No. Not our table. Not now. It would never be our table again.
They pretended not to look, but I knew as soon as I walked on by their gazes would follow me, wondering where I was going to sit.
The Hell Cats had a table too. They never ate off it. They sat on top of it, or lay along it, or rested their feet on it. Today Wizzie was lying across the table on her belly, leaning her face on her hands, watching me heading towards them. She was always in trouble for it, but she didn’t care. Grace and Sonya were sitting on either side of her, throwing cake at each other. Lauren wasn’t even looking my way. She was sitting on the table too, eating an apple.
And I stopped right beside them.
I could feel everyone in the canteen hold their breath, expecting trouble. Wondering what was going to happen next.
I could almost hear the communal gasp at what did happen.
‘You’re only allowed to sit here if you’re one of us,’ Wizzie said.
I looked at Grace. ‘Move your lardass, Grace, I’m sitting.’ And I plonked myself down beside her.
Grace moved up. Wizzie slid on to the seat beside her. Lauren looked up and smiled. They moved up. They welcomed me in.
And I sat down.
It was a great moment. There, in front of the whole school, they were letting everyone know I belonged, and I was letting everyone see where my loyalties would lie from now on.
Why did I always think like the movies? During that long walk, it was as if the sound had been turned down, I couldn’t hear anything. As soon as I sat down the noise of the canteen at lunchtime was switched up to full blast.
‘See if you say one more thing about the size of my bum I’ll thump ye,’ Grace said.
I pretended to be shocked. ‘Are you allowed to thump your mates in this gang?’
‘No way.’ Lauren offered me a bit of chewing gum. ‘But you’re not allowed to slag them off either.’
‘We stick up for our m-m-mates,’ Sonya stuttered deliberately, daring me to say a word about it. I didn’t. I never would again.
I looked at Grace. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’
Grace looked away from me and I knew it would take more than an apology to make Grace happy about me being her mate.
I could see a lot of puzzled stares as I sat there. Everyone wondering what was going on. It made me smile. A mystery, and I love mysteries.
Suddenly Heather came hurrying up to us, her tray in her hands. Her mouth was hanging open and she couldn’t take her eyes off me. ‘What are you doing sitting here … with them?’ She looked around as if they were a bad smell. ‘Have they kidnapped you?’
‘Do you care? Will you pay the ransom?’ I asked.
‘I’d tell them to keep you.’
Wizzie blew a pink bubble. ‘Might just do that,’ she said.
Heather didn’t know what to say next. ‘Let me by,’ she finally muttered, staring at Grace’s big feet spread out in the passage.
I spread my feet out too. ‘Go another way,’ I told her.
She stood for a moment, unsure of what to do, shaking with anger. Then she turned on her heel and stamped away from us.
‘Heather won’t stand up to anyone on her own,’ I said.
Wizzie raised the eyebrow with the earring in it. It jiggled. ‘That’s good to know,’ she said.
‘So, is that me in?’ I asked.
‘Not quite,’ Lauren said.
‘Think it’s going to be that easy?’ Grace said.
‘We’ve decided you’ve got to do something to prove you’re worthy to be one of us.’ Lauren told me.
‘You mean, kicking your butts all over the football pitch wasn’t enough?’
‘We let you win,’ Grace said and turned her back on me.
‘Is this, like, a test?’ I asked. I didn’t like the sound of this. I’d heard about some of the boy gangs in the town and the daft initiation tests they had to get into the gang. One boy had supposedly died in very mysterious circumstances during one of those tests.
No. I wasn’t doing anything that involved grievous bodily harm, especially if it was my body that was going to be harmed. I wasn’t going to tie myself down on the railway tracks either, and try to escape before the next train splattered me all over the place. I wasn’t that desperate to be a Hell Cat.
‘So what is it I have to do?’ I asked.
‘Nothing much,’ Wizzie said. ‘Just impress us.’
Chapter Thirty-Six
Impress them? How was I ever going to impress the Hell Cats with their wild ways? They had done everything.
Abseil off the Erskine Bridge? Kidnap the prime minister?
But I knew I had to think of something. And it had to be good.
I hardly saw where I was going as I walked home. I was so lost in thought I almost fell over Junior Bonnar, and his three cases, coming out of our close.