Eleanor Wood - Gemini Rising

Last of all, the twins come rolling in. All that is different about them is the fact that they don’t automatically go and sit with Amie. Elyse and Melanie sit down alone together at the back, and quietly start reading their books. I keep my head down and do the same, but I am intrigued.

I know I spend an inordinate amount of time bitching about the futility of my existence, but really nothing – nothing – is as bad as I feel about Games. Even though we’re in sixth form, apparently it’s still essential that we get outdoors and do some wholesome physical exercise. ‘Healthy body, healthy mind’ is one of the phrases that gets thrown around a lot, along with, ‘You’ll thank us for this when you’re older.’ Yeah, right.

Despite the sunshine, it’s not that warm today, and I swear my calves are blue when we all trail out onto the playing field. I shan’t even horrify you with tawdry tales of the changing room – just consider yourself lucky and imagine how fantastic it makes the rest of us feel when all the hotties of the class stand about chatting, nonchalant and half naked, and Alice Pincott leaps about the changing rooms in a bright-pink mesh 32D bra.

Mrs Kingsley, who is quite nice but of course really hearty and overenthusiastic, starts us off with these stupid stretches before we do anything else. This might not be quite as bad as actually playing sports, but it’s equally embarrassing when she starts on all those comedy lunges and pelvic thrusts.

‘Sorana Salem! Come on, do something, don’t just stand there looking like a wet weekend!’

This is something of a recurring theme.

‘Yeah, come on, Sorana!’ Lexy White chimes in, right on cue. ‘You’re not feeling faint, are you? You look like you haven’t eaten in about a week.’

I thought we’d all grown up a bit and got over this sort of thing of late – clearly that’s over. In fact, the A Group seem to be going depressingly back to normal. Lexy and all of the other girls in that little gang are basically perfect size-tens, and woe betide anyone who isn’t – if they’re not snidely accusing me of being anorexic even though I eat more than most of them put together, then they’re making snorting noises whenever Helen Kennedy so much as cracks open an oatcake.

The irony is that, while I’d literally move into Nando’s and sleep on the floor if they’d let me, Jo Whitley really is anorexic. She’s not that much skinnier than me, to be fair, but it’s in a really wrong way – like she’s clearly not meant to be that size, and so she’s all angular and out of proportion. Even in summer she wears about four jumpers and says she feels cold. Somehow she’s got away with wearing long black tracksuit bottoms for Games without getting in trouble, and, although she practically needs help walking as she’s so frail, she gets mostly left alone. There’s a strange sort of power in being that close to the edge; it takes a lot of dedication to starve yourself slowly to death.

‘Right, girls – hockey today!’

My heart sinks – hockey’s got to be the absolute worst. Mrs Kingsley blows her whistle and the match starts, with all the usual players baying for blood and the rest hanging back hopelessly. As I shiver and dread the ball coming anywhere near me, I am pleased to notice that Melanie seems just as apathetic as I am about physical activity.

I hang back and drift off into my own world – a happy place of books, red velvet cake and Trouble Every Day – until Mrs Kingsley starts puffing away manically on her whistle and yelling her head off.

‘That’s a penalty! Shimmi Miah, it is not funny to pretend to be playing tennis with a hockey stick – someone could get hurt. Elyse, why don’t you take this one for the reds?’

Elyse saunters up to the white line and looks as if she couldn’t give a flying anything about this stupid game of hockey – she practically sneers at the ball. Then she squares her shoulders and lines up her stick and stares a flinty look into the distance, before slamming the ball with all of her might.

Mrs Kingsley starts shouting something about above-the-waist punts being illegal, but it’s way too late. The ball is sailing through the air and we’re all gazing at it, as if hypnotised, including Amie Bellairs, which must be why it smashes her full in the face quite as badly as it does.

There’s a collective intake of breath, as I’m sure I actually hear a smashing noise. The ball hits Amie so hard that it knocks her over onto the wet grass. Everyone starts rushing towards Amie and, as they’re all so busy doing that, I wonder if I’m the only one who notices the cool-blue look that passes between Elyse and Melanie.

Alice Pincott is sent off to get the school nurse, while Amie struggles to her feet from within a protective cocoon of people. When she stands up and lowers her cupped hands slightly from her face, it takes me a second to register why it looks so wrong. Then I realise that I can’t differentiate between her nose and her mouth, because it’s all a mass of blood. It’s the most dumbfounded I have ever seen my class. Although some of the more squeamish girls look as though they might be sick, everyone wants to know what’s going on.

‘Oh my eff gee !’ Shimmi stage-whispers to me. ‘Did you see the look on her face when that ball hit Amie in the gob?’

‘Yeah, it was spooky…’ I mutter.

‘Spooky? Classic, more like. Just gawping into the sky like the rest of us and then a bloody rock-hard hockey ball hits her bang in the face?’

Shimmi is going a little overboard with her glee. OK, so Amie’s kind of a bitch and we call her ‘Amie Bellend’ behind her back, but nobody deserves that .

The school nurse has waddled out onto the pitch in her high heels, and Amie is being led away, along with her best friend Alice. Alice is crying, just like half of the girls on the pitch are. Even Mrs Kingsley looks shocked.

It would kind of go down in school history, that afternoon, especially as everyone was so dazed they couldn’t remember exactly how it happened, so all of the exaggerations may have been true. It’s probably safe to say that even girls in Daisy’s class would be claiming to find random teeth on the hockey pitch for years after that.

‘It was an accident, wasn’t it, Elyse?’ Mrs Kingsley is asking. ‘It was just an accident.’

‘Yeah, sure,’ Elyse agrees.

The rest of the week at school is pretty weird, after what happened to Amie, but I keep my head down and will it to go quickly. I’ve been waiting for this weekend for so long, I just keep my face buried in a book and my eyes on the prize.

On Saturday night, I rock up at the Arts Centre bang on time, in shiny new American Apparel leggings and my old Trouble Every Day T-shirt. And, of course, I’m the only one here. Typical. It’s my birthday, and I’m the one hanging around waiting. Still, I’m not going to get stressed about it because I have hit the birthday jackpot this year – not only is my birthday on a Saturday, but this weekend heralds the start of half term. Then there’s the added stroke of rare luck that has meant Trouble Every Day are playing here on my actual birthday. Best present imaginable, frankly.

I’ve already had a pretty good day – my mum let me sleep in undisturbed until a relatively civilised hour; we had pancakes for breakfast, and pizza and birthday cake for lunch; and, as well as the new leggings and other bits from my mum, Pete bought me the Alfred Hitchcock DVD boxed set – enough to keep me going for months – and Daisy gave me a really cool headband from Topshop.

Now, outside the Arts Centre, I hang about until finally Shimmi appears. She couldn’t look any more out of place if she tried. She’s done up as serious jailbait in her knee-high boots and tiny dress; her parents are usually so strict that, whenever she gets out of the house, she goes crazy and rebels in every possible way she can. As she picks her way over to me, Shimmi doesn’t even appear to have noticed that she’s drowning in a sea of ripped plaid and dirty denim on all sides. My own Converse might be the same as everyone else’s in the vicinity, but there’s a reason for that – my friend is not going to be much good in the mosh pit.