Worse Than Boys (10 page)

When I saw Wizzie and her gang standing by that bus stop, silhouetted against the darkening sky, it sent a shiver down the back of my neck. I wasn’t afraid. As I watched my friends – why did I still call them my friends? – as I watched them strolling out of the school gates I knew how they would be feeling. Tensed and ready for anything. My eyes darted to Wizzie and the
others, spread out across the street. Grace stood with her fists clenched and she’d never looked more like a horse – a war horse. Lauren kept licking her lips nervously. Then there was Wizzie, bold and scary – that knife of hers was never far from everyone’s mind. Though I’d never known her to use it. But get Wizzie, and once she was out of action the rest would fall like pins in a bowling alley. But my friends didn’t have me there to whisper that advice to them. Instead, they had Geraldine Mooney, standing beside them where I should be. I’d been replaced already.

Common sense told me to go home and forget about them. Let them get on with it themselves. I shouldn’t care. But I couldn’t move. It was as if my feet were glued to the ground.

They stopped and stared at the Hell Cats.

‘What are you looking at?’ Grace said, and at the same time she moved forward. And suddenly, it was Mooney who leapt towards her – showing off if you ask me, desperate to make an impression. She landed against Grace and bounced off her. I could have told her she would have done that. She fell back on the ground and Grace laughed that neighing laugh of hers and stepped over her. By that time they were all on each
other. Wizzie grunted and grabbed at Heather. Heather screamed as Wizzie gripped her hair and lifted her from the ground. Erin and Rose had jumped in too and suddenly they were all a mass of arms and legs, flailing about wildly.

Erin was on the ground, struggling to get up, but big Grace was almost sitting on her. Mooney was trying to pull her off, but she had Lauren attached to her neck.

They were losing. My friends were losing. They needed me. They must see that. I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t even think about it really. I didn’t do it to impress or even to get back in with them. It came as naturally as flicking a fly from my face. I jumped in to help them.

I had Lauren off Geraldine in a moment and landed a punch that sent her reeling across the ground. I pushed Geraldine aside and gave Grace such a ferocious push she went toppling off Erin. I reached for Erin’s hand and pulled her to her feet. Her eyes flashed when she saw me, but I turned from her till we were standing, back to back, the way we always did. Ready to take on all comers. I was swaying on my feet as Grace headed back towards me. I stretched out my arms, eager to take her on. The adrenalin rushed through me.

And suddenly, Grace stopped in her tracks. In fact,
everything stopped. It was like that bit in a movie when the soundtrack fades and the action goes into slow motion. I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned, ready to punch, thinking it was Wizzie or one of the others who had grabbed me.

But it was Erin. Her face was angry, her voice bitter. ‘Piss off!’ she said. ‘We don’t need any help from you.’

‘But …’ I looked round them and I’ll never forget the triumph on Wizzie’s face.

She dusted herself off. ‘Yeah, let’s put this off till another day. You lot aren’t able to handle us on your own.’

And I realised that was what I had done. I had made it look as if the Lip Gloss Girls couldn’t win a fight without me.

‘Erin, I didn’t mean … I only wanted …’

None of them listened. Erin spat on the ground in front of me. ‘I wish you could take the hint … You’re not wanted.’

‘Aye, it takes a while for her to get a message, doesn’t it?’ This was Wizzie. She popped the chewing gum she had stuck behind her ear back in her mouth. ‘No longer welcome. Even I can read that one.’

Heather helped Geraldine to her feet. ‘Good going,
Gerry,’ she said. ‘We would have won if that git hadn’t interfered.’

In your dreams, I wanted to say. Why couldn’t I?

They all moved off, until only Wizzie was left, standing across from me, chewing her gum, sneering at me.

‘All alone, eh, Driscoll? Och, don’t cry. You won’t be alone for long … cos one dark night me and the lassies’ll get you and show you just what being alone means …’

And she swaggered off and left me. Alone. And for the first time, scared.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Why couldn’t I stop crying? Why was I so miserable? Every afternoon I’d go home from school and try to eat my dinner, though every morsel stuck in my throat. Half the time I threw it all up later. I’d go into my room and try to concentrate on my homework. But it would bring back memories of how homework was always interrupted by phone calls and texts between us all. The phone never rang now. No one called me. I tried to pretend it didn’t matter. I’d go to bed and pull the covers over my head and hope when I woke up everything would have changed back.

I had turned into a different person. Where was the old Hannah, the one I could rely on? I waited to hear her voice deep within me, whispering to me,
Who needs them? You can manage without them.
But she had deserted me along with my friends. Friends! I didn’t have any friends any more.

Feeling sorry for me?

Don’t bother. I was feeling sorry enough for myself. Every night I’d end up crying. No matter what I did to try and stop myself. Putting on my favourite comedy video only seemed to make things worse. I remembered how Heather had bought it for my birthday. Reading a funny book, I couldn’t even see the words through my tears. Finally, I’d give up, get into bed and just cry myself to sleep.

Perhaps it would have helped if I’d had brothers or sisters. This would never have happened to Erin with her protective family brood surrounding her. Big brother teasing her, her sisters spending time with her to take her mind off it.

But I had no one. Not even a favourite aunt to confide in. My mother and her sister didn’t talk any more. They’d been ‘estranged’ for years. ‘Estranged’ was one of my mother’s favourite words. She used it so often. She was ‘estranged’ from most people. And that made me wonder if it ran in the family, this knack of losing friends, becoming ‘estranged’. Was I my mother’s daughter? I hoped not. I didn’t want to be like my mother.

My mind was in a constant turmoil, thinking all the
time. It was because I had no one to talk to. No one except my mother, and I didn’t want to talk to her. In a weak moment I told her about the fight outside school, about Wizzie’s threat. She almost hit the roof, and I shut her up by telling her that Wizzie had started another fight with someone else and had forgotten about me.

Yet I knew she was worried about me. She never stopped asking me about what was happening at school, watching for my answer, knowing I was lying when I’d tell her everything was fine.

One night, she came into my room. She looked as if she’d been crying too. ‘This just can’t go on, Hannah,’ she said. ‘Every night you’re stuck in this room. You sleep half the time. You don’t go out any more. I don’t know how to help you if you don’t talk to me.’

How could I talk to her? The last time I’d confided in her she’d gone on the phone to Erin’s mother. I couldn’t risk that again.

‘I’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘I just need time.’

She sat on the bed. Did I look like her? I wondered. I’d never thought so, but now as I caught a glimpse of us together in my mirrored wardrobe, our hair
messy, our faces streaked with tears, I saw a distinct resemblance.

Like mother, like daughter.

I didn’t want to be like my mother.

‘I’ve been thinking a lot about this, Hannah.’ She pushed back her hair the way she always did when she was nervous. ‘What do you think about changing schools?’

Changing schools. I hadn’t considered that at all. Starting afresh, making a new set of friends. For the first time in ages I felt my heart lift. I could change schools, pretend none of this had ever happened. And then my mother said something that made me realise I could never do it.

‘That’s what I would do in your position. Just move away, leave it all behind you.’

That’s what my mum would do. Run away. I felt she always ran away from her problems, never faced up to them. And I wasn’t going to be like her.

‘I like my school, Mum,’ I said. ‘Why should I be the one to run away? Let them change schools if they want. I’m not going to.’

I tried to make it sound light-hearted, but my mum didn’t take it that way. She stood up and began pacing
the room. ‘That school you like so much has done nothing to help you. You’re going through all this and they just sit on their backsides and do nothing. What about this anti-bullying policy they’re supposed to have?’

‘I’m not being bullied, Mum,’ I tried to tell her, because I wasn’t. I was being frozen out by my friends, and ignored by everyone else. But I wasn’t being bullied. She wouldn’t listen.

‘These things are going on right under their noses and they do nothing to help. Oh yes, they want all the kudos for being teachers, but they don’t want any of the responsibility.’

She was talking rubbish. ‘It’s not the teachers’ fault, Mum.’ But still she wouldn’t listen. She went on and on, as if she was thinking aloud, venting all her pent-up anger on the teachers, on the school. Finally, I couldn’t listen any more. ‘Shut up, please, Mum, just shut up!’

Her face tightened with anger. ‘I’m trying to be on your side. Isn’t that what you want?’

‘Well, think of another way to be on my side, OK!’

She slammed out of the room and I thought I had shut her up. But I was wrong.

She took me at my word. She thought of another way to be on my side. Next day she did the very worst thing she could.

She came to the school.

Chapter Twenty-Six

I was in English when the teacher called me out of the class. Her face was so stern I knew something was wrong. Anne O’Donnell had been called out one day by a teacher wearing this same expression, to be told her father had been killed in an accident. So as I followed her along the corridor, I was expecting the worst. But not this.

My mother was sitting in Mr McGinty’s office. So was Mrs Tasker, standing beside the headmaster, looking as grim as he was.

Mum had been crying. She was blowing her nose and her face was almost hidden by a cloud of tissues. Her eyes, all I could see, were puffy with tears. My heart sank like a stone when I saw her. What was she doing here?

‘Sit down, Hannah,’ Mr McGinty ordered me.

I took the seat beside my mother, but when she
stretched out her hand to touch mine I shrank from her.

‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

‘Your mother’s very worried about you, it would seem.’ The head’s voice was cold and I knew he wasn’t impressed by my mother’s attitude. ‘She seems to think you’re going through a major trauma and that we are doing nothing to help. Is that true?’

I glared at my mother. She looked back at me innocently. ‘I told them everything, Hannah. The way that crowd are treating you is disgraceful. You’re home every night on your own, crying.’ She looked back at the headmaster. ‘They all turned on her the other day during a fight outside the school.’

Mr McGinty almost leapt out of his chair. ‘Is this true?’

I didn’t know how to answer that. Deny it and make my mother out to be a liar? Or admit it and do the worst thing you can ever do – grass? In the end, I said nothing. I bit my lip and stared at the floor. I didn’t have to say a word anyway. My mother did all the talking. I couldn’t have shut her up with anaesthetic.

‘And now one of the other gangs is threatening her – her with the funny name and everything pierced. She told her they’re going to get her.’

Why couldn’t she ever keep her mouth shut? I bit my lip even harder to keep from screaming.

‘She’s terrified to come to school. And you do nothing to protect her. I’ll go to the authorities. I’ll go to the papers. I’ll do something about it if you won’t.’

My mother’s voice was becoming almost hysterical.

She was making me sound like the world’s biggest wimp. ‘I am not terrified,’ I said at last, trying to keep my voice calm. I didn’t want to sound like my mum. ‘I’ve fallen out with my friends, that’s all.’

‘I tried to help the girls to make up,’ Mrs Tasker said.

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘It didn’t last. Doesn’t matter. I’ve got other friends.’

‘She hasn’t!’ my mother shouted. That really made me feel worse. ‘She’s got no one. They’ve all deserted her.’

It took all my willpower not to cry. She was making me sound like the biggest kind of loser.

‘Mrs Driscoll,’ the head said when he could get a word in edgeways. ‘I don’t like the gang culture in this school. Especially amongst the girls.’

‘They’re worse than boys,’ my mother said loudly.

Worse than boys. How chuffed I had once been to be told that.

‘We intend to do something about it. As for Hannah being bullied –’

‘I’m not being bullied –’ I tried to tell them but he wouldn’t let me finish.

‘We will be dealing with that too.’ Mr McGinty looked at me then. ‘I don’t ever want you to be afraid to come to school, or afraid while you are here. But you have to let us know what’s happening. As for this fight, I’m not going to let this pass without a word. And if anyone is threatening you they are going to be in big trouble.’

I wanted to plead with him to forget my mother had ever been here. But I knew it was too late. Wheels had been set in motion and things were going to get worse.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I stormed from the office without even looking at my mum. She tried to touch me, to pull me round to face her, and I jerked myself away from her angrily.

‘I’m only trying to help,’ she said.

How could she possibly think this was helping?

Everyone knew she’d come to the school. Lots of people had seen her barging in and demanding to see the headmaster. The word had gone round the school like a bushfire in a drought.

At break they were all round me in the yard. ‘See if you’ve got us into any trouble, Driscoll,’ Rose pushed herself against me, ‘you’re going to get it.’