Owen, Iain and me met on our very first day at Mount Pleasant. None of us knew anybody in our tutor group, so at tutor time we ended up sitting on our own, all at the same table. We started talking, and didn’t really stop for five years.

Iain introduced Owen and me to Sam a few days later. Sam Ellison was in another form, but Iain knew him from junior school. They hadn’t been friends, but they hadn’t hated each other either, and in those first couple of weeks, Sam and Iain were familiar faces to each other in the middle of a sea of strangers.

Sam Ellison was reasonably tall and reasonably slim. He had reasonably fair hair, and it was reasonably long; until the end of the third year, when he shaved it all off.

Sam’s eyebrows were higher on his forehead than most people’s. It made it look like he had an open, friendly expression on his face when really he wasn’t making any expression at all.

Sam started shaving at the start of the third year. He proudly showed us where he’d nicked his top lip. During the summer at the end of the third year Owen and I met him in town. He had a small tuft of what looked like pubic hair growing on his chin that he was trying to pass off as a beard. We didn’t tell him what we really thought of it.

Sam’s favourite phrase was:

- My schlong!

He used it the way other people used:

- My arse!

As in:

- Kate Winslet is hotter than Pamela Anderson, my arse!

Sam would say:

- Kate Winslet is hotter than Pamela Anderson, my schlong!

Except that he wouldn’t say that, because Sam was always the one who started the argument that Kate Winslet was hottest to begin with.

He rolled schlong of his tongue like Jews said 'schlemiel'. Though that was the year everyone went around calling each other schlemiel. Nobody knew what it meant, but we’d all heard it in "Independence Day" and it sounded cooler than calling someone a wanker.

- Owen, I lost your pen.

- Oh, cheers, you schlemiel!

- Did you hear Henderson got caught smoking again?

- God, what a schlemiel!

Sam invented a variation on the theme:

- You son-of-a-schlemiel!

He tried to roll 'son' off his tongue too:

- You schlon-of-a-schlemiel!

He stopped when someone supposedly told him it was a terrible Sean Connery impression. Owen said it was Mr Reginald, but I didn’t believe him.

In the second year, it was Sam who offered us our first cigarettes. The Ellisons had been to France over Easter and his dad had stocked up on fags at the hypermarket. Mr E had bought so many that Sam didn’t think he’d notice if one pack went missing.

We sat in the middle of the park on Saturday morning. It was sunny but still chilly. Sam had also brought a box of matches. He didn’t know how to use a lighter yet, though it took a few snapped matches before he worked out how to use them, too.

He lit the cigarettes himself and then passed them around. We sat cross-legged in a circle. We didn’t speak. We just sat there, holding the fags in our fingers like crayons, occasionally putting them in our mouths.

- Well, that was fun, Owen said as we walked into town for some lunch.

- Yeah, Sam agreed. - We’ll have to do it again some time.

- Don’t smoke any more of those without us, then, said Iain.

- How about next Saturday? said Owen.

- Yeah.

- Sure, said Sam.

I’d spent the entire time looking over Owen’s shoulder in case someone who knew my parents walked past. Now I just wanted a burger to take the taste away. I still went back the next weekend, though, and until Owen worked up the courage to start stealing fags from his own parents, Sam was our only source of supply.

Sam had two groups of friends. There was us, and there was Tim Fincher and Ed Dawson. Tim and Ed were in Sam’s tutor group. They had been friends at the same junior school. In the first year, Sam and Tim and Ed’s tutor made them all sit in alphabetical order for tutor time. Sam E ended up sitting between Ed D and Tim F. Stuck in the middle, he was in prime position to ingratiate himself upon their conversations.

Tim and Ed were into ghetto music. They both wanted to be DJs. In the second year they went through a phase where they tried to talk street. Tim also tried to grow an afro, but it ended up just looking like a shaggy mess, and Mr Wright told him to get a haircut. Outside of school they wore these really baggy trousers, and insisted on calling them pants.

In the third year, Sam was invited to Ed’s fourteenth birthday party.

- Oh, man, it was so cool, he told us.

So cool, in fact, that he didn’t stop telling us about it for almost a week afterwards.

- They had like twenty or thirty bottles of Bud, and there was like twelve or fifteen of us, so it was all gone by ten o’clock, so -

For my fourteenth birthday party, Owen, Iain and Sam slept over at my house and we watched videos until 2am.

- There was this girl, Sarah, and she’d brought her boyfriend, and he was over eighteen, and he had ID, so he went down the offie and came back with -

By the second or third time we heard this, I wasn’t the only one noticing how the story changed each time Sam told it.

- And we were so pissed, and at one point we were in a bedroom upstairs and this guy, Sarah’s boyfriend, opened the window and -

- Do you believe any of it? I asked Owen, when Sam wasn’t around to hear.

- No. Of course not, said Owen. - Why? Do you?

- No way.

- And then this friend of Sarah’s said she’d whack off any guy who had the guts to kiss Ed on the lips, Sam continued. - Oh, man, it was so cool.

Ed became something of a legend towards the end of the third year. The rumour went round that Ed had had sex with his girlfriend six times in one day. He’d started the rumour himself, of course, but left its spreading to others. It was far more believable when you heard it from someone else other than Ed, and Ed knew it.

Owen and I heard it first from Iain. Then we heard it again from Sam. Soon it was so widespread even some of the teachers had picked up on it. Owen and I had French with Tim and Ed, and Mr Cockthruster made a joke about virginity, and he glanced over at Ed whilst he made it. By that stage it didn’t even matter whether Ed had made it up or not. So many people believed the rumour that it was as good as true anyway.

Toward the end of the subsequent summer holiday, Owen and I arranged to meet in town, see a film. As always, those last couple of weeks were spent regretting not doing anything with the previous four. I was expecting to find Owen in a similar mood to my own. Instead he was looking quite manic.

- Hey, I just saw Sam, he said.

I laughed. - Has he shaved that bum-fluff off his face yet?

- Yes. It’s all gone.

I laughed again.

- And I think I know why, he added.

- Yeah, I said. - Someone probably told him how crap it looked. Someone more honest than us.

He smirked. - Perhaps.

- What are you grinning about, Owen?

As we walked down the high street, he told me:

- Sam’s got a girlfriend.

I looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

- Her name’s Beth, he went on.

- Did you actually see her?

- Dude, I met her. They’re out on a date.

I looked around, just in case they were still nearby.

- And I must say, said Owen. - She’s a mighty fine piece of work. I have no idea how he got that lucky.

There was no sign of Beth, or Sam.

- Tell me everything, I said.

Beth was a friend of Ed’s girlfriend. She had dropped a piece of paper with her number written on it into Sam’s lap at a party a couple of weeks before. Both Owen and I had been away with our families at the time; not that we would have been invited to one of Ed’s chums’ parties anyway.

Sam took two days to work up the courage to call her. He was afraid it was a practical joke, Beth being as hot as she was. Everyone knew about the time when that happened to Chris Parsons. A girl gave him her number at the second year disco, but when he rang it the next day it turned out to be the number for a local family planning clinic.

Fortunately for Sam, Beth hadn’t gone to the bother of finding a fake number just to humiliate him. She’d been waiting for him to call. They agreed to meet up, and as Owen learnt, had spent most of the last fortnight together.

Owen smiled pleasantly. - When I first spotted him they were holding hands.

- How sweet, I said.

The first chance I got to talk to Sam was when we went back to school a few weeks later. We knew they were still together. On the last day of the school holiday Iain invited Sam out, but Sam declined. The four of us had always spent the last day of every holiday together until then. It wasn’t the same without him.

Owen and I told Iain about Beth. We discovered he already knew.

- It’s not like it’s a secret, he told us. - Sam just didn’t expect it to last very long.

In other words, Sam didn’t want to boast about his hot bird one week and then be ridiculed and tormented when she dumped him.

Except she didn’t.

As we found out that first week of term, there were certain people who knew even less than us. This was the fourth year, and the four of us were sitting in McDonalds legitimately for the first time. Sam took a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Owen. Owen passed it on to me. I passed it on to Iain.

The piece of paper was blue. It had been shaded that way with colouring pencils. In the middle were the letters S, A and M in big red characters. This wasn’t just his name, but an acronym, too. Under the respective letters were the words Sexy Adorable Male in black felt-tip pen.

- Beth made it for me, Sam told us.

- Are you sure it wasn’t your sister? I quipped.

Iain and Owen burst out laughing.

- Fuck you, man, said Sam.

- Anytime, anywhere.

Just then, Sam snatched the piece of paper back, folded it and stuffed it back into his pocket. I didn’t know why at first, but Sam’s chair was opposite mine and behind me was the entrance.

- All right, me buggers? said Tim in a fake Norfolk accent as he and Ed came in.

Ed put a palm on the table and leant across me to steal a few fries from the bag Owen had bought.

- What’re we eating, girls? he said.

He shared Owen’s fries with Tim.

- Hey, you got any smokes on you? Sam asked them.

- Are you that desperate for a fix, or are you going to let us eat first? said Tim.

Then he and Ed went up to the counter.

Owen leaned forward. - They don’t know about Beth, do they?

Sam wouldn’t look him in the eye.

- I’ve mentioned her, he said.

- Then why did you suddenly hide that thing when they came in?

Sam sighed. - Because they wouldn’t understand.

We all went on eating. When we’d finished, Owen, Iain and I headed back to school. Sam waited behind to have a smoke with Tim and Ed. We weren’t invited.

On the way back, we joked about the S.A.M. thing.

- D’you think he’s really told them? I wondered.

- Perhaps he’s telling them now, said Iain.

Owen snorted. - I doubt it.

We both looked at him curiously.

- Look at it from his perspective, he went on. - His cooler-than-cool mates are supposedly getting laid every weekend, and all he’s getting from his girlfriend are little pieces of paper!

Iain and I chuckled at that.

- They’d probably laugh at him, Owen added. - Hell, even we’re laughing at him, and we’re all single.

No more was said about it after that.

- I miss her, Sam told me halfway through the week.

- Dude, it’s only been four days, I said.

In sports on Monday we were doing cross-country. Sam was as fit as Owen but as lazy as me. One of the benefits of walking the course is that you were nearer the changing rooms for longer. It was no accident that when the lunch bell rang, Sam and I were some of the first in the showers, and the first out again. We timed our walking perfectly. We were already half-dressed when Owen showed up. He’d been so far ahead of us he’d been on the other side of the school field.

- Saw Beth again on Saturday, Sam told me as he knotted his tie. - And yesterday, too.

- How’s it going with her? I asked.

He glanced around, as if making sure everyone nearby was preoccupied with their own conversations. - Home run.

- Home run?

- Yeah. You know.

I shook my head.

- Home run. You know, he persisted.

- No, Sam, I don’t. Why don’t you spell it out for me?

So Sam picked up one of his trainers and pushed it into his kit bag. Then he pulled it out again. Then he pushed it back in again. And then he pulled it out again.

I’d thought there was something he was itching to tell me the entire time we were running.

- What? The whole way? I said.

Sam grinned like a twelve-year-old.

- So what was it like? I asked.

Sam didn’t get a chance to answer.

- Don’t tell Owen, he said.

Just then Owen reappeared, wrapped in his towel, and flicked us both with water as punishment for being ready to go already.

- He’ll only be jealous, Sam added.

- Who’ll be jealous? said Owen. - About what?

Owen found out by the end of the week anyway, but not from me. I was good at keeping secrets because I knew they became a whole lot less valuable the more people who knew. In the end, Owen heard the way most people heard: from the rumour spread by Tim and Ed.

- Have you heard this rumour about Sam? Owen came up and asked me. - I heard from Tom who heard from Ed, and apparently, Sam met a girl at some party and fucked her last Saturday.

Well, in essence it was true. All Tim and Ed had done was condense Sam and Beth’s month-long romance into a single evening. And we didn’t hear Sam correcting many people. He had finally done something worthy of being gossiped about by his cool friends.

For a while after that, we all used to sit together in McDonalds. We’d get two tables next to each other. Sam came with us at the beginning of lunch and sat at one table with Iain. Owen and I would sit at the other. Nobody else wanted to share with us. When Tim and Ed swaggered in casually ten minutes after the last completely free table was occupied, Iain would move to mine and Owen’s table and Tim and Ed would sit down at Sam’s. We thought we were cool by association.

A year before, the novelty factor of breaking-out fizzled out after about a month. Now we were fourth years, and permitted to leave at the lunchtime, the novelty factor didn’t even last that long. By mid-October, you would have had no problem getting a free table even if you turned up ten minutes after everyone else, like Tim and Ed always did.

But we still saved them a table. Or rather Sam did. On a couple of occasions he and Iain sat on the second table until we had to leave, and Tim and Ed never showed up.

- Tim said they went into town instead, Sam told us after one of those times.

We didn’t believe it.

- No way there’s enough time, said Iain.

- Yeah, it’s too far, said Owen. - Even if they went on the bus.

But Sam believed them.

- They said they were coming today, Sam told us on another occasion. - I don’t know where they are.

- In town? I suggested.

Owen and Iain laughed into their Cokes.

- I’ll go with them next time, Sam said one Friday when we hadn’t seen them in McDonalds since Tuesday. - You’ll see.

He was sitting on the second table alone by that stage. Iain had sat down at mine and Owen’s instead.

The next time we went to McDonalds, Sam didn’t come with us. We couldn’t find him at the start of lunch, and he didn’t turn up whilst we were there. He had announced this, of course, but we hadn’t expected him to do it.

At break the next day he told Owen and me where he’d been instead: the town, with Tim and Ed. They’d caught the bus and gone to Burger King.

- See? I told you it was possible, said Sam.

I looked at Owen. Owen looked sceptical.

- We’ll come with you next time, then, he said.

Sam shrugged. - Don’t know when we’ll be going next.

But he didn’t show up at McDonalds the next day, or the day after that. Iain, Owen and I still went every day without him, but all that those Big Macs did was serve to remind us how much we all preferred Whoppers with cheese.

- Well, we could go to town on our own, Iain suggested.

Owen pointed a fry at him. - Yes!

The idea had occurred to me, too.

- Anyone know the bus route into town from here? Owen asked.

- Joe Fletcher lives in town, I said. - We could ask him. He’s got a bus pass, so he must know.

We wolfed down what was left of the meal and hurried back to school. It wasn’t until Miss Patterson’s history class the next morning that Owen and I caught up with Joe.

- What bus do we catch to get to town from here? Owen asked as we unpacked our bags.

- The number seventy-one, said Joe. - If you’re quick. It’s the most direct, but if it’s on time you’ll have to run to catch it. It stops outside the school at 3:22. If you miss that -

- Actually, we’re thinking of going at lunchtime, said Owen.

Joe gave us dubious looks. - Lunchtime?

- Yes. What bus comes at lunchtime?

- Are you planning on skipping or something?

- No.

Joe shook his head. - You won’t have time to get back. Well, you might, if you got there and then came right back again, but that kinda defeats the point, doesn’t it?

- We’re thinking of going to Burger King, I said.

- No. You definitely wouldn’t have time for that.

Owen looked a bit stung. - Sam did.

- Sam?

- Yeah, Owen went on. - He went to town, at lunch, with Ed and Tim, and they went to Burger King, then came back.

A smile spread over Joe’s face.

- That’s not what I heard, he said.

Owen glanced at me and frowned.

- What did you hear? I asked.

- That they went to town, Tim and Ed, took too long, and came back and had to get late slips, Joe told us. - But that was weeks ago, and Sam wasn’t with them.

We told this to Iain later.

- Why don’t we just ask Sam what bus they catch? he said.

- And let him fob us off with an excuse not to tell us? said Owen. - No, I have a better idea.

The next day we forewent our usual sojourn to McDonalds and trailed Sam instead. He didn’t see us at all. Owen and I were quickly becoming experts at this. We’d trailed Dean Henderson last year, soon we would be trailing Iain this year; Owen told me he’d even done it to me once, just for a lark.

When the lunch bell rang, we followed Sam out of the classroom. He didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry to catch a bus, or even find Tim and Ed. We followed him until he went into the library. We couldn’t go in without a good chance of being seen, so instead we went around the outside of the building and peeped in through the glass windows.

Sam was sitting with Tim and Ed. They had been there before he arrived. They had claimed the most prized table in the library. It was the only one completely hidden from Mrs Powell’s desk by racks and shelves of books. Of course, it was only prized if you actually wanted to be in the library. Sitting where they couldn’t be seen, Sam, Ed and Tim were eating snacks. Ed was also playing with a lighter.

- It doesn’t mean anything, said Iain. - They might not have been planning to go into town today anyway, that’s all.

So Owen and I confronted Sam later and asked him.

- Yeah, he said. - We went to BK.

We didn’t tell him we knew differently.

- Wow, said Owen. - I feel snubbed.

I grunted in agreement. We were walking down the road toward the bus stop after school.

- He’d rather be in the library than with us, said Owen.

- No, I said. - He’d just rather be with them, wherever they are.

Now it was the library that was cool by association.

Sam broke up with Beth in December. We didn’t hear this from Sam himself. We didn’t hear it from Sam via Iain either. Even Iain heard it the way most people heard it: as a rumour overheard when others were talking about it. We heard it from Sam, via Ed and Tim, via all the people in between.

According to the rumour, it was Sam who dumped Beth. We heard the word ‘nymphomaniac’ being bandied around and Owen had to check in the dictionary to make sure it meant what he thought it meant. It did. Even before we talked to Sam about it we knew which parts of the rumour were Tim and Ed’s usual bullshit.

- It just wasn’t working out, Sam told us.

This was the first time he’d come to McDonalds in ages. We knew there was probably more to it than he was telling us, but we didn’t have time to ask. Tim and Ed were coming back to the tables with their food.

Because it wasn’t that we weren’t friends with Sam anymore. We still saw him and talked to him every day. But things were different now.

So it came as something of a surprise when, several months later, Sam asked Owen and me if we were going to McDonalds that lunchtime.

It was February, the end of winter. The cold weather hadn’t put us off the trek down the retail park. Indeed, on the coldest day of the year, McDonalds was packed for the first time in months. There was snow on the ground, but you weren’t allowed to throw snowballs on school property, so everyone who could leave at lunch did. The mammoth snowball fight between the fourth year and the fifth year lasted the entire journey from school to the retail park. Those of us who went the distance sought sanctuary in McDonalds.

But apart from that, Owen and I weren’t going as regularly anymore. We both got money for lunch from our parents that covered the cost of a Big Mac, but Iain had to pay for his own. Over Christmas he realised he was getting up at 5am every Sunday to do a job just to throw all his earnings away on fast food. So he stopped coming every day and only came with us once a week.

When it was just Owen and myself, a trip to McDonalds at lunchtime lost a sense of occasion, but we still went at least twice a week; once with Iain, once without. We were planning to go the day Sam asked.

- Right. I’ll come with you, then, he said.

At the beginning of lunch, we waited for him. Owen expected him to bring Tim and Ed with him, but when he caught up with us outside the gate he was on his own.

We walked to the retail park. On the way, Sam told us about another wild party he’d been to recently where people were smoking weed. He told us he got off with a girl named Tasha whilst they were both drunk. And on the way back, walking with Tim and Ed, they saw someone’s BMW parked in the road and apparently Ed took a leak against the back wheel.

- Oh, man, it was so cool, said Sam.

When we got to McDonalds there were plenty of seats free, so we all queued up for food together rather than one person buy it all whilst the others grabbed a table.

We had only just sat down when Iain came in. He paused in the doorway, looking at us, looking at Sam, then went and bought himself a Coke and some fries.

- You should have told us you were coming today, Owen said as he sat down. - We would’ve waited.

Iain shrugged as he swallowed some Coke.

- Mr Slater wanted to see me at the start of lunch, he said. - I didn’t know how long I’d be.

I noticed he was giving Sam a funny look.

- Owen bought another pack of ciggies yesterday, I said.

Iain chuckled. - More to sell?

- No, said Owen. - These are just for us.

We ate in silence for a while.

- So I heard about your run-in with Jill’s Pie, Iain told Sam.

Owen and I stopped eating and looked up.

Sam groaned into his Coke.

- What’s this? asked Owen.

Jill’s Pie is what we called Frankie Gillespie. He wasn’t in our form and he wasn’t in Sam’s, but we had all heard the story of what happened in the first year when someone thought Jill’s Pie was how you pronounced his name. Gillespie stole the kid’s exercise book, opened it, spat in it, closed it, then handed it back.

We didn’t call him Jill’s Pie to his face.

- He was just being stupid, Sam said.

Iain snorted. - You pissed him off real good.

Sam shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

- What happened? Owen asked.

As part of the national curriculum, we all had to take a technology subject. The school offered everything from graphical design to metalwork. Owen took graphical design, I took woodwork and Sam took metalwork. So did Jill’s Pie.

In that morning’s lesson, Jill’s Pie had a hacksaw on his workbench that he wasn’t using and that Sam needed.

- Hey, man, can I borrow that? Sam asked.

- No, Jill’s Pie replied.

- Okay, but can I have it after you’ve finished?

Jill’s Pie didn’t answer him, so Sam went away and found something else to be getting on with. After a while, Sam saw Jill’s Pie busy doing something else, so he just took the saw.

Jill’s Pie noticed.

- You took my saw, he said.

- You weren’t using it, Sam returned.

- So? You don’t steal.

- I did ask.

- And I said no, you couldn’t use it.

Sam chuckled, trying to keep this good-natured.

- Dude, it’s not even your saw, he said.

- Come on. Give it back.

- I’ve nearly finished.

- I need it now.

Sam eventually capitulated and held the saw out to Jill’s Pie with a sigh. Jill’s Pie took it away with him.

- And it just sat on his table the entire fucking lesson! Sam told us.

Owen crunched on an ice cube from his Coke.

- People like that should be shot, he said.

Iain and I laughed. Sam looked grey.

- Why didn’t you just ask Mr Skinner to get the saw back for you? I asked him.

He snorted with laughter. - Because I like my face the way it is, thanks!

- Then hopefully you’ll get to keep it that way, Iain quipped.

Owen and I chuckled, but Sam wasn’t even smiling. He had taken the lid off his Coke and was stirring the drink with his straw.

- Maybe you should’ve gone and spent lunch hanging around outside Mr Wright’s office, I suggested quietly.

- Why? he asked.

- Well, he wouldn’t dare try anything there.

Sam shook his head. - I’ll be fine here.

And he was, for about twenty minutes.

We had all finished eating, but Owen was waiting for the last of the ice cubes to melt in the bottom of his cup. Today Sam was sitting with his back to the window, and I was sitting opposite him, so I was first to see them arrive.

I didn’t know their names, but I recognised their faces. They were in our year, but they weren’t in our form, and they weren’t in Sam’s either. That meant they were in Frankie Gillespie’s. There were only a couple of them to begin with. I wouldn’t have paid them much attention, but when they strolled past the window, instead of coming in, they just hovered outside.

The next time I looked up, there were two more. The four of them were standing outside the window, looking in, looking at our table, saying something we couldn’t hear. Owen had seen them too. He didn’t say anything. He lifted his cup to his mouth and sucked on the straw, but he was just sucking air. He was ready to go, but he didn’t move.

And then Jill’s Pie himself arrived. The crowd suddenly grew. He must have brought five or six people with him. As he swaggered up to the door, cigarette clamped between his lips, the spectators spread out along the entire length of the front window so that they would all get a good view.

- Sam, I said in a low voice.

Sam looked up and glanced round.

- Well, shit, he said resignedly.

Just before Christmas, Frankie Gillespie had bleached his hair. We were all surprised he didn’t get into trouble for that. He only bleached it once, so pretty quickly his dark roots began to show through. Now his hair was half peroxide blond, half his normal brown-black. But even we had to admit it looked pretty cool.

Frankie Gillespie was about as tall as Owen, and he was quite well-built. Not all of it was muscle, but most of it was. Funnily enough, Frankie Gillespie was the school’s chess club champ. I guess he always felt that he had something to prove because of that.

- Sam, go, said Iain.

Sam didn’t turn round again.

- Go where? he said.

- He’s not going to try anything in here, I said. - This place is full of witnesses.

- We’ll just wait until his leaves, said Owen.

Then Jill’s Pie spat out his cigarette and leant on the door to push it open.

Sam started fiddling with his straw. He didn’t have to look round to know Jill’s Pie was coming over.

Owen sat up tall in his seat.

- Look, just leave it, man, he said.

- I just want to talk to Ellison, said Jill’s Pie.

He didn’t take his staring, unblinking eyes off the back of Sam’s head as he approached.

Outside, the jackals were silent, watching, grinning.

I heard Sam give a quiet little sigh, then he swivelled in his chair to face Jill’s Pie. He held up his hands, as if trying to make himself seem more sincere.

- Look, man, I’m sorry about -

Frankie Gillespie punched him once, twice, hard in the side of the head.

Then he turned and went back out again.

The sound, the dull pound, of Jill’s Pie hitting Sam made some people sitting at other tables look up. They fell silent for a moment or two, then went back to their conversations.

Jill’s Pie had hit Sam so hard he had almost slipped out of his seat. Now he sat up again, put an elbow on the tabletop and grabbed the side of his head. His eyes were screwed shut and he was screaming silently, but he wasn’t crying.

Owen and I looked at each other. Owen looked just as guilty as I felt. I was angry with everyone else for not doing anything to stop this, but I hadn’t done anything either. In that last moment we had all decided it was better Sam got hit than any of us.

Outside, some of the jackals were still looking through the window. The rest were gathered around Jill’s Pie. I could tell from his exuberant gestures that he was bragging. Someone handed their all-conquering hero another cigarette.

- You okay, mate? said Iain.

Sam was breathing heavily. He jutted his jaw out, clenching his teeth together, looking like a man with a purpose. He got up from the table, knocking over the empty cups as he did.

- Where are you going? asked Owen.

As if Sam was going to give Jill’s Pie what-for. He was angry, but powerless. Jill’s Pie had a ten-strong army outside who’d just love to take part in a re-enactment.

Sam headed to the gents instead.

Owen and I looked at each other briefly, then followed him. We caught the door before it closed behind him.

Sam was at the sink. He bent down and drunk, slurped, straight from the tap.

Jesse Armstrong was standing at the urinal. He turned his head.

- Hey, man, you shouldn’t drink that water, he said.

Sam stopped drinking and glared at him.

- Fuck off! he said.

Then he went into the cubicle and locked the door.

- What’s his problem? said Jesse as he zipped up.

When Jesse was gone, Owen and I approached the cubicle door. We could hear sniffing from the other side, and it sounded wet.

- He’s going to get expelled for this, said Owen.

- Yeah, I agreed. - They’ll chuck him out for sure.

Sam didn’t say anything.

- Let’s wait outside, said Owen.

So we went and sat back down with Iain, who didn’t say anything either. We looked out the window. Jill’s Pie and the jackals were gone.

I looked at my watch. We would have to be going soon ourselves. There was just enough time to get back to school.

A calmed Sam emerged a few minutes later.

- I’m gonna tell Wright, he said.

We hurried back to school. We saw Jill’s Pie and his flock on the way and crossed the road to avoid them.

As well as being our head of year, Mr Wright was also a biology teacher, so his office was in the science block. Sam led the way up the stairs and knocked on his door.

Mr Wright promptly opened it.

- How can I help you, Samuel? He asked.

Mr Wright glanced back at mine and Iain and Owen’s fiery faces.

- Frankie Gillespie just attacked me, sir.

- Attacked you? How?

So Sam told him what happened. His voice was loud, mock-calm; on the verge of cracking, I thought. By the time he had finished, his eyes were welling up.

I’d once put on tears for Mr Wright myself.

In the first year we had English followed by science between break and lunch on Tuesdays. The English department was right at the other end of the school to the science block, and Mr Reginald was a stickler for punctuality. He refused to start the lesson until everyone had arrived, and made us make up any lost time at the beginning of lunch. So we used to run to his class.

You weren’t allowed to run through the school, so we used to take a shortcut and go round the outside. It wasn’t actually a shortcut. If you walked it, it took longer, but because we could run, we did it double-time.

There was a short corridor between the entrance to the science block and Mr Reginald’s room. If there were no teachers in sight, we would risk running that, too.

One morning we had been particularly late getting out of English, so we ran all the way. Owen burst through the science block doors and didn’t stop to check the coast was clear. But it was okay, it was. I ran after him.

Another class was still waiting outside another classroom. Though I didn’t know it then, they were fourth years. They laughed and jeered at us, these flustered first years sprinting past, and one kindly stuck his foot out right in front of me.

I went flying. My bag flipped over my head. I landed heavily on one knee and then slid to a stop on the polished wooden floor. Owen came back to help me up.

- Cocksuckers! he spat.

It literally brought the house down. The fourth years were in hysterics. It probably didn’t help that Owen still had a very high-pitched unbroken voice at that stage.

- You okay? he asked as he put an arm around my back and took the burden off my bad leg.

I winced and nodded. My vision was blurred and my cheeks were wet. A couple of tears had leaked out, but I wasn’t going to give those fourth years the satisfaction of hearing me sob or anything. Owen and I headed to class.

Before we reached the door, it swung open anyway. Mr Reg had come out to see what all the noise was about. He saw me hobbling, and the fourth years laughing down the corridor, and worked it out for himself.

After getting me to identify exactly who was responsible, Mr Reg marched the two of us upstairs. He’d decided to let the older boy’s head of year deal with this, and the head of year for the fourth year was Mr Wright then, too.

Mr Reg made my assailant support me as we walked, like Owen had done. He was stronger than Owen, but I could probably have managed it on my own by then, anyway. Separated from the herd, the fourth year looked anxious and glum. I was determined to see him screwed, so I put it on: the limp and the tears.

Mr Wright demanded an explanation.

Unfortunately, my assailant had one.

- He was running so fast I didn’t see him, sir, the fourth year said. - He just ran into me.

- Is this true? Mr Wright asked.

Eventually I had to admit that it was. At the end of the day, I had been running, and everyone down there could attest to that. But only me and him knew he stuck his foot out deliberately, so it was going to be my word against his, and the tears weren’t working anymore.

Nothing happened to the guy. We got a joint warning.

- Both of you be more careful in future.

So ended my first encounter with Mr Wright.

It felt different this time. Mr Wright looked back at Iain and Owen and myself again.

- Did you see all this? he asked.

I thought if we all told the truth this time, then things would end differently.

- Yes, said Iain and Owen.

- That’s exactly what happened, I added.

Just then, the end of lunch bell rang.

- Where’s Gillespie now? Mr Wright asked.

We told him where we’d last seen Jill’s Pie.

- Okay, he said. - The three of you get to registration.

Sam stayed with him. We didn’t see him until the next day. We didn’t ever expect to see Jill’s Pie again.

But we saw him the next day, too.

He wasn’t expelled. He wasn’t even suspended. The attack had occurred outside of school. The permission slips both Sam and Gillespie’s parents had signed waived the school’s responsibility. Though by way of punishment, Mr Wright gave Jill’s Pie a dustbin and a pair of scissors and made him cut up his own permission slip in front of him. But that was it.

On the day it happened, I had technology last thing; woodwork, an Owen-less class. As I was walking through the school on my own, I spotted Tim and Ed ahead of me. I increased my speed to catch up with them.

- Have you heard about Sam? I asked.

I thought they’d want to know.

- Heard what about Sam? said Tim.

- He got attacked.

They glanced at each other.

- Frankie found him, then? said Ed.

They knew something.

- Yeah, I said.

- Did you see it happen?

- Yeah. I was with him at the time.

Tim and Ed shook their heads, snickering.

- What? I said.

- Nothing, said Tim.

- Sam said he was having lunch with you, that’s all, said Ed.

They were both grinning.

I had a horrible thought.

- You didn’t tell Gillespie where to find him, did you? I said.

They burst out laughing.

- Would we do a thing like that? said Ed.

- I don’t know, I said. - Would you?

- Don’t listen to him, said Tim. - We didn’t tell Frankie where to find Sam. We didn’t have to.

I frowned. - What’s that supposed to mean?

- Think about it, said Ed.

They were walking away from me again.

- No. Come on. I want to know.

Tim sighed. - Look, why d’you think Sam was having lunch with you and not us in the first place?

- Because we’re friends.

Tim took a long time to respond.

- Maybe he was hoping people didn’t know that.

I slowed, almost stopped.

- Sorry, said Ed.

But he wasn’t.

NOTES:
Contrary to what I said about these coming-of-age stories in general, this one's mostly true. In fact, so much so that SHSB-ers astute enough should now be able to work out exactly who I based all the characters upon. The six-a-day rumour, the S.A.M. love-letter, pissing on cars, these are all things I saw or heard about. Plus the two attacks in this story are written pretty much exactly as they really happened. Except it wasn't a fourth year who tripped me up on the way to Physics, it was James Paviour (aka "The Boy Who Nobody Wants", as the real Owen would have had it). And, of course, we weren't allowed outside the school in year ten, so the attack on the real Sam took place in the "Magic: The Gathering" room, not McDonalds. Most despicably, it's also true that a certain head of year with the initials MEV wasn't beyond brushing such incidences under the carpet in the name of preserving that school's claim to zero bullying.

My aim with this 7000-word behemoth of a short was to write a sad story. And by that I didn't mean one dripping in teenage angst, but one that explores how friends drift apart; a theme close to my heart. It seems to come to an end pretty abruptly, which was unintentional, but I think appropriate. Sometimes you discover friends you've had for years suddenly aren't as close as they were anymore, and sometimes it's hard to understand why that is. I think it ended up being as light and humorous as previous stories until the second half, but I think I managed to make the characters a little deeper and complex, particularly Sam. He might come off as a bit of a bastard in the end, but I hope readers also feel sympathetic toward him. All in all, this story is most like the autobiographical writings I did in September '04, both in terms of content (some paragraphs were lifted directly from it, with the appropriate name changes) and style (the collage approach).

On a lighter note, the reply "Anytime, anywhere" to when someone says "Fuck you!" is not something I've ever heard anyone say; I just lifted it out of "Aliens". Plus I think I should be getting a commission from both McDonalds and Coca Cola for the number of times they get mentioned in these stories, don't you?