For my Kit.

  The greatest footballer since Grandad!

  CHAPTER ONE

  I really don’t know what got into me.

  I will do my best to describe it.

  I was just so angry!

  So… disappointed!

  I was a big ball of BOO.

  A fuming lump of… BAH!

  I had been best friends with Tom since I was two years old. That’s nearly ten years!

  Back then everything was simpler. All we wanted to do was push each other over or rub paint on each other’s faces.

  Our houses back onto each other’s, mine and Tom’s. The end of my small garden meets the end of his. We live so close that sometimes, if I’m sitting by my desk at my bedroom window, I’ll see his mum’s head appear and disappear over the dividing fence every two seconds because they’ve got a trampoline now.

  ‘Hello, Ryan!’ she’ll shout as she bounces up and down. ‘Hiya, pal!’

  So that’s how close we live.

  Tom and I know everything there is to know about each other. He doesn’t like cats whereas I think they’re smashing. I hate tinned tomatoes whereas you can’t keep Tom away from them.

  We even look alike. People sometimes think we’re brothers. Except my eyes are blue where his are green, and his black hair is quite neat, and my black hair is quite messy. I like to wear tracksuits or joggers after school, and he prefers nice trousers and jumpers. We look like the Before & After pictures if a rock star stopped being a rock star and decided to run a small garden centre instead.

  Tom and I even learned to swim together when we were really little. His Uncle Bobby used to take us to Bridgwater Leisure Centre. Uncle Bobby taught us lots of things, like how to tie knots under what he called the ‘Magic Tree’, which was just a tree next to a brook and not all that magic. Then we learned to ride bikes together one summer and even got the same ones for our birthdays. We got all the way through primary school together and I was really looking forward to starting secondary school with him.

  And just like that, Tom completely and utterly changed.

  I tried my best with him, honest I did. I tried to make him laugh. I gave him my spare sweets when I suspected he was upset that time. Mum always says actions speak louder than words, and I felt like those sweets said a lot. I offered him loads of other stuff, too, like a spare pencil to make sure he could do his homework when he was off school for a bit. I’d even have rubbed paint on his face again when he was sad, if I thought he’d still find it funny.

  And when he went all quiet on me, I asked if we were still friends, and even though he never said ‘No’, he never really said ‘Yes’ either.

  Then he started hanging out with a couple of different kids. Simon Roberts and Minnie Graham. He walks home with those two now, always stopping at Bridgwater Food & News for sweets and treats.

  Simon Roberts isn’t the type you’d want to hang round with, by the way. He always wraps his school tie round his forehead after school. It gives a very bad impression and Mum says it makes him look like a hooligan, but I can see how Tom would be attracted to the danger.

  ‘Maybe Tom’s just trying to make a new start,’ my mum said one night at bedtime after she’d seen me walk home without him again. ‘I know it hurts, but people do that sometimes, especially when there are big changes in their lives. Whether it’s starting a new school… or something that happens in the family, my love.’

  Well, what about me? I was being forced to make a new start too, at the same new school, with loads of different kids, when what I really wanted to do was hang out with Tom.

  I should have just got on with it.

  I should have joined some clubs.

  I should have made some new friends.

  I should have left Tom alone.

  I did absolutely none of that.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Now, this was the situation I had found myself in and the possible reasons for it:

  POSSIBLE REASONS TOM HAS STOPPED HANGING OUT WITH RYAN (ME)

  He doesn’t appreciate Ryan (me) which is obviously ridiculous!

  He has swapped bodies with an alien.

  He has been told a strange rumour about Ryan (me).

  He has become possessed by evil spirits.

  He is almost twelve which means he’s almost a teenager which is when everybody gets all weird anyway (like Daisy!)

  I can’t think of a sixth reason.

  None of it made sense.

  I’m not a bad kid. I give five per cent of my pocket money to charity, when I remember. I am not afraid to compliment people on some nice new socks or an impressive haircut. Grown-ups have called me ‘a delight’ on more than one occasion. I try to ask interesting questions when Mr Calloway brings up a new subject in class and I always go quiet when I’m on a plane and they do the safety announcement. I lock eyes with the flight attendant and stare straight at them so that they know their efforts are appreciated. I have only been asked once to stop staring at them so intently – the captain came out and asked me himself. So, it is a mystery of epic proportions why Tom has gone all weird on me.

  And when I say weird, I mean… he still basically talks to me and everything, but it’s like he’s talking to a stranger. All of our jokes are gone. It’s only me that says ‘remember when we tied all those knots?’ or ‘remember the time we rubbed all that paint on each other’s faces?’ He sort of half-smiles and says ‘yeah’, but he never laughs with me any more. He never gets excited. He never seems very happy to see me.

  It’s like something’s happened in his brain and he’s deleted the file marked RYAN.

  Wait.

  Something’s happened in his brain and he’s deleted the file marked RYAN.

  I have other friends, of course. I’ve got Tyler and Margot. They’re really nice, but they’re sort of school-friends, not friend-friends. They don’t live right next to me like Tom does, and they don’t have mountain bikes, so things are less convenient.

  I’ve got a cat, but she’s pretty snooty and barely looks my way, so we don’t really have the kind of relationship where I know that much about her wider interests.

  I’ve got Mum and Dad but they’re always busy ‘because of everything’, and I’ve got my big sister Daisy, but she’s fifteen and just as snooty as the cat and looks at me even less.

  It’s Tom I need back, and so before it all went crazy in my life, and before I did all the things that made everything worse, I made one important positive decision.

  I had to give it one more go, give it absolutely everything, and win my best friend back.

  It would work. It had to.

  * * *

  Now, I have watched enough TV to know that if you want to win someone back (Tom), you have to make big gestures. Maybe pay a plane to go skywriting, or rent big billboards, or dress up as a giant present and jump out at them, that sort of thing. But that kind of thing is very expensive, and all I’ve got is a small amount of pocket money and whatever I saved up from birthdays.

  I saw on a soap opera once a woman was angry with a man, so what he did was, he cooked her a salad and put her favourite music on and when she walked into the living room and saw he’d also lit a candle – well, all was forgiven! It probably stank of roses, but that’s a good tip, I’d imagine.

  Another grand gesture that I saw was on YouTube where a lady wanted to propose to a gentleman so she got his favourite American football team to turn up at the house and shout ‘WILL YOU MARRY ME?’ at his window, but this one seemed less relevant to my situation and much harder to organize.

  So, my big gesture to show Tom what a great friend I am was this: to get a top-quality white T-shirt and jogging bottoms and have an outfit made at the shop in town that does that stuff. I found loads of pictures of the two of us, and designed the whole thing on Mum’s work computer. It was a really very touching selection of photos and I think it showed off my sensitive side. I used my birthday money because I was sure it was worth it.

  If you started at the bottom of the trousers, you would see:

  Me and Tom in our matching nappies.

  Me and Tom having a toddler bath.

  Me and Tom playing robots.

  Then, as you got past the knees, you would see:

  Me and Tom riding our bikes.

  Me and Tom playing football.

  Me and Tom with his Uncle Bobby, all laughing as we pointed at a lion in Bristol Zoo.

  Do you see? The clothes are like a timeline of me and Tom! We are moving through history! This trouser-and-top combination is a cotton-based tribute to our friendship!

  Other notable highlights include me and Tom dressed up for Halloween (just above the belly button), me and Tom eating sausages (lower ribs to nipple) and me and Tom giggling at the fairground (left nipple very specifically). Happy days!

  I also wrote ‘Me and Tom!’ right at the very centre of the T-shirt. It was, and I am sorry if this sounds arrogant, perfect. I was sure it would melt Tom’s heart in an instant and we’d be back on our bikes together by sunset.

  I was very, very wrong.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I had run back home very quickly after school on Monday and changed into my ‘History of Me & Tom’ suit, then I ran straight back to the newsagent’s, where I knew he would be buying some sweets and treats.

  He’d started splitting a pound with his new friends, Simon Roberts and Minnie Graham, so that they could buy a discounted end-of-day cake and I’d seen them share it on the walk home. Sometimes chocolate, sometimes coconut, but they’d only

had the old lady one with the jam and nuts on once. It made Tom look pretty grown up, eating a cake with his hands on the street, but I wasn’t going to be intimidated.

  And when I jumped out at him from behind the bus stop that afternoon, and yelled, ‘Check out my Me & Tom suit!’ he looked at me not in delight, but in actual horror.

  His friends took a second to work out what was happening.

  Simon Roberts pointed at my leg.

  ‘Is that you two in the bath as babies?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, yeah,’ I said, not yet losing confidence.

  ‘Why are you wearing trousers with a picture of you two in the bath as babies?’ Simon Roberts asked. ‘Out here, in the street, where we can all see?’

  Tom stared at his own feet.

  He looked mortified.

  I didn’t know that word until I saw his face, but I didn’t know how to describe it, and then I looked and looked in the dictionary until I found ‘mortified’ and believe me, that’s what he was.

  ‘Well, uh, it’s a very touching tribute to our friendship,’ I tried.

  Now it was me that felt mortified. Proper mortified.

  ‘And is that you two on those trousers, sitting around in your nappies?’ asked Minnie Graham.

  Tom squeezed his eyes shut.

  ‘We all wore nappies, Minnie!’ I said, trying to defend myself. ‘Isn’t that right, Tom? You wore a nappy, and I wore a nappy. Simon wore a nappy. We all wore nappies!’

  Tom looked even more mortified (more-tified) but I had made my decision and had to keep going (even more mortifying).

  ‘This is deeply uncool,’ said Minnie Graham, and I didn’t have anything to say back, because Minnie is actually seen as very cool and wears sunglasses and somehow makes her uniform look awesome and it’s hard to argue with those people.

  Someone had to do something to make this stop.

  ‘Ryan,’ said Tom firmly. ‘It’s nice that you’ve made some clothes which have some deeply embarrassing pictures of me on. I appreciate it, I really do.’

  Wait. Was this suddenly going better than I’d thought?

  ‘But I just think maybe we need to move on,’ he said. ‘I don’t really think I should be hanging around with someone who does things like this. Not now we’re in a new school. With new people. And not now we’re older, talking about more serious things.’

  I must have looked like I was going to faint, because he held out his hand and said, ‘Do you want a bit of cake before you go?’

  Mortifying.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  When I got home, I ran up to my bedroom, slammed my door shut and tore off my stupid Me & Tom suit.

  Then I ate my bit of cake to stop myself feeling so faint.

  What had I been thinking? I stared at the suit on the floor in horror. The stupid pictures all over it.

  Why hadn’t I dressed as something awesome instead? Like a samurai? Or a monster truck driver? Why wasn’t I acting ‘older’, like them?

  But I knew why. These pictures meant something to me, they were pictures of happy times. Some of the best times of my life, and I thought they were some of the best of Tom’s too. Back when things were easier and less confusing. But it was still ridiculous. I felt humiliated. Like I’d risked everything and thought it would work out, but it hadn’t and obviously never would.

  And then I realized I had taken off my suit and was just standing in my pants and that made me feel even sillier.

  I put on my black T-shirt and black trousers so that I could mourn the end of mine and Tom’s friendship properly, and then I heard some pretty clear sniggering.

  Where was it coming from?

  I peeked out of the window, being careful to stay hidden.

  There, just near Tom’s house, on the street: Tom had his school tie round his head and was giggling with Simon Roberts. Oh, giggling, is it? Not talking about ‘more serious things’? Not acting ‘older?’ I immediately knew they were giggling about me.

  I went from feeling like I wanted the whole world to swallow me up to suddenly feeling furious. A hot rage.

  But the rage felt better than the embarrassment I’d just felt from my stupid suit plan. It was nothing out of control.

  I felt very calm with it. I felt very focused.

  I watched the two of them as they slapped each other on the back and went into Tom’s house. It used to be me that did that.

  And then I felt a pang of jealousy.

  And in that moment… a devilish plan began to form, like there was a dark cloud of evil gathering over my head, with all lightning bolts and that crackling away.

  I’m going to get Tom back, I thought, my face like thunder.

  I didn’t mean get him back as a friend – I meant get him back, like revenge.

  More thunderbolts crackled above my head! More black clouds swirled!

  I could imagine lasers shooting from my fingers! Electricity crackling around my angry shoulders! My whole room shaking and trembling to reflect my rage!

  I was going to teach Tom a lesson.

  I was going to make him feel like everything was going wrong without me.

  He would come crawling back, saying his whole life was rubbish now, and could he please be my friend again, and I would consider it for a moment and then say:

  ‘NO, TOM! YOU MADE YOUR CHOICE AND MUST NOW LIVE A LIFE WITHOUT ME!’

  Or:

  ‘NO, TOM! NOT UNTIL YOU APOLOGIZE LOADS AND LOADS!’

  And then I’d turn away from him dramatically and refuse to turn back until he fell to his knees in tears!

  Look. This wasn’t how I normally behaved at all. But I had been forced into it. I had changed, through no fault of my own. I’d always been a good kid, but now I was turning bad, because I realized I had been powerless, and this was the way I would take back that power.

  And more than anything, this was going to be FUN.

  And make me feel LOADS BETTER.

  Absolutely.

  No two ways about it!

  * * *

  I was quite surprised by how quick and easy it was to slip into the role of master villain.

  I’ve never really liked the bad guys in films. I’ve always thought if they just took a moment, had a glass of milk and maybe a nice hot bath – really took a little bit of time for themselves and perhaps read a favourite magazine or some nice poetry – they would soon calm down and see they were behaving very childishly.

  But maybe – MAYBE – the potential to be bad has always been inside me.

  I mean, whenever Mum gave me some hand sanitizer after school, I would walk around, rubbing my hands together and smiling, pretending I was an evil mastermind concocting a nefarious plan. So it’s possible I have always had a dark side.

  It surprised me, thinking that. I’m generally too polite to have much of a dark side. I’m not obsessed with taking over the world or crushing people’s spirits. I like normal things like sausages and stickers. I nod at dogs to say hello.

  One of Daisy’s friends supposedly has a dark side. She is what they call a ‘goth’, and she paints her nails black and has really black hair and she’s meant to be sad all the time. But she came round once and watched Paddington 2 with Daisy and you’ve never heard anyone laugh so much. She was an absolute joy to be around. She even brought over home-made brownies. This is all to say that I have a hard time getting my head around what a dark side is supposed to be.

  But I was going to go for it. I was going to really try.

  What will I do first, I wondered?

  How will I begin?

  It had to be fiendishly clever!

  But it turns out coming up with fiendishly clever ideas is fiendishly hard.

  I ran to the bathroom and got some hand sanitizer. I rubbed my hands together and paced around my room, making Evil Genius noises, hoping something evil might come to me. I wished I had a tiny twirly evil moustache I could twiddle. That’s when Mum knocked on my door.

  ‘Don’t forget you have that maths test tomorrow,’ she said quickly, and walked off. It was very efficient mumming.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9