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more accurately, cubes. His head is a cube. His body is a cube. Even the different bits of his legs are made out of cubes. He looks exactly like one of those pictures of a robot they used to draw in the olden days, before they thought of fluid metal cyborgs and robots with realistic skin and hair and stuff.
    Normally, looking like a really out-of-date robot would be the weirdest thing about a person, but with this kid it was only the second weirdest.
    ‘Corky’s got a problem,’ said Renfrew.
    We were sitting in the dining hall. In front of us were trays piled with misery, the name of which was toad-in-the-hole. Toad-in-the-hole is supposed to be made from sausages (the ‘toad’) and Yorkshire pudding batter (the ‘hole’). But this one seemed to have been made out of real toads and the hole part was the hole at the back of a rhino, through which it slopped out its claggy poo.

    ‘We’ve all got a problem,’ I said, jabbing at a toad with my fork. It hopped out of the way.
    ‘He’s got something called Tourette’s syndrome,’ Renfrew continued.
    ‘I’ve heard,’ said Spam in his low-down voice, ‘of that,’ he added with a squeak.
    ‘I haven’t,’ I said. ‘What is it?’
    ‘It’s when you can’t stop yourself from blurting out bad words and other things you shouldn’t say …’ Renfrew explained.
    ‘Yeah, I can see that that is a problem.’
    ‘No, you don’t get it. He also has a really bad stammer.’
    It didn’t properly sink in until Corky started to speak. Well, speak maybe isn’t the right word.
    His square face went purple. He opened and closed his eyes. His ears began to wiggle. But all that came out of his mouth was:
    ‘ F-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f .’
    Then a pause, followed by:
    ‘ K-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k .’
    I looked at Renfrew.
    ‘Philip Cork,’ he said. ‘It’s his name.’
    ‘Oh,’ I said.
    It was kind of fascinating to watch, in a car-crash kind of way. Which was probably why half the kids in the dining hall were staring at us. The ‘us’ included four other nerds. They weren’t nerds like us, i.e. blatantly obvious, screaming, flagrant nerds. They were more the quiet, semi-invisible kind of nerds that nobody really notices or cares about. A couple of them already had zits, which you’d have thought would have had the decency to wait until puberty came along. It was so unfair – like having rotten teeth even though you never ate any sweets. Some of them had rotten teeth too, crossed over or gappy or green. And they all had seriously terrible haircuts, as if a flock of mutant birds had come down and nested on their heads.
    I felt kind of embarrassed to be on the same table as these guys, but I also felt grateful that I had some people to sit with. I looked around. The FHK was on a table with his cronies. I also saw Tamara Bello sitting with a gang of girls. And she saw me. She looked at me, then looked at the other freaks on my table, then shook her head. If we were flies she’d definitely have pulled our wings off by now. I couldn’t quite decide who I hated most, her or the FHK.
    Actually, I’ve just realized. That’s it – I’ve survived my first week at St Michael’s. The worst is over.
    The worst has to be over. Celebrated with three donuts, although I am determined to keep it down to two or less from now on.
    DONUT COUNT:

Saturday 16 September
    FUNNY, THIS WHOLE keeping a diary thing. I’m not saying I like it, but I actually don’t hate it as much as I thought I would. Kind of gives me a way to get my head in order. It makes me think about things. Some of these things aren’t very nice to think about, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have to do it. Like brushing your teeth, I suppose. I mean, no one really likes brushing their teeth, do they? But you do it because you don’t want to have green teeth.
    And one of the things it made me think about is being fat. Like I said, being a bit porky at junior school was OK. I had Jim and my