Starting Over Read Free Page B

backtrack with some spiel about me needing space and that I needed to find my own set of friends and identity, blah de blah de blah. She was blowing me off and we both knew it. I knew what it was like in schools. Sixth Formers simply don’t mix with the younger years.
    As we turned into the road that led to the school, my phone bleeped that I had a text message. It was from Erin.
    Rmembr to smile; of all the things u wear, it’s the mst imprtant.
    That’s sweet,
I thought,
and a good job that she’d texted as I might have forgotten to turn my phone off.
It would have been so embarrasing if it had gone off in my first assembly. I was about to turn it off when it bleeped another message. This time she’d written:
    Don’t smile 2 much tho or peeps will thnk ur a loonie.
    I laughed.
Thanks for the advice, Erin,
I thought, then I switched it off and stashed it in my rucksack.
    The traffic became more congested as we got closer to the school. Fleets of four-wheel drives and people carriers were double parked, horns blared from cars who were held up behind them and couldn’t get through, and droves of pupils in black-and-white uniforms were swarming towards the school from all directions, some getting out of cars, others off buses, a few on bicycles, others, like Dylan and I, arriving by foot. I felt my stomach lurch with nerves as the noise level grew as old friends greeted each other, linked arms and headed in through the gates. I turned to glance at Dylan. ‘OK?’ I asked.
    He nodded but he still looked pale. ‘Got any fags?’ he asked.
    â€˜Dylan! I know you don’t smoke.’
    â€˜Thought I might start,’ he said. ‘That and drinking hard liquor.’
    That made me laugh as Dylan is Mr Healthy. He reads all the labels on everything, looking for hidden preservatives. For a brief moment, I felt protective and tender towards him, as Icould see that he was trying to put me at ease as much as I was trying to reassure him. And then he turned from white to green.
    â€˜Oh God . . .’ he gasped and ran back in the direction that we’d come from.
    I looked towards the school. We’d timed it to perfection so that we weren’t too late and weren’t too early. I heard the bell go and pupils began to speed up. But there was no way I could go in without Dylan. I turned and raced after him.
    To the left of the main road, there was what looked like a quieter road, and that’s where he’d gone. I turned the corner and saw him disappear through someone’s gate beside a tall privet hedge. I could immediately see why he had done that -a bunch of boys in our uniform were coming along the pavement. I knew that the last thing Dylan wanted was to be seen doing the technicolor yawn on his first day. I walked past the hedge then casually turned into the gateway as if I lived there. I could see Dylan in the corner of the garden, ducked down behind the hedge. I turned back to check the other boys had gone past then looked up and down the street. ‘Coast is clear,’ I said. ‘You going to hurl again?’
    Dylan shook his head and came back on to the path. ‘Don’t think so. Ergh . . . Urghhh . . .’ His timing was impeccable. The front door of the house opened and an elderly lady in a hairnet appeared in a long, pink, fleecy dressing gown. She didn’t notice us at first because she was looking down at her step. She bent over to pick up her milk and it was
then
that she saw Dylan. She couldn’t have missed him really as it was at the exact moment thathe lost it and threw up for a third time, all over her front steps.
    Her face was a picture. Like she’d seen a ghost. ‘Whah . . . Who?’ she blustered.
    I went into a strange hopping dance behind Dylan. ‘Oh God. Oh Lord. I am sooooo sorry. New to the area. Wrong house. So sorry.’
    The lady straightened up, pulled her dressing gown tight around her, ducked back in