Big and Clever (3 page)

“Where's the wife?” Raks asks.

“Dunno.” I check my watch. It's nearly quarter to eight.

From where I'm sitting I can see Thurston Community College up at the top of the hill. Looking at the low red brick buildings, windows glinting as the sun slowly rises, it's hard not to get a bit nostalgic. I spent three years there. Happy times. I wasn't always the first one picked for games, or anything like that, but I wasn't the last either. I
was
someone at TCC. At Parkway, I'm nothing.

I look up again just in time to catch sight of a familiar figure coming down past the war memorial, shoulder length blonde hair blowing in the breeze. My stomach gives a little flutter. Zoe.

My dad might not have his Hollywood looks any more, but Zoe has. Think Keira Knighley's nose and mouth on Sienna Miller's face shape, and you're starting to get somewhere close. She's five five, fit body, smooth clear skin, blonde hair and pale green eyes. Even the way she moves is nice. She does a lot of swimming, dancing and gymnastics. There's a sort of natural grace about her. People stare at her. Lads and girls. I've got used to it now, just about.

She cuts across the road and comes straight over, smiling. She gives me a kiss. Zoe's not ashamed to be seen with the Parkway misfits. Things have brightened up no end.

“Hello, you,” she says. “Sorry I didn't call yesterday. I was really busy. You didn't worry did you?”

I shake my head, doing my best not to look at Raks who's raising his eyebrows and dropping his jaw.

“No,” I tell her. “No worries. Are you still coming round tonight? I'll have finished my papers by about six-thirtyish.”

She scrunches her face up, looking awkward.

“I can't. Not today. I'm really sorry. I've joined the drama group and we're putting on
Oliver
at Christmas. The auditions are tonight, so I'm not going to be back in Thurston until half past eight, nine o'clock. I'll have to give it a miss.”

“Oh, right,” I say. I feel slightly crushed, but I know I shouldn't blow things out of proportion. I smile but I'm sure it looks pretty unconvincing. “Which part are you going for?”

“I'm going to try out for one or two,” she tells me. “Nancy, Mrs Bumble. See how it goes. I know lots of people are going to audition. I'll just see what happens.”

I nod. I can't really think of anything else to say. For the first time I notice that she's wearing makeup. Just a bit of foundation and some eyeliner. I'm still surprised though. Zoe never wore make-up at TCC. She puts her head into my chest and I stroke her hair. We don't say much for the next few minutes, but it's still the most enjoyable part of my day.

It's nearly five to eight. The Townlands and Letchford Grammar buses have come and gone, but the other two are late. I'm just starting to toy with a fantasy where the Parkway and Richard Martin buses don't turn up at all, and I get to spend the whole day with Zoe, but then the Preston's coach rolls up at the crossroads, green and white with added rustpaint. Our bus. It grinds to a halt at the kerb and the doors hiss open.

I kiss Zoe, grab my bag and make my way over to the bus, following Raks up the steps. The driver has got Letchford Sound on. There's no getting away from The Tobemeister this morning. The bus is already half-full with the kids from Rushby and Collinsby. We find a couple of spare seats and Raks lets me take the one by the window so that I can wave. Zoe has wandered down towards the other Alderman Richard Martin kids, but she still blows me a kiss as the bus pulls away. I'm just feeling good about that when Raks jabs me in the ribs.

“You didn't wish her good luck with her audition, you bastard,” he says.

A wave of guilt sweeps over me.

“Fuck,” I say, quickly sending a text.

The journey is the usual route through the villages, picking up the odd passenger here and there, then out into the countryside, brown fields stretching away as far as you can see. A couple of the big kids on the back seat have been passing a half bottle of whisky around, and the driver's started casting a few glances in their direction, but that's about all. Some days it's a madhouse, upholstery being torn, the fire door getting opened every thirty seconds, graffiti scrawled on the seats, people chucking cans at passers-by. Not today though.

We come through the outskirts of town. Boarded-up tattoo parlours and kebab shops, plastered with faded posters for bands and nightclubs and films from years ago. Derelict pubs and half-demolished houses.

It's started raining now. Raks is staring out of the window, shaking his head.

“What a shithole.”

I can't disagree.

Letchford's a nothing place, stuck out in the middle of Lincolnshire, miles away from anywhere. When I was little I used to come into town with my mum and dad, Christmas shopping or going to the cinema. It used to seem big and glamorous. These days though, it's a town in serious decline. The only thing the place ever had going for it was lino. Nearly half of the town worked in the lino factories. But a few years back it all went badly wrong. Nobody wanted lino any more. Not the sort of lino they were making in Letchford anyway. Thousands were laid off, and the town never really recovered. My dad definitely didn't. He's been out of work for eight years now, on Incapacity Benefit for the last five. Chronic depression. But that's got more to do with my mum dying.

Raks sighs and turns his attention away from the window.

“We going fishing this weekend?”

“Mmm,” I say. “I've got a match for Thurston Dynamo on Sunday, but Saturday will be OK.”

“Up the canal again?”

“Yeah. Got some decent-sized perch and roach up there last time, didn't we?”

Raks nods.

“Yeah. Some beauties. And what about that zander I had? It must have been three pounds. Maybe a bit more.”

I stifle a laugh. His zander was nowhere near three pounds. It looked like a stickleback on steroids. I'm going to give him some gyp about it but I stop myself. I don't want to wind him up. And it's just nice to have something to look forward to.

The bus is coming past The Tony Mantle Health And Fitness Factory now. We keep going, heading along the side of the school perimeter fence, turning left, then left again through the main gates.

From the front, Parkway College doesn't look like much. It's just a big, single storey, grey block. On the inside though, it's a different story. The whole place has been built as one continuous spiral, gradually winding inwards until it comes to a circular central courtyard. Apparently it won some sort of architectural award when it was built back in the early seventies. There was an aerial photograph of the school in the
Letchford Argus
last week. Unless you looked closely, you could be forgiven for thinking that you were looking at an old, dried, coiled-up dog turd.

We stop and the big kids from the back seat bustle down to the front, barging people out of their way.

I yawn, pick my bag up, and then shuffle towards the exit doors. The rain's getting worse. I pull my hood up. I've got Maths, English Lit and French this morning. Then it's Geography and Biology this afternoon.

I puff out my cheeks. It's going to be a long day.

“Anyone? Anyone?” Mrs Wetherall looks from one side of the room to the other.

Nobody says anything. Ten minutes into the lesson and English Lit isn't going well.

She has another go.

“Can anyone offer me suggestions for symbols we might find in
Lord Of The Flies
?” Her eyes scan the room one more time. “
Symbols
.” She's emphasising the word, hoping it's going to trigger someone. You can hear the pleading in her voice. “Come on Year Tens. I know it's our first look at
Lord Of The Flies
as a class, but you were all asked to read the text. There must be somebody?”

We've reached a stand-off. Just about everybody in the room could come up with an answer if they really had to. I mean, the whole island's covered with symbols, isn't it? The conch, the pig's head, the glasses, you name it. The thing is though, nobody wants to be the first to break cover. Nobody wants to look too keen. And there's something off-putting about Mrs Wetherall too, with her VW Beetle,
Stop The War
badge, tie-dyed clothes, nose ring and red Doc Martens. The image is all about peace and love but there's a nasty side to her. She's like a hippy with the good bits taken out.

There's still no response. Everyone's got their heads down, trying to avoid catching Mrs Wetherall's eye. Me and Raks are OK. We're sat right at the back, just us two on the table near the brown concertina partition that separates Room 37a from Room 37b.

Mrs Wetherall tries a new tack.

“Emma,” she says, focusing her attention on Emma Atkins up at the front. “Perhaps you could start the ball rolling?”

Emma blushes. She'd been happily doodling away on her note pad, not expecting to participate.

“Er, is the conch a symbol, miss?” she says eventually.

Mrs Wetherall looks relieved.

“That's right, Emma,” she shouts. “Exactly right.” She bounds across to the whiteboard and scrawls up a cloud with the word
SYMBOLS
on it in blue marker pen, and
CONCH
on a line sticking out of the side.

A few hands go up and in no time the
SYMBOLS
cloud has got lines for
BEAST
,
MASKS
/
CLOTHES
,
FIRE
and
GLASSES
. I'm toying with the idea of tossing in
PIG'S HEAD
, but I'm finding it hard to concentrate because of all the noise coming from the other side of the partition. Mr Gillespie's teaching a Year Eleven Business Studies class next door, and he's getting the runaround.

Mr Gillespie's a Geordie, a real
Why-Aye
,
Howay the Lads
merchant. The kids are always winding him up, getting him to say words that sound funny in a Geordie accent. Today he's talking about types of competition. Every time he says Monopoly or Duopoly or Oligopoly everyone's pissing themselves laughing. By the sounds of it, things are building up to some sort of crescendo. Gillespie's raising his voice, trying to restore order. I'm just craning my head to the side, near to one of the rips in the partition, trying to hear what he's saying, when the door to our room swings open and Ryan Dawkins appears.

Mrs Wetherall's in the process of drawing another blue cloud on the board, this time with
PIGGY
written inside it. Hearing the door open, she swivels round and catches sight of Ryan.

“Ah. Mr Dawkins,” she says. She puts the lid back on her pen with a click and checks her watch. “And only twenty minutes into the session.”

I check my watch too. It's just gone ten, so we're fifteen minutes into the lesson really. Every face in the room is turning towards Ryan standing in the doorway. It's like one of those nature programmes where they use time-lapse photography to show a whole field of sunflower heads swivelling round to follow the sun across the sky.

“Sorry,” Ryan says. It doesn't look as if he's going to explain his late arrival.

“So pleased you could join us this week,” Mrs Wetherall says, voice heavy with sarcasm. “I don't think you actually managed it last week. It's really good of you to grace us with your presence.”

A couple of the kids near the front start to laugh, but I'm starting to feel a bit uneasy. Mrs Wetherall looks like she's enjoying herself, taking potshots at a sitting target. It seems a bit unfair. I've seen other kids turn up late for lessons and nobody's said a word. But this is Ryan Dawkins. His reputation precedes him.

Ryan shrugs.

“That's alright, miss,” he says. “No problem.”

Mrs Wetherall's eyes widen. Suddenly she's furious. It looks like there's going to be a scene. Before anything can happen though, Ryan has turned away and is heading towards our table, swinging his bag off his shoulder, putting his jacket on the back of a chair and sitting down. I get a sudden twinge of anxiety. ASBO Boy's just parked himself across from me. It's one thing feeling a bit of compassion for him, or nodding at him across the dining hall, but this is something else. He's supposed to be a headcase.

“Alright lads?” he says.

We both nod. Mrs Wetherall carries on looking daggers at Ryan for a few more seconds and then turns away and goes back to her
PIGGY
cloud. Ryan fishes an A4 pad and a biro out of his bag and chucks them on the table-top.

“I thought she was really going to go for you there,” Raks says.

Ryan waves his right hand in the air, like he's swatting a fly. A don't-give-a-shit gesture. I notice that the two outer knuckles of his left hand have pinkish scar tissue running across them. Up close he's quite intimidating. Taller and broader than Raks and me, black hair shaved down to a number one, pale skin, square jaw, piercing blue eyes and thick, dark eyebrows. He's in the same Adidas trainers and tracksuit top he was wearing the last time I saw him. Raks says the word is he was sent back a year at his last school. It could have been more than that. He looks about twenty.

“Water off a duck's back,” he says. “All teachers are the same. Always chipping away, looking to get me to blow up, so they can chuck me out.”

“She was bang out of order, though.”

Ryan's hand waves again.

“She'll get hers, one day.”

“I'd have just told her to piss off.” Raks is getting carried away now.

The corner of Ryan's mouth curves up in a grin.

“Would you?”

There's a pause as Raks shuffles about in his chair, looking uncomfortable. Telling people to piss off just isn't his style. Luckily for Raks, Ryan leaves it at that.

“I'm Ryan, by the way,” he says, stretching his hand out.

“Tom,” I say, taking Ryan's hand and shaking it. My anxiety is starting to subside now. He isn't so bad. In fact he seems quite a sound bloke. “And Rambo here is Raks.”