Worse Than Boys Page 12

  ‘Scared, are you?’ I asked, and Erin turned on me. There was red-hot anger in her eyes.

  ‘At least we wouldn’t have fought you all at once, like your new mates did.’

  ‘I took them one at a time, square go, and I’ve discovered you can trust them to give you a square go.’

  ‘You could trust us.’

  ‘Could I? You proved the kind of friends you are.’ I stood up to them. I wasn’t afraid.

  I saw what was in all their eyes then. It was Rose’s question they wanted answered. In just a few days, what had happened to me?

  I don’t know what would have happened next if Mrs Carter, the PE teacher, hadn’t bounced into the changing rooms. She took one look at us and bellowed, ‘What’s going on here? Are you all right, Hannah?’ She looked at me the way I had seen her looking at me so often lately. As if I was the poor little victim, the one she had to protect.

  I got to my feet and pushed Heather aside. ‘I’m perfectly fine, Mrs Carter. The girls here were just asking me advice on how to get rid of bad breath. But personally, I think they’re past any help.’

  I could almost feel the daggers zooming from their eyes. I ignored them. I was enjoying myself. Why had I let them bring me down so low? They were nothing. And what had changed me? Not just becoming one of the Hell Cats. No. Not even fighting Wizzie and winning. No. I knew what had happened to me.

  It was the fact that I had vowed never to be anybody’s victim again.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  That night was one of Mum’s early shifts. She had settled herself in front of the television to watch her favourite detective serial as I was getting ready to go out. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Just going to meet my mates, Mum.’

  She looked up at me and smiled. ‘I’ve waited so long to hear you say that. I knew it was only a matter of time before you all got together again. Girls fall in and out all the time. It never lasts.’

  She thought it was her lovely Erin and friends I was meeting up with. She’d go spare if she knew who it really was. So I didn’t tell her.

  She came with me to the door. ‘Now remember, don’t be late. Have you got your mobile with you? Well, you go and have a good time.’

  I left her happy. She’d enjoy her programme all the more now. Why should I spoil it? She’d find out who my mates were soon enough.

  I met them in the town centre. We all turned up, and then walked like Amazons, arm in arm, through the mall. We broke up for no one. Anyone who wanted past had to walk round us. It was brilliant!

  One group of girls looked as if they weren’t going to move. They saw us coming, linked arms and locked themselves together.

  ‘Tilda and her mates,’ Wizzie whispered. ‘From up my estate.’ She said it as if it belonged to her. ‘Mingers.’

  I would have laughed if I hadn’t felt so tense. Mingers – what we had called Wizzie and the Hell Cats – was what she was calling another gang she considered lower than her.

  The Mingers looked as if they were spoiling for trouble.

  My first fight alongside the Hell Cats. I didn’t want to let them down. Yet I was scared. What kind of a fight would this be? They came from Wizzie’s estate, the hardest in town. Dirty fighters? Would Wizzie produce that famous knife of hers? Would they have knives too?

  Wizzie swaggered up ahead of us, pushed herself right against them. ‘Sorry, I never saw you there. You’ve lost that much weight, Tilda. Have you been on a diet?’

  It was the last thing I expected her to say. Lauren squeezed my arm to keep me quiet.

  Tilda narrowed her eyes. ‘You winding me up, Wizzie?’

  Tilda looked as if she ate a diet of chips, chocolate and cream cakes. I was trying to keep my face straight. Lauren joined in. ‘Right enough, Tilda. I can see it myself. You’ve definitely lost weight.’

  Tilda tried not to smirk. She turned to her mates. ‘I told you that doughnut diet was workin’. C’mon, lassies.’ They all followed her, glaring at us as they went.

  ‘I thought we were in for a fight there,’ I whispered.

  ‘Wi’ Tilda?’ Wizzie said. ‘Not worth the effort. We could beat them easy.’

  Wizzie waited till we’d turned a corner, out of sight of Tilda and her mates, before she bent over and roared with laughter. ‘That Tilda is thick as a brick. Lost weight! She looks as if she swallowed a balloon.’

  We were all laughing then, except for Grace. ‘I did really think she looked thinner,’ she said, and that only made us laugh all the more.

  So we walked and laughed, me mostly with relief. And I felt good.

  And that was the first night I met the Black Widows.

  I saw them striding it out through the centre as if they owned the place. Older than us, they were all dressed in black. Even their lips were painted black.

  Wizzie began to wave wildly at them. ‘My mates from up the estate,’ she said.

  One of them waved back and Wizzie swaggered over to talk to them.

  ‘Who on earth is that?’ I turned to ask Lauren. Her face was grim. ‘They look as if somebody dug them up from the grave.’

  ‘They call themselves the B-Black Widows,’ Sonya said.

  I almost laughed at that. The Black Widows indeed! Lauren saw my smile. She shook her head. ‘They’re nothing to laugh at, Hannah. They’re really bad. I wish Wizzie would keep away from them.’

  ‘They live on Wizzie’s street. It’s hard for her to keep away from them,’ Grace said, watching Wizzie closely.

  I looked over at Wizzie too. She was laughing with these other girls, as if she was one of them, their mate. As if she was trying to impress them.

  A moment later, she came walking back to us. ‘They are such a laugh. Bold as brass.’

  Lauren wasn’t smiling. ‘You don’t want to have anything to do wi’ them, Wizzie. They’re a bad lot.’

  ‘No, they’re alright. Honest.’ She dared us to argue with her. None of us did.

  Except me, of course. I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. ‘Is that them away back to the graveyard?’

  Wizzie looked at me, ready for an argument. I grinned. Suddenly, she slapped me on the back and grinned too. ‘Very funny.’

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  ‘I wish I had the money to go to the pictures,’ Grace complained as we passed the cinema. ‘But I’m skint till Friday.’

  ‘I can give you a loan of money, Grace,’ Sonya said.

  ‘Should tell you,’ Wizzie said to me, ‘if you want anything, ask Sonya – generous to a fault. Always the first to offer.’ She blew a bubble. ‘Don’t ask me. I’m tight.’

  ‘Not tight, Wizzie.’ Lauren squeezed her arm. ‘Just usually skint.’

  ‘That was a nice thing to say, Wizzie, thanks,’ Sonya said without a stutter. I’d noticed Sonya hardly ever stuttered when she was alone with us. I was sure half the time she did it deliberately to wind everyone up.

  But Lauren had told me different. ‘It’s only when she talks to other people, she gets nervous.’

  ‘Nothing on at the pictures anyway, Grace,’ Wizzie complained. She pointed at the posters. ‘Only some daft girlie picture.’

  I was glad I’d kept my mouth shut. I had been just about to say I wanted to see that daft girlie picture. It was the kind of film the Lip Gloss Girls always made a point of going to see. ‘Girl Power!’ Erin would yell as we marched into the cinema.

  Now I saw how stupid we must have looked. Girl Power indeed. No wonder they called us the Lip Gloss Girls. The Hell Cats didn’t need to go to girlie films. There was nothing girlie about them.

  Out of uniform, Lauren dressed in the weirdest outfits. Tonight she was wearing a battered leather jacket passed down from her sister, and bright yellow cropped trousers. Her hair looked as if she’d slept in it, and she had it tied up with assorted baubles of all colours. ‘I like to look funky,’ she said.

  ‘Have you done your homework for old Malcolm?’ Sonya asked me as we walked on.

  ‘I h
ope you didn’t ask me to join so I could help with your homework. I’m rubbish at maths.’

  ‘Tell him you couldn’t finish it. Make up some sob story. Your cat died and you’re in mourning, or something.’ Wizzie laughed. ‘I’m going to tell him my Rottweiler ate my jotter.’

  ‘Sounds like the title of a book,’ I said. ‘A Rottweiler Ate My Jotter.’

  Grace looked at her. ‘You don’t have a Rottweiler, Wizzie.’

  ‘Everybody else on our street does. I could borrow one of theirs.’ Wizzie gave her a shove. ‘Grace, it was a joke! Right.’

  Grace still looked as if she didn’t understand what the joke was.

  I began to laugh and couldn’t stop.

  ‘It wasn’t that funny,’ Wizzie said.

  ‘It’s just … I didn’t think I would be running about with the Hell Cats and talking about maths homework. That’s what we used to talk about as well.’

  Grace cut in. ‘Don’t dare say we have anything in common with that lot.’

  Lauren agreed. ‘No, we’d never turn on a mate like them. We stick up for each other.’

  ‘But be fair,’ I said. ‘Erin thought I’d told everybody she wet the bed. That must have been mega embarrassing for her.’

  ‘And did you tell on her?’ Lauren asked me.

  ‘No. I would never grass up a mate. It was a secret, and I know how to keep a secret.’

  ‘Everybody’s got secrets,’ Wizzie said. ‘Hers was nothing special. So how did she not believe you?’

  ‘I suppose she thought as I was the only one she had ever told, who else could it be?’ Here I was, practically sticking up for Erin. Would I never learn? ‘But it wasn’t me,’ I went on. ‘Somebody must have been listening.’ My face went red as I suddenly remembered who I suspected had been listening. Lauren’s sister.

  Lauren didn’t get mad. Instead she burst out laughing. ‘And you thought it was our Ellen. Even if she could hear you, she wouldn’t care. She’s rubbish at passing on gossip.’

  ‘Next to Sonya,’ Wizzie said, ‘her sister, Ellen, is the nicest lassie you’ll ever meet. She makes Mother Teresa look like Adolf Hitler.’

  I glanced at Sonya. She was blushing with pleasure at the compliment.

  So it definitely hadn’t been Lauren’s sister. The mystery was still there. Who was it who had spread the story?

  ‘Anyway, it was a whole load of rubbish for nothing,’ Wizzie went on. ‘So, she pees the bed. Who cares?’

  ‘Five-minute wonder,’ Grace agreed.

  ‘You don’t think it’s the most embarrassing thing in the world?’

  Wizzie looked at me as if I was daft. ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’

  ‘But that Erin’s really clever, you have to admit it,’ Lauren said.

  ‘How do you mean, clever?’ I asked.

  Wizzie answered me, as if they had discussed this before. ‘One minute everybody’s talking about Erin’s “little problem”.’ She sketched the inverted commas in with her fingers. ‘And the next she’s managed to turn all the attention on to you. Everybody forgot Erin. Who mentions Erin’s little problem now? That was fly. She’s manipulative.’

  Lauren choked on her chewing gum. ‘She’s what?! Have you just swallowed a dictionary? Manipul … wha’?’

  ‘Heard it on the telly last night. It was a film about this lassie, she’s a serial killer, who makes everybody do what she wants … only they don’t realise it. They think she’s really their friend. And I thought it sounded like Erin Brodie.’

  I had never thought about it like that, but it was true. Erin was manipulative. She told me I was her best friend. Had she told Heather that too, and Rose? Winding us all around her fingers. And I had fallen for it. How could I have been such an idiot?

  ‘I’m going to get her back for that,’ I said.

  Wizzie grinned. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘We’ll help you.’

  And our loud tribal roar echoed through the mall.

  Chapter Forty

  And so I became one of the Hell Cats. We spent the days at school lolling on the stairs, not letting anyone past, and at night, usually we would meet up and strut our stuff through the town centre. I began to dress like them, wearing my school skirt too short, my blouse open at the neck and my tie always loose. A disgrace to the uniform, the teachers would say. I didn’t care. I was having a great time.

  Mrs Tasker didn’t like it one bit. She kept me back in class one day to have a ‘serious talk’ with me.

  ‘Why on earth are you running about with Wizzie?’

  ‘She’s my mate,’ I said at once.

  ‘Wizzie was never your “mate” as you call her. You fought with her. You never got on with her.’

  ‘I do now, Mrs Tasker. I get on with them all.’

  ‘I don’t like it, Hannah. I don’t like it at all. And neither do the rest of the teachers.’

  ‘They asked to be friends with me.’

  ‘You could have had other friends, Hannah.’

  But I couldn’t. Nobody wanted me. Why hadn’t she seen that?

  ‘They’re trouble, Hannah. These girls are not your type.’ I knew she meant they were common, came from the wrong side of town. I had thought that once too. But not any more. ‘I think they’re good friends, Mrs Tasker.’

  She tried one last time to get through to me. Make me drop them. ‘There’s still a question mark hanging over them about the old woman who was held up. You haven’t forgotten her, have you?’

  Of course, I hadn’t forgotten her. It was the one thing that worried me and I was trying to pluck up the courage to ask them about her too.

  It was only a matter of time before my mum found out about my new friends.

  She came charging in one night from late-night shopping and dropped her bags with a crash. A bag of frozen peas burst open and scattered noisily on to the kitchen floor.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve just met your friend Erin’s mother.’ As soon as she said that I knew exactly what was wrong. The cat, as they say, was out of the bag.

  She went on. ‘At least I thought she was your friend.’ She looked at me as if she really wanted to throttle me. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? I made a real fool of myself. I walked right up to her and said, “Oh, I’m so glad the girls have made up.”’ When Mum told a story she always put on a posh voice. ‘“I knew they wouldn’t fall out for long,” I says to her. And she says to me in that nippy voice of hers, “I don’t know who your daughter’s made up with, but it certainly wasn’t my Erin. I wouldn’t let Erin anywhere near her after what she did.”’

  I got to my feet. ‘She said that!’

  Mum wasn’t listening. ‘But she knew exactly who my daughter had made up with, didn’t she?! “I think your daughter’s found her own class at last, from what Erin tells me.” That’s what she said to me.’ Mum took a deep breath. ‘Hannah, what does she mean? Who are you going out with at night?’

  But I could tell Mum knew the answer already. Erin’s mum and her nippy voice had told her. ‘You’re going about with that awful Wizzie’s gang. I can’t believe it. I won’t have it, do you hear me? I won’t have it.’

  Now it was my turn to sigh. ‘You’ll not have what, Mum?’

  ‘I’ll not have you going round with that lot.’

  ‘I’ve been going around with them for a couple of weeks now, Mum, and I haven’t got into any trouble.’

  She shook her head so violently I was waiting to see it spin across the room. ‘It’s only a matter of time.’

  ‘So what am I supposed to do, Mum? They’re the only friends I’ve got now.’

  She slapped her head dramatically. ‘How sad are you? They’re the only friends you can get? You must be desperate.’

  ‘I was,’ I reminded her.

  ‘Well, you won’t be seeing them again. I forbid it. I’ll ground you.’

  ‘You can’t ground me. I’ve not done anything wrong!’

  She ranted on until I couldn’t listen any mo
re. She was going to ground me till I was sixteen, she yelled at me. But I knew she couldn’t ground me at all. The way her shifts worked, half the time she wasn’t home at night. I’d never really defied her before – never had to with the Lip Gloss Girls. Everything Erin did was just fine, according to my mum. But I would defy her now.

  I strode into my room and slammed the door shut. Then I texted them all.

  HELP. CRAZY MOTHER.

  Wizzie’s answer made me laugh.

  W8 TILL U MEET MINE. SHE DFNITLY FLU OVR THE CUCU NEST.

  I didn’t care if it made my mother mad, or if the teachers were annoyed. So Erin’s mum thought I’d sunk low. So the teachers thought I was running with a bad crowd. Why should I care what they thought? For the first time in ages, I was enjoying myself. And I hadn’t been in a fight once with the Hell Cats. Why couldn’t anyone else see that?

  Chapter Forty-One

  Lauren suggested we all meet at her house next night. It was Mum’s night for her aerobics class, so she wouldn’t be in till later. I’d be back before she was.

  I’d never been to any of their houses before. All I knew was that they lived on one of the worst estates in the town. Half the houses were derelict, windows boarded up with steel shutters, yobs running wild, causing chaos. The local paper was always full of stories about the place. I took the train from the station at the top of my street and two stops later I was in another world. I was a little afraid even venturing on to the platform.

  ‘Just wear a bulletproof vest and carry a gun and you should be OK,’ Wizzie had warned me on the phone, trying to be funny. I didn’t laugh. If I’d had a bulletproof vest it would have been on me. ‘That’s why everybody’s got a Rottweiler up here,’ she went on. ‘Or keeps a baseball bat behind the door. Safety precaution.’

  But Lauren’s house was a total surprise. Set in a little cul-de-sac, it was a two-storey semi-detached council house that her parents had bought. The windows sparkled clean and the lights inside were warm and welcoming. The garden was tidy too and well kept, except for an army of garden gnomes. Erin would have laughed at that, called it ‘common’. I thought they were kind of cute.