The Day the Ear Fell Off (11 page)

Oh help!

Everyone knows mobs are dangerous. Even if in real life they’re ballet teacher or baby-minders, put a load of people together and they’ll start fighting. We could be beaten to a
pulp. And pulp means blood and gore.

I was clear about one thing – if they came any closer we were going to have to abandon the initiation. If we failed, we’d just have to put up with being unworthy of belonging to
Tribe. I could cope with that.

‘What’s brought your little gang here today then, Pinky?’

She was talking to me. I could feel my face getting warm all over again. She was looking
straight
at me. It was definitely a moment for some of Fifty’s mum’s magic.

I gave myself a lecture inside my head.

Pinky . . . That’s just a word. Like ‘bubblewrap’. It can’t hurt me. And neither will they. They’re teasing, like Amy does, because they’re older than
us.

She waited for me to answer.

I waited to see if I had anything else to say to myself . . .

Nope, the lecture seemed to be over. I took a deep breath.

‘Actually, we’re not a gang. We’re Tribe,’ I said.

It came out pretty good. Loudish. Not squeaky. No one laughed at me. I checked behind – Jonno made a carry-on sign with his eyes.

So I carried on. ‘And we’d like to come down the alley without you lot shouting at us.’

Good stuff,
I thought.

‘Ahh! Bless. We’ve scared them,’ she said, looking round at her mates. I was getting ready to say the guns and cakes bit (I was, honest) when Bee barged past me with the
tin.

‘It’s simple. We’ve got weapons in there . . .’ She turned round and pointed at the bag. Copper Pie did an evil grin. ‘Or we’ve got cakes.’ She opened
the tin.

You should have seen their faces. It was like happy dust had been sprinkled all over them. The girls all whooped, and ahh-ed and wowee-ed. I could see why. Bee had made about thirty cakes, all
with different coloured icing and flowers made of pink and white marshmallow petals with Smarties for the middles. They looked amazing.

‘Did
you
make those?’

Bee nodded.

‘For us?’

‘Yes, but only if you agree to stop being bullies.’ She’d used the b-word. That wasn’t going to go down well.

The main girl, Sass, didn’t say anything right away. She turned round to face her mates.

It was like waiting to find out whether you were guilty, and about to be sent to the dungeons, or free to go.

Was she going to make a deal? Cakes for peace.

Or would she choose combat?

Or, worst of all, would they snatch the cakes from us but carry on teasing anyway?

I didn’t move or breathe. I don’t think my heart was beating either. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Copper Pie swinging the bag slightly, as though he didn’t want her
to forget what was in it. Like a threat. Nothing else moved.

Why was she taking so long? ‘So what do you think?’ she said to the rest of them.

I heard some mumbles but they didn’t make words.

Come on.

She slowly swivelled back round.

‘Well . . .’

I took a step back. I couldn’t help it. If they were going to attack I didn’t want to be in the front line.

I think she knew what I was thinking. It happens to me a lot. Maybe my thoughts are very loud.

I don’t see why someone being scared of you is funny, but she obviously thought it was. Her mouth curved up at the corners and she laughed.

‘I say we go for cakes. What do you think, girls?’

‘Definitely.’

‘For sure.’

‘NO WAY!’

Oh no! Who said that?

‘Only joking. I’m for cakes.’

They all agreed.
Fantastic! No war.

We watched Bee offer round the cakes. Everyone took one. And then it was our turn. And it was totally weird. I don’t think any of us felt even a tiny bit scared of the Alley Cats. You
can’t hang around eating a cake with yellow icing and a pink flower with a blue Smartie middle and be frightened of someone standing by you eating a cake with green icing and a white flower
with a red Smartie middle. You just can’t.

It reminded me of that story about how the Germans and the English had a ceasefire on Christmas Day. One minute they were fighting and the next they were sharing their dinner and singing
carols.

By the time we’d eaten all the cakes (Copper Pie had three), Bee had agreed to meet the Cats the next day with the recipe written out, including how to do the decorating.

Sass had said she was sorry. ‘No more teasing, we promise. Everyone is welcome in the alley.’

Copper Pie had shown his collection of toy guns and even let some of the girls have a go.

And Jonno had explained about Tribe and the initiation. They were all really interested, even though they’re at secondary school.

‘Being a Tribe sounds really wicked,’ said Sass. ‘Can I join?’

‘No, sorry,’ said Jonno.

‘Only joking,’ she said and gave him a sort of squeeze.

Jonno suddenly found something interesting to look at on the floor.

‘So where did you get the kooky idea to do cakes or war?’

We all did different versions of a shrug.

So Fifty spoke. ‘Well . . . Bee likes cooking and Copper Pie likes guns.’

‘I thought you were going to say something really clever,’ said Sass.

‘Like what?’ asked Bee.

‘Well, they say everything people do is because of love or fear. That’s like cakes or war, isn’t it? Love cakes. Fear war.’

I thought about that. It made sense. Tribe had made a good choice, even if it was accidental.

‘Time we were off,’ said Sass. ‘See you then, Tribers. And thanks for the cakes. Awesome.’

As Sass walked off with some of the others, Bee said, ‘I’m going to grow my hair that long.’

Girls!

Copper Pie put out his hand. I slapped mine on top. The noise made Sass turn round. She watched as Jonno and Bee and Fifty added theirs. We shouted, ‘One. Two. Three,’ and threw our
hands in the air.

‘Is that a Tribe thing?’ shouted Sass.

‘Yep,’ said Copper Pie.

‘Cool,’ she yelled.

‘Yeah, it is,’ we shouted back.

late home

Bee was full of it on the way home.

‘We freed the alley. All the kids can use it now. Yeah!’ She punched the air.

She said that the reason Tribe succeeds is because we believe in it. We’re still the same kids we were before but, because of Tribe, we’re powerful. It’s made us different.

‘So what shall we do next?’ she said. ‘Now that we’ve proved ourselves.’

‘Go home and have tea,’ said Copper Pie. ‘Initiations make you hungry.’

‘Not possible. You’re full of cake,’ she said. ‘Seriously, guys, what’s our next job?’

‘Bee, we can’t expect to change something every day,’ said Fifty.

‘Why not?’

‘Because we’d be too tired,’ he said and we all laughed.

‘What’s next,’ said Jonno, ‘is explaining to Miss Walsh that we got my birthday wrong.’

‘When is your birthday?’ asked Fifty.

‘October eleventh. We were only six months too early.’

‘Easy mistake to make,’ said Fifty.

At the end of the high street, Fifty and I went straight on and the others went left.

‘Bye,’ we all shouted.

The turn to Fifty’s house is before mine so I walked the last part on my own. I had lots to think about. I knew what Bee meant about being in Tribe. It was like wearing armour or being
given a lion’s heart. My mind wandered, like it does in dreams. I thought about a tribe in South America that Jonno told me about that doesn’t have a word for ‘worry’, so no
one worries. That would suit me. They don’t have words for numbers either, so Copper Pie would like it because there’s no counting. And I thought about how good it is now there are five
of us. And about how Copper Pie is the Triber I’ve known the longest because he saved me from Annabel Ellis at nursery.

‘The agreement was that you would walk straight home. I have been sitting here with Flo trying not to worry. The first day you’re allowed to . . .’

Mum went on and on but nothing went in. I stared at the evil grin on my nasty little sister’s face. She loves trouble, as long as she’s not in it.

Scowl away, Flo, I’m so not bothered.

When Mum finally stopped I said, ‘Sorry’, went up to my room and laid in my hammock.

What a great day! Nothing could take away the feeling, not even Mum’s telling off.

So she didn’t know what had come over me . . .

So I was acting out of character . . .

Exactly,
I wanted to say.

Surely new me was better than old me. I realised I hadn’t held my breath for days. I hadn’t had any bad dreams either. I felt like a snake, who’d shed its skin and started
again as . . .

Keener of Tribe – full of good ideas, not wet blanket.

Keener of Tribe – trailblazer (of the route to school and back).

Keener of Tribe – warrior, not worrier.

Could it get any better?

Bribes, Beetles, Bark and Bobotie

being a Triber

It’s funny how quickly exciting things become normal. When I first got my phone I was always changing ringtone and texting and playing the games but now . . . I’m
still glad I’ve got one, but it’s not like when it was new. It’s the same with walking home. I felt so grown up the first few times but now it’s just part of a regular
school day.

Being a Triber is normal too. We meet once a week (Wednesdays) at my house because:

Fifty’s mum’s too nosy so we can’t go there.

Jonno says his dad doesn’t like other people’s kids.

Bee likes everyone else’s house better than hers, and everyone’s scared of Copper Pie’s mum. (She shouts.)

We’d like somewhere else to meet, like a proper hut, but no one’s got one. We might build one. Fifty’s garden is huge and messy. He’s done a deal with his mum: if we
clear the bottom of it, which is a jungle of nasty pointy bushes and junk and smelly stuff, then we can have a go. Copper Pie wanted to do it right away but it’s not really a
couple-of-nights-after-school type of job. My dad said ‘Maybe we could do it one weekend,’ but he needs to talk to Fifty’s mum first. So . . . headquarters is still my room and
when we’re ‘in the field’ we use our patch under the trees at school.

I keep everything to do with Tribe in my safe. It’s quite full already. There’s the file with loads of fact sheets about us, a bit like Tribe Top Trumps. We’re always adding
new sheets. Some of them are funny, like things we did in Reception, and some of them aren’t.

There’s my notebook where we keep a record of everything we do – not eating and sleeping and going to the park, but important things, like when we mended the statue that Copper Pie
destroyed with his catapult.

There’s a paint tin to keep Tribe funds in. We all get different pocket money so everyone gives what they’ve got spare. We’re saving up to buy things for the hut. And if we
don’t get the hut, we’re going to have a Tribe Christmas party instead. And if we can’t wait that long, we’ll have a summer holiday one. Or we might just buy chocolate.

At the back, rolled up and tied with an orange and brown ribbon (Bee said it looked tribal), is a list of our rules and our manifesto. Bee wrote it. We argued about it for a while because it
made us sound like we were going to change the world, and then we gave in, rolled it up and it’s been there ever since.

The safe needs a five-digit code to open it. It used to be 77777 but I’ve changed it to 87423 – the numbers you’d press if you tried to spell TRIBE on a phone. Clever.

We do the fist of friendship whenever we meet – we make a fist and punch each other’s knuckles. It means respect. And when we leave (or when something good happens) we do the Tribe
handshake. We agreed that you have to know the opening and closing actions to be part of Tribe – it’s a rule. And no one knows both of them except us so no one else can join and
that’s good.

It would be better if Tribe was a total secret, but we told the Alley Cats and a few of them have brothers and sisters in our school so we blew it really.

It’s funny how we’ve gone from being totally average to something special. It’s actually quite annoying for two reasons . . . no, three reasons.

1. Other kids want to join. We spend ages explaining that it’s not join-able. You’re a Triber or you’re not. And they’re not.

2. Callum, who used to ignore us, is now set on making our lives difficult. He seems to think we’re a threat to his position as King of the Playground.

3. As so many people are interested in us, we have to be really careful not to let anyone hear when we’re talking about Tribe business.

Fifty said something yesterday that summed it all up: ‘It’s strange how we used to be in the middle, not liked or disliked, not unpopular but not very popular, and now we’re
either worshipped’ (an exaggeration I thought but I’m writing down exactly what he said), ‘or hated. Like Marmite.’