Boy2Girl Read online

  Another thing. What had been so irritating about him when he was a boy – his confidence, his drawling accent, his need to show off and shock people and generally draw attention to himself – seemed almost charming now that he was a girl. Starting out at a new school in a new country should have been tough, but Sam, the female Sam, was making it look easy. Already, he was Year Eight’s new cutie.

  ‘I think this might just work,’ I murmured to Jake as Sam talked on.

  Jake shook his head. ‘Not when he’s flashing that boy’s watch, it won’t.’

  Ah. I looked closer. On Sam’s wrist, occasionally showing under the sleeve of his jacket, was a watch that was straight from his male past – flashy, big and sporty.

  At the end of the lesson, we were due to take a twenty-minute break. As Sam approached, chatting to Zia, I tried to attract his attention but, almost as if he had forgotten who I was, he walked straight past me.

  In the playground, when the two of them had been joined by Charley and Elena, I tried again.

  ‘Everything OK, Sam?’ I asked.

  The four of them looked at me coolly as if my interruption was profoundly unwelcome.

  ‘Sure,’ Sam said. ‘Why shouldn’t it be?’

  ‘I just thought I’d watch out for you.’ I glanced in the direction of his wrist. ‘I wanted to watch how you were getting on. I didn’t want you to lose it.’

  ‘What’s he talking about?’ Sam asked the girls.

  ‘I think he’s trying to get you to look at your wristwatch,’ said Charley.

  Sam flicked his wrist, carelessly revealing the evidence. ‘Hey, you’re wearing a boy’s watch,’ said Elena.

  ‘I lent her mine,’ I said quickly. ‘I…I didn’t want her to be late for lessons on her first day at school.’

  ‘What you talkin’ about?’ Sam laughed. ‘This is my watch. In the States, all the girls are wearing sports watches. It’s the hot new fashion statement.’

  ‘Really?’ Elena, who lives to accessorise, took Sam’s wrist and looked more closely at the watch.

  I stammered something about the watch looking rather like mine, but no one was listening to me. As the three girls fussed over Sam’s left wrist, he looked over their heads in my direction, smiled happily, then jerked his head in an eloquent gesture of dismissal.

  I walked across the playground to where Jake and Tyrone were standing.

  ‘How’s she doing?’ Jake asked.

  He glanced back at the group of girls. Zia was actually touching Sam’s blond hair admiringly. The four of them made a picture of girly togetherness.

  ‘She’s doing great,’ I said.

  Tyrone

  Face it, we took our eye off the ball. We were so hung up on how Sam had managed to get in with Elena’s crew within, like, seconds of arriving at Bradbury Hill that we forgot one crucial fact.

  The guy was trouble – always had been, always would be. Even at that moment when it looked like he was the Miss American Pie of Year Eight, some kind of bother would be heading his way like a heat-seeking missile.

  Gary Laird has a brain the size of a small, dried pea – getting to the end of the simplest thought is sometimes beyond him – but, like an elephant, he has a memory. If someone has annoyed him in even the slightest way, that person will be added to Gary’s private shopping list, the one headed ‘People I Must Hurt Very Badly Today’.

  Right now, Sam was top of that list. Gary had seen the American girl making herself the centre of attention in assembly. He had sensed a weird lack of respect or fear when he had spoken to her in the playground. All through the first lesson of term, that small, dried pea of his was filled with thoughts of violent revenge.

  Jim Kiley

  I didn’t want to get involved. Keep your nose clean, that’s me. But have you seen Gary? Have you met him? He’s not the sort of person you say ‘no’ to – not if you fancy keeping your looks, that is. So when Gary asked me to get the new girl to the science block, I wasn’t about to ask any questions. I guessed that he wasn’t exactly planning to talk sweet nothings to her but I was like, hey, not my problem. That’s the way it is at Bradbury Hill – at least when Gary Laird’s around.

  Gary

  It was my moment. I’d been thinking about it all through the lesson. I was focused, ready. I felt very, very good.

  Elena

  Sam was telling us all this crazy stuff about her life in America when Jim Kiley, one of those nervous, invisible types from Year Ten, came up and told her that Mr Smart, the deputy head, needed to see her for registration in the science block.

  It was only after she was making her way across the playground that we began to be suspicious.

  Mr Smart in the science block? He taught geography. And why should Sam need to register right now? If it was some kind of joke or set-up, then it wasn’t exactly subtle.

  ‘Gary!’ It was Charley who got there first. ‘It’s a trap.’ Sam had turned the corner. The three of us started walking after her.

  It was at that precise moment that this sound – a yodelling, deafening bellow – echoed around the playground. It was coming from the science block.

  Zia

  For a few seconds there was this ‘What the—?’ moment in the playground. Then everyone began to move in the direction of the noise.

  When we turned the corner, there was already a crowd of people gathered near the entrance to the science block. We pushed our way to the front.

  There a weird and amazing sight greeted our eyes. Gary Laird was bent double. His face, flushed a dark red, was at a painful angle to his neck, and from his gaping mouth there came an agonised lowing sound, like a cow giving birth. Standing over him, looking, if anything, smaller than usual, was Sam. She was holding Gary’s left ear in her hand, stretching it away from his Neanderthal skull.

  It was astonishing, unnatural – funny but also scary – to see the Terror of Year Ten so completely and humiliatingly at the mercy of this small, blonde girl.

  ‘It’s the American kid,’ someone said.

  ‘Go for it, girl,’ someone else shouted to nervous, excited laughter.

  Sam ignored us all and concentrated on her victim. ‘You wanted something, buddy-boy?’ She spoke in a voice of cold, controlled rage. ‘Was there something you had to say to me?’

  ‘Nooo,’ Gary moaned. ‘Nothing.’

  Sam gave the ear such a savage tug that the boy in front of me winced and looked away.

  ‘Don’t get me mad now,’ Sam said through clenched teeth. ‘I just know you wanted to say something.’

  ‘Ssss.’ A noise like a punctured tyre came from Gary. ‘Ssssorry!’

  Sam jerked the ear again. ‘Sorry, Sam,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry, Sam.’

  It was at this moment of surrender that someone at the back of the crowd shouted, ‘It’s Forrester.’

  As Steve Forrester pushed his way forward, Sam glanced up and seemed for a moment about to let Gary go. She released the ear but, at the very moment that her victim relaxed, she let fly with her right foot, catching him with a vicious force between the legs. Gary seemed actually to lift off the ground before landing on the tarmac, a hunched, quivery hulk of agony.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Steve asked.

  Sam tucked a lock of blonde hair behind her ear and widened her eyes innocently. ‘I was attacked, sir.’ The voice was suddenly small and timid. ‘Someone told me the deputy head wanted to see me. Then, when I came around the corner, this guy jumped me.’ She briefly seemed to be about to cry. ‘For no reason, sir.’

  Steve looked down to where Gary was still writhing in agony, both hands between his legs. ‘Is this true, Gary?’ he asked.

  Gary was having difficulty breathing. ‘She’s a…psycho,’ he groaned.

  ‘Oh, yeah, and I suppose she attacked you,’ one of the girls called out from the crowd.

  ‘I saw what happened,’ someone else said. ‘Sam was just walking along, minding her own business, when he grabbed her.’

>   Gary heaved himself so that he was sitting on the tarmac. ‘I just wanted a quiet word,’ he said sulkily. ‘There was no need for’ – he rubbed his left ear – ‘all that.’

  Steve Forrester laughed coldly. ‘It sounds to me that at last you’ve met someone who can stand up for herself,’ he said.

  Gary tried to say something, but Steve had clearly made up his mind. ‘I’ll be reporting this to Mrs Cartwright,’ he said.

  ‘As for you, Miss Lopez…’ He turned to Sam, who was tucking her shirt into her skirt. ‘You’ve got to learn that violence solves absolutely nothing in this life. And kicking a boy where you did can be very painful for him. D’you understand?’

  Sam nodded. ‘Yes, sir,’ she said quietly.

  ‘All right then. Go and tidy yourself up before the next lesson.’

  The crowd parted as Sam made her way towards the main entrance, the victorious gladiator, the little girl bullfighter who had slain a mighty beast. There were mutters of congratulation. ‘Way to go, supergirl,’ someone shouted.

  We watched her go, saw her push her way through the doors and into the toilets.

  The boys’ toilets.

  Elena

  We were like, Huh? Then we saw Matt Burton making his way to the toilets too.

  Matthew

  He had blown it. We were convinced about that. First of all, he had made Gary Laird beg for mercy – something which no one, boy or girl, had ever managed to do. Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, he had barged into the boys’ toilets, watched by half the school.

  Trying to look casual, I followed him in. Sam was at the urinal, casually hitching up his skirt.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I hissed.

  ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘But you’re a girl.’

  He glanced down and made a strange, snickering sound. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You know what I mean. Operation Samantha.’

  He finished peeing, then ambled over to the mirror. ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said, tugging his hairband off and shaking his hair out. ‘I’m a babe. It clean slipped my mind.’

  He looked at me. My panic must have been obvious because he shrugged, almost apologetically, and muttered, ‘I was kind of preoccupied with mashing that guy’s face.’

  I glanced towards the door. Any moment someone would come in.

  ‘Get your hairband on,’ I said. ‘Leave this to me.’

  He gathered his hair and slipped the band over his head in a way which I have to admit was surprisingly expert.

  ‘Don’t get the wrong idea.’ I put an arm around his shoulders.

  He jumped away as if I had an electric current running through my right arm. ‘What you doing, you freak?’ he said.

  ‘Getting you out of a mess.’ I stepped forward and put an arm around him again. ‘This won’t take long,’ I said. ‘Just act upset.’

  I opened the door. Elena, Zia and Charley were waiting in the corridor outside.

  ‘Come on, Sam,’ I said in a gentle, nurse-like voice. ‘It’s all right. The girls will look after you now.’

  Sam’s head was lowered. I felt him relax beneath my arm. The cute, vulnerable, female Sam was there once more.

  ‘What…what happened?’ he murmured in a stunned voice.

  ‘You went into the wrong toilet, didn’t you?’ I smiled at the girls. ‘She’s in shock.’

  ‘But…’ Sam looked around wonderingly. ‘In the States, the guys and the girls share toilets. I never knew…God, I’m so embarrassed.’

  Personally, I thought this was pushing it a bit, but the girls fell for it big time.

  ‘Oh, poor Sam.’ Elena stepped forward, arms out-stretched. Sam allowed himself to be embraced.

  After a few moments of sisterly cuddling, he was ushered away by the girls, who were making comforting, cooing noises.

  As I watched them go, Sam flicked me the finger behind his back.

  I allowed myself a little smile.

  Gary

  She caught me off guard. For a girl, she was surprisingly. strong. Mean with it too. I only wanted to teach her some manners, but at the end of the day it was me who had a throbbing ear and an appointment to see the head. She was trouble, that Sam Lopez. I could have sorted her out, no problem, but after that day I decided I had better things to do.

  7

  Charley

  A whole sisterhood, we-are-family thing was kicking in. It had been quite a day for Sam. She had stood up to the Carthorse. She had talked about her mum in class. She had been attacked by Gary Laird. She had visited a boy’s lavatory by mistake.

  Now she was in need of some good old girl talk.

  That lunchtime, we were in early to grab our usual corner table in the dining room. Sam was still looking a bit pale and shaken from what had happened, so we just stepped on the gas-pedal and chatted away. There was no doubt that she was one of us now. As far as we were concerned, she was a Bitch through and through.

  Matthew

  We were late for lunch and ended up on the big table with a load of Year Sevens. I noticed that Sam was sitting with the girls over in the corner, not saying much but just kind of listening while major-league girl talk was going on all around him.

  I didn’t envy him, to tell the truth. All that chatting and yapping is pretty alien to a guy. We can communicate well enough with a few words, grunts and facial expressions, but they seem to feel the need to verbalise just about everything and anything. It seems that, as soon as a thought comes into their heads (sometimes even before a thought comes into their heads) they have to share it with others.

  If I were a sexist (which, thank goodness, I’m not), I might say that this makes them more superficial than us.

  I tried to catch Sam’s eye, but whatever they were talking about was certainly occupying his attention.

  Elena

  The great thing about us is that we can say anything. There are no boundaries, no whoops-I’d-better-keep-quiet-about-that, when the three of us are together. Sooner or later, everything – even total blush-making stuff about Mark Kramer, The Date That Never Was – comes out. I guess it must be different in the States, because Sam just looked from one of us to another, jaw gently sagging.

  Charley

  Here’s me at lunch that day: ‘You know what I almost said when Steve asked us what happened to us in the holidays?’

  ‘About Elena falling for Mark Kramer?’ Zia asked innocently.

  ‘Actually, I was going to say, “Well, Steve, my big news this summer was that I started.”’

  ‘Oh, yesss!’ Elena clapped so loudly that the people at the next table glanced in our direction.

  ‘Cramps and everything,’ I said, allowing a hint of pride to enter my voice.

  ‘Good old Charley,’ said Zia. ‘Put up the flags.’

  ‘The red flags,’ said Elena, laughing.

  I noticed that Sam was looking a bit confused, so, dropping my voice, I told her that I had been a bit worried last year on account of virtually every girl in our year having started except me. I was kind of relieved. My mum actually came over all teary when I told her: ‘My little girl’s a woman,’ she sobbed. A tad embarrassing but sort of sweet.

  Sam still had this vacant look on her face. ‘Er, started?’ she said.

  ‘You know, the curse,’ said Elena. ‘She’s come on,’ said Zia.

  ‘The old red devils,’ I said. ‘I’ve got the painters in.’

  By now Sam was looking really confused. ‘Excuse me?’ she said.

  I put a hand on her arm and murmured, ‘Period, Sam: got my period.’

  ‘Ah…right.’ Sam nodded slowly as if she didn’t know what to say. I thought maybe we should change the subject but, as is her habit, Elena managed to crank up the embarrassment quotient. She may look like cherry pie, but she has the tact and delicacy of a charging bison, that girl.

  Elena

  I’m like, ‘Duh. You must have known what we were talking about.’

  ‘Maybe it’s s
ome kind of British thing,’ Sam said.

  ‘Menstruation,’ murmured Zia.

  ‘Of course,’ said Sam, kind of unconvincingly.

  ‘When did you start, Sam?’ I asked, trying to put her at her ease.

  ‘Me? Erm…I’m kinda still waiting.’

  We must have looked a bit surprised because Sam goes, ‘I guess it’s because my mom never gave me cereal for breakfast. I’ve always been kind of irregular, if you know what I mean.’

  There was a long, long silence of about three seconds. Then I said, in my kindest voice, ‘It’s not like going to the loo, Sam. It’s…different.’

  Sam seemed embarrassed. ‘Sure, I know that,’ she said. ‘I’m totally cool with the old cramps and stuff.’

  Charley was giving me her usual shut-up-Elena look, but I decided it was best to be completely open with Sam. ‘We won’t tell the others,’ I said. ‘Some of the girls can get a bit mean if they know you’re a bit retarded in that department – particularly since you’re kind of flat-chested too.’

  Sam looked down at the totally boob-free zone that was her chest. ‘Getting kind of personal here, aren’t we?’ She muttered.

  ‘Yeah, give it a break, El,’ said Zia.

  ‘I’m only telling Sam because I had that problem myself,’ I explained reasonably.

  It was at that moment that I had a rather brilliant idea. ‘In fact,’ I said. ‘I might be able to help you.’

  Mrs Burton

  It was my decision not to tell Sam about the slightly changed circumstances of our situation. Jeb Durkowitz, the attorney in San Diego with whom I had dealt following my sister’s death, had telephoned us some three weeks before the new term started.

  It turned out that Gail had not been as completely hopeless when it came to practical matters as we had assumed. She had left a will in her bank vault. A lot of it was nonsense – New Age stuff about the need for Sam to be rebirthed on the eighteenth summer solstice and so on – but in its last paragraph my little sister had decreed that half of her estate should be kept in trust for Sam while the other half should go to his carer to cover the cost of his upbringing.