Sonya was on me now. She sank her teeth into my ear. I screamed so loud that for a split second Wizzie turned to me again. A grin flashed across her face when she saw why I was screaming. I elbowed Sonya in the chest and heard her gasp for breath, but she let go of my ear. I staggered to my feet, clutching my ear. So much blood was pouring from it. The roars from the crowd were louder now, yelling at us, egging us on.
‘Get right in there, Driscoll!’
‘Bite off her other ear, Sonya!’
‘There’s nothing to beat a cat fight!’
I took a second to look around. And that’s when I realised that the girls from the school had stepped to the back of the crowd, or maybe they had been pushed there. The cheering, the roaring, was all coming from the boys. We were surrounded by them. Cheering, jeering at us. I saw Zak Riley and his mates watching, taking bets on the winners.
All the boys were there.
And we were entertaining them.
‘There’s nothing to beat a cat fight.’ The words repeated themselves in my head and made me angry.
We were the entertainment for this bunch of morons!
I pulled at Heather, hauling her off Lauren. ‘Are we going to put up with this?’
Heather blinked and looked, saw what I saw: boys laughing at us, betting on us.
At the same moment, so did Lauren. She stood straight, shouted, ‘Wizzie!’
Wizzie gave Erin a final push, sending her stumbling to the ground. Then she stood, legs apart, following Lauren’s gaze. Erin saw it too.
Boys.
Laughing at us.
Jeering at us.
One of them shouted from the crowd, ‘Don’t stop now, lassies. This is great. I’ve got a bet on you to win, Wizzie. Get right into them!’
And a chant went up from his mates all around him.
‘Win Wizzie! Win Wizzie!’
I saw Wizzie really angry then, her eyes go round as moons. She yelled back, ‘This Wizzie isn’t going to win for any boy!’ She glanced round at her mates. Her eyes seemed to miss the rest of us. ‘We don’t win for anybody but us. Right?!’
‘Right!’ Grace Morgan yelled back.
Neither do we, I was ready to shout. But it was Erin who roared it first, and suddenly she was charging at the boys, Wizzie right by her side.
Wizzie yelled, ‘Get them!’
Chapter Nine
Boys jumped to their feet. They leapt from the walls. They hooted with delight. But they didn’t run. They stood, looking puzzled, as if they couldn’t quite figure out what was going on.
I began hooting too, like some kind of wild animal, and, after a second, the others took up the chant. Some of the boys were still smiling, but the smile soon dropped from their faces as we charged towards them. Worry took its place. We began to circle them, howling like wolves, like wild female wolves.
They stepped back. ‘Hey, come off it.’
‘Fun’s fun, but this is beyond a joke.’
‘Think ye can scare us?’ a weedy voice shouted.
‘I think we can,’ Wizzie said. She moved first. I’d never seen her move so fast. She almost leapt, and a couple of the boys stumbled and fell.
‘Get them!’ Erin shouted, just the second before I planned to. Why was I always a second too late?
And we chased them. The boys turned and ran, wondering what was happening. Wondering what we would do to them if we caught them. Humiliate them, embarrass them? Maybe being chased and caught by a bunch of girls would be humiliation enough.
But the boys were determined not to be caught. I could see that in the way they ran, pulling at their friends to keep them ahead of us. They were still laughing, but there was a panic in their laughter now.
I saw little Rob Bolton squeeze through a broken rail in the school gates. His jacket caught and he pulled so hard he finally ripped his sleeve, he was that determined to get away from us. Two of the other boys threw their rucksacks over a wall and leapt after them, and got stuck on the top. I’d never seen Zak run so fast either, as if somebody had wound him up.
I was laughing as I ran. I was screaming with laughter. We were all laughing. I lifted a stone and hurled it. It smashed against a wall, narrowly missing one of the boys. He got such a fright he tripped, rolled over and ran off without even lifting his rucksack. We didn’t stop chasing them until they had all disappeared. Jumping on buses, racing behind houses, vanishing into shops, belting round corners.
Finally, we stopped running. I bent over, rested my hands on my knees, trying to get my breath back.
Erin leant against a wall. ‘That was brilliant.’
Rose was already fixing her hair. ‘They won’t laugh at us in a hurry again,’ she said.
Heather was breathing so hard I thought she was hyperventilating.
I looked round for Wizzie and her crowd. They had stopped too. On the other side of the road, but miles apart from us. They gazed across. We gazed back. For a second I thought we might wave at each other, or give some kind of sign that we had beaten them. A moment of togetherness that would change everything.