The Tooth Fairy by Graham Joyce

military right-wheel, airily waving them away in the opposite direction. Across the playground they could see a small knot of Scouts gathered under the gymnasium wall. As they made to present themselves, their pace reduced the closer they got to the gym wall.What slowed them was the aggressive, contemptuous collective gaze of the six regular Scouts huddled there, older boys, all smoking cigarettes. The three pulled up at a distance of a few yards. Nothing was said. Clive scratched his sock-top. Terry pretended to tie up his shoelace. Sam folded his arms, and then quickly unfolded them.
    ‘What do you fucking want?’ said the biggest of the gang, a boy with cropped hair and eyes narrowed to a porcine squint. His huge, meaty legs strained the seams of his short khaki trousers. The grey-pink skin of his thighs looked chafed and raw. Sam shifted his weight from one leg to the other.
    ‘Yeah, what do you fucking want?’ said a tall, thin boy with shockingly bad teeth, stubbing out a cigarette on the heel of his shoe.
    ‘Fuck off,’ said the first Scout.
    ‘Yeah, fuck off,’ said his lieutenant.
    Terry, Sam and Clive did exactly as instructed. Turning uneasily, they made agonizingly slow progress back across the playground. Still feeling six pairs of eyes burning into their backs, it was a long, long walk.
    They hovered nervously at the school gates for five minutes or so and were about to leave when a grown man, in full Scouting uniform, sped through the gates on a bicycle. Applying his brakes, he skidded to a halt. ‘New boys? You the three new boys?’
    The question carved them an island. They swam to it, gathering round the bicycle. The man lifted a hairy leg over the cross-bar, wheeling the bicycle back across the playground. The boys followed, covering old ground to find that the smoking scouts had vanished. The man had a toothbrush moustache and a florid complexion, plus a way of smiling which involved baring his clenched teeth. He introduced himself as Skip. He chatted amiably, learning their names immediately.
    Wheeling his bike through a back entrance to the school,Skip led them down a corridor and opened a door to a classroom where almost thirty Scouts were busy unpacking boxes and unloading equipment. He pushed his bike into the classroom, leaning it against the chalk-dusted blackboard rail. Then he turned to press an industrial-sized forefinger flat against the centre of Clive’s forehead. ‘Falcon,’ he whispered, with mystical intensity. Slowly withdrawing his finger to leave a white mark on the flushed skin of Clive’s brow, he let the finger float towards Sam’s forehead. ‘Eagle.’ Terry was the last to be anointed. ‘Merlin.’
    Skip bared his teeth before propelling first Sam, then Terry and finally Clive into different corners of the room, where small clusters of Scouts were still busy with a ritual of unpacking a battered suitcase, checking off the equipment therein and restoring it to its original position. Sam’s group turned from their task and looked at him with a mixture of pity and contempt. Sam found himself face to face with the brawny, cropped, fat-faced boy they’d encountered under the gym wall.
    ‘What do you want?’
    ‘Eagle,’ spluttered Sam. ‘Eagle.’
    The boy’s lip curled, miraculously ammonite-like. ‘Fuck.’
    Skip sauntered over. ‘Show him the ropes now, Tooley. Be a good mother.’
    The boy’s sneer disappeared. With an alacrity quite alarming, he jumped up and offered his Scoutleader, and then Sam, a winning smile. ‘I’m Tooley. Eagle PL. Best patrol in the troop. Welcome aboard.’
    ‘That’s the stuff,’ Skip said, baring his teeth before wheeling away to facilitate similar introductions elsewhere.
    After he’d gone, Sam was pushed into a chair and given a short piece of rope to hold. Then he was ignored for three quarters of an hour. When the equipment was packed back into its box, someone snatched the rope out of his hands andstowed it. Skip came