Unexpected Twist

by Michael Rosen

  She said it wouldn’t make any difference, it was in the system.

  “What system?”

  “There’s this internet thing just for the school. It’s called School4U, and they put all the homework up on there but also D8 stuff.”

  “Blimey, in my day, the teacher just put it up on the board, and I remember this time when the teacher forgot and—”

  “—and your mate Jaffo said, ‘Oi, sir, you’ve forgotten to give us homework!’ and you lot gave him the beats.”

  “Did I tell you that one before?”

  Shona nodded.

  Dad sat thinking for a moment. Even school was different. School4U? “Hang on a minute, girl, we haven’t got the internet. How are you getting this Schools4U?”

  “School4U, it is. I get it from the ITC room at 3.30 and they just do a printout of anything I need.”

  “You never shown me that.”

  “No. I know.”

  Dad shook his head, like a dog, as if he was trying to get rid of something: a thought, a sense that he wasn’t keeping up and never would.

  Shona was standing in the mouth of room 3.01 where the D8 was happening. She looked in and it struck her immediately as a place that she didn’t want to be, with people she didn’t want to be with. The look that came back to her was kind of leery, looking her up and down, like, “what’s a little girl like you doing in a place where us lot hang out?” There was no teacher in the room yet, a teacher who might perhaps be some sort of shield against these looks and leers.

  She pretended she hadn’t noticed and sat herself down apart from these bigger, older kids, winding their legs round chairs, pushing at the tables like they were in the way of important, cool stuff that kids like them would do or could do, given a chance.

  Shona waited.

  One boy said, “Is your name Sheena?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Hey,” he said a bit louder, “is your name Sheena?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Shona?” he said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Kerpow!” he said as if he had hit some kind of target with a dart, or a bullet.

  “How did you know her name?” one of his mates asked him.

  He just tapped the side of his nose.

  “Do you know which teacher’s doing this D8?” the first boy asked her.

  She just shook her head.

  “You could look it up on School4U, couldn’t you?”

  “It’s not me that wants to know, though, is it?” she said.

  The other boy clapped. “That’s told him,” he said.

  “Yeah,” said the first boy, “but you want to do me a favour, because I knew your name.”

  “Look it up yourself,” she said.

  “I will, then,” he said and he took out a phone. He started tapping the keys.

  The other boy said, “It won’t be on there anyway.”

  “It will,” said the first, “the one who does the D8 is the same as the ‘Duty’ teacher, isn’t it, Shona?”

  Shona ignored the question.

  “I can’t find it on here – I think there’s too much stuff on it, and School4U won’t upload. Can you try on yours? Pleeeeeeeze?”

  “I haven’t got a phone.”

  A hush went round the room. Even people not listening to the conversation went quiet. The sentence “I haven’t got a phone” was so odd, so strange, so shocking that it seemed to freeze the room.

  The one person who wasn’t fazed by it, though, was the boy who knew her name, who had asked the question. He just fished into his pocket, pulled out a second phone and slid it across the table at Shona.

  Shona didn’t touch it.

  “Oh well, don’t worry about it,” he said.

  So Shona slid it back towards him.

  “No, no,” he said, “have it anyway,” and back it went towards her.

  She looked at him. Was he kidding? What was going on?

  “Have it,” he repeated.

  The second boy leered and said, “It doesn’t work.

  It’s like one of those toy phones they give babies.”

  “Sling it back, Shona,” said the first boy.

  Shona slid it back across the table and it caught the light as it flew.

  The boy picked it up and pressed a few keys, and in a second it was playing the trailer of a movie that had only come out last week. While it was still playing, he slid it back once more towards Shona and it went on playing Michael Fassbender dropping out of a plane with only half a parachute.

  At that precise moment, Lanyard Man walked into the room in a very straight line. Shona quickly pressed “pause” and sat as still as she could.

  “Give!” he said to her. “You know the rules. No mobiles turned on in school time.”

  “It’s not school time, sir,” said one of the boys on the other side of the class.

  “It is,” said Lanyard Man, “another D8 for you next Thursday.”

  He turned to Shona. “You can have this back at the end of the D8. I’ve heard about you from Miss—”

  Shona interrupted him. “It’s not mine,” she said. “It’s his,” she added, pointing at the first boy, who was smiling in a nearly nice sort of a way. Well, certainly not in the leery way the other boy did.

  “I gave it to her, though,” he said.

  “I don’t care one way or another,” said Lanyard Man, “you can sort it out between you at the end of the D8 … which” – he looked at his watch – “is starting … NOW!”

  Everyone apart from Shona seemed to know that this meant from this point on you said nothing. If you did, your D8 began again, or it was added on to a new one, next week.

  There were about ten students in the room. Sitting in silence.

  Lanyard Man wrote some things up on the white board:

  Do you know why you’re here?

  Why do you think you did it?

  What are you going to do about not doing the same thing again?

  Shona stared at the writing.

  Do I know why I’m here?

  No, she wrote down mentally on an imaginary piece of paper in front of her. I don’t know why Lanyard Man didn’t wait to hear why I didn’t have a lanyard. Or why it all went weird after that about the maths test. But does he mean that? Or does why am I here mean, why were we born? I don’t know why I was born. I don’t know why things have turned out the way they have.

  Why do I think I did it?

  I didn’t. I didn’t deliberately not have a lanyard and I wasn’t deliberately rude to Lanyard Man about whether I needed a lanyard to do a maths test. And I didn’t have anything to do with being born but— and then, in an awful flash, that old terrible, shaky thought came to her about Mum, and she stifled it and buried it and pushed it back down to where it came from.

  What am I going to do about not doing the same thing again?

  I don’t know. I don’t know if for some reason I might not have my lanyard again. I don’t know if I might say something in some kind of a way that someone will say is rude and I’ll be here again. Stuff happens to me. Like Mum. I don’t make stuff happen.

  Her mind drifted on and on; she felt herself floating from the classroom, sitting in grumpy Ron’s van… Why did he “owe it to Nan”, as he said? And then on to the new place, to Zeynep’s caff, to Nan – poor Nan – in the market, to that time at the seaside on the school trip when Shona ran so fast that she was the fastest in the whole school and it felt for a moment like she was so not ordinary, she was special … and way, way back to a beach and she was crying because she couldn’t find her bucket and there was Nan and Mum and another woman who brought her an ice cream… Who was that woman?

  Little Shona Walker

  Sitting in a saucer

  Ride Shona ride

  Wipe your weeping eyes …

  …and that was it. Lanyard Man said it was all over. He seemed in a hurry and stuffed the bits of paper and books he had been looking at into his bag. Sud
denly, he wasn’t a fierce, angry man, sticking to the rules; he was a small, very busy, very harassed man who still had the scab on his face from a shaving accident, who had to be somewhere right away, and was already late.

  He put the mobile down on Shona’s table and said to everyone, “I don’t like doing this thing any more than you do. If, next time, you think you’re going to do something pointless, useless, rude or unnecessary, spare us all the tedium of having to do a D8. Just think, in a few years’ time, you’re going to be like me, trying to make a living. Get it right, guys. Get it wrong now and you could end up like my brother.”

  Shona had no idea who Lanyard Man’s brother was, but it seemed as if all the older ones did, and they responded by either nodding or grunting in some kind of knowing way.

  At that, the man rushed out of the room, trying (but not succeeding) to smooth down a spiky bit of hair at the back of his head.

  The boy who had tried to give Shona the mobile didn’t pick it up. He was halfway out of the room when he turned to her and said, “If you want a phone line on it, so you don’t have to depend on Wi-Fi, I can do that for you,” he said. “I’ll be at Zeynep’s – you know, the Kettle Caff – tomorrow night. Around seven.”

  And he walked out.

  Shona was on her own in the room. She hadn’t streamed out with the rest. It was just her and the phone, glinting slightly under the lights.

  A phone! Internet, apps, YouTube, Snapchat… She almost ached with the longing to have it all for the first time in her life. Should she? Just pick it up. And, yes, she could just go down to Zeynep’s tomorrow and if he was there, he would sort it.

  No, she shouldn’t. She didn’t know the boy. What would Dad say? Who knows what Dad would say? He was sinking more and more into his armchair. And he doesn’t seem to know anything. No, the best person to ask was herself.

  Yes, I’ll ask myself: what do you say, Shona?

  Well, Shona, I say, pick it up, and see him at Zeynep’s tomorrow.

  Shona walked over to the phone, picked it up and walked out the room.

  Sorted.

  CLASS X10 READING COMPREHENSION

  “I beg your pardon, sir,” said Oliver at length: seeing that no other visitor made his appearance; “did you knock?”

  “I kicked,” replied the charity-boy.

  “Did you want a coffin, sir?” inquired Oliver, innocently.

  At this, the charity-boy looked monstrous fierce; and said that Oliver would want one before long, if he cut jokes with his superiors in that way.

  “Yer don’t know who I am, I suppose, Work’us?” said the charity-boy.

  “No, sir,” answered Oliver.

  “I’m Mister Noah Claypole,” said the charity-boy, “and you’re under me. Take down the shutters, yer idle young ruffian!” With this, Mr Claypole administered a kick to Oliver, and entered the shop with a dignified air, which did him great credit. It is difficult for a large-headed, small-eyed youth to look dignified under any circumstances; but it is more especially so, when added to these are a red nose and yellow breeches.

  Oliver, having taken down the shutters, and broken a pane of glass in his effort to stagger away beneath the weight of the first one to a small court at the side of the house in which they were kept during the day, was graciously assisted by Noah: who having consoled him with the assurance that “he’d catch it,” condescended to help him.

  Mr Sowerberry came down soon after. Shortly afterwards, Mrs Sowerberry appeared. Oliver having “caught it,” in fulfilment of Noah’s prediction, followed that young gentleman down the stairs to breakfast.

  “Come near the fire, Noah,” said Charlotte. “I saved a nice little bit of bacon for you from master’s breakfast. Oliver, shut that door at Mister Noah’s back, and take them bits that I’ve put out on the cover of the bread-pan. There’s your tea; take it away to that box, and drink it there, and make haste, for they’ll want you to mind the shop. D’ye hear?”

  “D’ye hear, Work’us?” said Noah Claypole.

  “Lor, Noah!” said Charlotte, “what a rum creature you are! Why don’t you let the boy alone?”

  “Let him alone!” said Noah. “Why, everybody lets him alone enough. Neither his father nor his mother will ever interfere with him. All his relations let him have his own way pretty well. Eh, Charlotte? He! he! he!”

  “Oh, you queer soul!” said Charlotte, bursting into a hearty laugh; after which they both looked scornfully at poor Oliver Twist, as he sat shivering on the box in the coldest corner of the room, and ate the stale pieces which had been specially reserved for him.

  Noah was a charity-boy, but not a workhouse orphan. No chance-child was he, for he could trace his genealogy all the way back to his parents, who lived hard by; his mother being a washerwoman, and his father a drunken soldier, discharged with a wooden leg, and a daily pension of twopence-halfpenny and an unstateable fraction. The shop boys in the neighbourhood had long been in the habit of calling Noah insulting names like “leathers”, “charity”, and the like in the public streets; and Noah had taken them without reply. But, now that fortune had cast in his way a nameless orphan, at whom even the meanest could point the finger of scorn, he took it out on him with interest. This shows us what a beautiful thing human nature may be made to be; and how impartially the same loveable qualities are developed in the finest lord and the dirtiest charity-boy.

  Chapter 7

  Shona was looking down at her mobile. Miss Cavani was in full flow. She turned it over. And back. And then over again. She was so looking forward to getting the connection.

  In fact, she was looking forward to it so much, she didn’t notice Miss Cavani creeping over to see what she was doing. Shona slowly became aware that just as Miss Cavani was saying: “…and the Victorians kept the idea of death very much to the forefront, much more than…” that her teacher was now right beside her, watching her turning the mobile over and over in her hand like it was a bit of treasure.

  And Miss Cavani did that thing where teachers merge what they’re saying about their subject with what’s going on in the room: “… us with our obsession with mobile phones, Snapchat, Facebook and the rest.”

  The class laughed. Miss Cavani stopped talking.

  Shona blushed and dropped the mobile into her bag. At least it hadn’t been switched on. She might just avoid getting a D8 then.

  “If your husband died, Shona, what would you wear?”

  It seemed such a bewildering thing to say. She didn’t have a husband! What sort of joke was this?

  Crayton had his hand up. Miss Cavani nodded.

  “Widow’s weeds, Miss.”

  “Excellent, yes. The black shawl, long black dress, the black veil they called ‘widow’s weeds’. What with people dying young – no modern medicines, remember, and wars – this meant that everywhere you went, you would see this reminder of death. Nowadays, walking down a street, say, you wouldn’t know if someone had lost their wife or husband.”

  Shona would never know why at that very moment something – what was it? A slight noise, the sound of a movement? – made her look round behind her.

  Rory was looking across to Sunil – it would be Rory, wouldn’t it, so often himself on the end of jeers and sneers – and with an exaggerated hand mime was pointing at Shona while at the same time doing a death line across his neck. The others in the class wondered, what did Rory mean? That he reckoned Shona was in serious trouble with Miss Cavani and was “dead”? Or was he picking up on Miss Cavani saying that Shona’s “husband” was dead?

  Shona was in no doubt what it meant. For her, it meant that Rory had discovered that Shona’s mum was dead and he was looking to get a laugh for pointing it out to the whole class. And the moment she saw it, that fearful, night-time terror got hold of her.

  She turned and rose out of her seat in one move and jumped at Rory. One hand reached his throat and the other his face. The one that reached his throat clutched and scratched at it, and the one that reached hi
s face started to hammer at the first part of Rory’s face it reached: the side of his nose.

  To say Rory wasn’t ready for it would be an understatement. He had no inkling, not one jot of a thought that such a thing was going to happen. So, for a full four seconds, Shona’s hands did the damage they were meant to do, by which time Miss Cavani from one side, Désol’é from the other, had grabbed Shona and pulled her away from Rory’s face and neck.

  The class could hear Rory making sobbing sounds while out of Shona’s mouth came a rasping, gasping sound.

  Once Miss Cavani had got everyone back in their seats, she had to decide very quickly whether to press on as if nothing had happened or to stop and have a “Cavani Talk”. In a split second, she decided that it would be the “nothing happened” routine. She knew – and she reckoned that Shona knew she knew – that there was stuff going on here that just couldn’t be talked about in the open.

  Everyone in the room, Shona especially, was waiting for those words: “D8” … or even “D2” … or even “exclusion”. But they didn’t come. For some reason, there was going to be a deviation from the usual, an unexpected route round the rock.

  Instead, Miss Cavani breathed in with all the professional skill of an actor, flicked over the pages of her copy of Oliver Twist and said, “Oliver Twist, because he looked so miserable, was promoted by the undertaker, Mr Sowerberry, to be a mourner at funerals.” She began to read:

  CLASS X10 READING COMPREHENSION

  … for many months Oliver continued meekly to submit to the domination and ill-treatment of Noah Claypole: who used him far worse than before, now that Noah’s jealousy was roused by seeing the new boy promoted to the black stick and hatband, while he, the old one, remained stationary in the muffin cap and leathers. Charlotte treated him ill, because Noah did; and Mrs Sowerberry was his decided enemy, because Mr Sowerberry was disposed to be his friend; so, between these three on one side, and a glut of funerals on the other, Oliver was not altogether as comfortable as a hungry pig shut up, by mistake, in the grain department of a brewery.