The northbound platform at St. John’s Wood Station was eerily deserted. Carter stood alone, staring at the concrete floor and absently scuffing his brand new Nike’s on the grimy surface. His body wasn’t moving, but his mind was flipping back and forth like crazy. He kept thinking of the friends he’d left behind in what was already starting to feel like an old movie. Tom, Daniel, Sandy, Oh yes, Sandy. For the first time in his life he’d worked up the courage to ask a girl out on an honest-to-god date, and it looked like it might turn into a long-term thing. Then Dad came home and dropped his bombshell. Tom, Daniel and Sandy were now five thousand miles away and only lived in the movie inside his head.

Alone on the platform, Carter forced his mind back to the present. He’d stayed over at school a couple of hours to work with Mr. Graham, his home room teacher, on make-up assignments. He was way, way behind his classmates because the transfer to ASL was in mid-term. Actually, not even mid-term because the summer break was just two weeks away. All his new classmates were cramming for finals in courses he hadn’t even taken. What a crock this was. Thanks, Dad.

The American School in London was in a quiet suburb, where there weren’t many factories or offices or things like that, so not many people got on the outbound train. Except for students like him. And, thanks to his late departure, he was the only one there. The platform was dead quiet – but just for a minute.

When the train rolled in, he could hear the din while the cars were still moving and before the doors opened. When they did, the noise swept out like a violent storm. Shouting and cussing and off-key singing. Inside the train, he could see women and older people cowering in their seats, while the aisles were filled to capacity with pushing, shoving young men and boys, most not much older than his seventeen years. Sheesh, he thought. I’ve run into rowdy kids before, but nothing like this.

He ran along the platform searching for the least crowded car. His backpack was flumping up and down like crazy, extra-loaded with a gazillion books that needed his attention. Then the doors started to close and he had no choice but to leap through the closest one, hoping those gazillion books didn’t get caught on the outside. The force of his charge brought him up against the back of a guy in a green windbreaker who was just winding up to slug someone in front of him. He missed and fell forward, and the one he was trying to hit took a swipe at the side of his head. Down he went. A dozen voices quit cussing and singing and started to laugh.

Carter wasn’t one of them. As the train lurched forward and then rolled smoothly out of the station, he watched green windbreaker grab on to the silver pole people use to steady themselves. He was having trouble hauling himself up. It was crazy, Carter thought, but through all that, the guy was still clutching a can of beer to his chest with his left hand. He looked pretty smashed. When the fellow who’d knocked him down reached over and tried to help him stand, Carter knew he was in trouble. These were guys who got off on beating the shit out of each other and then ending up hugging and singing. He figured this guy wouldn’t hesitate to beat the shit out of a stranger. No singing involved.

He tried to edge himself through the crowd, hoping to get out of sight, and hopefully out of mind, of green windbreaker. But the raucous, already-plastered-at-five-pm crowd wouldn’t let him through.

“Lookie here. Whatcha got there, ya skinny poofter?”

Someone started to pull open his backpack. He jerked away. “Oooh, lotsa books, huh?”

“He got on at St. John’s Wood. Gotta be one a them Yank swots.”

“Whyn’tcha say something, Yank? Stand their with yer cake-hole open.”

He tried to pull himself together and act as stoic as possible. He’d met enough bullies to know if he showed weakness, they’d be all over him.

“So who are you guys?” he said. “You all just break out of jail or something?”

It seemed like the right thing to say, because everyone around him started laughing again. One next to Carter threw his arm over his shoulder, leaned in and said, in a beer-drenched voice, “You said it, chum, so look out ladies, we’re randy as hell.”

“Look out, skinny poofters, too!”

Green windbreaker was fully upright and lurching toward Carter. Just then, the train started to brake for the next station. All the inebriated louts standing in the aisle stumbled forward and windbreaker grabbed the pole with both hands, losing his beer in the process. When the doors opened he was back down on his knees, groping for the can and swearing like a drunken pirate. Carter slipped by him and out the door.

On the platform he ran toward the back of the train and went into another car, this time with a little more finesse. It was just as crowded, but at least here he hadn’t made such a grand entrance. He worked his way toward the back, nodding his head in time to what he assumed was some sort of soccer football club song. He hoped he looked like just one of the lads.

Then his new-found sense of comfort got stripped away. In fact, he stripped it away himself. In his new surroundings, it wasn’t Carter Chamberlain that was getting picked on. It was a girl. Red-brown-haired, about his age. She was probably pretty, but her face was all screwed up in what he could only describe as half fear, half anger. He could see she could probably hold her own in any one-on-one situation, but this was too much. She was totally surrounded by leering, cursing, drunken louts, who were poking at her breasts and pulling at her hair.

He couldn’t stand and watch this. He knew it was probably stupid to get involved, but he was still on an adrenaline high from his adventure in the other car, so he just plowed in and started to throw punches at her tormentors. Most of them missed, but some didn’t, and he found himself the target of far more angry fists than he was giving out. Luckily, this bunch was every bit as drunk as the guys in the other car, and most of the fists whizzed by him completely. Then, either by accident or on purpose, they started slugging each other, and Carter was in the middle of an old western barroom brawl. He grabbed the girl and pulled her up against the door that goes into the next car and they sank down on the floor, out of range of the fistfight raging above.

She started to pull away, but then she grabbed on and clung to him. They stayed that way until the train reached the next station. Somebody shouted, “Wembley, mates!” and the fighting stopped like magic. Nearly the whole crowd cheered and lurched to the door and out on to the platform, elbowing and shoving. Outside, they started in with the off-key singing as they staggered toward the exit.

There were maybe a dozen people left in the train car. Some were business types gripping their briefcases like they were filled with the Queen’s jewels. Two were women who’d obviously been in town shopping. They were hunched over, hugging their day’s acquisitions. One was an elderly woman who clutched her hands together to her throat. Her face was almost as white as her hair and Carter suspected she’d looked a lot younger a few minutes earlier.

Then there was him. And the girl who was clinging to him like a winter coat. He didn’t know what to do. Normally, he’d have gotten off at Wembley Park Station himself, to change to an express train that went straight through to Rickmansworth, where he lived. But he wasn’t about to do that this time, for two reasons. One, he wasn’t about to get tangled up with that gang of soccer hoodlums that just got out. Secondly, he had a pretty, red-haired girl squeezing her arms around him and dripping big fat tears all over his chest.

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