It took my mind a bit off today’s assembly we did for Years Eight and Nine. I mean, it went OK and everything, but it just
wasn’t the same as the one we did for Year Seven. It was as if the Year Eights and Nines weren’t properly listening. They
were just there ’cos they had to be. And when Joshua got them to shout out the stuff at the end they did it sort of half-heartedly
and some of them never answered at all.
“I think you gave them so many ideas to think about you stunned them into silence!” said Mr. Bamblebury afterward.
Mmm. Yeah.
OH MY GOSH. Today was proper humiliating. My face is still red just writing this. So today we did our “Increase the Peace”
assembly for the Year Tens and Elevens. Well, actually just Year Tens as hardly no Year Elevens showed up as they were all
doing homework or were just skiving or they didn’t know it was happening or were pretending not to know or couldn’t be arsed.
BRILLIANT.
So me, Carrie, Saf, Sean, Joshua, Nabila, Luther, and all the rest of us are waiting in the hall and the Year Tens start arriving,
mooching in slowly with folded arms and scowls on their faces like they don’t want to be there one little bit. Right away
some lairy girls wearing mini-skirts start shouting stuff out at us and trying to come over and mess with our projector and
some of the boys are asking what “all this crap” is about, then laugh at us when we explain. I felt proper angry then and
wanted to kick off but Joshua put his arm around my waist and told me to chill. For some reason, I did what he said. My heart
felt all fluttery when he touched me, but it was probably just nerves.
Then Murphy comes in with Tariq and some other really tall boys and I waved at him and the little shit pretended not to know
me!!! Then a couple of boys in the back row started having a fight and Ms. Bracket had to split them up and tell everyone
really sternly to CALM DOWN NOW. Then, just as we were about to begin, Mr. Bamblebury stormed in with about seven really tall,
scary-looking boys who had half-grown mustaches and hoodies and baseball caps and nothing like proper uniforms on and he shouted,
“Right, you sit near the front! You should hear this so LISTEN UP GOOD!”
Right away I figured that one of them was Meatman and another one was Delano and I dunno who the rest were but they looked
like a right bunch of rudes even though I’m pretty sure there never used to be any rudes in Murphy’s year at all. Just spotty
little boys in blazers too big for them who’d never DARE give no one in our year any trouble at all. WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM?
When did they all get so ginormous? Meatman sat down on the front row and took one look at all of us and chucked his head
back and laughed. Then he folded his arms and glared at Sean and pretended to cough but said “fairy.” Then he sucked his gold
teeth in a proper dramatic way like he was showboating and everyone laughed and some people even clapped.
I felt well sorry for Sean then ’cos his hands were shaking. I felt irate too ’cos what bloody right has anyone got to make
anyone feel like that? I mean what if Sean is maybe a bit, well, gay? He ain’t harming no one. Sean’s not the one with the
crap tattoo and a mouth like my nan’s bloody cheese-grater. I wanted to shout that at Meatman ’cos he ain’t no big man he’s
a bloody overgrown fifteen-year-old child thinking he’s some sort of rude but I thought it might end up like that bit in the
Incredible Hulk
movie when Hulk starts picking folks up and whirling them round his head shouting, “Hulky angry! Hulky smash!”
So we put the lights off and put the video on and at first everyone just talked but they shut up once the scenes started where
the kids are dealing drugs and riding about in Escalades and Benz Jeeps drinking champagne and getting all up in each other’s
faces in nightclub VIP rooms and being all gangster. Meatman and Delano and the rest of the audience seemed to really like
this. They were cheering and pretending to fire guns at the screen.
Then the video moved on to where kids start getting shot and stabbed and the parents start getting involved and kids are crying
in apartment stairwells and bodies are on mortuary slabs and police are shoving people in jail cells and it gets proper heavy.
I looked at the Year Tens and I see that Meatman had got bored now and got his phone out and he’s sending a text and Delano
is chatting up some girl near him and everyone had got a bit distracted; even my bloody brother Murphy was talking to Tariq.
It was like the end scenes were just going right over their heads. They didn’t care at all. They probably see this type of
thing every day on MTV, so it weren’t like any big deal to them. Then the lights went on and Ms. Bracket saw us Sixth Formers
were a bit flustered so she stepped in and said “So, has anyone got any comments about this video?” and everyone just pretended
to be deaf or ignored her.
Then Meatman said, “I got a comment, Miss. Can we watch the first half again ’cos all the gangster bit was well nang before
all the preaching crap started.”
Then Delano chipped in with, “Man, dat blood was asking to get merked anyway.”
Then lots of the boys in the front row laughed well loud and fired invisible guns in the air shouting, “Brap Brap Braaaap!”
I won’t even describe what happened during our play. It is still proper painful in my brain. All I’ll say is the image of
Meatman chasing Sean through the assembly hall in a salmon-pink bolero jacket with glitter patches while a group of Year Tens
shouted, “Run Fairy Run! Ruuuuuuuuun!” will stay in my head forever.
Meatman has been suspended from Mayflower Academy for two weeks.
I called Sean today and told him. Sean was in bed watching Season One of
The OC
on DVD and eating string cheese and feeling proper suicidal.
Sean says he ain’t never coming out of his house again until he knows he ain’t under threat or nothing. So I says, “Oh, come
back Sean, I’ll be your bodyguard. I ain’t scared of Meatman.”
Then Sean laughed a bit and says, “I know you’re not scared of him, you loon. You’re proper hard as nails you are, princess.”
Sean says he’ll come back sometime soon but not today ’cos he’s bleaching his hair. I felt happier when he said he was bleaching
his hair ’cos no one bothers to spend an hour wrapped in tinfoil just to kill themselves, do they?
Mr. Bamblebury and Ms. Bracket say we shouldn’t be discouraged by the near riot that broke out in our final “Increase the
Peace” assembly. Mr. Bamblebury says, “All great journeys start with a few small steps.”
So I said, “Well, tell Sean Burton that, Mr. Bamblebury, ’cos he took more than a few small steps, in fact, he was well past
the supermarket hiding in a Dumpster when I found him.” Joshua snorted Fanta down his nose when I said that.
Mr. Bamblebury just pretended to be deaf. He can’t handle me being real. I always keep it real. Joshua says my rap name would
be MC Realize.
Carrie and Saf are going out together! They were working after school last night on some geography homework and Saf asked
Carrie if he could have a snog and Carrie said yes and she gave him a quick snog but that was all so she reckons, although
they are both now banned from the library for a week and the librarian has put a lock on the reserved book room closet.
Carrie and Saf are well loved-up together. They roll around on the common room sofas, cleaning out each other’s ears with
their mouths and pawing each other. Joshua Fallow says it’s like refereeing one long World Wrestling Entertainment Smackdown.
Joshua is bare jokes sometimes even though he is quite posh.
I went and ate my Chicken Chow Mein outside today ’cos of all the squelching. Me and my Wesley are never really like that.
Not even when we first got off. We are more like best friends. I mean, it ain’t normal all that squelching, is it?
Thank flaming God it is Friday. This week has been proper hardcore. I’ve had English homework and films to watch and history
books to read and peace to increase and Sean Burton to bodyguard and my head is in a proper spin. I don’t know how I’m supposed
to fit so much into one girl’s brain.
Wesley knows I am proper stressed so he said he’d take me down Romford for happy hour at Pizza Junction, that place where
you sit in a booth that’s like a racing car and traffic lights flash on and off and horns honk at your table when your order
is ready. It’s quite a laugh, even if all the noise and flashing does sometimes gives me a migraine.
Wesley and me shared a Sloppy Joe pizza and a hot chocolate fudge cake and Wesley was telling me ’bout this lad Wazzle on
his plumbing NVQ who flooded this posh woman in Epping Forest’s bathroom and I was trying to tell Wesley about history where
we’re learning about Renaissance architects and how they started building churches ginormously massive in the 14th century
to make the people feel like they were properly in the presence of God, but Wesley didn’t really get what I was going on about
so I sort of gave up.
On the way home Wesley said he had something to show me and I thought, “Oh here goes, it’ll be something in a store window.”
But it wasn’t at all it was something much bigger than that.
We drove back to Thundersley Road on the route that goes past Bishop Fledding Industrial Estate where I once did some work
experience in a Indian food factory. Round the back of the park there’s a building site with a big sign that says
LUXURY HOMES AVAILABLE SOON
.
So Wesley parks the car and puts on some hip-hop and I sat for a bit listening to the words to “Kill You When I’m Dead” by
Mazzio and my mind started wandering to Meatman and the Year Tens.
“’Ere, Wesley, don’t you think this gangster rap stuff is sort of bad for, like, society?” I said. But Wesley just looks at
me funny and says, “But we don’t live in America, Shiraz! It ain’t nothing like as bad as this in Essex.” So I shut up about
that and asked what it was he wanted to show me then.
“Look at those condos they’re building, innit,” he said. “I think they’re proper nice.”
I looked at them and I said, “Well, yeah, they’re gonna be well good when they’re finished, why, what’s so special about them?”
And Wesley says, “Well, if you think about it, they’re exactly halfway between your mum’s and my mum’s houses, innit?”
So I says, “Yeah, I suppose.”
And Wesley says, “Well, the thing is, Shizza, y’know when my dad died he left me a little bit of money, innit? Just a little
bit, mind. Well my nan put it in a bank account for me and she’s been adding to it here and there for about eighteen years
with bingo wins and that and on my birthdays and… well the thing is, there’s a few grand now and I reckon if I get a job straight
after my NVQ, I reckon I might have enough for a down payment on one of them condos, innit.”
I looked over at the building site which was full of cement mixers and rubble.
“You wanna live in one of them condos?” I said.
“Well, not just me,” he says, “Me and you, innit. You’d come and live with me too, wouldn’t you, and help me with the mortgage?
In a few years, mind, when you finish all this school stuff and you get a job in Ilford?”
“I’d move in with you?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I want us to be together forever, innit.”
I didn’t know what to say. I’ve never ever thought seriously of leaving Thundersley Road and if I have it wasn’t to move into
a condo five minutes away.
Thing is, I’ve not really properly thought EVER about what I’m gonna do with my life. I only got as far as signing up for
Sixth Form. I haven’t figured out any other stuff about the next seventy years!!!
“You want us to live together in a condo in Goodmayes? Forever?” I said.
“Well, not right now,” he said, “But someday soon. I love you, Shiraz.”
I looked at him for a bit and he got hold of my hand and held it tight.
“I love you too, Wesley.” I said, and I properly meant it.
But at the same time I sort of didn’t.
It’s weird ’cos Wesley’s never mentioned that condo behind Bishop Fledding Industrial Estate since that night last month.
Neither have I.
It’s a bit like Wesley reckons me and him have made some sort of secret pact to move in together which we totally haven’t
’cos I totally didn’t say yes at all. All I said was, “Mmmm, dunno, Wes. That’s a lot to think about.” Then I made him drive
me home quick ’cos my mother wanted to borrow his superplunger to unblock hair from the upstairs sink.
I wasn’t lying. It IS a lot to think about. And believe me, the last thing Shiraz Bailey Wood needs right now is something
else that makes her have to think ’cos her brain is bloody FULL up with other stuff like flipping AS-Level Critical Thinking.
OH MY GOSH that whole course is one ginormous headbend. Basically you get a question that is totally easy like, “Should pedophiles
go to jail?” which is a proper no brainer ’cos the answer is “YES, RIGHT AWAY” but then you have a “debate about morals and
ethics” then suddenly it’s not so straightforward no more and before you know it you’re sounding like you’re the one bloody
sticking up for pedophiles and everyone in the class has fallen out and the bell goes and you’ve got a sore throat from shouting
and a pain behind one eye and some homework to do for 9
AM
tomorrow. BRILLIANT.
Today we talked about cars and pollution. Joshua Fallow started arguing that all cars should cost double the price to stop
road congestion. Saf and Manpreet told him to shut up and stop being a tree-hugger. Then Joshua went a bit further and said
he would ban all modded cars with rims and stupid extra-loud chavvy stereos to stop chavsters from making fools of themselves.
Everyone started laughing well loud then and I could feel my cheeks go hot ’cos my Wesley has got glowing wheel arches and
they do look a bit silly though I’d never tell him.
Then Joshua said when he is Prime Minister he’s bringing in long jail sentences for anyone caught attending Dagenham car meets
in a souped-up Golf with munter girlfriends who keep flashing their norks to get in
Super Street
car magazine. And by this point everyone in the class was proper howling INCLUDING me ’cos Wesley’s ex-bird Dee Dee used
to go up to Dagenham looking like a right old hoochie with her schnockers out like cow’s udders.