The Boy at the Back of the Class

by Onjali Q. Raúf

  I like looking like I have a suntan, and I like everyone being different. It would be too boring if everyone was exactly the same as each other.

  “Mum?” I asked, because the Deep Thought was starting to give me a Head Ache. “Does that mean the Queen’s Special Guards were scared of me too?”

  Mum looked at me and asked, “Did they seem scared of you?”

  “No,” I said, after thinking hard. “They were nice.”

  “Well, then,” she replied, stroking my hair. “The thing you have to remember is that for every silly person who’s afraid of you, there are at least twenty people who aren’t silly at all.”

  “Okay,” I said, feeling better. It was good to know there were more nice people in the world than there were silly people in it.

  Just then, a face I knew popped up onto the television screen.

  “Mum! Look! It’s the Taxi Man!” I shouted excitedly. “He took us from the station to the Queen’s Palace—and he wouldn’t take our money!”

  Mum put the sound up and we both listened as a big red sign with STAN O’CONNELL, TAXI DRIVER popped up underneath the picture of his smiling face.

  “They were just kids,” he was saying cheerfully. “Innocent kids, you know?”

  A man next to him, who must have been the reporter because he was holding a microphone, said, “And you didn’t get the impression they were planning any sort of protest or attack?”

  Mum made an angry sound in her throat and I saw her shake her head.

  But Stan the Taxi Man smiled again and said, “I didn’t get that impression because that wasn’t what happened. You can ask me another five times, though—if you like!”

  That made Mum burst out laughing, and she said she was glad I had met a cabbie who was as good and as funny as my uncle Lenny was.

  Just then the phone started to ring. It was Uncle Lenny checking to make sure I was okay. And after he rang, lots of other people rang, too, but they weren’t people we knew—they were reporters from newspapers. In the end, Mum turned the phone off and said it was time to put this adventure to bed—because tomorrow would bring with it a brand-new adventure to go on.

  Mum let me go to bed a whole thirty minutes late that night, because I wanted to watch the news again. Lots of people had taken pictures and videos of me running onto the road. It was strange seeing things that I hadn’t been able to see for myself at the time, even though I had been there and it had all happened to me. I hadn’t realized how exciting it had been. As soon as I had run out onto the road, the police had started shouting and moving the crowd back and surrounded me in a big circle, and all the Special Guards had stopped playing their drums and trumpets and slammed the palace doors shut. It felt as if I were watching a movie starring someone who looked like me but wasn’t me at all.

  I lay in bed that night trying to make sense of everything that had happened. But my brain felt fuzzy and tired, so in the end I gave up and closed my eyes. None of it really mattered, anyway. What mattered was that we had given our note to the Special Guards, and they had given us their word that they would tell the Queen about Ahmet.

  And just as soon as they did, she would send out her Special Guards to find Ahmet’s family. Before the gates closed shut, and it was too late.

  Instead of going to work the next morning, Mum decided to walk to the bus stop with me. She said it was because Tom and I were famous now and that even though we probably wouldn’t be famous for more than a day, we needed to be careful.

  “I just want to make sure you don’t get chased by any reporters,” she said as she helped me put my coat on. “Some of them are good people doing their job, but some of them have absolutely no scruples!”

  I followed Mum out of the apartment, wondering what “scruples” were, because Mum had looked angry when she had said the word, so I knew it was bad not to have any of them. I also wondered why reporters might chase us. Tintin, who has to be one of the best reporters in the world, only ever chased people who were kidnappers or thieves or had done something wrong.

  When we reached the bus stop, we found Tom’s mum and dad there too. Mum went to talk to them and Tom and I huddled together.

  Tom said his parents had told him that if he ever ran away from school again, he would be so grounded that he would never see daylight again.

  “But I told Mum it comes in through the curtains anyway—even when they’re shut. And then when we watched the news, she screamed and hugged me and said how brave I was,” said Tom, scratching his head. “I don’t get it.”

  I told him I didn’t get it either and about everything that had happened to me after I had gotten home too—all the neighbors coming over, and about horrible Mr. Greggs and how Mum had been angry one moment and then happy the next moment, and how she had laughed at what Stan the Taxi Man had said.

  “Oh yeah—Dad gave him a cheer too.” Tom grinned. “I’ve never seen him cheer for anything before. Except when we dropped off my nana at the airport after she’d been staying with us for a month.”

  We heard footsteps, and Josie and Michael came running up to meet us.

  “We saw you on the news!”

  “Did you give them the note? What did they say?”

  As soon as Josie and Michael finished asking their questions, Tom and I took turns answering them. As we were talking, lots of people gathered round and asked me and Tom if we were the kids from the news. We were about to say yes, when Tom’s dad called us over.

  “Listen up, kids,” said Tom’s dad, kneeling. “There are going to be a lot of people wanting to ask you all sorts of things about yesterday. And while you can tell Josie and Michael and Mrs. Sanders everything—”

  “And Mrs. Khan?” I added.

  “Yes—and Mrs. Khan—”

  “And Ms. Hemsi?” asked Josie.

  “Okay, yes. Her too.” Tom’s dad nodded, scratching his head in the exact same way Tom does when he’s thinking. “But if anyone else asks you what happened, I want you to say exactly what grown-ups say when they’re famous and they’ve got to keep something a secret. Shall I tell you what that is?”

  We all nodded and looked at each other excitedly.

  “Famous grown-ups always say ‘No comment’ when they want to keep something a secret,” continued Tom’s father. “And that’s what I want you to do. Let’s practice together right now. Tom, you go first.”

  “No comment!” said Tom, thrusting his nose in the air.

  “No comment!” said Josie, grinning.

  “No comment!” said Michael seriously.

  “No comment!” I said loudly.

  “Good,” said Mum. “Now, if anyone asks why you went to Buckingham Palace, or what the police said to you, or anything about yesterday, you say…?”

  “NO COMMENT!” we shouted, making all the people at the bus stop look over at us.

  My mum and Tom’s mum and dad smiled.

  “And there’s a promise we want you four to make too,” said Mum. “We want you to promise us that you won’t look at any newspapers today.”

  We all looked at each other, frowning a little, but nodded.

  “Promise?” asked Tom’s mum. “Not a single newspaper?”

  “We promise,” we said, although I could see Josie had her fingers crossed behind her back.

  “Excellent,” said Tom’s dad, giving us a thumbs-up.

  “Now, we’ve spoken to Mrs. Sanders this morning,” said Tom’s mum. “And a teacher—probably Mrs. Sanders herself—will be meeting you at the gates to make sure you don’t get hounded by the odd reporter or two. You’ll be taken straight to her office because she needs to have a few words with all of you before lessons start.”

  “Oh no,” cried Michael. “Are we in trouble—are my parents going to find out?”

  “It’ll be fine, son,” said Tom’s
dad, patting Michael on the back. “I promise.”

  “Off you go, then—have a good day,” said Mum as our bus came to a loud, hissing stop in front of us. “And we’ll see you tonight—you’re all to come straight home!” she shouted.

  The four of us nodded and waved and ran up to the top deck of the bus as usual. The other passengers looked at me and Tom with a frown before looking at their newspapers and then looking back at us again. We hurried past and sat together in a little huddle.

  In whispers, Josie and Michael told us about their day yesterday. It had been exciting too. Josie said she’d had to make up a story involving Chinese takeout and endless buckets of puke to get Mrs. Khan to believe I was sick but would be back the next day, and Michael had pretended to lose his voice so that he didn’t have to say anything to Mrs. Khan when she asked him where Tom was. But of course, he had kept forgetting that he was meant to have lost his voice, so Josie had to kick him lots of times to make him remember. And then, when the police rang to tell Mrs. Sanders what had happened, she had come and taken them both out of class and made them tell her everything.

  “Er…did Mrs. Sanders say anything about giving us detention?” asked Tom.

  Josie and Michael shook their heads.

  “But Mrs. Khan seemed upset,” said Josie, looking down. “I feel bad for lying to her.”

  “Me too,” said Michael.

  “Maybe we should make her a card,” said Josie.

  “Yeah. And I’ve still got some of the Queen’s cookies left over—we can give her those for her tea,” said Tom.

  But when we got to school, we forgot all about Mrs. Khan, because the school was surrounded by hundreds of vans with large round satellite dishes on their roofs, and lights and microphones and fluffy gray things on sticks. Staring at us were hundreds of cameras on legs, which looked like one-eyed insects that could zoom their eyes in and out and swivel their heads in any direction they wanted. And all of them had lots of people bobbing up and down behind them.

  As we walked toward the gates, a woman suddenly cried out, “There they are!” and started running toward us. I could see Mr. Irons standing by the railings and looking at us, his eyes narrowed and his nose high in the air. His mustache was twitching.

  “No comment!” shouted Michael as he began running toward the school gates. We all ran, too, but before we could reach them, lots of cameras and arms and legs had surrounded us and were blocking our way.

  “What message were you trying to send our government?”

  “Was this an act of protest on behalf of child refugees around the world?”

  “What was in the note?”

  “Who put you up to this?”

  “Where are you from? Were you born in this country?”

  “Would you like to sell us your story?”

  Everywhere we looked, there were lenses and lights and loud clicking sounds. I clung on to Josie and Michael and Tom as the one-eyed machines all pushed us into a circle. I could hear Josie’s breathing beginning to wheeze—she doesn’t like tight spaces—and my hands were beginning to sweat. Michael and me shouted “NO COMMENT!” but I don’t think anyone could hear us.

  “EVERYBODY STAND BACK RIGHT NOW!” came a cry. And just as suddenly as the scary cameras and reporters and microphones had surrounded us, they all instantly moved away, and we could breathe again.

  “NO SHAME AT ALL!” shouted the same familiar voice, which was getting closer and closer to us. “HOW DARE YOU HARRASS MY KIDS!”

  We saw Mrs. Sanders pushing past the cameras like a red-faced bull and reaching out her hand to us. “STAY OFF SCHOOL PROPERTY! AND IF I SEE ANYONE NEAR THESE KIDS AGAIN, I’LL BE CALLING THE POLICE AND THE QUEEN’S GUARDS!”

  Grabbing my hand, Mrs. Sanders stormed back in through the school gates, pulling us like the trailing tail of a kite behind her. She stopped briefly in front of Mr. Irons, who was now standing by the school doors. “MR. IRONS! YOU WERE SPECIFICALLY INSTRUCTED TO WAIT AND BRING THESE CHILDREN IN SAFELY. WHERE WERE YOU?”

  Mr. Irons gave us all a cold stare, his nose deadly quiet.

  “I’m afraid I didn’t see them,” he said, his eyes narrowing even more and his mustache getting twitchier.

  “YOU DIDN’T SEE THEM? STAY HERE! I WILL SPEAK TO YOU LATER.”

  Throwing open the school doors, Mrs. Sanders led us in and stopped to look down at us properly. She was angrier than I had ever seen her and her whole face was the color of a bright pink peach. “Are you all okay?” she asked. Her voice was back to a normal volume now but it was shaky.

  We all nodded, too stunned to say anything.

  “Anyone hurt?”

  We shook our heads.

  “Good. Now all of you are to go straight upstairs to my office,” she ordered, looking over her glasses at us. “You’ll find Mrs. Khan already there, along with Ahmet and his foster mum and Ms. Hemsi—and two police officers who want to have a quick word. I’ll be up in just a minute. I need to speak with Mr. Irons!” And waving us along, she hurried back outside.

  I think there are two types of being scared in the world. The first type is when you do something wrong—like breaking your mum’s favorite vase by accident and you’re scared of her finding out, but at the same time, because she’s your mum, you know that deep down she won’t ever punish you too horribly because she knows that accidents happen.

  But then there’s another type of scared. It’s when something you never, ever thought would happen suddenly does. And the idea of it is so awful that you want to run away. I’ve only ever felt this type of scared once before. And that was when I saw Mum standing in the hall of the hospital crying, and I knew right away that something bad had happened to my dad.

  I was feeling that second type of scared again now, and it made me want to be sick all over the floor. I had never thought that the Greatest Idea in the World would get us into trouble with the police. And I never ever imagined it would get Ahmet into trouble too. I didn’t want him to feel angry at us. But what if he hated us for not telling him our plan—and for the news people knowing about him, even though we hadn’t meant them to?

  “Come on,” said Josie, putting an arm over my shoulder. And together, we all walked in silence up to Mrs. Sanders’s office. I took a deep breath and, fearing the worst, opened the door.

  But instead of angry stares and shaking heads, we found everyone smiling at us. Mrs. Khan ran up and gave us all a hug, and so did Ms. Hemsi, and Ahmet looked at us with his wide lion eyes and gave us a small wave. His foster mum was holding her hands to her lips as if she was praying and kept saying, “You dear children!” And there were two police officers standing near the door, but they didn’t look angry either and just nodded and smiled at us.

  “Come and sit down,” said Mrs. Khan, leading us to four chairs that had been squeezed in front of Mrs. Sanders’s desk.

  We all sat down. I was still feeling jumpy inside, but at least I wasn’t feeling sick anymore.

  “As soon as Mrs. Sanders gets back, we want to hear all about what happened yesterday,” said Mrs. Khan. “Ms. Hemsi will translate everything for Ahmet. And we want you to take your time, because it’s all very important.”

  “But, miss, what about first period?” whispered Michael, showing her his watch as it started flashing a blue color. Just as he held it up, the morning bell began to ring.

  Mrs. Khan smiled. “Don’t worry. Miss Stevens is teaching the class this morning.”

  We immediately felt sorry for everyone in class. Miss Stevens is learning to be a teacher, but she’s so boring and always spends so much time writing on the board that everyone hopes she won’t ever really become one.

  Mrs. Sanders came in and, squeezing past everyone, sat down in her big chair that had a squashed green velvet pillow on it. “Right!” she said, clapping her hands once. “Begin!”

 
Slowly at first, and then getting faster and faster and faster, we began to talk. We talked about how we became friends with Ahmet and how we wanted to help after finding out about where his mum and dad might be. We talked about hearing that the border gates were going to be shut and about all the plans we had come up with to help. I could see Ms. Hemsi explaining everything to Ahmet as we went, and his eyes getting wider and wider. But it wasn’t until I got out my notebook and showed everyone the Greatest Idea in the World and the Emergency Plan, that he jumped up from his seat and came to stand next to me. Ms. Hemsi had to stand up, too, as we continued to talk about the letter to the Queen and the presents we were meant to give her, and Stan the Taxi Man, and Davinder the Paramedic, and the Extra-Extra-Special Cold Stream Guards who had given us their word.

  Nobody asked us any questions. Not even one. They all just sat and listened and nodded as Ms. Hemsi murmured what we were saying in Ahmet’s ear. It was strange having so many grown-ups sit and listen as if we were them and they were us, but it felt good too.

  When we had said everything there was to say, Mrs. Sanders nodded and put her hands together.

  “Well,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “I hardly know what to say.” She picked up my notebook with the Greatest Idea in the World drawn in it and, looking down at it, said, “But what I can say is that Ahmet is very, very lucky to have friends who are so passionate about helping him find his family.”

  Mrs. Khan nodded, and I saw the two police officers nodding too.

  “Now just to be clear,” said Mrs. Sanders, peering over her glasses at us. “What you did was extremely dangerous. And your plan—or the likes of it—must never, ever be attempted again. Do you understand?”

  We all nodded silently. I could feel my cheeks getting hot and saw Tom’s ears instantly turn bright red.