When I Was Joe (16 page)

There's only one way to block it out. I grab my mobile and send a text:
OK 4 pm
And I shift on to my less painful side, close my eyes and start imagining – in fantastic exotic detail – what Ashley and I are going to get up to tomorrow.

But even that's not enough to bring sleep. I'm relaxed all right, but I can't get rid of the fear. I'm scared of the faceless people out there who want to hurt me like they hurt Gran. I'm terrified that Mum's phone call is going to lead them to me.

But the biggest fear is what I'm becoming inside.

Ashley's annoyed with me. I can tell the minute I spot her coming along the path, by the way she's frowning and flouncing and pouting.

It's a shame because she looks
fantastic
. She's in summer uniform, which means a really short skirt and a tight white polo shirt through which a purple bra kind of shines. I'm dimly aware that my aunties wouldn't have been so impressed – they'd use mean words like chav and tart – but I don't care what they'd think because to me she's really sexy, incredibly attractive.

‘Hey Ash,' I say, as she sits down next to me. ‘What's up?' I'm hoping that we can keep any talking to a minimum so I can explore this new look as thoroughly as possible. And I'm also worried that if I allow myself to dislike Ashley any more than I do now, I'll have to chuck her, which I'd rather not do quite yet.
We're just finely balanced right now.

‘I thought you'd call or text or something yesterday or today and tell me exactly what happened – the whole story,' says Ashley in a huff. ‘Everyone was asking me about you and I felt a right lemon not being able to tell anyone anything. You could have waited for me after school. And then you just texted ‘4 pm OK', no kisses nor nothing.'

Blah, blah, blah, blah. Loud and annoying, just as I thought. Me, me, me, me. And I suspect she's a bully. Why am I even here? ‘I can give you kisses like this,' I say and lean in to do just that.

She's not having it though. ‘But why didn't you call me yesterday? My mum knew more about what was going on than I did.'

‘I was in the hospital for hours, Ash. Look.' I lift up my T-shirt to show her my bruises, which are nearly the same colour as her underwear. ‘Two broken ribs from that thug Carl.'

Her hand goes to her mouth. ‘Oh my God. You must be in agony.'

‘Only you can make it feel better,' I lie, because today the painkillers are doing an excellent job and I was able to go out for a two-hour run this morning, no problem at all.

‘Oh, I suppose I forgive you,' she says, and moves
in close for the kind of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation that Carl very nearly needed yesterday at the pool.

We're there for an hour, during which I discover that Ashley will let me go quite a bit further than Arron ever got with Shannon Travis, although – somewhat to my relief – there do seem to be limits. But one minute she's pushing my hand away and the next she's placing it right back where it was, which is kind of confusing.

And then we hear something. A rustling noise. . . We freeze. Nothing. ‘It's OK,' I murmur and my hand creeps on to her thigh. And then muffled laughter, a bright light and – bugger– he's taken our photo on his mobile phone.

‘Slag!' he yells at Ashley. ‘Slapper. . . Wait till all the boys see these. . .'

It's Jordan. Carl's sidekick. And Louis is by his side. Ashley's never moved so fast in her life. She launches herself at them: ‘Bastards! Delete them!'

They're laughing at her and at me, and they're taking the opportunity to feel her up a bit. Inside me there's cold fury. This is threatening. This is unacceptable. This is an emergency. And I reach into my back pocket and I pull out the knife that I took from the kitchen before I came out to meet her.

‘Gimme da phone,' I say in my hardest gangsta
voice, slowly unwrapping the handkerchief I'd wound around it.

Now it's their turn to freeze. They look uncertainly at each other. ‘Gimme da phone,' I repeat, except this time I throw in a bit more cussing. ‘Den no one's gonna be hurt.'

‘Oh my God, Joe,' says Ashley.

‘You knows I can fight. And you knows I can run. And you see dis blade.' I wave the knife at them. ‘So give. Me. Da. Fu'in'. Phone.'

Jordan throws it on the ground. I look at Louis. ‘And you.'

‘But I never took any.'

‘Gimme da phone coz you is disrespectin' me and dis gel, and you is gonna pay for dat, muvverfu'er.'

He throws his phone down too and I say, ‘Ash, get ‘em.' She picks them up and I can see she's crying.

‘Delete all their data and then give them back.'

She does it and I say, ‘OK, now you're gonna apologise to the lady.'

They shuffle their feet. ‘Sorry, Ashley. Sorry.'

‘Get outta here.'

They stumble along the path, looking behind them every two seconds. Ashley and I follow – I don't want to let them out of my sight so they can ambush us halfway down. At the park gate I put the knife back in my pocket
and make sure they've got on to a bus. Then I turn to Ashley, who has stopped crying but looks pretty upset. There's this little tiny bit of me that thinks it's not such a terrible thing for her to find out how she makes people like Claire feel.

‘Are you OK?' I ask.

‘Yes,' she whispers. Then, ‘Joe, why did you have a knife?'

Because there are people out there who beat and tortured my gran to discover where to find me, and my mum may have stupidly given them my address. I shrug. ‘Old habit.'

I wonder whether Jordan and Louis are going to go home and start looking in their kitchens to be ready for the next time they meet me. But most of all, I wonder what I'd have done if they hadn't thrown down their phones.

‘How come you talked like that?'

It's just another language, I want to say, like Urdu or Turkish or Portuguese. We played around with the way we spoke all the time at primary school. And then at eleven some of us went to a school where you could go on doing that (St Jude's) and some of us went to a school where you spoke in gangsta and you wrote in text (Tollington) and two of us went miles across town to St Saviour's where it was, ‘yes sir, no sir,' and the other
boys laughed at you for coming from East London.

‘Dat's da lingo in da hood, innit,' I tell her.

‘You sound like another person altogether,' she says. I kiss her goodbye as her bus draws up, but her heart doesn't seem to be in it.

I lie low for the next few days. I don't answer anyone's texts – even Ashley's – and I don't go near the school. The only message I'd like to get would be one from Ellie but I don't hear anything from her. Maybe she's too disappointed with me to bother. Maybe Claire told how I hurt and scared her.

Maureen keeps me up to date with news from the hospital. Gran is still in a coma and although they say she's stable, they have no idea when she might wake up. Mum and my aunties are staying at the hospital. ‘Are you guarding them properly?' I ask, and Maureen assures me that yes, there's a police guard there all the time. ‘Have you found the people who did this?' I ask, but she shakes her head.

I watch a lot of daytime telly and I keep the curtains closed. It seems that one way or another I'm going to get permanently excluded from school. Jordan and Louis will report me for threatening them with a knife. Claire will tell someone that I bullied her. Carl will have suffered irreversible brain damage.

And then what? I won't be Joe any more and I'll
have to start all over again. I can't decide if that's a good thing or not. It seems that once Mum left, once no one knew me as Ty, then Joe turned into a monster. It's safest to stay at home and watch
Cash in the Attic
.

Friday morning, I come downstairs dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and Maureen sends me straight back again to change into uniform. She even cuts my hair a bit to make it tidier and combs it for me like I'm six. She drives us to school: ‘Just remember, tell him you're sorry and promise it won't happen again. And look like you are sorry. No back chat, no arguing.'

Luckily everyone's in lessons and no one I know sees us as we walk through the corridors to the head's office. There's an outer office and Maureen knocks on the door and tells the woman, who answers, ‘Joe Andrews and Maureen O'Reilly to see the head teacher.'

I get a horrible shock when I see this woman. It's like Ashley's aged thirty years overnight. Same dark hair, same spidery eyelashes, same pouty mouth, even the same strain on the buttons around the chest area. She makes me feel a bit sick. She looks at me like I'm a dung beetle – interesting but revolting. I remember how unprofessional she is and glare right back. I wonder if she knows about Ashley and me.

We wait for ten minutes, and then the door of the head teacher's office opens and Carl and his parents come
out. Carl's nose is still swollen and there's a huge bruise that covers both eyes. I can't imagine that, having seen that, the head teacher is going to want me to stay in the school. To my surprise they come over to us, but only to sit down – it seems that they're not finished with the head. We all ignore each other, which is a lot of ignoring. I stare at the ceiling and in my head I rerun my 1500-metre triumph.

‘Mr Naylor will see you now,' says Ashley's mum, and we walk into his office. I'm actually relieved that Mum isn't here. Maureen is a lot calmer than she would have been.

Mr Naylor is sitting at his desk and we sit down in front of him. He's quite old; grey hair, beard and specs, and I know from assemblies that he's nuts on order and discipline.

‘Mrs Andrews,' he starts, and Maureen interrupts. ‘Excuse me, but I'm not the boy's mother, Mr Naylor. She's away at the moment and I'm
in loco parentis
. The family is in severe crisis: Joe's grandmother has been the victim of an extremely violent crime,' – my stomach lurches – ‘and is still unconscious. Although it in no way excuses Joe's behaviour, I think it may go some way towards explaining it.'

Mr Naylor and I are both a bit dazed by this opening speech. ‘Ah,' he says. ‘Well. I'm sorry to hear that,
Mrs . . . er. . .'

‘Maureen O'Reilly,' says Maureen, offering him her hand to shake. ‘Friend of the family.'

‘Ah. Oh. Right.' Mr Naylor is trying not to look too nosy. ‘Well, I was hoping we could hear from Joe his explanation of the event in the swimming pool.'

Event? That's a good one. Perhaps they'll add drowning and fighting to the next swimming gala. I give him a brief outline.

Mr Naylor reaches for a piece of paper on his desk. ‘And Carl suffered a broken nose, concussion and severe bruising.'

Maureen says, ‘Yes, but what Joe hasn't told you is that Carl broke two of his ribs earlier in the day. Show him, Joe.'

I unravel my uniform to display the bruises. It's kind of embarrassing stripping off in front of the head, but I suppose it's worth it.

‘How did this happen?' asks Mr Naylor, peering over his specs at my torso.

‘I fell over a kit bag in the changing room and Carl kicked me. I didn't realise anything was broken though.'

‘I would suggest that any punishment you give Joe should apply equally to Carl,' says Maureen.

‘Carl's parents are talking about taking the whole
matter to the police,' says Mr Naylor.

‘That would be very foolish of them, unless they would like Joe's mother to press charges against their son as well,' counters Maureen with quick-fire speed.

‘Joe, what are the roots of this argument between you and Carl? You've hardly been in the school any time at all, and I'm very disappointed to find you mixed up in what seems to be an escalating feud.'

‘I . . . er . . . Mr Henderson gave me an access card to use the fitness suite and stuff out of hours and Carl was really angry, said the football team should have them too. That's the main reason, I think.'

‘And there's nothing you've done to exacerbate matters?'

‘No, I don't care if they have cards as well.'

‘And over the last few days you've done nothing to stir up popular feeling in the school? This petition, for example,' – he points to a wodge of paper – ‘and the protests that have been taking place?'

‘I didn't know anything about that,' I say, and Maureen kicks into action again.

‘Mr Naylor, over the last few days I've seen the very sad sight of a bright, athletic, sociable boy turn into a virtual recluse who sits and watches television all day and won't even open the curtains. He's had dozens of messages from supportive friends and he hasn't replied
to one. Joe and his mother are new to this town and they came here not knowing a soul. He's had to find friends and get used to a very different atmosphere, and I think the school's let him down by failing to protect him from this sort of bullying behaviour.'

She pauses, but only to draw breath. ‘At the hospital they told me that his breathing may have been affected all day, and that the supply of oxygen to his brain was obviously further restricted by being held under water. This could well have affected his judgement. Joe's come from a tough area and his mother sent him to boxing club to learn to protect himself. I'd ask you to consider that he was acting on instinct and in pure self defence.'

She ought to be a lawyer. That was brilliant! Mr Naylor opens his mouth to reply, but Maureen has more to say.

‘He's been at home all week. Surely he's had his punishment.'

Mr Naylor clears his throat. ‘I've certainly heard some good things about Joe and I have a letter here from Ellie Langley, the student responsible for his training. She makes a strong case for allowing him to keep on with the athletics programme. I'd like to hear Joe say he's sorry for his behaviour and make a commitment to behaving better in future.'