by Dave Shelton
I think it helps that none of the teachers like Callum, because he is probably the naughtiest child in our year and probably number three in the whole school, after Jenny Blake who was caught smoking and Luke Kelly who set off a firework in the boys’ bathroom and everybody is scared of. I look at the floor and say, “Sorry, Mrs. Brock,” and she says, “Well, okay, then,” and sends me back to my classroom.
It is interesting walking along the corridors when lessons have already started and the corridors are all empty. Normally there is everybody else laughing and chatting and shouting, but now there is only the sound of my shoes going click-clack click-clack as I walk quickly because it is math now and I am missing it, and I like math because it is interesting and I am good at it.
My school shoes are probably my noisiest shoes, and because there is only me in the corridor they sound extra noisy and they echo a bit and it sounds good. And because it is good I lift my knees up high as I walk and stomp along extra loudly in the bits of corridor that aren’t too close to classrooms that have strict teachers in them. My teacher is Miss Khosla, and she is nice because she is only three-and-a-half-out-of-ten strict, so I am quite loud in the last bit of corridor up to quite close to her door, then I walk along the last bit normally.
Now that I am outside the door, I think that it is not a clever thing to punch the naughtiest boy of the year in the tummy because he will probably want to do revenge on me. Abby told me that Callum made her eat a spider once. And that was for no reason; not because he was doing revenge on her. So I am a bit worried now and I just stand still outside the door for a little bit.
And then I hear somebody else’s noisy shoes somewhere, and so I know that somebody else must be out of class, too, and I wonder if they have been sent to be told off, too. I look back along the corridor to where I think I can hear it coming from and I think I see the girl in the red duffle coat disappearing past the corner. I wonder if she is new at school because I don’t think I have seen her before today. And now I can’t hear her noisy shoes anymore, but I’ve forgotten about thinking about Callum and revenge so I turn the door handle and go into the classroom.
When I go in all the other children go “Wooooo!” like they always do when somebody has been to see Mrs. Brock, only Callum doesn’t join in, and Miss Khosla says, “Settle down, class,” and tells me to sit down and I sit down in my usual place between Nadia and Imran, and Nadia is trying really hard not to giggle and Imran puts his hands in front of his face like he’s going “Don’t hit me!” and pretending to be really scared of me and I think about kicking him under the table, just a little bit, but I decide not to.
And then we’re doing math, which I like because I’m good at it, but today I pretend not to be quite so good at it because everybody thinks I’m strange and too clever. I help Nadia when she gets stuck, but I don’t put my hand up too much when Miss Khosla asks the class questions, and I don’t look over at Callum’s table hardly at all, so if he is looking at me all scary I don’t see it, and so it’s okay.
At morning break it is raining, which means we stay inside. Nadia and Kirsten play Single Moms and they ask if I would like to play and I can be Kirsten’s baby, Tyrone, if I want, but I say no thank you because I want to read the rainy-day comics. I get one from the box and I go and sit with my back to the window quite near to Miss Khosla’s desk where she is doing some marking and drinking tea from a thermos flask, because then if Callum tries to do revenge he can’t sneak up behind me and Miss Khosla will see.
I like to play hopscotch or skipping in normal breaks because of the counting and songs, or I like to be alone and pretend things, but on rainy-day breaks I like to read comics.
There is a big box of them and they are very old, which means they have more words and pictures on the pages and hardly any colors. But the one I’m reading is a little bit annoying. I think the comics must have been given to the summer festival by somebody’s grandma or something and then the ones that didn’t get sold ended up here. And all the stories are in lots of episodes but most times the comic with the next episode in it isn’t there, so I just have to read the next one I can find and try to guess what happened in between.
I don’t mind too much normally, but this time I realize this comic comes between two that I’ve read before and now all the things that are happening in the story about the girls in the spooky school are different to everything I made up and it’s making me a bit annoyed, partly because some of it isn’t as good as what I made up and partly because I’m angry that the comics were in the box in the wrong order even though I spent ages last week sorting them out.
I put down the comic and scowl at Charley, because I decide it might be his fault, and he looks at me a bit funny, only he’s not quite looking at me, he’s sort of looking over my shoulder, so I look around and there’s someone outside the window.
It’s a girl, but she’s facing away from me, and the window is quite high, so I can only see the back of her head. Her hair is straight and shiny and ginger. I wonder why she’s outside in the rain, but then a ball of wadded-up paper bounces off my head (and Miss Khosla doesn’t even notice because she’s looking at her cell phone) and I turn to make a face at Charley for throwing it, and then when I turn back around the girl is gone.
Then Miss Khosla puts her phone away and blows her nose and says break is over and it’s time for the spelling test and I get nine out of ten (because I deliberately get population wrong).
Normally I look forward to lunchtime, but today I don’t look forward to lunchtime. I don’t look forward to it because the rain has stopped now and so we have to go outside and I think that Callum will try to do revenge on me. It’s only Mrs. Fleet on duty on the playground today and it’s easy to get away with things when it’s Mrs. Fleet because she is only one-out-of-ten strict, and I think my sandwiches might be soggy.
When the bell goes, I go and get my lunch box and open it and look inside and I can see that my sandwiches are soggy. And because I was right about that I think I am probably right about Callum, too, so I go and stand near to Mrs. Fleet to eat my lunch, but she keeps moving about and it’s hard to eat my lunch with only one hand (because I’m holding my lunch box with the other), and all the sandwiches are wrapped in plastic wrap because that’s the way I like them so that even when they get squished I don’t get squishy tomatoness on everything else.
I really need both hands to unwrap the plastic wrap, so I stop trying to follow Mrs. Fleet around and sit on the bench by the office and just try to eat my lunch as fast as I can while Callum and Charley are busy telling jokes from TV to Fahreed from the next year up.
I try to keep an eye on them, but I drop some tomato on my cookies (Dad gave me cookies today because it is a Wednesday and Wednesdays are cookie days, and Mondays and Fridays are, too, and Tuesdays and Thursdays are Healthy Choice days), and so I have to pay attention to that and get the seeds and juice off the top cookie as fast as possible to stop it from being too tomatoey to eat (the bottom one is absolutely fine). I’m just deciding that the top cookie is not okay to eat because it will be too tomatoey, but that from now on I’ll ask Dad to wrap the cookies in plastic wrap as well for extra safety, when I realize that I can’t see Mrs. Fleet at all anymore. But I can see Fahreed from the next year up and he is not talking to Callum and Charley anymore. Where have they gone?
And what’s that smell?
I look down at the ground to my right and see Callum’s sneakers with the stupid twinkly lights.
“Your shoes smell like vomit,” I say.
“Shut up!” says Callum, and because his mouth is all twisted up, a little bit of spit comes out when he says it and lands on the stain on his shoe. Maybe it will wash it off a bit. He gives me a shove on the shoulder that makes me drop the cookie, the non-tomatoey one, onto the ground, and now it is broken and dirty and I don’t have a good cookie left.
“Hey!” I say, but it doesn’t sound as brave as I want it to.
Callum hunches up his
shoulders and screws up his fists and his face. “I’m going to get you!” he says.
“No, you’re not,” says somebody else.
I look up and it’s a girl I don’t recognize. At least, I think I haven’t seen her at school before, but she does look a bit familiar. She’s wearing the old school uniform that they used to have here ages ago but that they made “optional.” (“Optional” means you only wear it if you have crazy parents who want you to be bullied. At least, this is what Dad told me when I asked if I could have one.) She is also wearing a red duffle coat, so I realize that this is the girl who was here earlier.
Her haircut is funny. She has quite long, straight, shiny red hair and it flops down over one side of her face, covering it up completely so you can only see one of her eyes. She is not as tall as Callum and she is quite skinny-looking, but there is something odd about her and her head is tilted down so that the one eye that you can see is looking up through her eyebrow and her body is all sort of stiff and tense and that makes her look a bit scary even though she is only little.
You can tell Callum thinks she looks scary, but he is trying not to let it show, but he does look scared of her and he can’t even think up anything to say.
“Yeah, well, just …” he says, and points at me. Only he doesn’t even properly point at me. He sticks out a finger but he just sort of waves it roughly in my direction, like he’s scared that if he actually, properly aims it at me he’ll get in trouble with Red Duffle Coat Girl.
I think he’s probably right.
He mumbles something and flicks his eyes my way really really quickly one last time, but he’s already shuffling away. Then he runs off to tackle a football from Nadia’s little brother from kindergarten and nearly trips himself over, which makes me laugh even though he doesn’t actually fall over (which would be really funny), but I suppose I laugh a bit extra because I am relieved.
I turn around to thank the girl, but she is walking away, and seeing her head from behind I realize that as well as being the girl who was here earlier, she is also the girl who was outside the window at break time. I shout after her but she doesn’t look back. Then she turns a corner and I think about running after her but I don’t run after her because I’m still picking up my lunch.
I eat the tomatoey cookie after all. It is a bit peculiar, but it is okay.
In the afternoon we have science (which I like) and PE (which I don’t like unless it is running, and today it is not running, it is indoor exercise, and that is quite bad).
At home time Auntie Anna meets me at school and we walk home and it is not raining. Auntie Anna asks me how was school and I say it was good because of science and I don’t mention the strange girl or punching Callum and we stop at the supermarket for Auntie Anna to do a bit of shopping and she buys me a chocolate bar, which I eat and it is nice.
At home, I do my homework and I play a game on Dad’s computer. I play Boxworld, which is a puzzle game and doesn’t have shooting or zombies in it and I am good at it. I score 13,024 points, which is my second-best score ever (my best score was 16,712 points, but that was when I played for a whole Saturday when the babysitter who we don’t have anymore looked after me and didn’t stop me and my eyes and my head went a bit funny). Then Dad gets home from work and we have dinner, which is sausages with onion gravy and mashed potato and peas, which is my third favorite dinner, and Auntie Anna stays and eats with us, then goes home.
While we are watching TV, I draw in my special notebook with my good felt-tip pens that I got for my birthday. I draw a police lady (because there is a police lady in the program), and I draw Dad and I draw a cat eating a fish (but I get the mouth a bit wrong). Then I turn the page and I draw the girl in the red duffle coat. I concentrate really hard. I remember the way her hair was and I try to get that right, and I do her uniform and her coat and it all comes out looking quite good. In fact, it’s probably one of my top ten best drawings that I’ve ever done and I am really pleased. I am just finishing coloring in her coat when the man who had done the bad thing at the start of the program is caught by the police lady and the story finishes.
Dad says, “Right then, monster, you should really be in bed by now, you know.”
I say, “Can I just finish—”
And then I make a funny squeaky yelping noise because Dad has dropped his not-quite-finished mug of tea and it has spilled on the carpet, and even though the mug has not smashed into smithereens, it is still a big surprise. And when I look up at Dad’s face, his eyes are all wide, which I think is being frightened and that makes me a bit frightened. Then, when he sees me being frightened, Dad makes his face into a different shape, I think because he doesn’t want to worry me. He worries a lot about not wanting me to worry but really I don’t worry much anyway.
“Oops-a-daisy!” says Dad in his not-quite-right jolly voice, and he smiles at me with his not-quite-right smile. “I’d better get a cloth.” And he goes to the kitchen and gets a damp cloth and kneels on the floor mopping up the little bit of tea he spilled. I don’t say anything and I stay on the sofa, pretending to watch the ads on the TV but glancing at Dad sometimes and at my drawing sometimes and thinking about what just happened. It is like a puzzle and I like puzzles mostly, except when I can’t work them out and they make my head feel funny, and I think this might be one of those ones.
“There we go,” says Dad, looking up from the wet patch on the carpet. “I think that’ll be okay once it dries.” Then he looks at me, and I realize I’m looking at him with a very frowny face from thinking about the puzzle and it puts him off from acting like nothing has happened.
“Sorry, darling,” he says. “Your drawing reminded me of something. Something … not very nice. It just gave me a bit of a shock, that’s all. It’s a very good drawing, though. I like … I like her red coat.” And he smiles at me again, but it’s still not a very good one.
“Who does she remind you of, Daddy?” I say. Normally I call Dad “Dad,” but when I want something I call him “Daddy” because that works better. I look straight into his eyes with my eyes opened really wide and I keep my mouth tightly closed. Dad’s eyes are blinking and he looks in lots of different directions but not really at me.
“A girl named Karen, darling. Karen Hockney. You remember I told you about Susan Hockney, Mummy’s friend? Well, Karen was her daughter.”
“Oh. The lady and the girl who were in the car with Mummy?”
Daddy is still kneeling on the floor, but he’s shuffled over to me now and he’s put his arm around me. He thinks I might get upset talking about Mummy and the crash.
“Yes, darling. Mummy was giving them a lift into town.” His voice has gone all quiet and full of breath and his eyes aren’t blinking anymore. He’s looking at me sort of sideways and his eyebrows have gone high up.
“Oh …” I say, and look down at the floor and I stay very still and quiet. Sometimes before when I’ve done this, he’s made me hot chocolate and given me cookies. It works this time, too. I even get marshmallow bits in the hot chocolate.
Mostly I don’t get upset about Mummy or the crash anymore, not really. Sometimes one of the children at school will say something horrible that makes me feel a bit sad for a little while, but really I don’t remember Mummy properly (I was three and a half when the accident happened to her). There are photos of her in the house, though, so I remember what she looked like from them (even though some of them are from before I was born). But mostly the crash is A Thing That Happened and I don’t mind it. But I don’t talk about it because it makes Dad’s eyes go wet.
I ask Daddy if I can play on the computer for ten more minutes before bed and he looks at me carefully and then says, “Well, oooookay then,” (which I knew he would) and goes into the kitchen to do the washing up.
I go to the computer but I do not play Boxworld this time because I told Dad a fib and what I really do is go on the Internet and try to find out about Karen Hockney. It is easy. I go on Google and do a search on “susan ka
ren hockney crash” and I find the story from the local newspaper from the day after the crash.
Mostly it tells me things Dad has already told me (only he had never told me that the accident was a tragic accident—I thought it was a traffic accident). Mummy and the man in the other car died instantly and they get her name wrong, and Susan and Karen Hockney went to the hospital. Then next I find a story from the paper from a day later and Mummy is still dead but they get her name right this time, and now Susan Hockney has died in the hospital, too, and Karen has “serious injuries” but is “stable.” And there are photographs of Mummy and the man from the other car and Susan Hockney and Karen Hockney, and the one of Karen Hockney does look a lot like the girl in the red duffle coat, only younger and with her hair different so you can see all of her face. I can see why my drawing would make Dad jump. He gets more upset about Mummy than I do. I suppose that is because he knew her for longer.
In the morning, Dad has toast and horrible coffee for breakfast and I have orange juice and Rice Krispies (because it is Thursday).
“Do you know where she is now?” I say.
Dad lowers his newspaper, which he is reading the back page of with a screwed-up face. “Where who is?” he says.
“Karen Hockney,” I say. I have been thinking about Karen Hockney from the moment I woke up.
Dad puts his newspaper down and stares at me for two seconds. Then he puts down his coffee mug (the “World’s Fourth Best Dad” one that I got him for his birthday) and stares at me for three more seconds.
“She died, love,” he says in his slow, quiet voice that he uses when he thinks he needs to be careful.
“Oh,” I say. “I thought she was only seriously injured.”
Dad looks at me a bit funny, but doesn’t ask any awkward questions. “Yes, she survived the crash,” he says. “But she died a few months later. She, um …” I think he doesn’t know how much he should tell me because he is still wanting to be careful. I look at him with no blinks and guess at how much of a smile is the right amount to make him carry on. I must get it right.