By Any Other Name Read Online Free PDF Page A

this.
    The teacher finishes up the lesson and asks me if I know where I’m going, while the others pack up.
    ‘No. I have French next but I don’t know where that is.’
    He raises his voice. ‘Anyone here able to take Holly to French?’
    I don’t dare turn around to see if there are any volunteers, but I breathe out in relief when a girl’s voice replies. ‘Yes, sir. I’ll take her.’
    I do turn then to mouth ‘Thanks’ at her. She’s sitting in the middle of the class and she’s prettyish with long brown hair. Not the kind of girl it’ll make me look
bad to be seen with, but not too noticeable either – that’s good.
    When did I get so scheming? I don’t like myself this way, but it’s Darwinism in action – survival of the fittest. Prey has to stay one step ahead of the predators.
    The girl comes over as the bell rings. ‘Hi, I’m Nicole. Are you ready?’
    I don’t answer but I smile a little and pick my bag up. I probably look shy, nervous. Normally I would never allow that to show, but that is who I am now so that’s what Nicole needs
to see. She smiles back, warm but not too confident herself. When we go into the corridor, she says hesitantly, ‘It’s this way,’ and then she’s silent as we push along past
Year 7s staggering under schoolbags almost bigger than them. I don’t know if I find her silence reassuring or nerve-racking.
    We skirt round the outside of the building towards some Portakabins and a group of girls wanders past. They’re the type Mum would describe as ‘slightly common’ with a certain
tone in her voice. There’s nothing about them that you could exactly put your finger on, except for a sort of hard look to their make-up and something in the way they walk that Mum would read
as ‘not quite our kind of people’. Tasha and I used to roll our eyes at her when she had one of her snobby moments, yet I find myself wanting to avoid these girls. Nicole walks a
discrete arc around them. I catch a bit of their conversation – bitching about someone in their Health and Social Care class. I’m not entirely sure what Health and Social Care is, but
from how they look and talk I guess it’s one of those subjects that would make Dad groan and say, ‘You see,
this
is why we sent you to a private school.’
    ‘What’s the French teacher like?’ I ask and Nicole’s face relaxes in relief as I break the ice. I decide she’s much shyer than I am . . . than I was, I mean.
    ‘She’s OK . . . ish. But you can’t talk in her lesson or have a laugh like you can with Mr Jenkins.’
    I nod, half wondering from her face when she says the teacher’s name whether she might have offered to take me to French to make herself look good in front of him. Leetle bit of a crush
perhaps?
    We enter a scratty Portakabin with rotten wood on the door frame. ‘It’s break after this lesson. I’ll show you around if you like,’ Nicole says tentatively.
    ‘Yeah, great. Thanks.’ I smile again. My mouth’s beginning to ache with the effort of trying to look genuine when I really don’t feel like smiling at all. When I really
feel like turning around and walking right out of this school. I don’t want to try to like it. It sucks and I . . .
    I want to go back home.
    But Holly Latham has no home to go back to. There is no other life.
    I don’t want to be Holly Latham.
    Nicole leads me to the French teacher’s desk. ‘Mme Carrière, this is Holly. She’s new. Can she sit with me and Ella?’
    Mme Carrière’s eyebrows shoot up in an expression of such Gallic surprise that I would normally have giggled. ‘New? At this time? In Year 11?
Zut alors!
’
    I nod and stare past her to a poster on the wall about Paris, for something to focus on.
    ‘I have not had information on you, Holly.’ She shuffles the papers on her desk and the sound they make signals her exasperation. ‘What is your predicted grade?’
    I can feel the rest of the class listening intently as they get books out