by Rick Wood
I walk through the corridor with my head down and I hear sniggering and I wonder if it’s at me. It’s like they all look at me yet no one notices me. I am invisible, yet I feel like I stand out.
A girl barges into me. She doesn’t even flinch. She carries on laughing, holding hands with a boy just as pretty as she is.
I walk into an IT classroom for registration, take my seat on my own at the back, and avoid making eye contact with anyone. My tutor talks but I don’t hear anything. She gives some letters out and one drops on my table but I don’t pay attention to it.
When registration is over I wait for everyone else to leave so I can go. My tutor says hello and I try to smile though I know my lips barely move.
In science, we are told to get into twos or threes for an experiment. No one comes to join me, and I look away from anyone who walks past. I end up working on my own, and either the teacher doesn’t even notice, or they do and they choose to let me so they don’t have to force anyone to go in a group with me.
She forced Charlene to go in a group with me once. I hated it. She hated it. She told me I was ratchet, and I don’t even know what that means. I thought ratchet was a cog, and she laughed when I didn’t look up to meet her stare.
For a moment, I look forward to being able to go home.
Then I remember what home is like.
And I look forward to nothing.
6
Will
On the way to work I get stuck behind a tractor, and a large queue of cars continually honk their horns at me. I’m not sure why their aggression is aimed at me, as it’s a twisty road and there is nowhere for me to overtake, yet the gestures made by the fella riding the bumper of my car makes it quite clear what he thinks of the situation.
I end up pulling over into a layby to let him pass, and receive a middle finger out his window. I’m not sure what I was meant to do, but I try not to think about it as I join the large queue of cars from the opposite end.
I tune into the local radio. There is a news report of a teacher in Manchester who has been suspended pending investigation. I turn the volume up.
“A fifteen-year-old female student has made allegations that her geography teacher attempted to kiss her. Police are currently investigating the matter but, like many similar situations, it appears that it’s going to come down to his word against hers.”
I shake my head. The fool. That is why you keep your classroom door open if alone with a student, and ensure there is a space between you and them.
“Despite the teacher, twenty-eight-year-old Patrick Armidge, vigorously denying the accusation, he says he has already been the subject of abuse. Police have confirmed that, over the weekend, eggs were thrown at his house and a firework put through his letterbox.”
I flinch. In a way, I feel sorry for the guy. He hasn’t been found guilty yet, but not only will his career already be over, and not only will the media be camped on his lawn, he is being persecuted for something he may not even have done.
Then again, I don’t feel that sorry for him. Guilty or not, it is a situation he could have avoided.
“The girl, who cannot be named because of her age, has been suspended from the school numerous times. Her parents have condemned the actions of her teacher, and do not wish to comment further.”
So it was a vulnerable child as well; one that a teacher knew he should be careful with.
I turn the radio off. It’s men like him who make a mockery of the teaching profession.
I arrive at school, and search for a space in an overcrowded car park. The only one I can find is between a jeep and a van, but I manage to fit, even if I have to slither through a small gap to get out.
I cross the field to the entrance to the maths block. As I do, Tyler, a delinquent I despise teaching, says, “Hello Mr Coady.”
“Hello, Tyler.”
As soon as I’ve passed he says, “Goodbye, bender,” and his group of mates snigger and cackle like it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever heard.
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.
I hate him. He’s made teachers redundant, citing lack of funds, then driven home in his flashy BMW. He is everything that is wrong with education.
“Unfortunately, her concerns have now been elevated to me. If we don’t see improvements, then we are going to have to go down the route of issuing formal warnings. You understand?”
I nod.
“We expect to see more in your lessons. We expect the learning objectives to be shown, we expect differentiation to be explicit to anyone who enters the classroom, and we expect your student’s behaviour to be better. They shouldn’t be just passively quiet, but be actively involved. You understand the difference, don’t you, Will?”
Stop using my name.
“Yes.”
I’ve been teaching for sixteen years.
Sixteen damn years.
And here is a man telling me how I should do my job.
But do I say this? Do I voice my opinion? Do I let the headmaster know what I think of his warning and expectations?
Do I hell.
“Do you have any questions, Will?”
“No.”
“I really would appreciate some more dialogue from you. I don’t want to sit here lecturing you; I would like to have some feedback, to know what your thoughts are.”
I say nothing.
“I mean, do you have anything to say about this situation?”
“I don’t really know what to say.”
“Right. Okay then.”
He leans back. Looks at me. Like he’s thinking deeply. He wanted more conversation, he wanted me to say more, he wanted this meeting to go differently. Perhaps he expected more fight from me; perhaps he even desired it.
I’m afraid I’m out of fight.
I’m tired and I’m angry and I just want to go to my classroom and plan my lessons.
“Okay, Will, well I will speak to you again, and we hope to see some improvements.”
“Thanks,” I say as I get up, and I wonder why I said it. It’s just automatic, isn’t it? You end a meeting and you say thank you.
But why?
I’m not appreciative of anything he’s just said.
“Have a good day,” he says.
I flash a forced smile and shuffle out.
The secretary says something as I leave, but I ignore her, and I walk back through the ominous corridors to my classroom, where I sit alone and plan lessons and try not to wonder how I got to this point.
9
Harper
After lunch I have textiles. We had to choose one technology to do for our GCSEs, and I could have chosen food technology, graphic design, electronics, woodwork, or textiles. I chose textiles because it’s a female-only class, so I figured I could be left alone there, and without the boys to show off to the girls might not be so nasty.
I was wrong.
It is the bitchiest class I’ve ever known. It is an hour of my day spent listening to girls moan about other girls, and the worst part is that the teacher even joins in. She comes to school wearing short dresses and with her long, blond hair flowing behind her, and, because she’s probably closer to our age than she is to most other teachers, she seems to think she’s one of us.
The other girls love her. I don’t. She does nothing when the other girls turn their attention to me, like she’s unable to see that their ruthless comments may be more than just little jokes.
And I can’t handle it today. I just can’t.
I don’t know what it is about today, I just don’t want to face that class.
Having skipped her class before and gotten away with it, I decide to do it again. The lunch bell rings and I wait ten minutes for the commotion to go, then I leave the toilets, leave the corridor, and leave the school. No one stops me as I walk through the gates.
I doubt anyone cares.
My textiles teacher probably doesn’t even notice that, when she marks me present on the register, that the small piece of silence that sits in the corner isn’t even there.
I remember parent’s evening when she looked at me, and I could see it in her eyes, that look of confusion as she tried to remember who I am. She had a pile of books and, as we sat down, she said, “Why don’t you find your book for me?”
She pretended this was to go through my book with my dad. Really, it was so she could look at the name on the book and know what to call me.
I considered picking the wrong book to see if she’d notice, but I didn’t.
It takes twenty minutes or so to walk home. By this point of the afternoon, Mum is normally at the pub or still passed out upstairs. The house is quiet and I am able to sneak inside without anyone knowing I shouldn’t be there.
I logon to the computer. The
home page on the internet browser shows a few headlines, one about a father and daughter my age found dead, and another about some teacher whose student has accused him of doing dodgy stuff.
I type in the beginning of the web address and the browser fills in the rest. It’s called Hope and Chances. It’s a fan site for fantasy novels and films, though I mainly just use the message board.
This is a place where I’m happy to speak. Where I’m not silent. Where I am noticed. A place where I can be sociable without showing my face. Where I can make friends without the worry of them knowing who I am.
There are a number of forums on the message board I can click on, but I have my favourites. They are Come to the Café, a board where you can chat about anything; Fairies, Fantasies and Frollocks, where you can share your own interest in fantasy creatures; and Our Members, where members can share things that have happened to them.
I go into Our Members, and the first post was done an hour ago, but already has 146 replies.
I click on it and read.
Author: @HappyGoLucky_11
Subject: The Death Club
Hi guys,
You may or may not be aware that one of our members, known mainly to you as @LuvvaGirl99, has been in the news today. Turns out her name was Linda Salborough, and it’s pretty tragic.
Apparently her dad was found dead, and there are suggestions that the post-mortem found cyanide in his system. Linda herself was also found dead on her bed, apparent suicide by overdose.
Thing is though… I’m not so sure she did kill herself. I mean, I heard her webcam filmed her doing it, and yes she did do it, but I wonder if she was MADE to do it.
