School Rules Are Optional

by Alison Hart

  By the time I arrive home my own head feels like it’s covered in dry mix gravel. Why haven’t I noticed it before?

  As I reach down to pat Milky, Mum and Noah are walking out the side door.

  Mum calls out, ‘Jesse? I’m taking Noah back to the doctor … for his eye.’

  ‘Can I come?’ I ask. ‘I want to come.’

  ‘We’re going now,’ Mum says.

  ‘I’m ready now.’

  ‘I’m not waiting.’

  ‘I’m ready,’ I say again.

  I want to be there when Dr Dabscheck looks at Noah’s eye and says there’s nothing wrong with it.

  Also, I want a clown stamp.

  Dr Dabscheck keeps an inkpad and rubber stamp of the creepiest-looking clown you’ve ever seen. It’s got weird-looking bells all over its puffy suit and a creepy mouth and creepy eyes. Dr Dabscheck’s pretty old so it’s usually blurry as well.

  Then it’s even creepier.

  My head can wait a bit longer.

  We don’t hang around the waiting room long. When Noah’s name is called out, I follow him and Mum into Dr Dabscheck’s office.

  Today Dr Dabscheck and Mum talk about other stuff for ages before he even looks at Noah’s eye. No wonder the waiting room’s full. Finally, he asks Noah to follow his bony finger going left to right in the air for hours while he looks into his eye with a camping torch.

  It’s pretty hard not to laugh.

  He has fingers like E.T.

  He does the same thing (unnecessarily) to the other eye then sends Noah and me back into the waiting room so he can talk to Mum about more boring stuff.

  We don’t even get a clown stamp, so it was a totally wasted trip.

  No one asks to see my head, though, which is a relief because I can’t help scratching it a few times while we’re there. The itching is not funny.

  I need to know if it’s in my head or on it.

  As soon as we climb in the car, I complain about needing to pee. That way I’ll get priority access to the bathroom when we return home. The bathroom has the best mirror in the house.

  The car is barely stationary before I’m in the house and down the hall to the bathroom. I lock the door behind me and lean right up close. I can’t really see anything. Just my panicked expression and a few bits of dandruff. Then I have a good idea and go and grab my torch and re-examine myself using Mum’s mirror. It magnifies everything times a hundred. I sit it on the basin and tilt it towards my head.

  The torch and mirror deliver an instant diagnosis: there are insects crawling all over my head!

  Hundreds of them. Maybe even thousands. Every time I shine the torch on a section of my head, a whole bunch of them crawl out of the light back into the safety of my hair.

  And those white bits aren’t dandruff; they’re eggs! About a zillion of them.

  I feel dizzy at the thought of those things sucking at my head all night and day. I thought I was looking pale lately. And I’ve got no energy. They’re literally sucking the life right out of me. I sit down on the edge of the bath, but it’s really hard to think with those things so close to my brain. I have to get rid of them.

  Normally I’m not allowed to touch anything in the medicine cabinet and, believe me, I’ve never been tempted before. But right now I’m desperate, so I open it up. Right up the back is the nit stuff. I pull it out and look at the label: ‘No More Nits’.

  Wow.

  Original.

  The stuff is so poisonous it has a childproof top. I pry it off and peer inside. It smells like a vet’s surgery. If I put that stuff on my head it’s going to stink and Noah will go on about it for the rest of my life. That’s if I live long enough.

  I put the top back on and shove the bottle back in the cupboard. I’ll have to think of something else.

  There really aren’t any other options, though. I’m going to have to cut my hair.

  Scrambling around in the cupboard under the basin, I find the clippers Dad bought last month. He was planning to save money by cutting his own hair but it didn’t really work out. That’s because he’s already going bald. After he’d finished, his hair was all tufty and looked like he’d cut it with a potato peeler. He ended up having to go to an expensive hairdresser to look normal enough to go to work. So, the clippers are pretty much new.

  They look like an electric razor with teeth on the end. There’s a dial on the side with the numbers zero to ten. There’s also another black plastic bit, but since I can’t figure out what it’s for, I leave it on the edge of the basin.

  I look at the instructions. A number six looks all right. Short but not too short. The idea of cutting my hair is causing me emotional pain but the thought of lice crawling all over my head is freaking me out and the itching is intense. I turn the dial to six and start at the front.

  I know immediately that something is wrong. A big pile of hair falls, plop, into the basin. A little draft of air feels cold on my head. I touch the top of my head with my fingertips. It feels like sandpaper. The really fine stuff.

  The hair on either side is long; kind of like a reverse mohawk.

  I look ridiculous.

  Why did I start at the front? On the top? I look at the instructions again and realise that the black bit is meant to clip on the teeth to measure the length of hair. The black bit is all that stands between me and no hair and it’s sitting on the edge of the basin.

  I look down at my beautiful lost hair. The nits are going berserk wondering what just happened. I fill the basin with water and watch them floating around on the surface; grasping on to strands of hair and crawling up to nowhere.

  Swallowing hard, I shave off all the remaining hair. Then I look in the mirror. My head looks like a fuzzy billiard ball. I scoop up most of the hair from the basin and put it in the bin. There’s still about a million nits having a party in the water, so I turn on the hot tap and wash them down the plughole.

  Noah starts laughing as soon as I sit down for dinner.

  ‘Uh … I think you might have lost something.’

  ‘Ha-ha. I had to cut it off. Kids at school have nits,’ I tell him. ‘Not me, though. I don’t have nits.’

  ‘Not anymore,’ he says, peering at my head.

  Dad is about to make a comment when Mum’s phone rings and she answers it. She never answers the phone at dinnertime. After a few minutes, she comes back from the kitchen, all worried-looking.

  ‘That was Dr Dabscheck on the phone,’ she says to Dad. ‘He thinks there might be something wrong with Noah’s eye. He’s arranged for a specialist to have a proper look.’

  Everyone goes quiet.

  Why didn’t Dr Dabscheck have a proper look?

  He might need to retire soon.

  Still. That’s not really the news about Noah’s eye that I was hoping for. I didn’t kick him that hard.

  I might need to look at relocating.

  The next day at school, it looks like a military camp. Braden’s left his hair in a kind of longish bristle but because it’s red, he looks just as bald as me. Alex already had short hair, so he looks pretty much the same.

  Jun looks exactly the same. He’s as worried about nits today as he was yesterday. That is, not at all.

  Most of the girls with long hair have their hair in tight plaits sprayed with something that smells like airports.

  After school, I see Peta in the corridor again. It’s a bit awkward. I don’t know if we’re friends or not. Her eyes rest for a second on my stubbly head but she doesn’t say anything.

  ‘Uhh, hi,’ I say. ‘I’ve got to meet my brother at the shops.’

  ‘Me too,’ Peta says. ‘Meet my brother, I mean.’

  Actually, I would never agree to meet Noah at the shops. He pretends he doesn’t know me whenever anyone from his school walks past.

  I don’t care that Peta’s looking at my bald head or anything. Her hair looks like a shiny traffic cone.

  As she’s talking, I keep getting the feeling that I should be saying som
ething or doing something else, but the nit spray in her hair is affecting my concentration. I’ve had to blink about nine hundred times since we’ve been standing here.

  It’s not until Peta turns out of the corridor that I remember what it is.

  Snail detention started ten minutes ago.

  ‘Who can tell me what Life Education is all about?’

  Mr S swirls around from the interactive whiteboard and smiles a weird smile at the whole class. We all know the answer, but no one is raising their hand. Doesn’t matter what you call it. Basically, it means an excruciating morning listening to Mr S talking about ‘bodies changing’ in way too much detail, complete with illustrations. Labelled illustrations.

  Mr S’s smile fades a bit.

  ‘No need to raise your hand, everyone … this is an informal session.’ He gestures in our general direction. ‘How about you … Jun! Do you want to start the ball rolling?’

  There are a few nervous giggles at the word ‘ball’. I look over at Jun. His face has turned a purple colour. I feel sorry for him but at the same time I’m relieved it’s not me.

  Mr S ploughs on. ‘Well, Jun. I won’t put you on the spot. Anyone else?’

  The room is eerily quiet. No scuffling, no talking, no one painting their nails with felt-tip markers or picking threads out of their uniform.

  Mr S explains he will start with some general things we all should know then after a break, we’ll be doing some ‘fun’ team-building activities. At one o’ clock, the girls will go into the music room with Miss Agostino and us boys have to stay here with him.

  Miss Agostino is probably about as enthusiastic as we are. Someone in the staffroom probably put her name down to teach life education when she was looking the other way. Mr S would have volunteered himself. Noah says he takes the class every year.

  Within ten minutes, Mr S abandons any hope of class interaction and delivers a long, boring lecture about stuff we’ve all known since Grade 2. He hurls a few questions to the room in general and ends up answering every one himself. Finally, the bell rings, and Mr S gathers up his whiteboard markers and tells us to be back for some ‘fun’ games at eleven o’ clock sharp.

  The next session is ‘Peer Group Exercises’. First, we’re put into pairs with someone we don’t usually talk to and have to talk to them for five minutes. Then we’re supposed to tell the rest of the class something we like about the other person. I’m paired with Samra from the other Grade 6 class. I’ve never known five minutes to go on for so long. When it’s our turn, I say, ‘This is Samra. I like that she’s School Captain and good at athletics,’ because all she talked about was running and jumping over things, so I didn’t have much to work with. Samra says, ‘This is Jesse. I like that his eyes are a nice colour.’ This makes the whole class giggle and my face go the temperature of barbeque beads.

  After that, we have to write something about ourselves that nobody knows, then Mr S will read them out and we have to guess who wrote it.

  I write, I saved my brother’s eyesight by clonking him in the head.

  I hope no one else has that one.

  Mr S writes all our answers on the left-hand side of the interactive whiteboard and all our names on the right. Most of the stuff people wrote is boring, but there are two or three interesting ones. Someone’s front teeth were knocked out and their teeth aren’t real. Another person lives in a converted hospital for infectious diseases with rails on the ceiling where the curtains went and an airlocked room to keep the germs from getting around. Someone else has a rescue dog with eleven puppies in their laundry.

  No one matches anyone with their answer. Samra turns out to be the one with fake teeth (I like that better than running) and Wesley lives in the old infectious diseases hospital (interesting). We should have guessed it was Minha that has eleven puppies. She probably has a hundred pets already.

  Mr S comes to mine and asks me to explain how I saved Noah’s eyesight. He makes me stand up so the whole class can hear me. Why didn’t I just pick something boring that requires no explanation? I should think before I do stuff.

  I start with the bit where I kicked Noah in the head and everyone laughs.

  This seems to me like a good time to sit back down, but Mr S is nodding his head, looking interested. He might be wondering how I think kicking Noah in the head improved his eyesight.

  I address the rest of the story to Mr S and a poster of the digestive system on the wall behind him so I don’t think about how nervous I am.

  I skip over the bit about Dr Dabscheck because it’s boring and so is he.

  ‘We had to take Noah to an eye specialist in the city,’ I say. ‘The hospital was massive. Like a normal hospital, but it only does eyes. And ears.’

  Mr S says, ‘Tell us what happened with Noah, Jesse.’

  ‘The eye specialist looked a lot like Ian,’ I say, ‘except he was wearing a suit and had a pair of binoculars on his head.’

  For some reason everyone thinks this is funny.

  ‘The receptionist told us off ’cause we were late. So Dad had to fill in all the forms after we saw Dr Green.’

  ‘Dr Green?’

  ‘Yeah. Dr Dean Green,’ I say, giggling.

  This makes everyone laugh again.

  ‘I went into the examination room with Noah. We all went in.’

  ‘Well, of course,’ Mr S says. ‘You must have been very concerned about your brother.’

  ‘Uh … yeah.’ Actually, I didn’t want to be by myself in the waiting room with the mean receptionist. And Dr Dean Green Binocular-Head was cool. He shook Noah’s hand and mine before Dad’s.

  Mr S scrunches up his forehead. ‘I’m a bit confused, Jesse. How is it that you saved Noah’s eyesight?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Dr Green looks at Noah’s eye with a light globe thing … and there’s a grass seed in it! In the back of his eye! We don’t know how it got there …’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And it was right near the optic nerve or something. It could’ve damaged his eye …’

  ‘Ahhh, I see.’ Mr S nods his head slowly. ‘If he hadn’t visited the doctor about your little kick, the grass seed might still be there.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Dr Green said he was very lucky. He had to have an operation on the same day.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Yeah. We had to wait around at the hospital all day but Mum wouldn’t pay to have the TV turned on. She said it wasn’t worth it for one day.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Mr S says. ‘That’s a very good story, Jesse. I particularly enjoyed the bit about Dr Green looking like Ian.’

  I don’t know why. That’s the least interesting bit of the whole story.

  The bell rings. All of this has taken us right up to lunch.

  Mr S does a quick headcount as people start to leave the room; he’s obviously had trouble in the past with kids nicking off during break.

  I’m glad most of the class has left when I get up to the front because Mr S says he wants to ask me something. He must have forgotten this is Life Ed and the other kids in the class and I know each other. Alex waits for me.

  Mr S half sits on the edge of Mrs Leeman’s desk. I hope she’s not anywhere nearby.

  ‘I’m curious, Jesse. About the situation with your brother … How did you feel when you thought your kick had caused Noah real problems?’

  ‘Oh … not good, I guess.’

  ‘And when you found out it was something else? The grass seed? How did you feel then?’

  Some weird feeling shifts in my stomach. ‘Actually …’

  ‘Yes?’

  I realise then how scared I was when I hurt Noah, how scared I was of Dr Dean Green Binocular-Head and how scared I felt when I thought Noah could lose his eye.

  ‘I … just as bad.’

  Mr S smiles and fiddles around with Mrs Leeman’s stationery a bit to give me a few minutes.

  ‘But he’s okay now? Eye all fixed?’ he says.

  ‘Yeah. He had to wear an eye patch for t
wo weeks after the operation.’

  Mr S nods and stands up straight. ‘Good, good. I’ll see you boys after lunch then. Don’t be late! We’ve got a lot to cover.’

  Yeah.

  Wouldn’t want to miss anything.

  Before the afternoon bell has even gone, some of the girls are standing outside the music room, talking in excited whispers. They probably talk about this stuff all the time; not only when it comes up on the curriculum.

  I would rather do almost anything else.

  Instead we’ve got another hour with Mr S and our numbers have dwindled. I consider making a run for it but Mr S is already striding across the quadrangle with a book and markers under his arm. He smiles at us as we stand in miserable silence staring at our shoes.

  All nineteen of us.

  We slowly troop inside and Mr S takes out a black marker and draws a huge picture on the interactive whiteboard. There’s a drawing just like it in the boys’ bathroom. This one is twice the size, though, and none of us can drag our eyes away from it. Mr S labels it ‘Male Anatomy’ and draws about a dozen black lines from the diagram and announces we are going to name all the bits.

  Mr S takes out a red marker and points to the board. ‘Who knows the name of this?’

  We try to look interested (but not too interested) as Mr S writes until everything has been labelled. Finally, he appears satisfied with our level of knowledge and picks up a cloth to erase the drawing. He sweeps the cloth across the board with a flourish except only the red names have been erased. He must’ve used the wrong kind of black marker because the picture is still there. Only now that the red names are erased, all the lines sticking out around the illustration make it look like a giant toilet-door echidna.

  Wesley (class puker) looks like he’s going to throw up.

  Alex and I giggle.

  Braden laughs too, which is a bit unusual for him.

  Mr S puts on his glasses and picks up the black marker. Bit late for glasses.

  Jun volunteers, ‘I think you used permanent marker, sir.’

  Mr S peers over his glasses at the offending marker. ‘Thank you for that astute observation, Jun. Maybe you’d like to come up with a few ideas then? Before Miss Agostino and the girls come back from the music room and ask why there’s a … a …’