Rampage

“Oh, sorry…I didn’t see you…did I hurt you?” I apologised, because I had certainly trodden on her foot, mortified that I had been so clumsy. She was really small, her hat only just about reaching to my shoulder, with long fair hair worn in two pigtails, with blue ribbons.

“You stamped on my foot, really hard!” She moaned, wincing as she hobbled about, close to tears from the wobble in her voice. She was wearing shiny black Mary Jane shoes, and white knee socks, which looked quite cute, really. Maybe a bit young for a mature thirteen-year-old teenager like me, but she was a sweet kid, and whilst I tried to apologise to her, again, my mind drifted straight back to my idle conversation with Gemma, which really made me wonder what the little girl’s life was actually like. Apart from so much better than mine, obviously. My life totally sucked, to be honest, so it was not really a very high bar. She looked so sweet in her all-encompassing uniform, like a Darrell Rivers, or the girls in Matilda, the musical, which I had seen at Christmas. And I bet she did not hate going home sometimes, just in case her mum’s boyfriend might be there, or have to beg for money just to top up her phone all the time. But I shook those thoughts out of my head, concentrating on making up for stamping on little Miss Perfect’s foot.

“Can you walk on it? I really am so sorry?” I asked, concerned for the poor little thing.

“It’s fine…just hurts…is that really your school uniform?” She asked, looking me up, plainly feeling better, and then down again, as if she had never seen anything like me. Not quite down her nose, as Gemma had assumed, but quite close enough, as if I came from a different planet from her, as I had suggested to my best mate. Redstone did not have much of a uniform, but it was not that unusual out in the real world, just a dark red jumper, a white and pale red striped blouse and just very ordinary grey skirts, or tight grey trousers, for the girls. I had opted for the trousers that morning because we were on the school trip on a cold March Monday, but I wore the skirt quite a lot, too. I thought it looked okay, and normal enough for a state school, red for Redstone obviously. It was not like it was my choice, but I did not have any real problems with it, because rules were rules. Except that most people broke them, all the time. Redstone was the sort of school where you could get away with murder.

“Yes…what’s wrong with it?” I responded, a little defensively. I wore the uniform properly most of the time, and reckoned I looked quite smart in it. Obviously, it was not like hers, but it was still the same basic principle.

“Nothing…it’s quite cool…I wish we could wear trousers.” She said, still staring at me, as if I was an alien life form or something. So, I stared right back at her, thinking that she did look very smart, sort of archetypal British schoolgirl, just like they always showed them in American movies. Like Wild Child, or the Gilmore Girls, although that was Canadian, I reminded myself as I smiled at her. Hollywood really seemed to imagine that every English schoolgirl was like Hermione Grainger, or Darrell Rivers. Redstone was not like that, of course. Real people were not like that, in my limited experience.

“Your uniform isn’t so bad…it’s really smart?” I suggested, relieved that I did not appear to have maimed her. “And I do wear a skirt sometimes…”

“It’s so ugh, and the rules are prehistoric…you get lines if you don’t have your chinstrap in the proper place…can you believe it?” She moaned, as we both sort of followed the queue and climbed up onto the first steps. She was so short that she really had to look up at me, and she had the chinstrap in its proper place, holding her old-fashioned hat in position, partially hidden behind her ears. I took her arm to ease her out of the way of an old man in a tweed suit, who was finding the steps hard to deal with, clinging onto the handrail for dear life. I did not want to add knocking an old man over to stamping on a little girl’s foot. He smiled at me and nodded his thanks.

“That is a bit strict…”

“I hate it so much…”

“Well, you can wish for something else, here…can’t you?” I smiled, and got a grin back. She had a pretty face, with a little button nose. Really cute. She seemed to be over being trampled at least.

“I am going to, for sure…what are you going to wish for?” She asked, taking another step up with the giant stone right beside us. She really was sweet, and she seemed to be enjoying talking to me. She was looking up at me, because she was so short, staring into my face.

“I don’t think it will come true if you tell someone else?” I pointed out, and she laughed, and nodded, as if that made some sense. I was neither pretty or cute. I was not ugly or anything but I was plain, I thought, or just ordinary. Everything about me was average and ordinary. Looking at my new little friend, I started to really wonder what it would be like, being her. Maybe she did despise her school uniform, but it sounded more like she had just been given some lines for breaking one of the stupid rules and was in a mood about it. Other than that, she was at a private school, which suggested that her parents had plenty of money, and I started to daydream about her house, and her family, and her perfect life, where all she ever had to moan about was a few annoying rules at school, which were the same for everyone. Whilst being cute. I wished I was pretty sometimes, and had the cash to buy myself some nice clothes, and do exciting things. I would happily wear her strict school uniform every day of my life, I thought, if it meant that I could have everything else, in my own time. She clearly did not know how lucky she was, but that was hardly her fault, because she probably lived in a bubble. She struck me as the sort of girl who really had no idea how fortunate she was, but she was still only a little kid, so I could not blame her for that, really. Her parents probably kept her on a short leash, in-between the daily piano lessons, riding her own pony and her ballet classes. My vivid imagination was really working overtime, turning her into a fictional character, a modern-day princess, in my daydreams. In my mind, her house was a mansion, with her pony in its own field, right outside her bedroom windows. She probably had staff at home, servants, and was driven to school in a Rolls Royce. “I’m Kelly by the way…Kelly Hughes…what’s your name?”

“Olivia Montague…I’m in year seven.” Olivia told me, volunteering her year group, perhaps because she had a thing about being small, which was fair enough, because she was really small and she was much older than I had originally assumed if she really was in year seven. Being in year seven meant that she was twelve years old, or thereabouts, and if I was honest, I would have put her at nine or ten, if she had not said anything about her year group. But it was always so hard to tell, when girls were in school uniform, especially that sort of uniform, because some of the girls in my year were quite tall really, almost adult size, and others were really short, and uniform, without any make-up, was a great leveller.

“I’m in year eight…get your wish ready…we are nearly there?” I grinned, as we reached the highest bit of the steel platform, just as Danny Brown and his neanderthal mates came charging up the down steps. From that moment, it all seemed to play out in painfully slow motion around us. The boys were on the rampage. It was something that happened, so often, at Redstone, that I hardly noticed it on a daily basis, but I was not usually standing on a steel viewing gallery at the time. There were about ten of them, all running at full tilt, pushing people out of their way and jumping around, going mental, so that the iron platform started to shake. I grabbed hold of Olivia, either to steady her, or myself, but everything was moving beneath our feet and the boys were heading straight for us, like a testosterone avalanche. I remember falling against the safety rail, still holding Olivia’s arm, and then the boys just barged into us, like a tidal wave. I hit the rock, with my shoulder I think, and Olivia was bouncing around next to me, grabbing my hand to stop herself falling over and screaming in fear, I think. Or maybe that was me. I am not sure now. But whatever, the world then went black and absolutely silent, like someone had suddenly turned out the lights, and everything changed for me, right then and there.