School friends

I was never much for friends. In primary school I was a loner, though I didn’t have the word for it then. My younger brother was the one with a talent for making allies. I was known not by name, but by association - “Oi, Toby’s brother.” I accepted the title. What else was there to do? He joined the great playground sagas - British Bulldogs, marbles, conker contests - while I quietly looked forward to rainy days, when you were allowed indoors. In the classroom I could draw undisturbed.

By secondary school I’d fallen in with the other misfits: the overweight ones, the spotty ones, the medieval role-play obsessives. One boy sat next to me in class and, every time I turned to a fresh page in my notebook, he would draw a crude biro penis. I’d rip the page out and glare; he’d tell me I was overreacting. We spent our lunchtimes doing inane things, like walking in time to the beep of his digital watch - bin to bin, dinner lady to dinner lady - while another kid marched past in military style, screaming in a fake American accent: WE DON’T TAKE NO SHIT.

The penis-artist owned an SLR camera and had taken to photographing squirrels at weekends. He begged me to join him. I must have said no two hundred times, but he didn’t relent. Eventually, I said yes, just to shut him up. We set a meeting time and place. This was long before mobiles. I didn’t turn up, of course. My mother thought it was cruel; I thought it was the only way to stop the invitations. We never spoke again.

There was another boy, an outcast for reasons that were never clear. He was neither stupid nor ugly, dressed well enough, even liked sport. One day he wasn’t in his usual seat. Across the room, the bullies were snickering, eyes fixed on something outside. In the hedge below, he was tied up, struggling to free himself. That could have been me. There was no reason for it not to be. I kept my head down.

I tried, afterwards, to befriend him, but he was into the Cincinnati Bengals and Whitesnake. I wasn’t. You can’t base a friendship on pity, guilt, or the mutual fear of being targeted by meatheads