What Not to Do If You Turn Invisible. Ross Welford

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      So, we’re still on backstory and you’re still around, which is good.

      Elliot Boyd, eh? ‘Smelliot’ Boyd as he’s known, because someone once made the joke and it kind of hangs around him like his smell is supposed to.

      The kid that no one likes.

      Is it his height? His weight? His hair? His accent?

      Or, in fact, his smell?

      It could be any of them, and all of them. He’s a big bear of a boy, as tall as a couple of the teachers, with a large stomach, and a chin with a fuzz of blond hair on it that I imagine he thinks disguises the fact that there’s another chin beneath it.

      As for his smell, to be honest, he doesn’t seem to smell that bad, though I go to some lengths not to test the widely held belief that he is a stranger to soap and deodorant by simply avoiding him.

      I think it’s his manner that grates on people. Overconfident, pushy, cocky, loud, and – my favourite, this one – ‘bumptious’. That was Mr Parker’s word, and he’s very good with words.

      You know what, though? I think it’s just because he’s from London. Honestly. People took against him from day one because he started slagging off Newcastle United (he’s an Arsenal fan, or so he claims). Round here, unless you’ve got a very good excuse, you follow Newcastle. Possibly Sunderland or Middlesbrough. But definitely not a London football team – not even, it turns out, if you’re actually from London.

      Boyd came into our class on the first day of Year Eight. No one knew him, so you’d think he would have kept his head down a bit, but no. I think he thought it was funny, what he did on his first day – you know, bold and a bit cheeky, but it didn’t come across like that.

      As well as taking us for Physics, Mr Parker’s our form teacher who does the register and stuff. He clapped his hands and cleared his throat.

      ‘Welcome back, you lucky people, to the north-east’s finest edifice of erudition. I trust you all had a restful break? Splendid.’

      He talks like that a lot, does Mr Parker. He used to be an actor and wears a cravat, which – incredibly – looks quite cool on him.

      ‘We have a new addition to our class! All the way from sunny London … Thank you, Mr Knight, booing is for boors … Please give it up for Mr Elliot Boyd!’

      Now, at this point, the class – who had done this routine a couple of times before with new kids – would usually applaud on Mr Parker’s cue, and the new kid would look all shy and smile a bit and go red and that would be that.

      Elliot Boyd, though, immediately stood up and raised both hands in the air in a triumphal gesture and said loudly, ‘Ar-sen-al! Ar-sen-al!’, which killed the applause dead. To make matters worse, he added, in his best London accent, ‘Wot? You lot ain’t never ’eard of a propah footbaw team?’

      Wow, I thought at the time, way to become instantly unpopular, Elliot Boyd!

      From that moment, at least half the class decided that they hated him.

      Yet it didn’t seem to put him off, or make him any less pushy. Elliot Boyd was like one of those large, shaggy dogs that lollop up to other, smaller dogs in the park and freak them out.

      Worse, he then started to hang around my locker after school, as if – just because we shared part of the route home – we should automatically be friends.

      Fat. Chance.

      I would have carried on ignoring him, except he was about to become part of what happened, and how I ended up turning invisible.

       THINGS I HAVE TRIED FOR ACNE