Big and Clever (8 page)

It's bright today. Late October, just gone half past seven on Monday morning, but the sun's in the sky and the birds are singing. It feels like it's going to be a good day. I heave myself up onto the wall of the Bulls Head beer garden and Raks boosts himself up next to me.

“Come on then,” he says.

I look around. We're earlier than usual and hardly any of the other kids have arrived at the bus stop yet. I reach down into my bag and get out the newspaper I've just bought.
The Sun
. The headline says
NEW PRISONS FIASCO
, but it's not the news I'm looking for. Opening the paper to the middle pages, I pull out the
Super Goals
supplement.
28 Pages. Britain's No 1 Pullout
. Wayne Rooney's on the front cover, snarling and looking aggrieved about something, but I'm not interested in that. I'm flicking through the Premier League reports and the Championship reports and the League One reports, back towards the League Two news.

“Anything?” Raks says.

“Not yet.” I keep on scanning, across the pages and down the columns. The League Two table is on page 24. Letchford are down to 18th. “Come on,” Raks says. “You must have gone past it.” He reaches across me, pulling the edge of the paper up so that he can look too.

I turn over another page, and there it is.

WHYMAN RUES DEFENSIVE LAPSE

Letchford Town 1 Castleton Rovers 1

Letchford boss John Whyman fumed as his League Two strugglers failed to hold onto their lead.

In a match that sprang to life in second half stoppage time, record signing Danny Holmes shook off his injury woes to head the Tangerines ahead, only for Mark Young to level for Castleton after a scramble in the Letchford goalmouth with literally seconds remaining.

Whyman said : “To say the least I'm truly disappointed. It was two points thrown away.

“I thought we defended well all match. We showed great control but a momentary lapse has cost us dear.”

In a final blow for Whyman, on an afternoon he'll want to forget, Letchford and Castleton fans clashed in ugly scenes in the minutes after the final whistle.

I look at Raks. He looks at me.

“We're in!” I shout.

We both start laughing. We were there. We were involved. And now it's here in black and white. In
The Sun
. Validation. In the oddest sort of way it feels like the biggest achievement of my life.

“Unbelievable,” Raks says. He takes the paper out of my hands and reads the last sentence out loud. “
Fans clashed in ugly scenes in the minutes after the final whistle
.”

We both laugh again, and we're still laughing when a voice I recognise cuts in.

“What's so funny?” It's Zoe.

Instantly I'm embarrassed, caught unawares. I grab
Super Goals
back from Raks and shove it into my bag. It's like cramming porn mags under the bed when I hear my dad coming up the stairs.

“Oh, nothing much,” I say. I slide down from the wall and give Zoe a kiss. She smells nice. Freshly washed hair and body spray. “You OK? I've not seen you all weekend.”

She nods.

“I tried to call you yesterday afternoon but your phone was off. Was the match good on Saturday?”

I sniff. I'm calmer now.

“Yeah. It was alright.”

Zoe smiles. She's wearing lipstick today.

“I looked out for the result on
Sky
,” she says. “It was a draw wasn't it?”

“Yeah. One-all. We should have won though.” I look at her and notice that her eyes are being drawn down towards my feet. Or to be more precise, my shoes. Blue and white Nikes with a red swoosh.

“No school shoes today?” she asks.

“Nah.” I try sound offhand. In truth my school shoes are stuffed in my bag. I took them off and changed into my Nikes the minute I got round the corner into Wolverton Road. Raks did exactly the same. We'll be putting our jeans on as soon as we get into the toilets at Parkway.

“Your dad not mind?”

I shake my head.

“Nah,” I say again. But of course my dad doesn't know.

Zoe's looking at my face now. There's a flicker of concern in her eyes. She reaches up with her hand, running her fingers over the bump on my right cheek. It's where I got punched by the blond lad, outside Southlands on Saturday.

“What's happened here?” she asks. Her green eyes are watching me intently.

“Bloody hell,” I say. “It's like
Twenty Questions
. I got elbowed yesterday morning, playing for Dynamo.” I thought she might ask about my face so I already had my answer lined up. I hope it doesn't sound too rehearsed.

“Looks sore,” she says.

I shrug.

“It's alright.” I push my tongue into the side of my mouth, into the rough patch where my teeth mashed against the inside of my cheek. At the same time I reach up to feel the lump on the side of my head where the coin hit me. The lump's still there, but I don't think Zoe can see it. “Anyway, am I going to see you tonight? Mondays are usually good for you aren't they?”

She shakes her head.

“Not tonight. I've got
Oliver
rehearsals after school, right through until seven o'clock, so I'll be whacked out by the time I get home.”

I raise my eyebrows.

“Rehearsals already?”

She nods.

“We've not got long you know. It's only six weeks, so I'm going to be staying late at college quite a lot this half term. I've got pages of dialogue to learn, and I have to sing a song too.
That's Your Funeral
. Well, not just me. Simon too.”

“Simon?” I say, trying to keep the concern out of my voice.

“Simon Matthews,” Zoe says. “Mr Sowerberry. He's really nice. You'd like him.”

“Right,” I say, as cheerfully as I can.

“Actually, I can give you the date of the performance now.” She dips into her shoulder bag and brings out her diary. “Friday December 15th. Eight o'clock in the drama studio. You're definitely coming, aren't you?”

“Course,” I say.

“You too, Raks?”

Raks nods.

“Count me in.”

I check my watch. It's just gone quarter to eight. There's a hiss of air brakes and I look up to see our bus at the crossroads.

“Right then,” I say, picking up my bag. “Got to go.”

Zoe stands on tiptoes and gives me a peck on the lips.

“See you then.” She pulls a strand of hair out of her eyes. “And sorry about tonight. It'll be hard this next few weeks, but I'll make it up to you, yeah?”

“Yeah,” I say.

The bus stops and the doors swing open. I climb on board and follow Raks along the aisle. I wave to Zoe, she waves back and then the bus pulls away.

We sit down. We're behind the Dalton twins. Matching blue parkas, matching telephone-directory-thickness sci-fi novels. I put my bag at my feet and fish out
Super Goals
, flicking through to page 27 again.

“Is it still there?” Raks asks, grinning.

I laugh.

“It's still there.”

We don't say much for the next ten minutes. The Tobemeister's playing
Three From The Eighties
on Letchford Sound but I'm not really listening. I scroll up and down the menu on my phone and think about the History assignment I was supposed to be working on yesterday. Raks is staring out of the window, at the leaves swirling in the breeze and the rubbish rattling in the hedgerows. As we turn onto the Medstone road he takes a deep breath and puffs out his cheeks.

“So what did your dad say when you got back on Saturday evening?”

I wrinkle my forehead.

“Not a lot. Asked how it was. Said he might come to a game one time.”

Raks laughs.

“What did you say to that?”

I shrug.

“Just said I didn't think it would be his cup of tea.”

We watch the countryside flashing past for another couple of minutes. Every now and again Raks is shaking his head, the way he does when he's trying to get something straightened out in his mind.

“It was one hell of a day, wasn't it?” he says eventually.

I push my tongue into the ripped inside of my mouth.

“You could say that.”

“I couldn't sleep,” Raks says. “Saturday night, I just lay there, thinking about everything that happened. I don't mean the match. I mean what happened afterwards. It was going over and over in my head.”

I nod.

“Yeah. I didn't get a wink on Saturday night either. Yesterday morning, playing for Dynamo, I was like a zombie. I spent ninety minutes trundling up and down the right wing, but I hardly touched the ball. I wasn't into the game at all. Same as you, things were just going round and round my brain.”

The bus stops outside the chip shop in Medstone and two girls get on. Year Elevens. Good-looking and self-confident. Our eyes follow them as they pass by, heading towards the back, but they don't notice us.

“The whole thing was weird though, wasn't it?”

Raks says, as the bus draws away from the kerb again. “When it all kicked off, something came over me. I was punching and kicking people, but it didn't seem like it was me who was doing the punching and kicking. I just didn't feel guilty about it at all. It's like because I was part of a crowd I wasn't responsible for what I was doing.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I know what you mean.”

Raks has got a faraway look in his eyes now.

“And I felt like I had all this power, like there was danger all around but nothing could hurt me. It was this amazing buzz. It was…” his voice trails off, and he shakes his head again.

I just nod. I know that he probably wants me to help him put things into words, but there's no point. I couldn't do it on Saturday, and I still can't. It was a complete overload. Too intense. But brilliant.

The rest of the journey into Letchford seems to pass more quickly than normal. It only feels like a couple of minutes since we left Medstone, but already my watch is saying it's quarter past eight and we're heading along towards the Parkway all-weather football pitches. I'm just thinking about getting my bits and pieces together when someone heaves themselves into the seat behind us, sticks a hand between the headrests and ruffles my hair. Ducking out of the way, I twist round to see what's going on. A pink, freckly, grinning face looms over me. It's the big, red-haired Letchford lad who laid out the bald-headed Castleton fan on Saturday. The one who winked at me.

“Well, well, well,” he says, looking at me, then at Raks. “It's the fucking Kray twins.”

We all laugh.

“I'm Gary,” he says. “Gary Simmons.”

Raks and me shake Gary's hand.

“I'm Raks,” Raks says. “And this is Tom.”

“You two are mates of Ryan's, right?” Gary says.

We both nod.

“You're dark horses, you are,” Gary says. “I'd never have had you two down as Letchford lads, but you're a right pair of fucking yobbos.”

I smile, shaking my head. I've never been called a yobbo before.

Gary looks out of the window. We're coming through the gates now.

“You should sit up the back with us,” he says. “Not down here with all these muppets.” He looks around to see if anyone's going to object to being called a muppet. Nobody does.

“Yeah, thanks Gary.” I try to keep it low-key, try not to show how chuffed I am.

Gary stands up. He's said his piece. He nods at us both, then heads for the front of the bus. His mates from the back seat pile down after him. They look like a team of debt-collectors. Gary, another white lad, and a massive black kid who virtually blocks out the light as he comes past.

“I wouldn't want to spill his pint,” Raks says.

I laugh. We watch the lads disappear down the stairs and then we stand up. By the time we're out on the pavement, heading down towards reception, Gary and the rest of the gang are long gone.

Five minutes later we're sitting in our tutor room waiting for Mr Green to turn up. When it's not being used for registration or for tutor group meetings, Room 16 is the GCSE Art and Design studio. The whole place stinks of oil paint and PVA glue. All sorts of artworks are balanced on shelves or against the radiators, drying or waiting to be mounted. Up against the far wall there's an eight-foot rowing boat made from papier mache. Apparently, some of the Year Elevens did it for a project last year. They never got to try it out though. Health and Safety issues.

The place is packed this morning and everyone seems to be talking at twice the normal volume. At least three types of music are competing for air space, blasting out of mobile phones in different parts of the room. There's some hip-hop, some indie and some slit-your-wrists dirge about wanting to commit suicide coming from the direction of the black trench coat brigade.

Usually I'm a bit self-conscious at times like this, a bit aware that me and Raks are slightly out on a limb. But I'm feeling more confident today. Over by the stationery cupboard, Susie Black and Carly Watts are locked in conversation. Susie and Carly are what you'd call popular girls. Well dressed. Quite fit. Pretty bright. Every so often, one or the other of them shoots a glance at me and Raks. They're gossiping about us. And judging from the way Carly's just smiled at me, what they're saying isn't too terrible.

I nudge Raks.

“Don't make it too obvious,” I say. “But check out Susie and Carly.”

Raks takes a quick look. He raises his eyebrows.

“See what I'm getting at?”

“Yeah.” Raks shakes his head. “It's a bit of a first isn't it? Those two normally look at us like we're something they've just scraped off the bottom of their shoe. What's changed?”

“Well it can only be one thing,” I say. “They've got wind of what happened on Saturday.”

Raks frowns.