‘How come every squitty little shitty snotty bastard knows my name?’

Marcus couldn’t believe she was talking to him, and when he looked at her it seemed as though he was right to be doubtful, because she was still looking the other way. He decided to ignore her.

‘Oi, I’m talking to you. Don’t be so fucking rude.’

‘Sorry. I didn’t think you were talking to me.’

‘I don’t see any other squitty little shitty bastards here, do you?’

‘No,’ Marcus admitted.

‘So. How come you know my name? I haven’t got a bloody clue who you are.’

‘You’re famous.’ He knew that was a mistake as soon as he had said it.

‘What am I famous for?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Yes you do. I’m famous because I’m always in trouble.’

‘Yes.’

‘Fucking hell.’

They sat there for a while longer. Marcus didn’t feel like breaking the silence; if saying ‘Hello, Ellie’ caused that much trouble, then he wasn’t about to ask her whether she’d had a nice weekend.

‘I’m always in trouble, and I’ve never done anything wrong,’ she said eventually.

‘No.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because you just said so.’ Marcus thought that was a good answer. If Ellie McCrae said she hadn’t done anything wrong, then she hadn’t.

‘If you’re being cheeky, you’ll get a slap.’

Marcus wished Mrs Morrison would hurry up. Even though he was prepared to believe that Ellie had never done anything wrong, ever, he could see why some people might think she had.

‘Do you know what I’ve done wrong this time?’

‘Nothing,’ Marcus said firmly.

‘OK, do you know what I’m supposed to have done wrong?’

‘Nothing.’ This was his line, and he was sticking to it.

‘Well, they must think I’ve done something wrong, or I wouldn’t be sitting here, would I?’

‘No.’

‘It’s this sweatshirt. They don’t want me to wear it, and I’m not going to take it off. So there’s going to be a row.’

He looked at it. They were all supposed to wear sweatshirts with the school logo on them, but Ellie’s showed a bloke with scraggy hair and half a beard. He had big eyes and looked a little bit like Jesus, except more modern and with bleached hair.

‘Who’s that?’ he asked politely.

‘You must know.’

‘Ummm… Oh, yes.’

‘So who is it?’

‘Ummm… Forgotten.’

‘You never knew it.’

‘No.’

‘That’s incredible. That’s like not knowing the name of the prime minister or something.’

‘Yeah.’ Marcus gave a little laugh, to show her that at least he knew how stupid he was, even if he didn’t know anything else. ‘Who is it, then?’

‘Kirk O’Bane.’

‘Oh, yes.’

He’d never heard of Kirk O’Bane, but he’d never heard of anybody.

‘What does he do?’

‘He plays for Manchester United.’

Marcus looked at the picture on the sweatshirt again, even though that meant sort of looking at Ellie’s tits. He hoped she understood that he wasn’t interested in her tits, only in the picture.

‘Does he?’ He looked much more like a singer than a footballer. Footballers weren’t sad, usually, and this man looked sad. He wouldn’t have thought that Ellie would be the sort of person who liked football, anyway.

‘Yeah. He scored five goals for them last Saturday.’

‘Wow,’ said Marcus.

Mrs Morrison’s door opened and two white-faced year sevens came out. ‘Come in, Marcus,’ said Mrs Morrison.

‘Bye, Ellie,’ said Marcus. Ellie went through her head-shaking routine again, still apparently bitter that her reputation had gone before her. Marcus wasn’t looking forward to seeing Mrs Morrison, but if the alternative was sitting out in the corridor with Ellie, then he’d take the head’s office any day of the week.

He lost his temper with Mrs Morrison. Bad idea, he could see afterwards, losing your temper with the headmistress of your new school, but he couldn’t help it. She was being so thick that in the end he just had to shout. They started off OK: no, he’d never had any trouble from the shoe-stealers before, no, he didn’t know who they were and no, he wasn’t very happy at school (only one lie there). But then she started talking about what she called ‘survival strategies’, and that was when he got cross.

‘I mean, I’m sure you’ve thought of this, but couldn’t you just try keeping out of their way?’

Did they all think he was thick? Did they reckon that he woke up every morning thinking, I must find the people who call me names and give me shit and want to steal my trainers, so that they can do more things to me?

‘I have tried.’ That was all he could say for the moment. He was too frustrated to say any more.

‘Maybe you haven’t tried hard enough.’

That did it. She had said this not because she wanted to be helpful, but because she didn’t like him. Nobody at this school liked him and he didn’t understand why. He’d had enough, and he stood up to go.

‘Sit down, Marcus. I haven’t finished with you yet.’

‘I’ve finished with you.’

He didn’t know he was going to say that, and he was amazed when he had. He had never been cheeky to a teacher before, mostly because there hadn’t been a need for it. Now he could see that he hadn’t started in a great place. If you were going to get yourself into trouble, maybe it was best to work up to it slowly, get some practice in first. He had started right at the top, which was probably a mistake.

‘SIT down.’

But he didn’t. He just walked out the way he had come in, and kept on walking.

As soon as he left Mrs Morrison’s office he felt different, better, as if he’d let go and he was now falling through space. It was an exciting feeling, really, and it was much better than the feeling of hanging on that he’d had before. He wouldn’t have been able to describe it as ‘hanging on’ until just now, but that was definitely what it was. He’d been pretending that everything was normal—difficult, yes, but normal—but now he’d let go he could see it had been everything but normal. You don’t get your shoes stolen normally. Your English teacher doesn’t make out you’re a nutter normally. You don’t get boiled sweets thrown at your head normally. And that was just the school stuff.

And now he was a truant. He was walking down Holloway Road while everyone else at school was… actually, they were eating their lunch, but he wasn’t going back. Soon he’d be walking down Holloway Road (well, not Holloway Road, probably, because he was almost at the end of it already, and lunch would go on for another thirty minutes yet) during history, and then he’d be a proper truant. He wondered whether all truants started like that, whether there was always a Mrs Morrison moment which made them blow their top and leave. He supposed there had to be. He’d always presumed that truants were different sort of people entirely, not like him at all, that they’d been born truants, sort of thing, but he was obviously wrong. In May, before they moved to London, when he was in his last term at his old school, he wasn’t a truant kind of person in any way whatsoever. He turned up at school, listened to what people said, did his homework, took part. But six months later that had all changed, bit by bit.

It was probably like that for tramps, too, he realized. They walked out of their house one evening and thought, I’ll sleep in this shop doorway tonight, and when you’d done it once, something changed in you, and you became a tramp, rather than someone who didn’t have anywhere to sleep for one night. And the same with criminals! And drug addicts! And… He decided to stop thinking about it all then. If he carried on, walking out of Mrs Morrison’s office might begin to look like the moment his whole life changed, and he wasn’t sure he was ready for that. He wasn’t someone who wanted to become a truant or a tramp or a murderer or a drug addict. He was just someone who was fed up with Mrs Morrison. There had to be a difference.