There was a rap at the door.

‘That’ll be Evan,’ I said.

He was standing there on the doorstep in his Mary Seacole Comprehensive School uniform. It was his big brother’s cast-off uniform – the trousers ended way above his ankles, the sleeves of the jacket ended way above his wrists, and it wouldn’t do up at the front. Evan’s a bit overweight. Not actually fat. Just . . . well, he’s in shape, and the shape is round, as my dad would say.

‘What are you staring at?’ Evan said. ‘Do I look really stupid?’

‘No, no, no,’ I said quickly. ‘You look fine. Uber-cool.’

‘No need to be sarcastic.’ He sounded a bit huffy.

I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. Except – a funny thing – now Evan looked so worried, I felt a lot less worried myself. I’d handed on the worry-baton, like in a relay.

Mum came out into the hall. ‘Hello Evan. Good luck, you two!’

Maeve appeared behind her. ‘They’ll need it!’

‘You survived it there, didn’t you?’ said Mum.

‘Yeah, just about!’ said Maeve.

Anyway, we set off up the road, me and Evan. Mum stood at the gate and called out, ‘Make some wise choices!’ She’s always said that, ever since I started primary school. She thinks it’s funny. But it’s just annoying.

Parents don’t always know the difference.

Mary Seacole Comprehensive is a massive new building. Mostly yellow, with steel girders on the outside, and between the yellow walls there are sheets of glass you can see the staircases through.

‘Weird, isn’t it,’ I said to Evan, as we stood outside. Hundreds of kids streamed past, jostling us as they went by. ‘We’ve gone from being the biggest kids to being the smallest kids.’

‘Yeah,’ said Evan. ‘Like in Gulliver’s Travels. When he goes from Lilliput, where everyone’s tiny and he’s the giant, to Brobdingnag, where everyone’s a giant and he’s the tiny one.’

Evan says stuff like that all the time. And he hadn’t just seen the film, either. He’d read the book, you could be sure about that.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I guess.’

‘But it’s going to be OK,’ Evan said. ‘Remember what Mrs Protheroe said – about the school’s strict anti-bullying policy?’

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’

We looked at each other. ‘Well,’ Evan said, ‘we’d better get in there.’

We knew where to go. They’d shown us on the Induction Day. We were in Mrs Protheroe’s class in Room G11 on the ground floor. But there’d only been year sevens there then. It was all nice and quiet. Today it was like entering a giant beehive.

‘You sure this uniform looks OK?’ Evan said.

‘Well, er, yeah,’ I said. ‘Totally.’

‘Your hair’s sticking up.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I like it like that.’