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has to look out for Vanda: if left alone with Mary, she’ll be tormented to tears. Mary hates Vanda because she’s a girl.
    ‘Why do we have to have girls in the gang?’ Mary whines.
    Once, off your guard, you say the obvious thing: ‘Mary,
you’re
a girl. We have you.’
    It’s the worst beating of your primary-school experience. Mary slaps you until you’re crying, then kicks you in the shins, barrels punches into your chest and face. Shane needs Paul’s help to haul her off you.
    ‘I’m
not
, I’m
not
, I’m
not
,’ she screams at you. ‘Say I’m not a girl, Keith! Say I’m
not
!’
    You’ve lost it too and are crying too hard to say anything. Mrs Newcomen, the Class Three teacher, breaks it up.
    Next day, Mr Brunt comes to Class Three while Mary is sent off to see someone. Mr Brunt talks to the whole class about Mary, explaining that she has problems and you should try to help her, to understand that she doesn’t always mean the things she does. Like Shane and you, and unlike Paul and Max and Vanda, Mary sits on the Top Table. She reads better than you and can do sums faster than anyone in Class Three. She isn’t stupid like Timmy Gossett, who is on the Bottom Table and can’t get through
Janet and John
, but she has problems. You and Shane look at each other, knowing no grown-up will ever really understand Scary Mary’s problems. Sometimes, a monster comes up behind her eyes and everybody had better look after themselves. Even Robert Hackwill of Class Six, the official School Bully, knows better than to pick on her.
    After Mr Brunt has talked to you, Mary comes back to class. At break-time, she says she was taken to a lady named Dr Killian, a psychiatrist, who asked her questions about herself and why she gets angry so often. For a while afterwards, Mary doesn’t have her monster spells. Eventually, when Vanda has her hair done in Indian plaits, Mary (out of boredom, you suppose) starts tugging them, pulling harder and harder, turning yelps to cries, not stopping until she is stopped. Even when you get to Class Six and start having your eleventh birthdays, Mary’s monster comes out from time to time. She isn’t as bad as she was: not because the monster has gone away, but because she’s got better at hiding it from grown-ups. Likewise, you don’t cry so often, but inside are still the same boy who could burst into tears at the slightest prod.
    At Ash Grove, you learn to read and do sums. You have a head start on other children, because you already knew your letters and numbers in Class One. You get to the Top Table in Class Two and stay on it all the way up to Class Six. You have Painting, Music and Movement, History, PE, Stories and Sums. You draw better than most, though not as neatly as some of the girls. In Stories, most boys write about football or the war, but you write about pirates (the old craze dims, but the interest is still there), spies, robots, monsters from space and jungle explorers. Teachers indulge your interests, but you sense they’d prefer you to be more normal.
    Dad, who fought the Japs in the war, buys you comics and stories about it: you like Biggies and Sergeant Rock, but prefer Doctor Who and Superman. Laraine, who goes to the Girls’ Grammar and wears a straw boater and a bottle-green blazer with a badge on the top pocket, moans that you only like horrible things, like robots and pirates, but you discount her opinion because she is only interested in clothes and pop music. Her favourite song is ‘White Horses’ by Jacky, which drives you mad if you hear it.
    * * *
    Sometimes, Shane Bush’s gang expands to take in almost all the school. In Class Four, everyone plays a game called ‘Timmy’s Germs’. At break-time, someone rubs his hand on Timmy Gossett and then touches someone else, saying, ‘Now you’ve got Timmy’s germs.’ The victim, choking and coughing, runs around and passes on the deadly touch. Timmy’s germs spread rapidly. Everyone falls wriggling