Worse Than Boys(42)

Erin just couldn’t handle it. She confronted me in the changing rooms for PE. Her face was like thunder.

‘Slumming it a bit, aren’t you?’

‘Actually, I think I’m moving up in the world,’ I snapped right back to her. I wasn’t angry, or apologetic. I was funny, the way I used to be. Why couldn’t I have been like this last week, during all those weeks when they had made my life such a misery?

I could see Erin didn’t like the change in me. Good. She tossed her strawberry blonde hair and pouted her lips. Once I would have thought she looked cool. Now, she just looked stupid.

Just then Heather and Rose came into the changing rooms, looking for Erin. They surrounded me. ‘Oh, look who it is – the girl who’s found new levels to sink to.’

They were trying to humiliate me, the three of them, standing round me, blocking me in. Trying to make me afraid. Just a week ago they would have managed it. Now they just made me laugh. They looked so stupid, standing there trying to act tough. They suddenly looked to me like silly little girls playing games. Was that the way we had always looked to Wizzie and the rest? Now that I was seeing them from the other point of view, they weren’t scary at all. They were a joke.

Heather shoved me, expecting me to shove back, or maybe to be scared. I didn’t even stumble. I only laughed. That shook her. ‘What’s so funny?’ she said.

‘You. You’re just so pathetic, Heather.’

Rose punched my arm. ‘What’s happened to you?’

Erin pulled her away. ‘Don’t even ask her. Leave her be, Rose. She’s not worth bothering about.’

‘Scared, are you?’ I asked, and Erin turned on me. There was red-hot anger in her eyes.

‘At least we wouldn’t have fought you all at once, like your new mates did.’

‘I took them one at a time, square go, and I’ve discovered you can trust them to give you a square go.’

‘You could trust us.’

‘Could I? You proved the kind of friends you are.’ I stood up to them. I wasn’t afraid.

I saw what was in all their eyes then. It was Rose’s question they wanted answered. In just a few days, what had happened to me?

I don’t know what would have happened next if Mrs Carter, the PE teacher, hadn’t bounced into the changing rooms. She took one look at us and bellowed, ‘What’s going on here? Are you all right, Hannah?’ She looked at me the way I had seen her looking at me so often lately. As if I was the poor little victim, the one she had to protect.

I got to my feet and pushed Heather aside. ‘I’m perfectly fine, Mrs Carter. The girls here were just asking me advice on how to get rid of bad breath. But personally, I think they’re past any help.’

I could almost feel the daggers zooming from their eyes. I ignored them. I was enjoying myself. Why had I let them bring me down so low? They were nothing. And what had changed me? Not just becoming one of the Hell Cats. No. Not even fighting Wizzie and winning. No. I knew what had happened to me.

It was the fact that I had vowed never to be anybody’s victim again.





Chapter Thirty-Eight


That night was one of Mum’s early shifts. She had settled herself in front of the television to watch her favourite detective serial as I was getting ready to go out. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Just going to meet my mates, Mum.’

She looked up at me and smiled. ‘I’ve waited so long to hear you say that. I knew it was only a matter of time before you all got together again. Girls fall in and out all the time. It never lasts.’

She thought it was her lovely Erin and friends I was meeting up with. She’d go spare if she knew who it really was. So I didn’t tell her.

She came with me to the door. ‘Now remember, don’t be late. Have you got your mobile with you? Well, you go and have a good time.’

I left her happy. She’d enjoy her programme all the more now. Why should I spoil it? She’d find out who my mates were soon enough.

I met them in the town centre. We all turned up, and then walked like Amazons, arm in arm, through the mall. We broke up for no one. Anyone who wanted past had to walk round us. It was brilliant!

One group of girls looked as if they weren’t going to move. They saw us coming, linked arms and locked themselves together.

‘Tilda and her mates,’ Wizzie whispered. ‘From up my estate.’ She said it as if it belonged to her. ‘Mingers.’

I would have laughed if I hadn’t felt so tense. Mingers – what we had called Wizzie and the Hell Cats – was what she was calling another gang she considered lower than her.

The Mingers looked as if they were spoiling for trouble.