That Wee Ginger Girl

Amelia Jessica Pond is at that delicate stage in her life when, at the tender age of six and two thirds, she knows exactly what she wants.

Leadworth certainly isn't it. Leadworth, with its duck pond that doesn't have any ducks, its lack of any amenities other than a post office, a hospital and a school, and, most importantly, with its complete and utter lack of Scottishness.

Because really, Amelia's Scottish. She's got the fiery red hair and the fierce accent to prove it. She should be at home in Inverness in her parents' old-fashioned cottage with her parents. Not in ruddy Leadworth with ruddy Aunt Sharon, perched on her suitcase in front of their new house while she watches the removal men carry their boxes inside.

But then, she didn't exactly have much say in the matter. Six-year-olds never do.

“Amelia, are you going to sit there and sulk all day or are you actually going to help?” Aunt Sharon hollers from somewhere inside the house.

“Sulk!” Amelia yells back. To illustrate her defiance, she rests her chin on her curled-up fist and screws up her face just enough that she’s got the I-hate-life-and-I’m-fed-up-with-you-all look down pat.

But after half an hour of sitting there, rocking backwards and forwards on her suitcase, she realises something important: she’s bored. Amelia Jessica Pond does not like being bored. She does not like it one bit. So that's why, glancing around to check Aunt Sharon’s nowhere to be seen, she picks herself up, dusts herself down and strolls off, heading down the path to explore the village.

It's just as boring as it looked when they were driving through it only a few hours ago. There's not even any other children of her age that she can see. She's been enrolled in the local school so there must be kids somewhere, but if they do exist, they're doing a very good job of keeping hidden.

Amelia's head swivels this way and that as she takes in the scenic location and she decides, right then and there, that she is going to hate it in Leadworth. At least in Inverness she had friends to take away the boredom and make up things to do together. Here, she doesn't know anyone except Aunt Sharon and that completely, totally sucks.

“Who are you?”

Amelia whirls around, shocked, and promptly comes face-to-face with a boy. He's not a very remarkable boy; he's about her age, maybe a few years older, with short, dusty brown hair and a mousy face. He's also wearing a nurse's outfit, which she thinks is a little bit odd. Especially as it's a female outfit and looks a million sizes too big for him.

“I'm Amelia Pond,” she says, with the kind of self-confidence most six-year-olds seem to exude effortlessly. “What's your name?”

“Rory,” he replies, holding out a solemn hand. “Rory Williams.”

“Nice to meet you, Rory Williams,” she says, shaking his hand firmly like she's seen adults do. “I've just moved here and it is soboring.”

“Yeah, it is.” Rory smiles, a goofy, lopsided smile that reveals a set of crooked white teeth. “Are you from Scotland?”

“Yep,” she replies proudly, smoothing down a ginger lock of hair that's escaped from under her brightly coloured knitted hat. “I'm from Inverness.”

His forehead furrows into a little frown. “Where's that?”

“It's... in the north somewhere,” she says vaguely, not entirely sure herself. She's not all that good at Geography.

He nods like he has any idea what she's talking about. “Hey, do you want to play with us?”

Amelia looks suspicious. “Who’s ‘us’?”

“Me and Jeff. Jeff’s a friend,” he explains. “We're playing Doctors. I'm a nurse. He's a doctor. You could be the patient, if you want.”

“I s’pose,” she shrugs, feigning reluctance. “It's not like I've got anything better to do.”

But, as Rory leads her over to where him and Jeff are playing, a tiny smile appears on her lips. Maybe Leadworth won't be so bad after all.

She changes her mind again when they stop in front of a boy, presumably Jeff. He's big and burly and doesn't have much hair and he looks like the kind of boy who likes to throw sand in people's eyes. Amelia knows all about those kinds of boys, and she doesn't like them one bit.

“Rory, you've been ages! You were supposed to be finding me a scalpel so I could operate on our patient,” complains the boy Amelia assumes is Jeff. He catches sight of her and frowns. “Why'd you bring a girlback? I can't use her to cut open Freddie!”

Freddie is, apparently, a bright orange stuffed bear that Jeff is brandishing at Amelia like it’s some kind of terrifying creature that might scare her away. She merely gives him an unimpressed look.

“This is Amelia,” Rory says shyly, gesturing towards her. “She just moved here and I thought she could play with us.”

“But she's a girl!” Jeff exclaims, aghast, as if a girl is some sort of hideous disease-carrying monster that can infect them with her, well, girlishness. “We can't play with a girl!”

“Why not?” Amelia challenges, glaring at him. “Girls are just as good as boys, if not better!”

“Are not!” Jeff protests.

“Are too!” Amelia yells back.

“Are not!”

“Are too!”

“Are not!”

And that's when Amelia hauls back her fist and punches him in the face. It takes him completely by surprise and he howls, more out of shock than the pain, and stumbles back, clutching his nose like somehow he could hold it together that way. Blood spurts from it in a great crimson gush all over his face and fingers, and Rory visibly pales. It doesn't take Jeff long to recover, though, and then he's lunging at Amelia trying to punch her back.

They end up rolling on the floor, scratching and clawing at each other, Rory hysterically trying to pull them apart. Eventually, he gives up and decides to find someone older and wiser and generally better at dealing with these sorts of things than him. When he returns with Jeff's grandma, Amelia's sitting on top of his chest, holding a limp, lifeless-looking Freddie, the stuffing hanging out of his stomach, and Jeff's repeating the words, ‘girls are better than boys, girls are better than boys’ whilst trying desperately hard not to cry.

So really, it's no surprise that the three of them end up being best friends. Well. For the most part, that is.

***

Rory gets better at dealing with Amy and Jeff's tumultuous relationship. Some days, they hate each other and they can spend whole hours insulting each other in various crude and colourful ways that one wouldn't think children under the age of twelve would be aware of. But that doesn't change the fact that on other days, they can spend hours playing games of make-believe or chasing each other around the tiny village or just talking about whatever takes their fancy.

They say three's a crowd, but Amy and Jeff would have killed each other long ago were it not for Rory's calming influence. He keeps them sane throughout primary school, comprising the third in their three musketeers, and the three of them stick together like glue.

All that changes when they get to secondary school. Out of nowhere, they all start growing except Rory doesn't really stop, and while Jeff gets muscles Rory stays lanky, a heap of bones and skin all patched together but not really fitting together. Other people, boys mainly, start noticing how pretty Amy is, something Rory realised the moment he saw her back when she was six. She makes more friends, gets in with the popular crowd, the people who ostracised them when they were younger because they were weird. Jeff gets more popular too, because he's athletic and good-looking and he's a sight to behold when he gets a football between his feet.

And Rory's left behind, still the slightly nerdy, painfully awkward yet fiercely caring boy he's always been.

They stay friends. Mostly. Things are different. Rory works hard and does well at school; Amy goes out to parties and gets drunk and gets off with guys. Jeff drifts away from the two of them, especially Rory, claiming that he’s just not cool enough to hang out with any more.

But one day, at the start of Year Ten, Jeff strolls up to him in the middle of the corridor and acknowledges him for the first time in years.

“Hey Rory,” he says, smiling amiably. “How've you been?”

“Good, yeah, good,” Rory squeaks, cursing his voice. It's been trying to break for a while now. He wishes it would just get this ordeal over with and stop embarrassing him already.

Jeff smirks, slow and deliberate, and that's when Rory realises, just a little too late, that something's going on. A couple of guys who are just a little bit shorter than him but much bulkier where it counts grab him from behind and haul him away down the corridor outside, where they open one of the massive rubbish bins and tip him into it. He lands on something soft and squishy and very, very smelly, and immediately jumps to his feet, only to hit his head on the lid as it comes down on top of him.

“Hey, let me out!” he yells, bashing on the sides of the bin with his fists. “Jeff! Jeff?”

He collapses in a heap, burying his head in his hands. He doesn't cry until the sound of their mocking laughter starts to fade. His shoulders shake with his quiet, choked sobs, until he manages to get himself back under control. Gulping in breaths, he wipes away his tears and closes his eyes, leaning back against the slimy bin wall whilst trying his hardest not to breathe through his mouth.

Amy finds him a few hours later. The lid opens over his head and there she is, her vibrant hair fanning about her head like a red halo. He's never seen something so beautiful in his entire life. Her face is thunder as she helps Rory out, calling Jeff every foul name under the sun.

“He'll regret doing this to you,” she promises, a scowl colouring her features. Somehow, it doesn't seem to detract from her inherent beauty. “How could he be such a dick? You were his friend. We both were.”

Rory doesn't really know what to say, so he just shrugs. Amy gives him a look, a long, lingering look that says everything and nothing all at once, and then she stretches up - she's tall, but she's not that tall, yet - and pulls him into a hug. He wraps his arms around her, highly conscious that he smells of rotting food and ancient sanitary towels and whatever the hell else was in there with him but not caring because it's Amy and she's hugging him and they haven't been this close in years and oh God, he's missed her so much.

The next day, Amy has it out with Jeff in the middle of the school canteen. She just strolls up to his table, cool as you like, and asks sweetly if she can talk to him in private. Jeff gets to his feet, smirking, his friends wolf-whistling in the background, and Amy, Amy hauls her hand back and punches him in the face like she did when she was six.

Rory wishes he could be like Amy.

She doesn't even wait until they're out of earshot of his friends before whirling around and yelling at him loud enough to burst the eardrums of every single person in the canteen, even Rory and he's sitting at the other end of the room.

“How could you do that to Rory? He's your friend. Or he was supposed to be, anyway. Why'd you do it, eh? Trying to fit in? HE'S YOUR FRIEND!” she roars, and for a moment, Jeff looks positively terrified. “Don’t you remember all the things he did for you? For us? How he used to pretend you were staying at his house when we wanted to go to a party even though he hates lying. How he stood up for me my first day of school here when everyone was making fun of me and calling me names and you just stood there and watched. How he’s always been there for us no matter what, willing to do whatever it takes to make us happy because we’re his friends and he cares about us and that’s just who he is.” She regards Jeff with a cool, contemptuous expression, shaking her head in disgust. “You’re not worth the shit he has to scrape off his locker everyday because of arseholes like you.”

And with that, she storms off, leaving Jeff standing there in the middle of the canteen, his mouth opening and closing like a drowning fish. She strides past all the people staring at the wee ginger girl from Scotland, and plonks herself down in front of none other than him, Rory Williams.

“Mind if I sit here?” she asks, though in all honesty, it's not really a question.

Rory just nods dumbly. She could sit on top of him and he wouldn't really mind. But that's a different matter entirely.

“Thanks for that,” he mumbles, clearing his throat. ‘Thanks’ doesn’t really cover it to be honest, but there’s no way he could adequately express the gratitude welling up inside of him, so it’ll have to do.

She smiles across the table at him, somehow understanding. “No problem.”

Jeff finds Rory the very next day and apologises for what he refers to as his ‘dickish behaviour’. Rory just shrugs, awkward as ever, and says it was nothing, but they both know it's the farthest thing from the truth. After a very uncomfortable silence that seems to span a lifetime, Jeff claps him on the back and tells him he's got a date with Amy before winking at him and strolling away, whistling.

Rory really, really hates Jeff sometimes.

They go out for approximately a month and a half and then they break up, abruptly and for no apparent reason. Rory never asks why. He doesn't think it's his place. But he's happy. When they break up they promise to stay friends, and since Amy has renewed her friendship with Rory, the three of them are together again and though things aren't exactly like they used to be, they're close enough for him. The three musketeers, back for another new set of adventures. The two of them laugh whenever he talks about them like that, but he doesn't care. Rory'd forgotten how nice it is to have people laughing with you rather than at you.

Of course, things change after secondary school, but they were expecting it this time so they're prepared. Rory goes off to medical school to become a nurse, Jeff does a few courses trying to work out what he wants to do with his life and Amy? Amy becomes a kissogram. The job is so perfect for her that he laughs when she tells him she got it, laughs for so long his throat starts to hurt and his sides start to ache and he realises that it really isn't that funny.

He never tells her, but one day, he dresses up as a ghost, complete with the white sheet with holes for his eyes and mouth, just so he could go to a party and be kissed by her and know what it felt like, just once in his life.

But that's a different matter entirely.