Hero the greyhound (Simon's Hero)

Hero the Greyhound (Chapter 4)

"Oi, you! Oi, squirt! Oi, SMELLIS! C'm'ere, I wanna talk to you. Oi, where joo fink you're goin'?"

Oh no! Simon had been spotted, despite keeping his head down and taking the long way around, past the music block and the school office. Jecko, the bully, had seen him and was walking towards him, surrounded by his cronies. A bunch of weak 'yes-men' who followed Jecko everywhere and laughed at all his pathetic jokes. Simon tried walking faster but it was too late, they had caught up with him before he could get inside the school's dining hall door.

"What's wrong SMELLIS? Is you avoidin' me by any chance matey? Don't you like me or sumffink? Ha ha ha ha ..."

Jecko's sidekicks all fell about laughing as they formed a circle around him. Whenever he told his mum he was being bullied, she would say "Well, you must run and tell one of the teachers" but he was surrounded and there was no way he could get past any of them, he wasn't very tall and he certainly wasn't very tough.

"...erm, erm...no, I was just going in for lunch so if you don't mind..."

"Well, akchooally, I do mind, as it goes, I mind very much indeed because if I call you and you walk away from me, then I'm goin' to get very upset, isn't that right boys?"

(laughter from the sidekicks)

"Yeah, 'cuz I'm a sensitive little flower and I DON'T LIKE BEIN' IGNORED."

"...erm, erm...I'm sorry I ignored you but I really do have to get into lunch now because I have a piano lesson afterwards and I don't want to be late."

"Oh well then, if you're goin' to be late, don't let me stand in your way 'cuz we wouldn't want it said that we ruined your chance of becomin' a world famous pianoist, would we boys?"

(cackling from the sidekicks)

"...erm, it's not pianoist, it's pianist, I'm a pianist."

"Are you now? Well then boys; let us make way for the world famous pianist, Mr Simon Matthew Ellis Esquire, otherwise known as SMELLIS. Ha ha ha ha ha, c'mon boys, let's get out of 'ere."

"Thank goodness" Simon breathed to himself, Jecko must be in a good mood today. He scuttled past the sidekicks and made his way into the very noisy dining hall. He quickly put his ear plugs in and walked over to the buffet station, hoping they would have mashed potato and/or broccoli and/or tuna fish on today. He was already stressed; having to eat alien food would just be too much.

"Everything alright Simon?" asked his form teacher, smiling as though she hadn't a care in the world.

"Erm, yes, thank you Miss Burbage" he said, as he rummaged through the stack of trays, trying to find a rare dry one "fine thank you, absolutely fine."

He wasn't really fine. Lunchtime was a hideous torment, the endless chatter, the chinking of water glasses and the clatter of dirty cutlery being thrown into the buckets was enough to fry his brain. The ear plugs helped a bit and as he rarely spoke to, or had to listen to anyone talking, he needn't take them out until he had left the hall. It was strange, the sounds he made when he was playing the piano didn't bother him at all but the sharp sounds of the dining hall made him want to scream.

Simon's heartbeat had just about returned to normal after his encounter with Jecko. He had learned, long ago, that complaining about Jecko and his cronies didn't really work. He and Jecko would be summoned to the Head Teacher's room, Jecko would be forced to apologise, they would be made to shake hands, they would return to their respective classrooms and the following day, it would start all over again. It was just best to try and stay out of his way, which mostly meant eating lunch as quickly as possible without giving himself indigestion and then, lurking behind the science labs until the rest of the lunch hour was over. He had even created his own 'secret place', behind the school recycling bins and when the smell was too awful, he just held his nose and hid there until lessons started.

Even the relative safety of the classroom posed problems for Simon. The hum of the bright, flickering fluorescent light tubes was so mesmerising, he sometimes came out of lessons not having remembered a single thing the teacher had said. Once that hypnotic sound was in his head, he just couldn't concentrate on anything else and sometimes, completely missed the homework instructions which, sometimes, depending on the teacher, got him into a lot of trouble. His mum would have to ring school and ask what he was meant to be doing and then, questions would be asked. "Why didn't Simon write it down like everyone else?" "Why wasn't he concentrating in class?" Blah, blah, blah.

Sensory overload was a real problem for Simon. If things were too loud (fireworks, aeroplane toilets, hand dryers), too bright (the lighting in the supermarket, the sun, the TV screen), too scratchy (woollen clothes and labels inside his collar), too lumpy (his mum's custard or gravy) or there was a single sound resonating in his head (the fluorescent light, a bumble bee's buzzing), he simply couldn't cope. He needed things to be the same, all the time, every day, the same foods, the same routes to school or the shops, the same TV programmes (with the brilliance setting turned way down low so it didn't hurt his eyes), the same bedtime routine. Same was good, same was safe and same made him more able to cope with life, most of the time.

The reason Jecko and his gang called him SMELLIS was because his mum had sewn name tapes into all his school clothes which read S M ELLIS. These were supposed to help him not lose all the different bits of his uniform. Unfortunately, Mum hadn't realised that, if you removed the spaces between the S and the M and the E, it read SMELLIS and on his first day at school, when Jecko had pinned him up against the gym wall, slowly unwound his scarf from around his neck and dragged it through a muddy puddle, Simon began to realise what a problem this was going to be.

"Oh ha ha ha ha, look fellas, our new little friend's name is SMELLIS! Oh, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ..."

The sidekicks laughed and pointed at Simon "Ha, ha, ha, ha, SMELLIS, ha, ha, ha..." One of the sidekicks was laughing so much, he almost fell over. Jecko looked mightily pleased with himself. He wasn't a good reader so for him to have noticed that Simon's name tapes spelled this embarrassing word was nothing short of a miracle.

Simon was mortified and at that moment, he would quite cheerfully have put himself up for adoption because he was so angry with his mum. He had wandered into the lounge one evening, just before he started 'Big School', to find her doubled up over a mountain of sports socks, rugby jerseys, ties, stripy shirts and all the other paraphernalia that goes with the start of a new term, sewing like a fiend. She was wearing her half-moon reading glasses so she could actually see to thread the cotton through the tiny eye and she looked very busy indeed. Mum had had to buy all the uniform from the second hand shop because to buy it new from the official school outfitters would have been just too much money. She worked part time so she could be at home when he arrived back from school each day and he knew, in his heart of hearts, that everything she did, she did for him so he couldn't bring himself to point out that the name tapes spelled SMELLIS, he just tried to pretend the problem didn't exist and hoped nobody at school would notice.

But they had noticed and he knew the problem would not just go away. Even if he begged his mum to change his name tapes, the damage had been done and Jecko and his gang would never let it go.

Between the bullying and not being allowed his own dog, Simon wondered whether life could get much worse.