‘Who are they letting in to this school these days? Look at this pair of doughnuts. This one’ – he poked Evan really hard in the stomach, you could see his finger push right in – ‘is so fat he couldn’t get a uniform to fit him! And this one’ – he poked me in the ribs and it really hurt – ‘has hair like a bogbrush. A ginger bogbrush!’

His mates laughed even more and came closer, crowding around us. I gave Evan a kind of helpless look at the exact moment he turned and did the exact same look to me.

‘What’s your name?’ said the tall boy.

‘Evan Carter,’ muttered Evan.

‘What? Evan Farter?’

Cue gales of laughter from his mates. Evan went red.

‘And you?’ He turned on me. ‘What’s your stupid name?’

‘Why? What’s yours?’

I don’t know why I was acting like I had a death wish. I have this idea that life should be fair, you know? If he could ask me my name, why couldn’t I ask him his? I know life isn’t fair – grown-ups are always coming out with that one – but it should be.

There was a gasp from his mates. ‘You better teach him a lesson, Scorpus.’

Scorpus gave a sneering grin – like a bit of string was pulling his lip up on one side. ‘Yeah, ’cause that’s what school’s for, innit? Learning lessons.’ He pushed me right back against the wall. I could feel the bricks scraping against my vertebrae. And I wished, more strongly than I’d ever wished for anything in my life, that I had super-powers, like in Marvel comics. If I was Spiderman, I could punch him to the ground using all my spider-strength, and then tie him up in a web. Or if I was the Incredible Hulk, I could hurl him right across the playground and he’d go splat against the far wall. Or if I was the Mighty Thor, I’d get out my hammer and—

‘You gotta pay tax,’ Scorpus said. ‘For being cheeky. Give us your money.’

‘Leave him alone!’ said Evan. ‘This school has an anti-bullying policy—’

Hurricane of laughter.

Scorpus held his hand out in front of me. ‘Dinner money.’

‘I haven’t got any, I brought a packed lunch.’

One of his mates – a thickset boy with a dyed-blond streak in his hair and a piercing in his eyebrow, even though that was against the rules – upended my Adidas bag. The calculator, geometry set and pens tumbled out, plus the lunch box.

‘Oh, what we got here?’ Scorpus picked up the calculator and geometry set. ‘He’s got all his little instruments, sweet or what?’ He slipped them into his jacket pocket.

‘Give those back!’