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Post by Big Lin on Oct 26, 2012 21:58:37 GMT
Chapter Ten
I didn't get much sleep that night, worry about what I'd found out. I still felt utterly let down and betrayed by Meg. How could she not have told me what she was planning?
How could she not have trusted me with the secrets of her heart?
It was Sunday morning, and I woke with a face like death. I staggered down to breakfast and Mum and Dad looked at me all anxious.
'How are you, Lin?' Mum asked.
'OK,' I lied.
'Sure, youse don't look OK,' Dad said. 'You went out last night, didn't you? Did anything happen?'
'Not so's you'd notice,' I said bitterly. 'Nothing that helps, anyhow.'
Dad sighed. He could see something was wrong but he didn't know what it was. He come over and put his arm around me all loving.
'There, there, my wee bairn, what is it that troubles you? Where was it you went – the Blue Angel? Did you have any more trouble with those boys?'
'No, Dad, it wasn't like that. I did go to the Angel and I did meet a boy but nothing happened. Well, not like that, anyhow.'
I knew I probably ought to tell Angry Joe about things but I just wasn't in the mood to talk to him right now. What I was doing was draining the bitter cup of memory. Everything was coming back to me this morning, remembering how me and Meg had got started. When I thought about it, I suppose if you looked at it one way you could almost say it was her fault I got into all this criminal stuff I'd been doing.
I was thirteen years old and she was not long turned fourteen. We were both in the same class at school but we hadn't been friends or anything like that. We lived quite near to each other so we often used to take a short cut home through an alleyway. It was all down to that bloody place that everything started off – the lezzy sex, my life in gangs, my criminal career, my two and a half years as a total slut. God, I hated that place. Maybe my life could have been so different if it hadn't been for what went down there one day.
I was walking home from school and took the short cut through the alleyway as usual. As I gazed ahead of me in a bored, absent-minded sort of way I saw Meg being taunted and threatened by a group of boys who were surrounding her. I recognised them at once. They were a bunch of lowlife scum who were junior players in the Royals, one of the local gangs. The Royals were total tossers who reckoned they was hard nuts and hated everybody. Even the Welsh were foreigners to them. They were Nazis to a man and as far as I was concerned that made them my enemies.
They were too busy making fun of Meg and telling her how they were going to rape her to notice me making my way towards them slowly and quietly. I waited till I got right up close to their scumbag of a 'leader,' Bryan Jackson, and then tapped him on the shoulder to make him turn round and face me.
'Leave her alone, Jacko,' I said. 'Just piss off and leave her be.'
Jacko laughed when I said that. He looked around at his seven mates and then back again at me once more.
'What's it to you, gypsy? Mind your own fucking business unless you want some of what this lezzy cunt's got coming to her!'
It was probably pretty stupid of me but I still reckoned it was probably just a load of bollocks. They weren't going to rape Meg in broad daylight, were there? Surely even a bunch of toerags like them weren't that moronic?
'Just let her go, Jacko. She wants to go home and so do I. You ought to do the same and all.'
'Oh, fuck off, gypsy, before you get hurt.'
'Oh yeah? You and whose fucking army?'
He threw a punch at me then but it was only a half-hearted one like he was just swatting away some irritating fly from round his face. I ducked it easy and then swung round in one fluid movement and kicked him hard in the balls. As he doubled up I gave him a swift left hook to the temple that sent him tumbling on the floor. He just lay there, winded, in pain and apparently out sparko.
The other blokes gave me a funny look then, like they wasn't quite sure if they ought to do something about it or not. Then Jacko's brother Doug 'the Bug' Jackson gave me a filthy look.
'Let's get the gypsy cunt!' he shouted. 'For fuck's sake, there's six of us, ain't there? Let's do the bitch good and proper!'
I didn't wait for his move but just twisted about like a snake. I tripped him up easy and had him on the floor, one foot on his throat and the other on his balls. The other gang members were staring at me in total amazement and, to be honest, scared shitless. I was really enjoying the sensation of power I had over them.
'Piss off, you dozy tossers!' I shouted. 'Don't fuck with a gypsy or you'll always come off worse!'
At that moment I heard a voice that changed my life for the next few years. It was soft but full of menace like a prowling cat's snarl at a rival tom in an alley.
'You heard what she said,' he said quietly. 'You'd best all go home. I'd take your feet away too unless you actually want to do him serious damage.'
I moved away and the Bug got unsteadily to his feet. He glared at me but just nodded to the gang.
'What about my brother?' he asked.
'Carry him home yourselves,' he laughed.
Reluctantly the six blokes lifted Jacko off the ground and took him back to his place. My rescuer then gave me a big beaming smile.
'That was quite a performance back there, Linda,' he said. 'I was seriously impressed. No shit, I mean, that Jacko's a tough fucker but you had him out for the count in seconds, no messing. Where'd you learn to fight like that?'
'I'm a gypsy,' I said defensively. 'It's in the blood.'
He laughed when I said that. I'd just been rescued by Wesley Clark, the biggest and strongest kid in my class, but the one with the worst reputation. Wesley was known to be in his own gang, the Trenchtown Tribute, almost all of whose members were black or mixed race, though there were a few white kids in it as well.
'What were you doing defending that lezzy bitch anyhow? We don't like dykes or batty boys in the Tribute.'
'I just don't like bullies,' I told him truthfully. 'One girl up against seven blokes is not what I call fair odds.'
'You weren't doing so bad on your own,' he laughed.
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Post by Hunny on Oct 26, 2012 22:25:51 GMT
Wow. I have truly been enjoying reading this. What a story you have! You know, you could start writing a chapter a week and posting it. I know I'd be quite pleased to read the rest of it. Honestly, Lin, finish this, get what you need out of it, then get a copy of Writers Market and figure out what publishing company to submit it to (I know a little about that process, my mom was a writer). You know, I just think it's really good and ought to be published. And if there is catharsis in it, you'll never get it unless you go forward again. Maybe it's time?
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