Fragment about a countryside girl

I like abscesses. I had one when I was eleven and I remember the yellow pus that warmed up half of my mouth when the dentist burst the blister. It tasted slightly salty and not too gross. I've eaten worse things. I think that everyone secretly likes the oozes and ingestions of the human body, even though it's polite to pretend to be revolted. The girls squeal when the boys at school exhibit ripped tendons and skin lacerations. Rugby can be cruel.
Then I think that I have more in common with my mum. She's a doctor and she likes wounds. She thinks that even the worst news a patient could get, a tumour raging over their lovely soft organs, is fascinating.

This is the dumping ground. All the Mercs and the school buses (which aren't old coaches or normal buses, but plush minibuses) and Land Rovers pull up. The pupils climb out. We all have to walk down a track, with blackberry bushes overgrown out of posh garden walls, towards the grammar school. I get off the bus and walk alone, because the only other person my age on that bus is Geoffrey and he stares at your face when you talk to him. I mean, he really stares. Nothing that you say goes into his ears and he just watches your lips move. At school all the girls have to wear kilts and I begin to fold the waistband of mine over and over whilst I walk. I can see Rebecca up ahead doing the same. An inch above the knee is fine, but if I fold it any more I develop a fabric roll of fat under my jumper.

The only other person who gets off the bus at the same stop as me is called Taylor. He sits at the back of the bus and chats loudly with the boys staying on until West Quay. He has greasy shoulder length hair which looks grey and his skin looks grey too. I know he has a dog called a Whippet because the boys talk loudly about their weekends on Monday afternoon. I think a Whippet is like a race dog but it makes me think of walnut whips instead. I associate Frankie with Walnut Whips. He never talks to me, even when we get off the bus. His parents are friends with my parents and he forces a smile when our families meet on the village hill where we walk our dog.

When I was younger and we first moved here, my parents were worried about how much time I was spending on my own. I didn't like the kids I met at the posh primary school. It was the first school I'd heard of where you have to pay to go there. I wanted to stay at home in the new wilderness. I stirred spoonfuls of table salt into a cup of tap water to make myself sick. Granny told me when I was very small that this is what people do to make themselves vomit and so salty water has always had a murky power to me. I hate to vomit, but it comes in useful when the situation calls for action. When I did go to school, I drew spiders across the covers of my notebooks because I thought they would make me look like a tough new kid. I preferred to skive at home and spy on our neighbours from the garden, or on shady looking walkers rambling up the hill that our village is on. I wrote down my findings in a notebook, with the hope of affairs, dodgy dealings and the opportunity for blackmail. Now that I'm in secondary school (it's a free one now), I have four friends and I speak to a handful of other people at school. It used to be five but Louise got this disease called ME and now she only comes to school for a couple of hours on Thursdays and Fridays and she looks all pale and can't even walk up the stairs without needing one of the teachers to hold her elbow.