Worse Than Boys(31)

‘This is the final warning. I’m going to be watching all of you from now on. And I’m going to be speaking to all of your parents.’

Mrs Tasker held me back until everyone else had left the room. I wondered if she could feel my shoulders shaking under her hand. Now I was really in trouble. Couldn’t they see that? Where was it all going to end? How was it all going to end?

I was ignored by them all until home time. I was desperate to get out of the school gates, away from everything. Though I knew home and my mum were no comfort to me. I expected Erin and the rest to be waiting for me, but it was Wizzie who was there. She wasn’t even looking at me when she spoke. She spoke in a voice so soft that anyone looking might have thought she hadn’t even noticed I was there. But her words were just like a knife inside me.

‘You’re going to be really sorry for grassing us up, Driscoll. One dark night, me and the girls are coming to get you. And you’ll have nobody to back you up.’

Then she moved inches closer so I could catch her next words. ‘See, McGinty had it all wrong. Being in a gang means you belong. And you, Driscoll, don’t belong any more.’





Chapter Twenty-Eight


It was true. I didn’t belong any more. And every day after that, I could feel Wizzie and her gang watching me. They were going to get me for grassing, and I remembered all the times we’d come up against each other. I hadn’t been afraid then, but I’d always had my gang to back me up. Now I had no one.

It wasn’t that everyone turned against me. Moira Hood, in my class, a really nice girl, always asked me to sit with her in the canteen, came to talk to me in the yard. But they even managed to turn that against me.

‘I see you’re Moira’s latest charity case,’ Erin muttered one day as she passed me in the corridor.

A charity case, that’s exactly what I felt like.

Zak Riley offered to let me join his crowd. ‘You’re safer with a bunch of boys, Hannah.’ And that made all his friends laugh. If I’d thought he was serious I might just have agreed.

I met Rose’s brother coming out of the boys’ toilets one day and hurried after him. Rose thinks her brother’s brilliant and I thought that maybe if I could talk to him he would pass a message on to Rose.

I called after him and he turned round. I saw his eyes go up in exasperation. ‘What is it, Hannah?’

‘I want you to talk to Rose.’

‘I already have. I think you’re all acting like idiots. But girls fall out all the time. It’s not the end of the world, Hannah.’

I realised then that what was the end of the world for me, was to him just his sister and one of her pals having a falling out. He saw how pale my face was. How could he not?

‘Don’t let it get to you,’ he said. ‘You look ill.’

In a way, I was ill. I was sick to my stomach all the time. Because I cry myself to sleep every night, I wanted to tell him, but he answered it himself. ‘There’s a bug going about. Think you might have caught it.’ Then he took another step back as if he might catch it too.

He left, assuring me he would talk to his sister. I think he only said that to get away from me. When I turned from him, there were Wizzie and Grace and Lauren all watching and smirking. I felt even sicker.

My only hope was that it just might work. Rose thought the world of her big brother. Maybe she’d listen to him.

Everyone in school was aware that Wizzie and her gang had threatened to get me. Most people thought I had it coming – hadn’t I always been fighting with them? Moira thought I should tell one of the teachers. In Moira’s world, the teachers always helped. But I was done with teachers.

It was later that same day when Rose passed a note to me. For a moment, a wonderful moment, I thought I had the answer I was looking for. She even smiled, with those bright white teeth of hers she was so proud of. Teeth that didn’t need the brace everyone else wore. My hands were shaking as I unfolded it.

Don’t ever speak to my brother again. You deserve everything you get. Grass.

I looked back at her and her smile had turned to a snarl. Erin and the rest erupted with laughter. She’d told them all.

The teacher turned from the blackboard. ‘What’s the joke?’ he snapped.

And Erin mouthed to me, ‘You are.’

Wizzie saw it all. Her gaze seemed to say, ‘No one to back you up. Not long now.’ It was as if she was playing with me, the way a cat plays with a mouse, waiting for the right moment to pounce on me. And I couldn’t get Wizzie’s knife out of my head. She’d never used it in a fight with us. In fact, I’d never even seen her with one. But it was all I thought about. She’d never use it on me, would she? But I had heard on the news just that morning, about a girl who had been stabbed in the school dinner queue because she’d grassed.