At school, everyone was opening doors for each other and trying to get the other person to go through first. It created quite a few traffic jams in the corridors. Even Scorpus was being nice. I saw him carrying Tiffany Johnson’s books for her, while jabbering on about how lovely and glossy her hair was. In Geography, Miss Skelmersdale gave us a test, but also gave out all the answers at the same time because, she said, she didn’t want anyone to feel bad about not getting top marks.

At lunchtime I played football. I’d already made a wish to be brilliant at football yesterday, but today I wished everyone else was just as brilliant as me, otherwise they might get upset, and I couldn’t bear that. It was sort of a peculiar game. Early on, I was running down the wing with the ball at my feet and Iqbal Patel moved in to tackle me. I thought I could maybe flick the ball past and run round him – but then, if I succeeded, he’d feel humiliated. No, it would be better if I let him tackle me, ’cause then he’d feel good about himself. I pushed the ball a bit too far forward so he had the chance to snatch it off my toes – but he slowed down and kind of waved for me to go past him. I stopped and made a sort of be-my-guest gesture, pointing at the ball.

‘No, you go, bro.’

‘No, it’s OK, you can tackle me.’

‘No, man, you keep the ball, you deserve it.’

‘But so do you!’

We kind of smiled at each other. Iqbal said, ‘Why don’t we give it to someone else?’

‘Yeah, you’re right, it’s good to share. Shall we give it to Evan?’

‘Yeah, I like Evan, he’s a good guy.’

‘One of the best.’

I passed it to Evan (who was on Iqbal’s team) and he ran towards the goal with it. As he got to the edge of the penalty area all the defenders melted away to give him a clear shot. And our goalie walked away from the goal and leant on the post with his arms folded.

He nodded pleasantly at Evan. ‘There you go, it’s all yours.’

All the defenders clapped this generous gesture.

‘Go on, Evan!’ I shouted. ‘Stick it away!’

‘No, I can’t,’ said Evan. ‘Then it would be one-nil and you guys would be really upset.’

‘No, honestly, we don’t mind!’ I said.

‘Don’t score, Evan,’ Iqbal advised him, ‘it wouldn’t be fair on them.’

‘You’re right.’ Evan carefully kicked the ball wide of the goal. Now it was the turn of his own team to applaud.

The game ended in a nil-nil draw. It wasn’t very exciting. But it was very good-natured.