Free By Any Other Name by Laura Jarratt Page B

the canteen, which tastes like margarine
on dough with some unidentifiable filling, and sit in the library preparing. When I get home, I’m so tired I crash out on the bed before tea and Mum has to wake me up.
    Tuesday isn’t much better, except I do get to have a lunch break and I sit with Gemma and Lucy. The boys are off playing football in some team practice thing. Thankfully Gemma’s got
over droning about wedding dresses and she’s in the middle of a bitch-fest about a girl they both know. It’s quite entertaining listening to Gemma tear her to shreds, especially as I
don’t know the girl so I don’t have to take sides. Gemma’s vicious when she gets her claws out.
    I see a little bit more of Fraser as the week goes on, but I don’t get much chance to speak to him alone. He stops me in the corridor once to check I’m still OK for the party at the
weekend and to sort out pick-up times but that’s mostly it. Except he does get my phone number and he texts me later to say he’s looking forward to it. I text to say ‘me
too’, but he doesn’t reply and neither do I after that. I’m not sure I am looking forward to it actually. It’s a funny feeling – more like stress than real excitement,
and not enjoyable but something to be endured and got through because I might feel better once I’ve done it. If I compare that to the last party I went to, and the buzz before that, getting
ready with Tasha . . . it’s just too depressing in a grey, shitty, hugely depressing week.
    And to add to the depressing, some idiot running the school had the idea to put a team-building event slap in the middle of this term when we’re getting ready for exams. So on Friday,
instead of doing our GCSE work which we’re all getting stressy about, we have an activity afternoon with the army. The whole year group is stuck out on the school field in a force-nine gale
and lashing rain with a bunch of really fed-up guys in khaki who look as unenthusiastic as we do. Awesome. We’ve been out there for precisely three minutes and my hair is wrecked already.
    They shout numbers at us and then tell us to stand in groups. A few kids try a quick shuffle-round, but the lead army guy notices and yells at them so the rest of us go where we’re told.
‘He looks a bit like a psycho killer,’ I whisper to Gemma who’s in my group.
    ‘Scary eyes,’ she says with a shudder.
    She nudges me as we’re all sent to different locations around the field, and points to the group next to us. It’s mostly Fraser and his friends – and I wonder how they managed
to engineer that – but also a quiet girl, who looks utterly miserable, and the Emo. Gemma sniggers. ‘Now this should be funny.’
    ‘Why?’
    She grins. ‘Watch and see.’
    So I do. While our army guy prepares something boring with a pile of ropes and nets, I watch the next group. They have some kind of landmine task, where they have to use planks and tyres to get
the team to safety on the other side. Fraser’s obviously up for it and so is Stuart. The others look reasonably interested, except for the quiet girl who looks like she’s about to cry.
But Emo Boy is more sullen than ever. In fact, he’s glowering at the army guy.
    My attention is pulled away while our guy explains what to do. Excellent – crawling under nets on wet ground!
    When I look back, Stuart is fronting up to Emo, staring him in the face. ‘It’s bad enough we get landed with you, pussy, but if you think you’re going to mess this up for us,
think again.’ Fraser’s laughing and I’m not sure what’s going on.
    Emo doesn’t back away though, just curls his lip in that way I know is really annoying when you’re on the receiving end of it.
    I blink and look again.
    Actually, now I’m not on the receiving end of it, it looks . . . no, I can’t mean that . . . because what I think I just thought is that it looks . . .
hot
? No, what I mean is
it would look hot if someone else other than Emo