SOMEONE DIFFERENT (3 page)

‘Why don’t ya come round to our house?’

‘Awe, but I promised I’d be at the party. It’s gonna be wicked; everybody’s gonna be there. Please, Jay,’ she said, and she lifted her face up, pulled me forward and kissed me.

My hand found the gap between her jacket and her jeans and I squeezed her waist for a second then worked upwards. We carried on kissing for ages, ’til she stopped, shifted her mouth on to my neck, and sucked on it like some thirsty vampire.

The belt on her jeans was fastened right tight. I managed to ease the tips of my fingers inside it, but then the alarm on my phone went off; quarter to seven. Shit. Would it matter if I was a bit late back, just once?

I pulled away to switch the alarm off, and Kira looked at me with her head on one side.

But I just couldn’t forget what Billy’d said earlier about being monitored. ‘I can’t,’ I said.

‘Oh, well don’t then.’ She did a proper strop and went over and stood with one of the other lads.

What was up with her? Usually,
where
we did it was the last thing she cared about, and it wouldn’t have bloody killed her to miss an hour of that party.

The other kid looked proper on edge as she pushed her hips against him, and he tried to ignore her. But I knew once I’d gone he’d be all over her like fake tan. I watched them for a second, then turned away; she wasn’t going to change her mind, and he’d only have to wait another day anyway. I couldn’t be arsed to start anything.

The snow got heavier as I walked back towards our house. My face and hands stung with the cold, my feet were soaked, and my trainers skidded about all over the place. But I still made it in time, and I put my key in the door at two minutes to seven.

The house was in darkness, and when I walked into my bedroom and put the light on, I could see my breath it was so cold. I got into bed and wrapped the duvet around me as tight as I could. My finger pressed the buttons on my remote and I flicked through all the channels – twice – but I couldn’t concentrate on any of the programmes.

Where would I be this time tomorrow? What would it be like? Who would I be with, and how long would I have to stay there for?

All at once, I wanted to talk to my mum. I checked my credit
– thirteen pence; enough for a text. If I sent her a message, she might call me back.

Mum wil u fone me

No reply.

4 – Anna

Lasagne for dinner; that was good. Usually I could manage to spread it out around my plate so much, it seemed like I’d eaten some.

Dad folded his Daily Mail and dropped it on the sideboard as he walked into the dining room. ‘Looting, in London, again,’ he said, sitting down and pulling his chair under the table. ‘Looks like the tough sentences
handed out last time weren’t tough enough.’

‘Parmesan?’ Mum asked.

‘No, thank you.
Groups of
young people
,
hooded
youths
... lawless thugs more like, and they ought to be treated like that. If more of these idiots got locked up the first time they stepped out of line, it wouldn’t get so far. But all you read about is this second chance rehabilitation rubbish; and who gets left to pick up the pieces? Mindless yobs, that’s what they are; scum.’

‘Andrew!’ Mum almost sprinkled grated cheese on the tablecloth instead of her plate.

‘Well, I’m sorry, Laura, but I just don’t know what’s happening in our society. They’re criminals; the only place for them is behind bars.’ He sighed as he poured himself a large glass of red wine, then lifted up his knife and fork.

Mum examined my plate carefully. ‘Annabel, are you actually eating any of that?’

‘Yes, lots; I must’ve helped myself to too much to start with.’

She frowned, but thankfully Dad spoke again. ‘Anyway, have you told Annabel about Tia?’ he asked.

‘Yes, she’s thrilled, aren’t you, darling?’

I looked at him, then her; my face completely blank.

‘Tia ... did I forget to mention it?’ Mum dabbed her lips with her napkin. ‘It’s what your new horse is called. Bella Ti Adora is her full name, but they’ve been calling her Tia for short.’

‘Oh.’ I tried to think of something else to say now their attention had been drawn away from the lasagne. ‘How old is she?’

‘Only five,’ Mum said. ‘But so unbelievably talented for her age, isn’t she, Andrew?’

‘A born winner,’ Dad said. ‘I can’t wait to see you bringing home those trophies once the outdoor season starts. We’ll have to see about getting some entries submitted soon, we don’t want to miss any deadlines.’

Mum nodded. ‘And about the horsebox; don’t you think we ought to upgrade if we’re going to be competing at county level? Gillian’s just bought that latest model by Prestige; she says it’s brilliant. Oh, and I’ve invited Gillian and David over for dinner like you suggested; Saturday the twenty-third. William’s away at Cambridge of course, but Rory will be home from school for the weekend, so I told Gillian to bring him along.’ She looked at me. ‘You and Rory haven’t seen each other for a long while, have you? I thought it’d be lovely for the two of you to have a chance to catch up.’

‘Can I get down now?’ I picked my plate up and lifted it above their heads as I stood up.

‘Have you finished your homework yet?’ Dad asked.

‘I’ll do it now.’ I walked out of the dining room just as I heard Mum saying something about ‘science test’, ‘results’ and ‘strange’.

In the kitchen, I scraped my lasagne into the bin and put the plate in the dishwasher. I poured a glass of milk and took it up to my room.

The first lot of homework was ICT. I switched my computer on, found my glasses and read through the task while it loaded up. It was something to do with spreadsheets and formulae, and it might as well have been written in Chinese. I opened up Microsoft excel and stared at it. I typed some numbers in, but I knew they were wrong straight away. I read the task again, tried some different numbers, tried some different cells – it just wouldn’t work. What did he want us to do? Why hadn’t he explained it properly?

I slammed the mouse down, stamped over to the French doors and leaned against the cool glass. Huge snowflakes drifted down steadily, and a thick covering had formed on my balcony. In daylight, I could see most of our fields from here. I could see the stables up at the house, our riding school and the ménage in the dip, then the woodland and the hills on the other side of valley. In the darkness though, I couldn’t see a thing – not even Pepper. But I knew he was out there, probably with this head over his stable door, and somehow, just thinking about him meant I managed not to cry about that ICT homework.

***

Waiting outside Miss Welbourne’s lab the following lunchtime made me feel more sickly than ever. I’d had no lunch and made sure I’d arrived there really early, but by 12.45 she still hadn’t invited me in. She knew I was there – she’d raised her finger in a ‘one minute’ sort of way when I’d first knocked on the door, but then she’d disappeared into the prep room, and, as far as I could see through the narrow strip of glass in the door, hadn’t come back out.

My fingernails clicked quietly against a piece of rough skin around my thumbnail. It was just starting to feel sore, but it wasn’t too bad; it wasn’t bleeding yet.

The lab door flew open and I jumped.

‘Come in,’ Miss Welbourne said, turning away.

I followed her and stood in front of her desk. She sat down, found my name in her mark book and traced her record of my test results across the page with her finger.

‘A steady decrease,’ she said, looking up at me. ‘Can you explain it?’

My cheeks must’ve gone red because I felt them getting hotter. ‘I ... I don’t know, miss; I just find the tests really difficult.’

‘
Difficult?
Do you listen in class? Do you revise adequately at home?’

‘Yes, miss. I try, honest.’

‘Well it shouldn’t be
difficult
then, should it? Obviously something is going wrong, somewhere.’ She closed the mark book and leaned back in her chair with her hands folded in her lap. ‘What do your parents have to say about this?’

Oh, God. Quickly I made an effort to keep the panic off my face, but it was too late; she saw it, she interpreted it, and she shook her head.

‘You haven’t told them, have you?’

Her eyes forced mine down low. ‘No, miss,’ I said.

‘Really, Annabel, that is so disappointing and deceitful; not at all what we expect from Highfield Park girls. I’ll telephone your parents this afternoon; it’ll be very interesting to see what they have to say about the matter. Now, you may go.’

Back out in the corridor, the bell rang for the end of lunchtime. I looked at my hand as I made my way to registration. Now my thumb was bleeding.

5 – Jay

My dad was still on the settee when I went down the next morning. He was snoring and his T-shirt had ridden up to show his skinny ribs moving in and out as he breathed. A thin dribble of slaver ran down the side of his face from the corner of his mouth, and the row of Budweiser bottles on the floor totalled ten. The Smirnoff bottle at the end topped it all off.

I went to get a glass of water from the kitchen and caught sight of myself in the mirror on the windowsill. Jeez, Kira really had gone for it – the shag-bites on my neck looked like two splattered blackberries. How could she’ve run out on me after that?

Martin knocked on the front door then, and I walked back into the hall to open it.

‘Sorry I’m a bit late,’ he said. ‘I took the wrong turning after the Spar. Are you all ready?’

I looked at my dad again and thought about waking him up.

But I didn’t.

The courtroom was tons emptier than it’d been before. There was no jury and not as many people in suits. Billy looked up at the public gallery as we walked in, but his dad must’ve changed his mind cos the only person there was that guy I’d seen leaving the day before. He had his cap pulled down to cover his face, but you could just see the bits of ginger hair poking out.

The solicitor called us over. He talked to Martin for a minute, but made sure I couldn’t hear him, then he sat down and wrote some stuff in some files. We sat there for ages but nothing happened. Billy tapped his foot against the wooden panel in front of us, and I realised I was messing around with the zip on my jacket again.

Then, after about half an hour, the usher got the nod. My empty stomach churned as we all stood up and the judge walked in.

‘Right,’ he said to me and Billy when everybody else’d sat down again. ‘I’ve given this case considerable thought. I’ve read the reports, and taken into account your positive engagement with the Youth Offending Service and your adherence to the conditions of your bail. I’m also mindful of the difficult situations you’ve experienced during your childhoods, and how these might have impacted on your behaviour. However, as I have stated previously, your crime was a serious one. You caused significant injury to another person, as well as extensive damage to private property. This kind of reckless and criminal conduct cannot of course go unpunished, but I have decided that your sentence, at this stage, will not be a custodial one.’

Every mouth in that courtroom dropped open. Me and Billy looked at each other. The two solicitors looked at each other. Martin looked round for somebody to look at.

The judge coughed, then carried on. ‘Instead, I’m sentencing you both to a twenty-four month Youth Rehabilitation Order, with requirements relating to education, unpaid work, and a six month curfew with electronic monitoring. If, during this period, you breach any of the conditions or commit any further crimes, the courts will look upon it most severely, and the likelihood is that it will result in a substantial custodial sentence.’

Me and Billy just about held it together ’til we got outside, then we exploded.

‘How the fuck did that happen?’ Billy’s voice was so loud everybody looked at him as he jumped down the last few steps and landed on the pavement underneath the sign that said Sheffield Law Courts. ‘Can you believe that?’

I laughed. ‘He must’ve got well lucky last night, mate; he were in a right good mood.’

‘Four years they all said. Go guilty they said; it’ll be better in the long run.’ He got his hat out of his pocket and put it on. ‘If we’d have gone guilty to that first charge, they’d have never reduced it. Shows ya what they know, dun’t it?’ Billy put a fag in his mouth and passed one to me. I couldn’t even light it for a few seconds though, because my mouth wouldn’t stop grinning and I couldn’t hold it in properly. It was just mad. How could we have ended up with that?

We stood there for about ten minutes smoking, and neither of us said another word. Every so often Billy shook his head, and I started to laugh. It was so hard to take in; this was like the most luck we’d ever had in our lives.