Wicked! Read Online Free PDF Page B

trouble. Cuts herself. Got arms like ladders.’
    ‘Well, she’s not wearing make-up and having hair that colour in my school,’ said Janna firmly as she broke open a packet and dropped tea bags into two mugs. ‘That one’s pretty.’
    ‘Kylie Rose. Already had one kid at twelve – wanted something to love. Time she spends on her back, she’ll have another any minute. Anything to avoid SATs. Those five make up the Wolf Pack.’
    ‘Feral, Paris, Graffi, Pearl and Kylie Rose,’ intoned Janna as she poured boiling water over the tea bags and added milk and two sugars for Wally, who carried on with her lesson.
    ‘There are three more you want to watch from Year Nine. One’s Rocky; he’s autistic. Attention Deficit Disorder they call it these days,’ he added scornfully,. ‘Nice kid, but violent if he don’t get his Ritalin. More serious are “Satan” Simmons – a racist bully, excluded last term for carrying a gun, overturned on appeal because his father’s a councillor – and “Monster” Norman. Monster’s mixed race’ – Wally stirred his tea thoughtfully – ‘in that his dad, who keeps walking out, is a quarter black, which Monster denies, which makes him even more of a racist bully. He’s also a great snivelling toad, really spiteful, but his mother’s a governor, so you can’t touch him.’
    Janna put her hand over the names: Freddie ‘Feral’ Jackson, such a beautiful face; Paris Alvaston: no one could forget him either, he looked so hauntingly sad; Griffith ‘Graffi’ Williams; Pearl; Kylie Rose; ‘Satan’ Simmons; Rocky; ‘Monster’ Norman.’
    ‘What’s that?’ she demanded, noticing a switch inside the well of her desk.
    ‘Your panic button,’ said Wally, then, when Janna looked mutinous: ‘You don’t know what you’re up against. Most of our kids come from the Shakespeare Estate. Their parents are crazy people who respect no one. From the beginning of term you’re wearing a radio mike, and if there’s any trouble, you summon back-up. Someone’s always on call on the internal radio link.’
    ‘I’m not bothering with any of that junk. This is going to be a happy school.’
    Before the teachers came back, Wally also gave her a sneak preview of the staffroom.
    ‘Why do they need a security lock?’ she asked as Wally punched out the code to enter.
    ‘To keep out violent kids and parents.’
    ‘And me too, presumably. God, it’s awful! Who’d want to break in here?’
    Walls the luminous olive green of a child about to be sick were not enhanced by brown and yellow check curtains. Mock leather chairs in the dingiest browns and beiges huddled dispiritedly round low tables. Staff pigeonholes overflowed, clearly untackled since last term. Three potted plants had baked to death on the window sill. A Hoover, weak from underwork, was slumped against an ancient television set. Health and safety laws and union posters promising significant reductions in workload shared the noticeboard with details of half-price Calvin Klein button-fly boxers and Winnie-the-Pooh character socks. Also pinned up was a letter from Cotchester University announcing that a former pupil Marilyn Finch had attained a second in maths.
    ‘For those who remember Marilyn,’ Mike Pitts had scribbled across the bottom, ‘all our efforts were worthwhile.’
    ‘Only graduate Larks ever had,’ volunteered Wally. ‘Pittsy taught her.’
    ‘I’m going to have to tackle him on the timetable,’ sighed Janna. ‘It’s covered with drink rings and Year Seven A and Year Eight B are having English with the same teacher in the same classroom at the same time on Tuesday morning – and it gets worse. God, look at that.’
    On the breakfast bar, untouched since the end-of-term party, sink and draining board were crowded with dirty wine glasses, moth-filled cups and orange-juice cartons. Scrumpy, beer and vegetable-juice cans littered the floor.
    Debbie the cleaner, said Wally disapprovingly, would blitz the place