past us.
He shrugged. “What’s the rush? All it’s going to be is a few boring hymns, the Lord’s Prayer, and the headmaster giving us a lecture about working hard and obeying school rules.” He made a theatrical cough and adopted a pompous expression. “Though you might be descended from apes,” he