I consider going back. Reprimanding him. Telling him off. Reporting it.
But what then?
He’d laugh in my face. With my back turned, I can pretend I didn’t hear it.
By the time I get to my classroom it’s already left my thoughts. I sit at my laptop, open my emails, and find an email from the headmaster requesting a meeting during my only free period of the day.
Looks like I won’t be able to plan any lessons this afternoon.
7
Harper
Lunch time comes and I’m so used to sitting on my own in the canteen that no one even teases me about it anymore. I’m on the edge of a six-seater table, and sometimes people take chairs without asking so they can crowd around a smaller table with their friends.
In my lunch box I find dry bread, supermarket own brand salt and vinegar sticks, and a soft banana. I don’t remember packing it, then I realise — this was Friday’s lunch that I didn’t eat.
Still, I’m hungry, so I start nibbling on the bread.
Someone laughs.
I ignore it.
But I can’t. They are laughing at me. I look up, and it’s a group of girls from the year above, sixteen-years-old and happy, looking and pointing and giggling with each other, and I don’t know why they are being mean to me when I’ve never been mean to them.
“Look at her,” I hear one of them say.
“Look at that skirt,” says another
Their skirts are black and tiny. Mine is grey and long. I feel stupid that my socks are pulled up. I feel stupid that I’m wearing glasses. I feel stupid that my hair is pulled back, that I’m eating a dry slice of bread, that my bag is so big.
“She eats like a squirrel.”
That did it. That was the observation that turned the giggles to hysteria. They practically fall over each other. One of the guys on the table next to them looks over to see what they are laughing at. One of them just points at me and he grins.
I pick up my lunch box and march through the corridors with my head down until I reach the toilets.
It stinks of urine and it doesn’t help my appetite. The lock on two of the doors is broken, so I enter the one with a working lock and shut myself in. There is no toilet lid, so I perch on the seat, and that is where I eat my lunch.
Sitting here makes me feel sick, and the way the bread dissolves in my mouth makes me want to gag.
The floor is slippery. Toilet paper and tampons poke out of the bin. On the wall someone has graffitied a phone number next to the word slut.
I wonder what that girl did to deserve it.
At least I’m alone. At least no one will disturb me here. At least I’m locked away and no one can see me.
Most girls seem to want to be noticed.
I can’t think of anything worse.
8
Will
Walking to the headmaster’s office makes me feel like I’m twelve years old all over again, like I’ve messed around in class or had my shirt untucked or hurt someone playing football. Not that I ever did any of those things, but I always seemed to get the blame.
It’s like that prayer. The one about walking through the valley of the shadow of death. It sounds extreme, but it’s just how this school feels. The walls are a disgusting cream colour, I can hardly walk a few steps without seeing peeling paint, and the carpet is blue and fluffy, with tufts sticking up and pieces of gum engrained in it.
I pass classrooms where students sit in neat rows of desks, dead-eyed and empty faced. If I walked through a prison, I’m not sure it would look much different.
I see students I know on the way. They shuffle past, avoiding my eye contact, or engrossed in their phones. They should be in lessons, and I know I should stop and ask them why they are wandering around school or have their phones out — especially considering we have a phone ban during lesson time. But what’s the point? I don’t remember these student’s names, so if they refuse, I’d have no way to follow it up as I won’t know who they are. And even if I did know their name, I’d find out their identity and pursue their disobedience and their punishment would probably just be a quiet word by their tutor. It’s not worth the fuss.
I enter the small lobby that leads to the headmaster’s office. I go to knock on the door, but a voice stops me.
“Do you have an appointment?”
To the left is a small office where the headmaster’s secretary sits. Her voice is whiny and makes my head throb.
“Yes, he asked to see me,” I say, annoyed that I’m being treated like a student. I am a teacher, an adult, I can knock on the head’s door myself — but no, his secretary who’s on less pay than I am somehow has the power to make me stop and wait.
“What’s your name?”
“Will Coady.”
“Take a seat and I’ll let him know you’re here.”
I consider not doing as she asks. I consider knocking and walking in. I consider telling her to stuff her seat up her arse.
Then I take a seat and wait.
She picks up the phone and I try to tune her voice out, not wanting the migraine it will probably create. After a few seconds, she puts the phone down and says, “Okay, you can go on in.”
With a sigh that prompts a scowl in this woman’s face — not that you can see much expression beneath the makeup — I walk into the head’s office.
“Will,” he says, without looking up. “Please sit down, I will only be a minute.”
I sit opposite his desk. Waiting.
He is typing something, and hasn’t even looked at me yet.
“Just one moment,” he says again, still not looking up.
He takes longer than a moment.
My eyes wander around the office. It’s probably the nicest room in the building. Chairs with cushions, new carpet, decent paint job. Qualifications in frames are hung on the wall, which is odd, as I’ve only ever seen such things in a doctor’s office.
“Right,” the headmaster says, and types a few more things, then finally turns to me. “Will. How are you?”
“Fine.”
His smile is insincere. He is bald, but has evidently tried to deny middle age by going to the gym, such is his physique.
I try to remember his name.
I can’t.
“Thank you for coming to see me,” he says. “I guess I’ll get straight to the point.”
He leaves a gap in conversation like I’m meant to say something. I don’t.
“I have concerns, Will, and I’m going to be completely honest with you, we have come to the point where I am having to speak to you.”
“Oh?”
“Your head of department has flagged up to me that your student’s grades are down. As you know, she already highlighted you as a cause for concern earlier in the year, and has been observing some of your lessons.”
She has. Every now and then she pokes her pointed face in and sits at the back, watching me, judging me, while I wonder who the hell she thinks she is. She’s in her twenties and has only been teaching for a few years. Am I meant to care about her opinion?
“She is still concerned, Will.”
He uses my name like he wants me on his side. Repeating it like he’s using some kind of technique that will make me like him.