Ash had always been in mixed schools, but West Road was all boys. The lack of girls gave the place an air of menace. It was noisier and everybody in the corridor pushed harder than at his old school. It felt like something could go off any second.

A Year Seven got a hard shove from a Year Ten and knocked into Ash. The kid went down and yelped as the Year Ten stamped his hand. The kids were all heading somewhere. Ash had a map that made no sense whichever way he turned it.

"Nice bag, girlie," somebody said. Ash thought it was aimed at him. The bag was a wreck. He decided to steal one from some weed the first chance he got. The bodies were all disappearing into classrooms and within a couple of minutes Ash only had a few late arrivals for company.

A couple of nasty looking Year Ten kids blocked Ash's way. One of them had spiked hair and a Metallica T-shirt under his hoodie. Both were wearing menacing-looking steeltoe-capped boots with fat laces dragging behind.

"Where you going, squirt?" Ash looked up at them, thinking he was going to die before he even made it to his first class.

"Registration," he said. The Metallica kid snatched the map out of Ash's hand.

"Well, you're not going to make it," Metallica said. Ash braced himself for a boot or fist.

"Try using the side of the map that says main building, not annexe. It's over there." Metallica turned the map over and handed it back to Ash. He pointed at a yellow door up a corridor on the left.

"Thanks," Ash said.

He hurried off. Metallica shouted after him: "Lose that bag if I was you." Ash looked back at the bag. He could see it was tatty but why all the fuss?

Ash handed his form teacher a note. All the kids in his new class were staring at him as he looked for a seat. He sat at the end of a row, next to a black kid called Jermaine.

"You one of the little orphans from the council home?" Jermaine asked. The kids sitting around Ash laughed. Ash knew first impressions counted. If he said nothing he'd look soft. His reply had to be sharp, but not so nasty it started a fight.

"How'd you know?" Ash said. "I suppose your mum saw me when she cleaned our toilets." The group of kids laughed. Jermaine looked angry for a second, then he laughed too.

"Like your bag, sister," he said. Ash had had enough with the bag. He took it off and looked. Then he looked at Jermaine's bag and the others around him. It wasn't the same colour. Nor was anyone else's.

"What is this bag?" Ash asked.

"The good news, orphan," Jermaine said, 'is that you have a West Road bag. But it's for the girls school, not the boys." Ash laughed with the others. These kids seemed OK. He was angry Brock had tricked him, though.

Ash left at lunchtime to see the counsellor. His office was on the second floor of Coumarine. It had spider plants branching off everywhere. The counsellor, Ramos, was a rake, barely taller than Ash. He had veins poking out of his hands that Ash didn't want to look at and he sounded really old fashioned, like a western saloon manager.

"Would you feel more comfortable in the chair or on the couch?" Ash had seen all the psychiatrist scenes on TV and felt he had to lie on the couch to get the full effect.

"Cool," he said, settling himself down. "I could sleep all night on this." Ramos walked slowly around the room, lowering the blinds so it was almost dark. He sat down.

"I want you to be relaxed around me, Ash. Everything you say stays between us. When you talk, don't try and say the correct thing; say what you really think, and remember I'm here to help you young whippersnapper."

"OK," Ash said.

"You said you could fall asleep on the couch. Have you been sleeping properly at night?"

"Not really. I have too much to think about."

"What do you think about most?"

"I wonder if my little sister is OK."

"It says in the file you're concerned about Giovanni's ability to look after Leaf."

"He's a retard," Ash said. "He couldn't look after a hamster. I don't even understand why he wanted her."

"Perhaps he loves Leaf, but found it difficult to express that while your mother was alive."

Ash laughed. "That's total rubbish. You'd have to meet him to understand."

"If you see Leaf regularly that should help both of you feel better."

"Yeah, but it won't happen."

"I'll talk to Giovanni and see if we can set up a schedule of meetings. Perhaps you and Leaf can spend every Saturday together."

"You can try, but Giovanni hates my guts. I don't think he'll let me see her."

"What about your mother? How do you feel about her?"

Ash shrugged. "She's gone. What can I do? I wish I'd been better when she was alive."

"In what way?"

"I was always in trouble. Getting in fights and stuff."

"What made you get in trouble?" Ash had to think hard.

"I don't know. I always do stupid stuff without meaning it. I'm a bad person, I guess."

"The first question I asked you was what you thought about most. You said you were worried about your sister. Wouldn't a bad person always think about himself first?"

"I love Leaf... Can I tell you something I did?"

"Of course, Ash."

"Last year at school. I got in this row with a teacher, so I stormed out to the toilets. This kid in the year below me was in there. I just laid into him. He didn't say one word. I just started beating him."

"Did you know that what you were doing was bad at the time you were doing it?"

"Of course I knew beating someone up was bad."

"So why did you do it?"

"Because..." Ash couldn't bring himself to be honest.

"When you were hitting that boy, how did you feel?"

Ash blurted it out, "It was the best feeling. He was crying his eyes out and I felt fantastic." Ash looked at Ramos to see if he was shocked, but his face was calm.

"Why do you think you enjoyed it?"

"I told you already. I'm sick in the head. Someone rubs me the wrong way and I go psycho."

"Try and describe how you felt about the person you were hurting."

"I owned him. There was nothing he could do, no matter how much I hurt him."

"You went from a situation with your teacher, where you were powerless and had to do what you were told, into the toilet where you saw someone weaker than yourself and exercised your power over him. That must have been satisfying."

"You could put it like that," Ash said.

"It's a frustrating situation at your age, Ash. You know what you want but you have to do what you're told. You go to school when you're told, go to bed when you're told, live where you're told. Everything is controlled by other people. It's common for boys your age to enjoy sudden outbursts where they have control over someone else."

"But I'll end up in loads of trouble if I keep getting in fights," Ash said.

"I'll teach you some techniques to manage your anger over the coming weeks. Until then try and remember that you're only eleven years old and nobody expects you to be perfect. Don't think of yourself as being a bad person or that you're sick in the head. In fact, I want to do something we call Positive Reinforcement. I want you to repeat what I just told you."

"Repeat what?" Ash asked.

"Say I'm not a bad person."

"I'm not a bad person," Ash said.

'"Say I'm not sick in the head."

"I'm not sick in the head." Ash smiled. "I feel like an idiot."

"I don't care if you feel like an idiot, Ash. Take a deep breath, say the words and think about what they mean." Ash had thought that seeing the counsellor would be a waste of time, but he did feel better.

"I'm a good person and I'm not sick in the head," he said.

"Excellent, Ash. I think that would be a positive note on which to end the session. I'll see you again on Monday." Ash slid off the couch.

"Before we finish, there is one detail on the notes from your school that made me curious. What's six hundred and ninety-four multiplied by seventeen?"

Ash thought for about it for three seconds. "Eleven thousand, seven hundred and ninety-eight."

"Very impressive," Ramos said. "Where did you learn to do that?"

"I just can," Ash shrugged. "Right from when they first started teaching me numbers. I hate it when people ask me to do it, it makes me feel like a freak."

"It's a gift," Ramos said. "You should be proud of it."

Ash went down to his room. He started doing some German homework but his heart wasn't in it. He switched on the Playstation. Brock came in from school.

"How was your first day?" Brock asked.

"Pretty good, no thanks to you."

"That was a good gag with the bag," Brock said. Ash jumped up off his seat and grabbed Brock by his shirt. Brock shoved Ash away, sending him crashing into a desk. He was stronger than Ash had expected.

"Jesus, Ash. I thought you were cool."

"Pretty nice thing to do. First day at a new school and you make me look like a tit." Brock threw his schoolbag down.

"I'm sorry, Ash. If I knew you were gonna have a tantrum I wouldn't have done it." Ash wanted to start a major row, but Brock was the only kid in Coumarine he could even put a name to. He didn't want to fall out with him.

"Just stay out of my face," Ash said. Ash sat on his bed sulking while Brock did his homework. After a bit he got fed up and went for a walk. He saw the kid in the Metallica T-shirt he'd met at school. He was in a corner with a gang who all looked pretty rough. Ash walked over to them.

"Thanks for helping earlier," Ash said.

Metallica looked him over. "No worries, man. Name's Rob. This is the gang. Vince, Big Wayne and Little Wayne."

"I'm Ash." There was an awkward silence.

"You want something else, squirt?" Big Wayne asked.

"No," Ash said.

"Piss off then." Ash felt his face turn red. He started to walk away but Rob called him back.

"Hey, Ash, we're going out tonight. Wanna come?"

"Cool," Ash said.

After dinner Ash went back to his room to change out of the clothes he wore for school into more causal ones. Brock had finished his homework and was lying on his bed reading a gaming magazine.

"You want to play Playstation?" Brock asked. "I'm sorry about earlier, Ash. It was mean to trick you on your first day."

"You play it," Ash said. "I'm going out."

"Who with?"

"Some guy called Rob."

"You mean Robert Vaughn? The guy who wears a heavy metal shirt under his hoodie?"

"Yeah, him and some mates."

"Seriously," Brock said, "don't hang out with those guys. They're mental. They go out stealing cars and shoplifting and stuff."

"I'm not sitting in here watching you doing your homework every night. Get a life, man."

Ash put his trainers on and walked to the door. Brock looked offended. "Hey, I warned you, Ash. Don't whinge to me when you land up in deep shit."

"Use the Playstation whenever you want," Ash said.

Ash sat on a brick wall at the back of an industrial estate. The gang were all older. Rob and Big Wayne were fifteen. Vince was fourteen. He was the meanest looking, with bleached hair and a busted-up nose. Little Wayne was twelve, Vince's younger brother.

They passed cigarettes around. Ash told them he didn't smoke. This didn't look cool but he thought it was better than pretending he smoked and coughing his guts up.

"I'm bored," Little Wayne said. "Let's do something." They walked to a car park full of Fiesta vans and climbed through a gap in the fence. Vince and Rob walked along the row of vans trying the back doors to see if any were unlocked.

"Bingo," Rob said. A door swung open in his hand. Rob leaned in and took out a bag of tools. He put the bag down and unzipped it.

"Feel like causing damage, Ash?" Rob asked. Ash reached in the bag and pulled out a hammer. The others all grabbed something.

Ash was nervous, but it was cool walking down the street in a gang carrying hammers and wrenches. A woman nearly got herself run over crossing the street to avoid them. Ash didn't know what they were looking for. Vince stopped when they found a flash Mercedes. The two Wayne's walked into the road.

"Go," Rob shouted. Rob smashed his hammer through the back window of the Merc. The alarm started screeching. The others all joined in. Ash hesitated, then took out a side window, knocked off the wing mirror and made two big dents in the door with his hammer. In twenty seconds every panel was dented, the lights and windows all smashed. Vince led off, running up the road and taking a couple more car windows out along the way.

They ran on to a council estate, down a narrow alley and into a concrete square surrounded by flats. Ash was out of breath but fear kept him moving. A few more turns, over a fence and they were in a playing field. Ash's trainers slid in the mud. They all stopped, plumes of breath rising into the freezing air. Ash started laughing, even though he had a stitch burning down his side. Rob put his hand on Ash'z shoulder.

"You're OK, Ash," Rob said.

"That was so cool." Ash laughed. The mix of fear, tiredness and excitement made his head spin. He couldn't believe what they'd just done.