Lifesaving for Beginners

Faith can’t boss you around anymore cos she’s not your sister.’
    Damo is a lot bigger than me. When I stand up, I come up to his shoulder. The one he picked the scab off. ‘Take that back.’ I must have shouted because the classroom goes dead quiet all of a sudden and everyone turns to look at us.
    Damo stops smiling. ‘No. I won’t. It’s true. You said so yourself.’
    ‘Take it back.’
    The chant starts at table two. Flapper starts it, I think. He turns his chair round so he can see better. Then everyone joins in. ‘Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight.’
    Carla says, ‘Shuddup, will ya? Miss Williams will be back in a minute.’ Nobody pays any attention.
    Everyone looks at us and the chant gets louder.
    I don’t want to fight. And it’s not just because Damo’s bigger than me and has a brother who’s in the army and teaches him proper fighting techniques.
    I say, ‘Take it back or I’ll hit you.’ Damo looks like he does when Miss Williams gets him to do a sum in his head. Before she moved us, I used to write the answers down for him.
    ‘No. I won’t,’ he says and I see his hands curl themselves into fists.
    All round me, the others chant.
    ‘Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight.’
    I swing my fist and when it lands, on his front tooth, the pain is as much of a surprise as the noise. The sharp crack of it. My knuckle is bleeding and a bit of his tooth is on the floor, beside Horrid Henry’s lunchbox.
    ‘Milo McIntyre!’ Miss Williams is standing at the door of the classroom, holding our corrected spelling tests in both arms, like a baby. Mine is on the top of the pile. I can see it. Twelve out of twelve, circled in red pen, with a smiley face beside the mark. My knuckle throbs. Damo holds his hands against his mouth and curses at me but the curses are muffled so he doesn’t get in trouble. Miss Williams says, ‘Oh my goodness,’ and then she runs to her desk and puts the papers on it and stands there with her hand cupped around her mouth. I didn’t mean to chip his tooth. His mam might ask Faith for money for braces or something. Braces cost a lot. When Faith had them, Mam said we couldn’t go on holiday for two years. But we did. We went to a caravan in Blackpool and I swam in the sea every day.
    Faith barges into Mr Pilkington’s office without knocking like you’re supposed to. She looks at me and shakes her head. She looks disappointed. The burning, stinging sensation is back behind my eyes and nose, and this time, tears run down my face. They feel hot. I make fists of my hands again and push them against my eyes but I can’t stop now. I can’t stop.
    She stands beside my chair and rubs her hand up and down my arm, as if Mr Pilkington isn’t even here and I’m not in dead trouble.
    She says, ‘Hey? You OK?’
    She says, ‘What happened?’
    She says, ‘Stop crying now,’ and her voice is sharper than before. She sounds like Mam when I say a bad word. She always gave out to me when I said a bad word. ‘You’ve some mouth on ya, boyo.’ That’s what she used to say.
    I stop crying. I wipe my nose with the sleeve of my jumper. Faith says you shouldn’t do that because the snots harden and they’re a divil to get out. Divil is one of Mam’s words. A divil is something that isn’t easy.
    Faith doesn’t say anything about the snots and the sleeve of the jumper. Instead, she looks at Mr Pilkington. He covers his belly with his jacket. He smiles at Faith but he’s looking at her like he’s checking the buttons on her shirt are closed or something. He gestures her to a chair and then sits on the corner of his desk, right in front of her. She moves her chair back and curls her feet up underneath her, even though you’re supposed to sit up straight when you’re in the office. Mr Pilkington doesn’t tell her not to. Instead, he folds his arms and crosses his legs and tells her all about me hitting Damo. When he bends towards her, I can smell his breath: cold coffee and Polo mints. I think Faith can too because she leans farther back in her chair.
    When he stops talking, Faith says nothing. Instead, she looks at me like she’s trying to remember my name.
    Mr Pilkington says, ‘So, you agree, this is a very serious matter?’
    Faith looks at him again. ‘It’s out of character.’
    ‘But serious, nonetheless.’
    ‘He’s never done anything like this before.’
    ‘Well, there was the incident last week. With George Pullman. Remember?’
    I didn’t think Faith