Cry of a Seagull by Monica Dickens

Lynette wandered about with the others, looking under boat covers to see if there was anything to pinch, Rose heard a smooth chug, chug and saw the lighted boat sliding easily through the water. When the boat stopped, the girl stepped over the rail on to the dock, and her mother threw the rope, and her father shouted from the wheelhouse, ‘Look alive!’
    Interesting
. Rose was watching exactly the same scene from a different point of view. It was coloured by the attitude of Lynette, who, like the rest of the gang, was watching the yacht and its captain and crew with a sour sort of envy, which expressed itself in automatic scorn.
    â€˜Look at her,’ they said to each other. ‘Who does she think she is? What a crummy boat. Got no sails nor nothing. Who’d be seen dead in that?’ and other derogatory remarks designed to make themselves feel good.
    Vicky was quite pretty, with short curly hair and a round, harmless face, but Lynette and the gang did not think much of her, because she allowed herself to be bossed by her totally awful father. They hung about in the growing dark to see what the people on the boat were going to get up to, not because it was of any interest, but because they had nothing else to do.
    When Vicky crossed the gangplank and began to walk towards them, the father shouted to her in his toffee-nosed foghorn voice, ‘Come on, Vicky. I’d stay away from that lot, if I were you!’
    â€˜Wouldn’t fancy
her
,’ Evil muttered. ‘I got something better.’ He gave Lynette one of his painful squeezes.
    When the father started to carry on about troublemakers and layabouts, and what he would have done with them in the Navy, Evil gave it him right back.
    â€˜The Navy’s only for morons,’ he called out. Evil was not afraid of anybody. He told the old turkey, who was getting red in the face, that he could clear off the gang’s territory.
    Rose, experiencing all this for the second time, knew what was going to be said and done, but it was curious how this different viewpoint altered the scene. Even the words sounded different, the way Lynette heard them. Vicky’s father sounded even more offensive, a dangerous enemy. What Evil shouted back at him was perfectly reasonable.
    When the big man called him a baby, and that fool Anita tittered and the donkey brayed, Lynette felt angry enough to kill. Tears welled up behind the sticky black lashes. She raged at the man like a tiger.
    Rose, as Vicky, had been afraid of this girl’s power. But as Lynette, when the man only looked at her with contempt, she was powerless. It was the contempt of the whole world, telling her she was a nobody.
    The most surprising thing to Rose was the knowledge of Vicky and Lynette’s silent feelings about each other. Vicky had been shaken with envy for Lynette’s wild freedom and dangerous entanglement with the gang leader. But now, as Vicky walked off with her parents towards the restaurant, Lynette was jealous of this sheltered girl who had all the security she lacked: the boat, money, parents who cared enough about her to be strict.
    If I had all that, Lynette thought bitterly, I wouldn’t need to put up with the way Evil treats me.
    Evil was furious. His pride had been hurt and he wanted to get his own back on the stuck-up family.
    â€˜Let’s do a bit of damage here.’
    The others were all for it. They debated various ways in which they could harm the boat, but none of them were practical. The yacht lay quietly by the dock, moored fore and aft, deck lights on, looking as impregnable as a battleship. ‘I know what we’ll do,’ Evil said. ‘We’ll give them the shock of their useless lives. When they get back to the boat, they’re going to find a surprise visitor on board.’
    â€˜One of us?’ Victor asked.
    â€˜Get out of it.’ Evil was looking at the little field, where the donkey still stood in the shadows