Free Fruit by Brian Francis

which are little safety pins with beads. They pin them to their shoelaces. Sometimes, they make friendship pins, using letter beads, so the pins spell things like “love” and “pal” and “classy.”
    Eric Bird is the leader of the Indian Group, the toughest group at Clarkedale Elementary School. You don’t talk to the Indian Group unless you’re an Indian yourself. Every morning the yellow school bus drops them off. They come in from the reserve, which is outside Chemical Valley.
    I don’t think the Indian Group likes Clarkedale, even though we do Indian crafts sometimes. I heard Eric say that everyone at Clarkedale is a “bejoggin head.” I don’t know what “bejoggin” means, but something tells me it doesn’t mean “super nice.”
    Michelle Appleby is the leader of the Slut Group. The Slut Group is made up of girls on the wrong side of the tracks. They wear dangly earrings and lip gloss and dark blue eye shadow. There’s always some story going around about them, like so-and-so put a thermometer up her vagina to see what the temperature was, or so-and-so gave a boy a BJ in the path behind the school.
    Whenever the Slut Group hears one of these stories, they yell “ THAT’S A LIE !” like they’re angry. But then they start to giggle. Except for one time, when people weresaying that Lisa Miller put peanut butter on her vagina so that her dog would lick it. She started crying and had to be sent home that day.
    The Banger Group leader is Brian Cinder. Banger Group boys date Slut Group girls. Most of them are poor and live in the South End, where the low-rentals are in Sarnia. The Banger Group listens to Def Leppard and AC/DC and wear black and white concert T-shirts and bang their heads against the brick walls of the school for fun. That’s how they got their name.
    The Banger Group picks on everyone except for the Indian Group. Each thinks they’re the toughest group at Clarkedale and there’s always some kind of fight going on. On Monday, it was between Darryl Lascelles and Ronnie Doucette. It started because Darryl said he fingered Ronnie’s girlfriend, Andrea, after school one day. Everyone was very excited about the fight, even me. I was just glad I wasn’t involved, because I’m sure that either one of them could’ve pounded the crap out of me.
    At the end of the day, everyone gathered in a circle behind the gym while Darryl and Ronnie went at it. All the Indian kids were yelling “Kill him!” and all the members from the Banger and Slut Groups were yelling, “Punch him out!”
    I felt sick to my stomach because I could hear the punches hitting body parts and Darryl’s nose was bleeding and it was very disturbing. The fight didn’t last for too long, because the principal came running out and everyone scattered. Darryl and Ronnie were suspended for three days.
    Then there are people that don’t fit into any group. Like Jackie Myner, who as well as being the ugliest girl at Clarkedale, is poor and stutters and doesn’t dress very well. Sometimes, I’ll see Jackie trying to talk to Arlene Marple. Arlene doesn’t belong to any group. That’s because she has dandruff and B.O. and wears sweatshirts with kittens on them. But even Arlene doesn’t like to be seen with Jackie. That’s how bad it is for Jackie.
    I guess I don’t belong to any group either, but I’m not like Jackie or Arlene. Even though I’m overweight and have deformed nipples, I never stutter. And there’s no way I’d be caught dead wearing a kitten sweatshirt.
    Back in September, I started hanging out with the Goody-Goody girls, but that was only because most of them were in my home ec class and Margaret goes to my church. Then, Brian Cinder noticed me trading stickers with a couple of the girls at recess.
    “Look at Peter Paddington,” he said in a high voice, “he’s just one of the girls.”
    Since then, I haven’t said two words to a Goody-Goody girl and I signed up to be a Clarkedale library assistant. I