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power, and I thought maybe some of the other kids might even have some respect for me after they found out what I was capable of. Maybe things would turn around and get better at Charlton. That feeling didn’t last long. On the bus home from school that night, Dim and Dimmer plus a load of their mates cornered me. I was sitting upstairs on the back seat, nose in a magazine, and before I knew it they’d all bombed up the stairs and gathered around me. I was pretty much trapped. I tried to look past them to see if there might be anyone else on the top deck who could help me, but there were just a couple of other kids and an old lady who disappeared as soon as she realized there was going to be trouble.
    “Think you’re funny, messing with my Facebook page?” Dillon said through gritted teeth. “You’re lucky I haven’t got a blade on me.”
    Before he’d even finished the sentence, I felt a punch to the side of my head, then my face hitting the window, and then pain shooting up my legs as they put the boot in. After the fourth or fifth punch I sort of went numb. I could still feel it, but it didn’t really hurt anymore, you know? In the end it just became a blur of fists and kicks, cussing and name-calling, and then finally there was a ringing in my ears and I think I must have blacked out. The driver stopped the bus in the end and came up the stairs, but they’d all legged it. He found me sort of half crushed between the back seat and the seat in front of it.
    “You got a lot of blood on you, man,” was all he said.
    I remember Mum’s face when she arrived at the hospital where they were patching me up; she was utterly horrified.
    “It’s not too serious, Mrs. Penman,” the nurse assured her. “Just surface mess and a few bruises. Nothing’s broken; he’ll be fine.”
    Mum looked relieved there was no permanent damage, but she still cried a bit. I did too.
    “I’m not going back there,” I told her, barely able to open my mouth. “I’m not a coward but I’m not going back. There’s nothing for me there.”
    She just nodded and hugged me, causing me to wince with the pain. Then I felt her tears fall on my shoulder, soI told her not to worry, and promised her I’d be OK and that things would be different from now on.
    “Jack, your lasagna’s ready!”
    It was her voice that shook me out of the unhappy memories of that day two months earlier, and as I jumped up off my bed, my heart thumping in my chest, I told myself that I would never, ever let anything like that happen again.

THE TEAM
    My first week at the new school went by in a blur. I spent most of it trying to learn the ropes, getting to grips with some of the study projects I was going to have to tackle and listening to the teachers banging on about revision and AS exams. Apart from the odd “How are you getting on, new boy?” and a few short bursts of small talk with people whose names I never really got to know, I drifted through the corridors like a ghost for most of that week. It was only when I bumped into Austin or one of his mates that I got into any serious conversation.
    The one bright spot in the week was seeing the incredible Ella Foster in the media production class on Monday. The downside of that was that Mr. Allen forced us to sit through several cringingly arty film clips to give us ideas for our upcoming project, which, he kept reminding us, was worth a massive chunk of credit for the AS level. So apart from a quick chat at the start of the class, Ella andI didn’t get to talk much. To be honest, I didn’t see half of what was happening on the screen anyway, as I spent most of the lesson just looking across at her, sort of mesmerized. I know, it sounds a bit lame, but as I watched the light from the screen flickering across her beautiful face, I wondered . . . well, mainly I wondered if a girl like that could be interested in somebody like me. And no, it wasn’t just the way she looked, either. Ella seemed to have a