Posh and Prejudice (6 page)
“Well you had all Sunday, Joshua!” Ms. Bracket said sternly.
“Yes, and I planned to read it,” Joshua said. “But then I went out for brunch with my parents to Applebees in Leytonstone
and when I got back my dad started watching his DVD boxset of
The Sopranos
Season 4 which, interestingly enough, we both agreed contained a lot of striking Shakespearian parallels, y’know, with it
focusing on an aging leader and his children jostling for power.”
Ms. Bracket smiled when he said that and let him off. Joshua Fallow gets off with stuff a lot ’cos he’s got the gift of gab.
And he’s properly good-looking. Not just “oh yeah he’s sort of buff” good-looking but in an “oh my days dat boy is bare choong”
sort of good-looking. Not that I think that but other girls do.
11
PM
—And what is BRUNCH???
One of the reasons I feel sorry for Uma is that despite the fact she’s trying proper hard to be like a normal Sixth Former,
and despite the fact she’s totally trying not to drop-kick Sonia Cathcart across the common room then finish her off with
a karate chop when Sonia makes those little comments about how hard FOUR AS-LEVELS are if you have to do four of them WHICH
SONIA DOES BY THE WAY… none of this matters. ’Cos just as folks are beginning to chill out a bit and forget that Uma is a
Brunton-Fletcher then BLOODY CLINTON BRUNTON-FLETCHER starts turning up around the school gates on his bloody tiny BMX, selling
weed to folk as young as Year Ten. KNOBHEAD.
“Can’t you tell him to stop?” Sonia Cathcart said proper loudly to Uma today in study hall. Oh my days I hope Sonia Cathcart’s
god is looking down on her ’cos she is going to get one good old proper ass-whooping on the day Uma gets kicked out and has
nothing to lose. Uma just opened her
King Lear
and pretended to read. “He ain’t nothing to do with me,” she said under her breath narkily.
Clinton was up at the school again today. Hanging about looking well wide. I got Wesley to be a double agent tonight and ask
our Murphy about whether he is buying any weed off Clinton ’cos if he is I’m going to be seriously narked ’cos I don’t want
him turning out like all those lads did when I was in Year Ten who got into smoking skunk and before you know it they’re just
sitting in the park smoking all the time and that’s all they do, smoke smoke smoke and they end up like Cotch and Eric who
Carrie once made us double-date and who act like they got some sort of brain damage. Or they end up like Luther who smoked
some skunk so strong that he got Kezia Marshall pregnant and don’t even remember doing it.
Wesley says that Murphy says that he ain’t buying any weed off Clinton. Wesley says that one of Murphy’s mates Delano is though.
Murphy says that Delano’s eighteen-year-old brother Janelle has already found out and is proper raging. Murphy says that Janelle
rolls with some proper hoods and he’s coming up to the school gates to kill Clinton.
I said to Wesley, “What does he mean
kill
Clinton?” and Wesley says he didn’t ask ’cos he was trying to play it cool like James Bond and not ask too much. I feel sorry
for Mr. Bamblebury, our headmaster. He was just on a news report showing off about Mayflower’s “Bright new start” too.
I’m quite enjoying History, but I don’t go about telling folks. The only reason my mother is off my back right now about doing
A-Levels is ’cos I always make a proper painful face when I mention school as if every day is like having your skin peeled
off and rolled in toilet cleaner. If I hate it she’ll keep making me go.
Today we were learning about Martin Luther who was this bloke in the 14th century who started the Protestant faith by writing
this notice to the pope saying something like, “Oi Bruv, you are bare jokes mate. This Catholic faith malarkey is a right
old ripoff.” Then he hammers it up on a door and before you know it all sorts of beef has kicked off and there’s this totally
rival crew to the Catholics started up called the Protestants. I like History ’cos it proves you can do one little thing and
the world can change forever. A bit like when Tabitha Tennant invented cupid-bow lips.
11
PM
—I can’t bloody believe what happened today. CAN’T BELIEVE IT. Right, so today me and Carrie and Sean and Joshua and Saf are
all sitting in the Audio Visual room in the dark watching this film called
Secrets and Lies
for Film Studies which sounds like a right old doss but believe me it ain’t ’cos you have to concentrate proper hard and
try to work out how the filmmaker is “creating tension” and “building characters” which is NOTHING LIKE going to the AMC Loews
where everyone chucks popcorn and farts and talks on their phones the whole way through.
So we’re all in the dark and it’s totally quiet aside from Carrie snoring and suddenly there is this well loud BANG outside.
Like, BAAAAAAANG! Like a car backfiring proper loudly. Then seconds later loads of screaming and shouting. Then doors slamming
and loads of noise in the halls and thundering feet and yelling and shrieking. So we all stand up and run to the window and
look down onto the path up to the school gate and suddenly there’s loads of Year Ten and Year Eleven kids outside all waving
their arms and looking frightened and sickened and excited all at once like something proper amazing had just happened.
So I open the window and shout down to Tariq who is one of Murphy’s friends, “Tariq, what’s happened?”
And he shouts “Clinton Brunton-Fletcher has been shot! Someone has shot him, man! Brap Brap Braaaaaap!” And Tariq is waving
his hands in the air giving gun signs looking sort of happy but sort of disgusted at the same time.
So I said, “What do you mean? Where’s Clinton?”
Tariq said, “Dunno man, he’s gone! Whoever shot him is well gone too!”
I backed away from the window, suddenly feeling well cold and sick, and by that point the bell was ringing and outside turned
into total bloody chaos ’cos suddenly there was like a thousand kids all flocking around the main gate and everyone telling
everyone else the tale that Clinton had been shot and Uma was in the center of it trying to talk on her cell phone looking
proper upset. And then the police arrived blaring their sirens and then even more police arrived and then some news reporters
arrived and then loads of parents arrived and then loads of passersby started loitering and everyone was shouting at each
other and Mrs. Radowitz and Ms. Bracket were trying to push the kids back indoors. And by this point people were saying that
they’d DEFINITELY seen the car and they’d definitely seen Clinton covered in blood and it weren’t a small gun, no it was a
big gun, in fact it was one of them proper gangster MAC-10 submachine guns and the gunman were on a moped, no in a Audi, no
in a Benz Jeep. And there was four of them. No, five. Five gunmen in ski masks doing a drive-by shooting! Except one gunman
took off his ski mask and a Year Seven lad saw it was DEFINITELY JANELLE.
This was all crap. No one had really
seen
anything, in fact the only people who’d seen anything at all was two Year Nine kids, Olivier and Mikey, and they were now
saying that they saw Clinton on his BMX, then they just heard a bang, which was maybe just a car backfiring and then Clinton
shouting out then pedaling away. But by this point that story seemed pretty BORING and everyone wanted to believe the gun
story more and everyone wanted to be part of the drama, except Uma who now seemed to have disappeared, and there were girls
crying and boys giving it the big one saying Clinton deserved to get merked and everyone was talking about gangs and guns
and by this point Sky News had arrived on the scene and my mother called my cell and said that Mayflower was live on the telly
on one of their big flashing News Flash bulletins that said, “SHOOTING AT SUPERCHAV ACADEMY.”
Mum said I had to come home straightaway and I shouted, “Mum, I don’t even think there’s been a shooting!” and Mum shouted,
“Well there’s been something going on! It’s all over the news! I’m watching your bloody school now! There’s a police helicopter
circling the school! Get yourself home RIGHT NOW!” So I says to her, “Mum I don’t think that is a police helicopter I think
that’s maybe the Sky News helicopter filming the pictures that you’re watching.” Then she told me to stop being so bloody
clever and get home before I got my head blown off.
I didn’t go home. Me and Carrie hung about around the film crews for a while listening to news reporters do their reports.
Loads of kids were trying to get into the camera shots and people who knew NOTHING about Mayflower School were suddenly turning
up being a world flipping authority on the place which was making me proper angry. I was listening to this one guy wearing
a suit and tie holding a microphone and he was going live on BBC and he was obviously just making up crap as he went along
going something like…
“Well, Julia! Here I am, outside Mayflower Academy! Now, this is a school that has been DOGGED BY CONTROVERSY for a long time
and it had seemed recently as though there had been some VAGUE IMPROVEMENTS, but now it’s more of the same: weapons, gangs,
violence, drug-dealing, and antisocial behavior! What a sad example of the youth of today this school is! I mean, to set the
scene, this was the school that was once called the WORST SCHOOL IN BRITAIN providing some of the lowest standards in education
in the country. In turn it gained a nickname in media circles as “Superchav Academy”—chav being a term for the very underclass,
FERAL, out of control children we see all too often in Britain today. Well the nickname CERTAINLY FITS TODAY, Julia, because
here I am on the scene of what is looking to be a drive-by-shooting incident! More news as we get it, this is me, Max Blackford,
reporting for BBC news, now back to the studio
…”
This made me really really mad. Max Blackford didn’t mention that this maybe weren’t even a shooting. Or if it was it HAD
NOTHING TO DO WITH MAYFLOWER KIDS, it was caused by somebody who left years ago. Max didn’t say there were lots of really
good kids at Mayflower. Or mention Tonita’s ice-skating or Manpreet’s
Countdown
prize or the time Year Eight made that Diplodocus out of egg cartons to give to the children’s hospital or the lad in Year
Ten who got scouted for West Ham youth soccer squad last week! Or the fact that loads of kids at Mayflower got proper GCSEs
this year or the fact that we WEREN’T ALL BLOODY CHAVS WHO WERE INTO SHOOTING EACH OTHER, RIGHT????
So when Max bloody Bratford asked me and Carrie if we wanted to go live on the six o’clock broadcast for forty-five seconds
and give an interview about “What Life is Like as a Superchav” I decided I’d wait till the cameras were filming and tell him
exactly what I thought. Go and look on YouTube—the clip is up already. His face is a proper picture.
9
AM
—Ms. Bracket has just sent me a text message saying that Mr. Bamblebury wants to see me in his office at 8:30
AM
SHARP on Monday morning to discuss my comments about Mayflower Academy.
Oh my days. Now I’m in SERIOUS BOTHER.
Clinton Brunton-Fletcher is not dead. IT’S OFFICIAL. But he’s not living at Thundersley Road anymore either. Uma says he’s
“gone away for a bit.” Uma didn’t say where but I reckon Portsmouth as that’s where the bloke he calls his dad lives. It said
on the news tonight that there definitely was a gun fired outside Mayflower, but whoever fired it probably just fired one
shot up into the air then drove off right away. The evening news said police are investigating claims that drugs are being
sold around the school gates, which is “fueling gang tension.”
So I go to my appointment with Mr. Bamblebury on Monday, and sit on a hard chair that hurts my arse amongst his dying potted
plants and he starts quizzing me about Clinton Brunton-Fletcher and saying like, was Clinton really drug dealing, ’cos he’d
heard this from several parents who were all calling up giving him an earache.
So I said, “I don’t know NOTHING!” and I said it loud ’cos the honest to God truth is that I don’t know much and what I do
know for sure is that I’m no bloody grass. I mean WHAT’S IT GOT TO DO WITH ME if a gang of rudes want to roll up the school
acting like big men? What’s it got to do with me if Clinton wants to sell weed? For once in my life I was in the headmaster’s
office for something that had NOTHING to do with me at all! I just wanna read
King Lear.
Mr. Bamblebury said all this
has
got something to do with me, ’cos I can HELP. Mr. Bamblebury said that Mayflower Academy is on the brink of turning a corner
and it’s important that we stay focused and on a positive track.
So I said, “WELL I’M STAYING POSITIVE, didn’t you see me on BBC news?! I was representing big time, mate!”
So Mr. Bamblebury said, “Yes, Shiraz, thank you, and your comments were very spirited… although there was no need to call
Max Blackford an ignorant-ass knobhead, was there?”
“Yeah, sorry ’bout that, Mr. Bamblebury,” I said. “I got a bit worked up.”
Mr. Bamblebury said that the Mayflower Sixth Formers already hold a “considerably weighty influence” around the school and
that we needed to “take prime advantage” of this and “set a good example.” So I said, “What does that mean in normal English?”
and that’s when Ms. Bracket stepped in and said that maybe the Sixth Formers could think about starting a little “Increase
the Peace” campaign? Maybe I could plan a little assembly telling the Year Sevens to Elevens about the dangers of becoming
involved with gangs and weapons and persuading them to go to Sixth Form instead and “be just like me.”
BE JUST LIKE ME!?
I stared at them both like they were a pair of mentals for a bit. Then I said, “Eh? Why me? Why do I have to do it?” and Mr.
Bamblebury said that the great thing about me was that I could really speak to the kids “at their level” and get through to
them. Mr. Bamblebury said most of the time he can’t understand what any of the kids are even saying, like earlier that day
he’d heard some Year Seven boy shouting, “Dat Bracket woman is nang, bruv” and he didn’t know whether to tell him off as he
didn’t know what “nangbruv” was.