The Boy at the Back of the Class

by Onjali Q. Raúf

  “Maybe he’s having lunch with the lower grades by mistake?” said Josie. But when we got into the cafeteria, we didn’t see him anywhere.

  In the afternoon we had history, and we were split into groups, but the new boy was allowed to sit on his own and not join in. Mrs. Khan spent more time with him than she did with any of our groups, and she was pointing at things in a new textbook she had gotten him.

  “Maybe he’s deaf?” someone whispered.

  “Maybe he can’t speak English?” muttered someone else.

  “There’s definitely something wrong with him!” whispered everyone.

  That afternoon I don’t think any of us learned about what it was like to be a gladiator living in Roman times, because we were all too busy whispering about the new boy. He must have known what we were doing because his face was red the whole time. Then, at last break, he disappeared again.

  “He must be inside,” said Michael, after we had finished searching the whole playground for the third time in a row. By now, my lemon candies were getting sticky in my pocket and beginning to look like bright yellow fuzzballs.

  At the end of the day, everyone was still talking about the new boy and wondering who he was. I think it was because a whole day had passed, and no one knew anything about him except for his name. Not even Clarissa—and she had been sitting right next to him! People kept running up to her to ask if the new boy had said anything to her, but she just shook her head and said he was using a lower grade’s textbook, so his reading and writing mustn’t be very good.

  As we made our way to our usual bus stop to catch the city bus back home, we saw everyone crowding around Jennie just outside the front gates. Jennie is famous in school for always knowing something about everything, so we ran over to hear what she was saying.

  Jennie is in the class next door and has the longest hair in school. She likes to spy on people and then tell stories about them to other people. Sometimes the stories are true, but most of the time they’re only half true because she makes things up. Last year she told a story about Josie cheating in a soccer match by pretending to fall down so she could get a penalty kick. But I was there and so was Tom, and we both saw her fall down after being kicked in the leg by an older boy named Robert. She had a big fat bruise on her leg the shape of Australia for weeks afterward! But no matter how many times we showed everyone the bruise and told them what really happened, no one believed us. Not even the people who were there.

  Sometimes I think people like to believe a lie even when they know it’s a lie because it’s more exciting than the truth. And they especially like to believe it if it’s printed in a newspaper. I know that now. I also know why Mum says politicians are liars and always shouts at them whenever they come on TV. Maybe Jennie will be a politician when she grows up.

  When we got closer, we heard Jennie telling everyone that the new boy had spent all his breaks and recess with Mrs. Sanders because he had done something bad in his old school and was too dangerous to be let out onto the playground with us. But I didn’t believe her; I could tell Michael didn’t believe her either, because he asked her how she knew so much about it. Jennie got angry and crossed her heart and hoped to die that she had heard Mr. Owen talking to Mrs. Timms outside the teachers’ staff room and that both of them had said how sorry they felt for Mrs. Khan and how glad they were that the new boy wasn’t in their class because it wasn’t going to be easy to deal with him. But before we could ask her any more questions, Jennie’s dad began to beep at her from his car, so she ran off.

  We all watched her go and then looked back through the school gates to see if the new boy had come out. But we couldn’t see him anywhere.

  “He’s probably left already,” said Josie.

  Tom and Michael nodded. “Let’s just wait two more minutes,” I said, hoping that he would still be inside. And I was glad I did, because a few seconds later, the new boy came out onto the playground. He was holding Mrs. Khan’s hand and staring at the ground. A woman who was waiting by the outdoor benches suddenly shouted, “Cooo-eeee!” and ran over to them. She was wearing a long brown coat, a woolly hat, and a bright red scarf. She stood and talked to Mrs. Khan for a long time and nodded an awful lot, but we couldn’t hear anything because we were standing too far away.

  “I wonder if that’s his mum,” said Josie. I didn’t think so because the new boy didn’t hug her at all and seemed shy around her too.

  “Come on,” said Michael. He was pointing to his watch, which was beeping like a submarine. Michael has a special watch that tells him when the next bus is coming. It’s supposed to help him get to places on time, but I’ve only ever seen it make him bump into things more quickly.

  “No! Wait!” I said. And before I could think about it too much, I ran over to where the new boy was standing.

  “Hello!” I said, tapping him on the shoulder.

  Mrs. Khan and the woman in the red scarf looked down at me as I reached into my pocket and got out the lemon candy. “Here!” I said, holding it out. I was a little bit embarrassed because by now it was covered in fluff. But it was still good enough to eat. That’s the good thing about lemon candies. No matter how bad they look, they still always taste delicious.

  I think I must have spoken too loudly because the new boy took a step away from me as though he was frightened.

  “It’s all right, Ahmet, you can take it,” said the woman, motioning to him with her hands as if she were speaking in sign language.

  But the new boy grabbed her hand and hid his face behind her arm. I didn’t know what to do because I’ve never really scared anyone so much before that they wanted to hide from me. The woman spoke to him gently again, and after a few seconds he took the candy and looked straight at me with his lion eyes before hiding away again.

  “Thank you,” said the woman. She looked at me and gave me a smile. I liked her deep brown eyes, because they seemed kind, and her bright pink cheeks. But what I liked best of all was how her long blond hair swirled around in the wind from underneath her hat. “Ahmet will enjoy that on the ride home.”

  I nodded and then ran back to where Josie and Tom and Michael were waiting for me. I felt extra happy because Mrs. Khan had smiled at me with her whole face and had given me a wink too—just like my dad used to do whenever he thought I had done something good or when he was teasing my mum. When I’m a grown-up, I’m going to wink at people just like he used to do and make them feel special too. And as we made our way home, I decided that the next day, whenever I saw the new boy staring at me, I was going to give him just as many winks as I could.

  The next day, and the next day and the next day after that, I smiled at the new boy and gave him a friendly wink, just as often as I could. My goal was to give him at least forty winks a day because that’s what Mum says everyone needs, but after a while my eyebrows started to feel funny. I could tell the new boy was finding it interesting because he stopped looking at everyone else and kept looking at me. But then Michael saw me trying to wink with both my eyes, one after the other, and said I looked like I needed a doctor. He probably said that because I can’t wink with my left eye as well as I can with my right eye. So I decided to stop winking quite as much.

  That week Mrs. Khan was teaching us all about photosynthesis and gave each of us a small pot with a seed in it to look after. Everyone was excited because she said there would be a prize for whoever grows the best plant. Even the new boy got one and I think it made him happy because he kept looking at it. I tried to whisper lots of cheerful words like “rainbow” and “popcorn” and “marshmallows” to mine, because I read somewhere that if you tell plants about happy things, it makes them grow quicker. I’d never won a prize before. Not even at the fair. I thought if I tried really hard and kept talking to my plant, I might win this time. And if I couldn’t win, then I wanted the new boy to, because he really seemed to like that plant.

>   But I was worried about Brendan the Bully Brooker. He’s the Class Bully. His cheeks are always pink because he spends most of his time chasing anyone smaller than him around the playground. He’s not very bright and hates anyone that is. If anyone gets a good grade in class or a prize, he’ll try to beat them up after school. I saw him looking at Ahmet’s plant and narrowing his eyes, just like he always does when he’s thinking of something mean to do. I didn’t like it one bit.

  His most common trick is to trip you up with his foot. He also likes to tip up your lunch tray as he walks by so that your food dribbles down your chest like runny eggs. He’s done that to me a few times. Sometimes he gets caught. But most of the time he doesn’t. And even when he does get caught, he doesn’t get detention.

  Most of the teachers seem to like him, though. Maybe it’s because when he smiles, he looks like one of those boys who sing in a church choir on television. Mr. Thompson used to call him “a rascal”—which must be a good word because he always gave Brendan the Bully a wink and a pat on the back whenever he said it, and then let him run off again. That made everyone else in class—except for Liam and Chris, Brendan the Bully’s only two friends—hate him even more. Even the bullies in the upper grades find him annoying. It’s funny how bullies don’t like other bullies. Maybe it stops them from feeling special. But in school everyone knows who the bullies are, and who they like to bully, and no two bullies can go after the same person. It’s a strange system. But those are the rules and everyone sticks to them. Even the teachers.

  But Mrs. Khan is different.

  She doesn’t seem to like Brendan the Bully as much as the other teachers. She’s always watching him, and ever since we were put in her class, he’s been careful not to do anything around her. I’m still going to keep an eye on him, though.

  Soon after the new boy joined our class, lots of rumors about him began to be passed around the playground like an invisible game of hot potato.

  Most people believed Jennie and said that the new boy must be dangerous and that’s why he was never allowed out. But then other people started saying he had a super-contagious disease, and that was the real reason why we weren’t allowed to talk to him. The disease rumor scared Clarissa so much that she tried to sit as far away from him as she could without leaving her chair. One time she leaned over so far that she crashed right onto the floor! She didn’t lean away so much after that, but she always put her arms up or used a notebook as a divider.

  I didn’t think the new boy looked the least bit dangerous or like he had an infectious disease, so the rumor I thought sounded the most true was the one that said he was from a super-rich family and that his parents had sent him to our school undercover so that he wouldn’t be kidnapped. Michael said kidnappers wouldn’t come to our school to look for him because it wasn’t in a fancy area, and Tom agreed. He said that when he had moved from America, his older brothers had told him they must be poor now because they were going to live in the Poor End of London and not in the Rich End. I didn’t really understand what he meant, because London doesn’t have ends. On maps it just looks a spilled blob of jam.

  I wanted to ask the new boy if the rumor about the kidnappers was true, and if he needed us to become his bodyguards. But he was still doing all his lessons on his own, and during every break and lunchtime he would disappear, so no one except for Clarissa could talk to him. And she didn’t want to! I tried to catch his eye so I could smile at him and whisper “Hello,” but Mrs. Khan caught me and told me to pay attention to my work.

  Next I tried to send him a note made into a paper plane—because I’m good at those—but it flew wonkily and hit Nigel on the head instead. He’s a tattletale and told on me right away. I hate tattletales because they seem to like getting people into trouble more than anything else in the world, and they always smile when they’re doing it. Mrs. Khan came and took the note and read it just to herself. She shook her head at me, but I think she must have found the drawing I made funny because her mouth gave a tiny smile that only I could see. Even though I didn’t get lectured, I knew it would be too risky to send any more messages by airmail. Especially with tattletales around.

  The next day at recess, Josie, Tom, Michael, and I decided to follow the new boy and find out where he was going. But Mrs. Khan caught us following him in the hall and told us not to do it again. She didn’t seem angry, but she did say that the new boy needed to be in “Seclusion” for a little while longer and that it was for his own good, so we promised not to follow him anymore.

  “What does ‘Seclusion’ mean?” asked Josie when we went back out onto the playground.

  None of us knew exactly, not even Michael, although he said it sounded as if the new boy needed to have private treatment like a really sick person in a hospital, so maybe he did have an infectious disease after all.

  But it wasn’t long until we found out what “Seclusion” really meant, and why the new boy needed so much of it.

  My dad used to say that if you really, really want something, you have to keep trying for it. And since he always used to say that he had everything he could ever want, I guessed he must have known all about trying for things.

  I knew that I wanted to be friends with Ahmet. I didn’t really know why; I just did. I gave up trying to speak to him during the day—because of all the Seclusion he needed—but I figured after school was okay, because Mrs. Khan had smiled at me and winked that first time. So every day for two whole weeks, I waited by the school gates at dismissal.

  As soon as the new boy and Mrs. Khan came out to meet the woman in the red scarf, I would run over and give the new boy a lemon candy—and sometimes a whole chocolate bar. But no matter how many candies I gave him or how much Mrs. Khan encouraged him to talk to me, the new boy never said a word, and he never, ever smiled back. Not even when I gave him a whole packet of chocolate frogs, which are my favorite. He just quietly took the candy and, staring at the ground, went and stood behind the woman in the red scarf as if he needed to hide from me.

  “Maybe he doesn’t like candy,” said Michael on the Friday of the second week.

  “Don’t be silly,” said Josie, chewing on her hair. “Everyone likes candy!”

  “Maybe he’s allergic?” said Tom.

  I’d never heard of anyone being allergic to chocolate and candies before, but then again, I was allergic to dogs when no one else was. So maybe he was right.

  After that, I decided to give the new boy my lunch fruit instead. He was still going to his Seclusion every lunchtime, so on the Monday of the third week of trying to be his friend, I took the biggest orange I could find from the cafeteria and waited by the gates. I was extra excited because I had drawn a smiley face on the skin, and Tom had given me a sticker of a dinosaur to stick on it—so those were two things that made the orange extra special. Tom loves collecting stickers—he has books and books of them at home, and whenever he gets a new one he likes, he always brings it in to show us. I’ve never seen him give a sticker away to someone he doesn’t know very well, so I hoped the new boy would like it and know how special it was.

  But as we were waiting for the new boy to come out, we heard something about him that we didn’t understand at all. In fact, it was even more confusing than learning about the Seclusion he was being given.

  There were lots of grown-ups standing behind us at the gates—there always are at the end of the day. Sometimes they talk about the news or what they’re making for dinner. But mostly they talk about the weather. I don’t know why, because there’s nothing more boring than talking about something everyone else can see for themselves, but I guess that’s what you’re supposed to do when you become a grown-up.

  Usually we don’t listen because we have more interesting things to talk about, like what we’re going to watch as soon as we get home and who our favorite Olympic athlete or soccer player is. But this afternoon, just after someone h
ad said how sunny it was and wasn’t it lovely and how they hoped it would be sunny again tomorrow, someone else said, “Have you heard about the new refugee kid that’s joined the school? He’s been put in Mrs. Khan’s class. They can’t find an assistant that speaks his language. Poor little blighter!”

  Josie and Michael and Tom all looked over at me and I looked back at them and then we stood very still together. I knew we were all thinking the exact same thing because our faces frowned at the exact same time: we were wondering what a Refugee Kid was doing in our class.

  Then the lady who had talked about the sun said, “It’ll cause trouble—you mark my words. They’re only coming over to take our jobs!”

  Carefully, so that no one else would see us, we all looked over our shoulders and saw that it was Mr. Brown and Mrs. Grimsby who were talking.

  Mr. Brown shrugged and then said, “If he’s from that awful war on the news, I feel sorry for the kid. Can’t blame ’em for wanting to get out of that death trap.”

  “Hmph!” said Mrs. Grimsby. “Trouble, the whole lot of ’em! Wouldn’t trust one as far as I could throw ’em. Just you wait and see—it’s our kids who will suffer, just because these ones are coming over to do whatever they like….” I could tell that Mr. Brown didn’t like what she was saying, because he frowned and shook his head and then took a step to the side.

  I like Mr. Brown. He’s Charlie’s dad. Charlie is one of the boys in upper school. Everyone knows who he is because he always steals at least three puddings from the pudding tray every lunchtime, so there’s never enough to go around. He’s also famous for setting off the fire alarm to get out of a science test. He’s always getting into trouble. But I don’t think Mr. Brown knows about that because whenever he cries out, “Charlie, my ol’ boy! What have you been up to today?” and Charlie says, “Nothing,” Mr. Brown beams at him. Charlie tells everyone that his dad is a boxer, but I don’t think that can be true. He has a long beard, and if I was a boxer fighting him, I’d just pull his beard all the time and win.