Worse Than Boys(2)

I ran to the doors. The train was picking up speed, but the Hell Cats were still keeping up, and getting madder by the minute. I was vaguely aware of the two women and the man moving off, muttering their way into the next carriage. I grabbed the handrails and swung myself up and, with all the force I could muster, I kicked both feet against the doors. The carriage shuddered. Wizzie was so taken aback she stumbled and fell back on to the platform.

We roared with laughter as her mates gathered round to help her up.

Only the old woman was left in the carriage with us. She looked at us as if we were dirt.

‘You’re worse than boys!’ she snapped. ‘Worse than boys!’

Worse than boys. Of course we were. And that made us really laugh.

It was a good night. The best.

I thought then, how could it ever change?





Chapter Two


The old bat complained about us. Can you believe that?! She was on the phone first thing on Monday morning. She recognised Wizzie. Let’s face it, once you see her it’s hard to forget her. That hair alone makes her stand out. And she was still in her school blazer. Between you and me, it’s all she can afford to wear.

We knew something was happening when Wizzie and co were ordered from the class and practically frogmarched to the Head’s office. We waited for our turn. It wasn’t the first time we’d been in trouble with them. It didn’t come.

I found out why just before lunchtime. Wizzie grabbed me in the corridor. She would have had me by the hair if I hadn’t leapt away from her.

‘What’s your problem?’ I yelled at her.

‘We got the blame for that! Just us!’ Wizzie’s voice was so common. She couldn’t hide her roots – not in her hair or her voice. We all made fun of the way she talked. ‘You’ll pay for that, pal.’

‘Make us,’ I said, egging her on.

Lauren jumped in, always the first to follow her leader. ‘You were on that train as well. You caused as much trouble as we did. But it’s always us that gets it, never the Lip Gloss Girls.’

They were gathered round me now, like zombies ready to strike. Come to think of it, that’s a pretty good description of Wizzie, with her white face and that stand-to-attention hair. A zombie. But I wasn’t scared. I pushed Wizzie aside. ‘Your problem, not ours.’

Wizzie tried to trip me. She stuck out her foot, but at the last minute I jumped and it was Wizzie who stumbled.

‘Muppet!’ I shouted. And I hurried off, not running – I never ran away. There would have to be two moons in the sky before I’d run away. I just hurried as if I was trying to get away from a bad smell. I knew they hated it that I wasn’t afraid of them. Even when I was on my own, I was never afraid of them. Why should I be? I had my friends to rely on, and my friends had never let me down.

Other people did, always had. My dad, leaving us when I was only a baby. And my mum, always so bitter about men, about life, about everything. She always thought she was the one who’d been handed the sticky end of the lollipop of life.

‘Nothing ever goes right for me,’ was her favourite saying. ‘If I didn’t have bad luck I would have no luck at all. You’ll be just like me, Hannah. Wait and see. Nothing ever goes right for people like us.’

But I would never be ‘people like us’. I would never be like Mum, I promised myself. I was always going to be lucky. I would make things go right for me. I was going to be the best. And with friends like Erin and Heather and Rose, what could go wrong?

I told them all at lunchtime in the canteen about Wizzie. ‘They must have got hell for what happened on the train, bringing down the reputation of the school and all that.’

According to the teachers, the Hell Cats were always bringing down the reputation of the school. Wearing their skirts too short, dyeing their hair, chewing gum. Common as muck.

‘He probably thinks they had something to do with that mugging anyway,’ Erin said.

Just a few days before an old woman had been held up by a gang of girls and her pension had been stolen. It had happened on their estate, and one of the girls had threatened the old woman with a knife, so naturally, for us, Wizzie was the prime suspect.

‘I love it when they get the blame!’ Erin said, laughing.

‘At least they didn’t tell him we were there as well,’ Heather said.

Erin looked at her as if she had two heads, and I could see Heather didn’t like that. But honestly, sometimes Heather was so dim. I sometimes think her lift didn’t go to the top floor.

‘Of course they didn’t,’ Erin said patiently, as if she was talking to an idiot. ‘That’s the worst thing you could ever do. Grass on somebody, even your worst enemy.’