Chapter 4.
It was an awkward dinner, the dirty-blonde, curly-haired youngster moving the food around his plate rather than eating it and the older of the two trying to encourage him to eat to no avail. Justin had got his exam marks just before the kitchen staff had brought dinner up to Josh’s room and he’d gone into a bigger funk than he’d been in earlier. Josh didn’t know what results he’d got, but from the expression on Dr McKay’s face, they hadn’t been good.
Watching Justin eating, Josh recapped what he knew about the boy in his head. What Justin didn’t know was that Josh’s father had gone to school with Justin’s real dad, and that was the reason Justin had been put into this school in particular. All of Justin’s parents hoped that Josh might be able to get through to their delinquent son.
“His parents don’t know what happened, Josh,” his dad had told him. “It was as if one day he just changed. He’d being doing a lot of shows in the area, he’d even got onto a national TV programme for his singing, but then he went away to summer camp when he was 12 and came back like a different kid. Suddenly he quit the choir, refused to attended the dancing lessons and started hanging around with that Ayla boy and his friends. He started getting into more and more trouble, firstly reports back to his parents about not doing homework and assignments, he’d always been an A/B pupil, but all of a sudden he was pulling C/D at a maximum. No one knew what happened, the camp councillors couldn’t shed any light on the matter, neither could the school. It was as if he’d had a brain transplant. How a nice boy can turn so quickly, it defies belief. It seems that now he hasn’t got the singing and dancing, he’s given up on everything else too.”
“What camp was it?” Josh asked.
“Sports and Arts. Combines the sports activities with things like music and choir, to try and get the less sporty kids active and the kids who just love sport interested in the music side of things, like dance, to help their balance and general fitness. Mostly kids who need help in English and those subjects too, it’s like summer school, but without the stigma. Justin was a good all rounder, this was the second year he’d been and he was really looking forward to going again. He was signed up for basketball, choir and modern street dancing. Hip hop, rather than ballet and tap.”
“In school, all he wanted to do was play basketball, so the school used that as a way of getting his grades back up, but it backfired. Once they dropped him from the team, he just went off the rails. That’s when he started bunking off school, getting in trouble with the police for loitering, shop-lifting, graffiti. His parent’s suspect he was involved in stealing cars, but he was never caught doing that. Other members of the Ayla gang have certainly been caught for stealing and assault though, so you can see why his parent’s wanted to get him away before the petty crime turned into major.”
“In the end, he was put on a social disorder notice, meaning that he wasn’t allowed to go into the Mall without a parent, wasn’t allowed out after certain hours, all that kind of thing. That’s why he was up in court for spitting gum out. It was a violation of the order. By all accounts, he should have ended up in a Juvenile Home, but because Lynn and Paul were coming over to the UK, the Judge let him off, this time. It was only likely to be a week long spell anyway.“
“So, who are these Ayla people then?”
“White trash from Justin’s neighbourhood. The youngest of the brothers is Justin’s age. A lad called Trace. There’s three older brothers who are the real firebrands. One is currently doing a spell for assault, where as the others are all involved with drugs, car theft, you name a crime, they do it as far as the police know. The only thing they don’t get involved in are sex-crimes. They just beat up the people convicted of them! They have a gang of about 20-30 people, male and female, numbers go up and down depending who’s in prison, call themselves Ay-ites. Justin seems to have go involved with Trace just after summer camp. Seems like they welcomed him with open arms once he started rebelling.”
“What we need you to do, Josh, is befriend the lad, give him a bit of guidance and see if you can get him back on the straight and narrow again. He’s a good kid under all the bravado. Just give him a chance. Yeah?”
Needless to say, Josh hadn’t been happy when he’d had all this dumped on him. This was his last year at Brassington and he hadn’t wanted it spoilt. He had his own dorm for the first time and was a Sub-Prefect on top of that too. He had a good group of friends, the quartet, who’d he’d been with since Year 7 and after all, who wants to be looking after any snotty-nosed kid, never mind one a criminal snotty-nosed kid. Being the nice kid that Josh was though, he agreed, so now all he had to do was come through for his dad.
“What did Dr. McKay say?” Josh asked. Trying to break the ice.
Justin just grunted.
“Have you thought about which GCSEs to take then? We do twelve here. Maths, English Language and English Lit. The three Sciences, ICT and RE we have to do. So you get to choose 4 other subjects. What do you like? I did Music, French, Art and PE. None of those shop classes for me, I couldn’t risk my hands!” Josh tried his hardest to be enthusiastic, but it was hard.
Still nothing but a grunt from Justin.
“I’m in my second year of A levels now. I’m doing Music, Art, Sociology and English Literature, and I want to go on to study Popular Music in Liverpool. Home of The Beatles and all that! People keep asking me why I don’t go back to America, but it feels like home over here, you know. Plus, it’s much cheaper.” Josh laughed. “What do you like to do? We do loads of sports here, rugby, football, oh. You’ll call that soccer won’t you. I’ve been here so long I’m speaking the lingo! Umm, I’m on the gymnastics team and the trampoline team, there’s swimming, no diving, you can’t do that ‘till you’re in 6th, basketball.” Josh stopped as he noticed Justin look up slightly at basketball.
“You play ball? Wow “ you’ll be the star here then, there’s a couple of kids who love it, but they’re is always short on reserves. You might even have a shot of getting in the starting team.” Again, Josh stopped as Justin muttered something.
“Sorry?” he asked, not understanding Justin’s quiet speech.
“I don’t FUCKING play anymore and will you shut the hell up. Please.” Justin screamed, before standing up and walking out of Josh’s room, slamming the door behind him.
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