Alex and The Gruff (A Tale of Horror)

by C. Sean McGee

CHAPTER FOUR

  When they left the apartment, side by side, Alex felt so special. He felt older and included. But with this feeling also came nerves and he wanted to ask his brother so many things. Most of all, he just wanted to know what it felt like to be older so that he knew if what he was feeling was right or not.

  By the stairs, at the end of the hall, there was an old lady who was walking with a silver cane and her legs were wobbling like jelly and she was trying to get down the stairs. She lived three apartments down and nobody really liked her because she was a busy body and she was always asking a million questions and her never really approved of any of the answers that anyone gave but still, she kept on asking, more and more inconvenient questions.

  Everyone hated getting stuck by the stairs. No matter what time of day it was, the old lady would always be there and she’d always insist on asking a trillion questions the whole time while struggling her way up or wobbling her way down the stairs and it would take her a lifetime just to do it.

  And any time anyone would try to help her, she’d hit them with her cane and shout that she wasn’t an invalid and she wasn’t dead yet and she could do it by herself if she wanted to.

  And then, when they’d try to walk away, she’d huff and she’d puff and shed purposefully wobble as if she were teetered to fall and she’d say it was typical of young people these days, leaving an old woman alone to trip and fall to her death. And whoever they were, they’d return, with guilt as their premise, on account of her being feeble and old and because karma, well she was a bitch, and she kicked around in the shadowy tail of old crippled women.

  So they’d always come back.

  And she’d ask them more questions.

  She was mean and confused.

  “A lack of respect,” is what she’d say, “is all that was these kids knew. Not enough discipline,” she’d say, say whilst parading the leathered cusps on the back of her hands from the countless educating wraps she’d received across her knuckles as young girl that, had society not gone to the liberal whores, she would gladly extend to the hands of every child she met, like a teacher, picking at the coat of bad grammar, teaching insolent little children good manners and polite demeanor.

  This morning they stood there, Alex and his brother while the old lady looked both of them up and down and she stared at Alex’s fretted expression like she was staring at a scuff on somebody’s shoe.

  Her face looked skeletal. Her skin was like dry desert sand. It cracked along her arm, up her neck and eroded dried blotchy crevices all over her face. She was like a human salt plain and when she spoke, the dry dusty earth spurted from hallowed caves of her sunken chest.

  Her long skinny fingers were like the scratching twigs that rasped his window. She reached her hand out to run her finger through Alex’s hair. He stood still, like any animal would, when such imperious death was approaching.

  Her skin stank. It smelt like leather shoes that had been run in, day after day by the same sweaty bare feet. And she’d tried to mask it, with some horrid perfume but its musky resonance only sought to rouse and anneal the scent of death that permeated from her dried saliferous pores.

  Alex had his hands pinned to his side. He tried to creep deep inside his own skin and, like a cat cowering in a corner, to find the farthest region of his own fretful body where he could pile his soul until this monster had passed or had its way.

  The old woman licked her finger along the line of hair that curled around his ear. She picked a curl of his hair around her scabbing finger and slowly ran it in circles, collecting the curl into a tight wind as if she were turning a crackling pig skin over a slow burning flame.

  Alex looked from the corner of his eyes at his brother and he called out without moving lips and without straining eyes. He looked right into his brother’s passive and educated stare for him to raise his hand or to raise his voice, whatever it took to free him from this spider’s web.

  Alex could tell that his brother wanted to run as well. But he couldn’t. And if he could, Alex wondered if he would leave him behind.

  “And how is your mother?” she asked.

  When she spoke, it sounded like a kettle boiling. She whistled from between her teeth while her flicking tongue, it slithered past her sliding dentures, catching each time that she painted in salivation, the whole of her arid pallet, pushing her dentures around her mouth like a rickety chest in a marred and decrepit, dilapidated old shack.

  “Good,” said his brother.

  “And your father?”

  “Good.”

  “And your sisters.”

  “They’re good.”

  “Does your mother not work?”

  “No. Yes. No” his brother said, confused by the question.

  “But she lets you walk around by yourselves?”

  “I’m old enough. I’m twelve” said his brother.

  “Don’t be smart” shouted the old lady.

  “Excuse me?”

  It was their mother. She was leaving to get some milk from the cafeteria. She came over to where her sons were and put her hands on their shoulders.

  “I was just saying how delightful your boys are. All off to school by themselves. How brave you are.”

  “Well, I trust my boys.”

  “Well good on you. In my day, it was different. We wouldn’t walk out alone and we wouldn’t talk back to our elders” said the old lady, looking at Alex’s brother disapprovingly.

  “Is that true?” asked their mother. “Did you talk back?”

  His brother wanted to tell her that the old lady was a bag, an inconvenient and mean old bag who asked too many questions. So he turned away from the old lady and widened his eyes to his mother as if to say, ‘you know exactly what I’m not talking about’.

  “Apologize,” said their mother.

  Alex and his brother turned back to the old lady.

  “I’m sorry,” said Alex.

  “I’m sorry,” said his brother.

  The old lady looked at their mother.

  “I do apologize,” their mother said.

  “That’s fine. They are healthy lads, especially this one” the old lady said, leaning down to squeeze Alex’s cheeks.

  Alex grabbed his mother’s hand and squeezed tight and what his clenched hand was saying was, ‘mum, please help me, I’m scared. Make her go away, please’. But his mother did nothing, even though she hated the old lady and she herself wanted to pull her sons away.

  Something inside of her kept her still and stupid.

  And so the old lady grabbed at Alex’s cheeks and he turned his face away and when he did, she assumed that he must have obviously wanted to be grabbed somewhere else so she ran her hands through his hair and she pulled at his ears and she made cackling old lady sounds as she did and Alex squirmed, but he couldn’t break free because his mother, who had a grip on his hand, was the pillar unto which the spider cast her web.

  “You boys should be off or you’ll be late,” said their mother.

  “Oh I meant to ask you something,” said the old lady, capturing their mother. “It’s about your…”

  The two boys ran off down the stairs.

  They’d only been at this new school for a week or so but already Alex’s brother was popular. As they left the block of flats, other kids getting off the buses were waving to him and when they passed, they gave him high fives.

  When they were nearing the school, they passed a group of older kids in black clothes and they were sitting on the ground, lined up against the wall. And it would have been impossible for anybody inside the school to see them and what they were doing.

  And the people driving by on the street, and the people walking their kids to school too, they were usually running late and so busy being rushed and angry that they didn’t notice that the older kids in black were being busy, up to no good.

  His brother saw them; out of the corner of his eye and he didn’t look to his right. He did what his father always did, keeping his eye
s straight ahead and pretending not to notice the things that were obviously right there. But how could he not? They looked so cool.

  When they passed the group, Alex couldn’t help. He turned his head and smiled at one of the older kids who was rolling something in a piece of paper between his fingers. He didn’t know what it was, but he guessed it was probably something dangerous or something that only grown-ups did because he got the feeling that what they were doing was wrong.

  This happened to Alex a lot. He would get a feeling in his stomach and a feeling in his head too that something was wrong or not right, or different or something. It was really hard to explain because he didn’t have any words to describe it and he didn’t really know that the feeling he had was actually there, so not only did he not have the words to describe the feeling, he didn’t have the words to tell anyone that he actually had a feeling. It was just something he felt and did nothing about.

  The older kid licked the side of the thing in his hands and then he pressed it between his fingers and he looked at Alex who was looking back at him smiling, wanting to do whatever the hell it was that he was doing.

  The older kid put the thing behind his ear and he gave Alex a look and it wasn’t the kind of look that said ‘how you doin?’ and it wasn’t the kind of look that said ‘get lost’ either. It was a kind of a mix of the two.

  Alex could feel though that his brother was scared. It was funny how people could look like they didn’t care and they could speak like nothing really mattered, but you could tell, just from a feeling that you couldn’t explain, that they were worried or scared or angry or sad or even that they were about to yell at you about something, even when their mouths were closed.

  Alex got the feeling that his brother was scared and this kind of made him feel scared too, even though the older kids looked so cool. And he also got the feeling that he was gonna be in trouble, that his teacher or Horace or someone like that was going to be waiting at the gates and would tell his mother or whoever was with him.

  And he was right. As they reached the gate, Mother Superior, or as Alex knew her as, The Scary Witch, was there in her black dress and that weird hat that covered her whole head, but just let her grumpy face be seen.

  Across the way - down the road and other the other side of the street - there was a different kind of school with a different religion and all the ladies, they all wore these long dresses that covered their whole bodies and only their faces and sometimes only their eyes could be seen. They kind of looked like lady Batmans. People looked at them funny, though like they were lying or planning something or hiding something under their garments. But The Scary Witch; she looked just like them and no-one said bad things about her.

  And the other ladies, under their veils and dresses and hoods, their eyes looked really kind whereas The Scary Witch, hers always looked despised and despicable, like she was about to shout out some awful grievance and she never looked happy to see anyone, not even her own miserable reflection.

  Yet every morning, there she was, with her whipping cane tied to her hip, her dangling beads curling in her strangling hands and her virtuous and chastising eyes, making a Judas of every child who feigned reservation as they slipped past her sight.

  “Good morning children,” said The Scary Witch. “James,” she said, nodding at Alex’s brother and pointing at his pants. “Your shirt. Disgraceful.”

  His brother looked down and his shirt was sticking out from his pants at the front. As he went to tuck it back in, The Scary Witch did it for him. She pulled his hand away and made that tisking sound that grown-ups always did when they were disappointed and she glared her angry and scary eyes at his, drawing her left hand around his belt while her right hand shoved and tucked and pressed the ends of his shirt down neatly and tightly into his pants.

  “I’m sorry Mother Superior,” his brother said.

  He didn’t look away, she didn’t let him. It was the kind of look that fathers gave you while they were smacking your bum. That look alone could hold you down and it wouldn’t let you run and it wouldn’t let you cry and it wouldn’t let you dissent your voice or kick your legs about in protest.

  “And you,” she said pointing at Alex. “Do you know what happens to children who don’t do what they’re told?”

  Alex was scared stiff.

  He didn’t know.

  The Scary Witch pushed her pointing finger into his chest and she prodded him over and over and Alex trembled. His bottom lip shuddered and if this was a silent movie it might have looked as if he were saying something, telling her just what happened to disobedient children.

  But he wasn’t.

  “The devil has a place for children like you; children who don’t do as grown-ups tell them. You’re a rude boy and god will make an example of you. Do you know what the devil does to little boys?”

  No, he didn’t.

  He had no idea.

  “The devil has his way with little boys. Little disobedient boys and god will see it, that the devil will have his way with you. Now if I catch you or if I hear about you escaping or plotting anything inside of my school, I will give you to the devil myself. Now get to class.”

  Alex was too scared to move, but his brother put his arm around his shoulder and brought him past Horace who was looking at Alex as if he were thinking about squashing him or eating him for lunch.

  “She’s a bitch. Don’t worry” his brother said.

  Alex couldn’t believe that he swore.

  They entered the school and Alex said goodbye but his brother didn’t hear and so he said nothing back, he just shouted out to his friends who were up the stairs fooling around near their classroom.

  Alex stood by the door to his class watching his brother running up the stairs and giving his friends special handshakes. He watched each time his brother did it and he tried to copy with his own hands. The other kids walking past thought he looked silly and looked at him strangely, but Alex didn’t notice, he was too focused on his brother and the things that he did.

  Alex wasn’t allowed up the stairs. Only the kids from years five to seven and the teachers were allowed up there. That alone made him want to be there, more than anything else.

  “Good morning Alex.”

  Alex shivered.

  Her words were like the wings of death, flapping as a bird of prey stood silent and staunch, behind and above an unwitting mouse. He could feel her talons cutting through the thin air as she reached to pluck at his nervous shoulder.

  “Come on in. Class is about to start.”

  He turned and The Teacher was there and she was already leaning down to kiss him on the cheek and he got that feeling again, the one that rolled around in his stomach and made him run out the door yesterday and the one that made him punch that boy the other day and the one he felt but he had no words to say what it was or even, that it was there in the first place.

  Alex moved his head and The Teacher brushed her lips against his ear lobe. He knew it was wrong that he didn’t let her kiss him, but he didn’t like it.

  His mum kissed him every night before he went to sleep. He asked her to. Sometime she would forget and he would shout out to her and she would come running and kiss him on the forehead and then he would snuggle up under his blanket and fall asleep. Sometimes his aunty would kiss him and it would feel weird and yucky and he would always squirm and wriggle.

  But this was different.

  This felt wrong.

  Alex made his way to his seat at the back of the class and he watched sullenly while all the kids lined up one by one and hugged and kissed The Teacher and then The Teacher kissed all of them on the cheek and they all went to their desks and they all looked at Alex funny, like his clothes were on wrong or something or like he was laughing, when like everyone else, he should have been crying.

  Alex didn’t like it.

  He didn’t mind feeling stupid, it was easy to come back from that. But he didn’t like feeling different or strange. He didn’t want
to feel different, but he didn’t want to be like them either. He wanted to be older, so they’d look at him the same way that he looked at his brother.

  He sat in his chair in the back of the room and he watched all the kids running in and smiling like they were all friends and all of them, they all gave Alex a special kind of look as if he weren’t their friend and would never be.

  The girl beside him was called Alison. He knew that because everything on her desk had a sticker with her name on it, from her pencil case to each pen and pencil. She even had a sticker on her chest with her name written on the wings of a purple and green butterfly.

  Alison was strange, maybe stranger than Alex. None of the other kids played with her and they sometimes chewed up small bits of paper and flicked it at her and it’d get caught in her hair and she’d never tell The Teacher and she wouldn’t try to pull them out either. Once she came to school for an entire week with the same small bit of chewed paper stuck in her pony tail.

  Alex liked her, mainly because she was strange. He used to look at her all the time, the same way he’d stop and look at a dead pigeon by the side of the road or a hamster, running tirelessly in its wheel. He didn’t really care if anyone could see him or not or what they even thought, he’d just watch her and he’d get this shiver running up and down his spine and he just couldn’t look away.

  On his first day, he thought Alison was just like a normal girl and like any boy; he was more interested in what the other boys in class were doing and saying. Girl stuff wasn’t the least bit fun. It wasn’t until that afternoon that she did something really weird and then he noticed that everything she did was weird and then he couldn’t look at anything else.

  They had been drawing pictures of mountains, with themselves on top. Alex hated art. He was no good and there was always one kid who drew cool looking cars and people that didn’t look like weather balloons. He would see their pictures and he would want to draw just like them and it made him feel angry and stupid that he couldn’t.

  The mountain was easy. It’s just a squiggle. You could make a mistake on a piece of paper and you could call it a mountain and then just say you drew it on purpose. That part was easy. But drawing a person, Alex hated trying to draw people. He knew what they looked like when he saw them, but he just couldn’t draw one for the life of him.

  Their hands were always too big and they had too many fingers and one leg would always look bigger than the other and their heads just looked stupid. Sometimes he would get angry when he was drawing because he knew other kids would say it was stupid or The Teacher would look at him funny, that smile that grown-ups gave when it was the least condescending thing thy could do without making the child cry. And so he would just mess it up on purpose so it would look insane and crazy and not talentless and stupid.

  This one day, Alex was drawing a square head on the man’s body that was falling off the mountain and then Alison sneezed. She hadn’t really said or done anything weird up until that point so Alex wasn’t really waiting for it when it happened, not like he did now.

  He was drawing, though, the speed lines beside the square headed man’s body as he raced to the ground when he heard an icky sniffling and then what sounded like Alison crying and when she cried, the icky sniffling sounded like a tiny plastic bag being blown with wet air and he looked beside him and he saw her with her eyes red and watery and she was holding back a terrific cry and she had her hands cupped over her mouth and he thought that she might have hit her teeth or her nose because that’s what it looked like.

  He didn’t say anything to her. He just kind of watched her as if it was a show or something. She took her hand slowly away and it was horrible. When she sneezed, all sorts of stuff had shot out of her nose and she was lucky her hands were there because they caught everything. Otherwise, it might have flown across the room.

  That would have been funny.

  Alex stared at Alison as she stared at her hands and it looked like she had no idea what to do. She just cried quietly, looking at the mess in her palms which was still stuck to her nose and Alex just watched her, as if she were stuck to his.

  “Ok angels. I want you to think about your favorite thing in the whole world. The bestest thing in the world that you love to do. Maybe it’s playing with your dolls, brushing her hair, maybe it’s playing on your skateboard and doing cool tricks, maybe it’s walking your dogs or hanging out with your friends. It could be anything. Whatever you want it to be. Then when you’re done, I’ll call your name, one by one and you can bring your drawings to the front and show everyone and explain the picture and why it’s the bestest thing in the whole wide world. Ok?” said The Teacher.

  The children all nodded.

  “And who wants to come up the front?” she asked.

  The children all threw their hands into the air and they tried to restrain themselves, but it was impossible. The boys stretched their right hands as far as they could; up into the heavens and they gripped under their armpits with their left hands; so desperately and the girls, their hands exploded upwards with as much zest but theirs was with more restraint and tact and poise and each girl tried to look primmer and more proper. And they were probably about to burst out of their skin in wanton excitement, it’s just they didn’t show it, not like the boys.

  The Teacher selected two girls and two boys and they both jumped from their seats, but they were careful not to knock them over. They were allowed to be excited, The Teacher adored the idea of childish rapture, but they weren’t allowed to show it, at least that’s what it looked like.

  The girls each took a large wooden brush and attended to The Teacher’s long blonde hair, using their left hands to lift long strands and then run the brush over lightly, letting them fall gently through the air like the florets of a dandelion, until they touched her shoulders and then they would lift and brush them again.

  And they brushed from the top of her head down to the finely cut ends that sat just below her hips. Her hair was so long and shiny and for the girls, it was like having a life size doll that they could make more beautiful than it already was and they would have these snooty expressions as they went from looking at her hair to looking out over the class at all the other girls who wished that it was they at the celebration of her fancy.

  The two boys stood on either side of The Teacher, but they didn’t brush her hair because that was a girly thing to do and they would look silly doing something like that. Instead, they massaged her legs and The Teacher sat with them both slightly open so that the boys could rub the inside and the outside of her thighs from her knees to all the way up her skirt.

  The Teacher would read one of those magazines that mums always read, the gossip ones with all the famous people being caught doing provocative things. She looked like all those ladies who sat in beauty salons as she caught up on the latest gossip while lesser privileged people prettied their nails and made up their hair and massaged their feet, only this time, the privilege was in being a chosen girl to brush her hair or a boy, to massage up and down her legs.

  Alex didn’t know why, but when he saw the boys rubbing her legs, he felt sick. He felt like he had this elastic band around his stomach and it was wound really tight and it was connected to something really far away, something outside of the class, outside of the school, somewhere far and different. And it felt like the elastic was about to snap if he didn’t get up and run.

  He felt scared.

  He felt wrong.

  The other kids were ok with everything. It must have been him that was broken. This was just like all those times he watched his aunty and his uncles and grandparents and all his mother’s friends; all of them, pinching and poking at his sisters, pulling on their hair and putting their hands on their shoulders and seeing his sisters standing still with an uncomfortable and well-mannered smile on their faces and neither of them being able to run away.

  And he felt the same, knowing that just like all of those times, he was watching the kids do all of tho
se things and it scared him and he knew that unless he ran away, he was probably next.

  Then Alison started her show and tell.

  She was so weird.

  It was awesome.

  Alison wasn’t very good at drawing either. She wasn’t really good at anything, not anything that they did in school anyway. Maybe she was good at things he didn’t know about, stuff they didn’t teach in school. But in class, though, she always did something else and one of those things was to practice her show and tell.

  You see, every Friday, the kids would bring in something from home and stand in front of the class and talk about it for one or two minutes. It could be a ball or a picture of a holiday that they went on. Once, one of the boys organized so his father brought in his new puppy, an Alaskan malamute, and they passed it round the class for everyone to pat while he stood at the front and talked about the time the puppy pooped on his sister’s pillow and it ate one of his mother’s cigarettes. The Teacher had to explain to all the kids after that what a cigarette was because most of the kids didn’t know.

  Alex did, though.

  It was what the cool older kids kept behind their ears.

  That day, the class thought up a name for the puppy. One of the girls wanted to call it Rose and a bunch of boys said it should be called Tyrannosaurus or Gun or Awesome; one of those. The class ended up deciding on the name Phillip. The boy’s dad said it sounded good and everyone agreed. Alex thought that maybe it was already called Phillip, before they brought the puppy into the class.

  All of the kids loved show-and-tell and everyone got a chance to bring something in and to talk about it. Alex never did because he had just moved and he didn’t really have much stuff. He had the clothes he moved with, but he had to give all of his toys away to his old neighbors and his mum threw most of his football magazines into the trash.

  He didn’t really like sport, but he still had loads of magazines. He collected them mainly because his father liked sport so much and his brother liked it too, mainly though because his father liked it.

  Boys were like that.

  Alison was different to the other kids. Like I said, she was weird. But not weird like stupid weird. She was interesting weird. When all the other kids were trying to act cool and interesting, she was just trying to act like them, when they were normal. That made her weirder. And when all the kids took their turn standing in front of the class and showing off their newest skipping rope or computer game when it came to picking from all the raised hands, Alison’s was never there to be chosen.

  For whatever reason, she never put her hand up.

  She would, though when the rest of the class was drawing and when the girls were combing The Teacher’s hair and when the boys were running their hands between her legs, practice quietly to herself, show and tell.

  She would take out quietly from a drawer below her desk, an envelope that maybe she had received weeks or months before. It was an envelope for a Dollarmite Account. It was a type of bank account for children to help them save their pocket money and it had these little cute monsters called Dollarmites that were always really hungry and they loved to be fed dollars and cents and when you gave them lots of money, like two or three dollars, they would have babies and there would be more Dollarmites and you had to feed them as well, like lice.

  Everyone had one of these accounts, even Alex. It wasn’t really that special. Every month he would be given a dollar or two by his father and he would take it to school - his old school - and they would put it in a Dollarmite envelope and give it to the bank person and she would feed the Dollarmites with it. Alex had maybe seven dollars in his Dollarmite account.

  Every month, though, he would receive an envelope in the post with a statement that usually mum helped him to read with all the money in his account and the number of Dollarmites he had and their different names. Everyone got the same letter so it wasn’t really that special.

  When he first opened his account, though, he received a really big envelope with a big sticker with his name on it. On the sticker, there was a big Dollarmite and for boys it was blue and for girls it was pink.

  Alison kept her envelope in the drawer under her table. And when everyone was drawing, she would take it out and practice doing her show and tell.

  Alex watched her now, pretending to be looking at his blank page but looking through the corners of his eyes and looking more with his ears to the sound of Alison speaking about her special letter.

  She never spoke in class; not to other kids and not to The Teacher. When they did roll call, she would quietly raise her hand but she would say nothing. So Alex had no idea what her voice was like but he knew, like the back of his hand, the sound of her whisper. And it sent a shiver up and down his spine as he listened to her.

  “Good morning” she whispered. “This is my Dollarmite. She is blue and her name is Alison, like me.”

  Alison held up the large sticker. Her Dollarmite was blue, like his, not like any other girls. Alison smiled as she presented the Dollarmite around the class, slowly turning her body to the left and the right so, if she were standing in front of the class like she imagined, everyone could see.

  When Alison whispered, it sounded like someone calling a kitten and as Alex sat there, paralyzed in an elated shiver, his conscious mind was purring like a cat while he pretended not to notice and pretended not to care.

  Alison put the sticker down and then opened the envelope carefully. There wasn’t a single tear anywhere. It looked so neat. She put the sticker on the table facing up and then took out a letter with her name on it. She held the letter in front of her and she whispered some more.

  “This is the letter they sent me” she whispered, like a light breeze, speaking to the afternoon sun. “It has my name on the top as well” she whispered, before pointing to the large bold print writing of her name and then slowly turning her hands to the left and to the right as if, in her imagination, she were showing it to everyone in the class.

  Alison slowly went through the contents of the entire envelope and whispered something about each piece and then each piece had her name on it and she held each piece proudly and pointed out her name as she moved it to the left and to the right so that, in her imagination, all the kids would be able to see.

  Alex wondered what all the children looked like, in her imagination. Would they be shivering as she spoke like he did now? Would they have wide smiles and glistening eyes? Would wonder and surprise keep their mouths open, like it did on their birthdays? Would the girls look at her with flattery or would they mock her with jealousy? Or would it be a mix of the two? And would the boys, for the first time, be interested in what a girl had to say? Would The Teacher gleam and would she write a note to her mother and tell her how amazed she was and how her daughter was so smart and so popular? And would they all cheer and stamp their feet and grin manically as she put her envelope away and said “thank you”?

  And would she blush?

  Or would she be cool?

  Or would she imagine that there were no children in the class, that every seat was empty? Maybe they had gone out to lunch or maybe they had gone home. Maybe something had happened and none of them could come to class. Maybe it was after school. Maybe it was a holiday. Would she imagine everyone gone, that they had all died in an accident? Or would the class be full? And would all the children look like her? And would they all have badges? And would they all be called Alison? And would she shout in a clear voice or would she whisper?

  Alex hoped she would whisper.

  “Ok, pencils down.”

  The children all dropped their pencils.

  Alex didn’t have a pencil in his hands, but he quickly picked one up and then dropped it, as if he had been stopped whilst working hard. Alison stopped whispering. She looked like she had been broken from a spell. She quickly slid the stickers and the pages with her name on it back into the envelope and she put the envelope back into the small white drawer under her desk.

  A
lex wanted to applaud.

  At the front of the class, the girls were still brushing The Teacher’s hair and the two boys were still rubbing her thighs. Alex didn’t want to, but she made everyone look to the front.

  “Ok, who’s first?”

  The Teacher called out different kids and they all got up one by one and they held out their picture in front of the class and they explained what they drew and why it was special to them and after they showed it to the class, they turned to The Teacher who was sitting on a chair in front of the black board and she smiled and she gave each child a kiss on the cheek and then they went back to their seats.

  “Alex,” she said.

  He couldn’t hear. He was looking out through the door and he could see older children walking past. He wished he was in the corridor. His stomach was shouting at him and it was making him feel sick. It felt like it was telling him to run, but that was stupid. He wasn’t allowed to run. That would be rude and undisciplined. And children who did things like that probably went to hell. That’s what he heard in his mind anyway; the sound of his mother saying “no” then the sound of his father saying ‘no” then the sound of Mother Superior tisking and saying “no’ and then the sound of his teacher saying “do you want to talk about it?’

  “Alex,” she said. “You’re next. Come up and show the class you’re beautiful art.”

  He looked at his page. It was completely blank. But there was nothing he could do. The door was closed. He wouldn’t be able to run, not like he did yesterday. Maybe he could, but The Teacher would catch him before he turned the handle. And if she didn’t, then the other kids would.

  He panicked. His heart was beating so fast again. He looked at Alison and she was staring at her own blank page. But she was lucky. The Teacher never asked her to stand in front of the class for anything.

  “Alex? Are you ok?”

  What could he do?

  He took the blank paper and walked with his head low, along the back of the room and then up the side of the class and all the kids looked up at him as he passed them and they were all curious about what was on his paper. The other drawings were all so cool and they were expecting the same thing from him.

  The Teacher was smiling.

  Alex tried not to look. He felt so nervous. He passed the door and he could feel the handle calling out to him. He could just run. He was so close now. Nobody would catch him.

  “Show your drawing to the class and explain what it means to you.”

  Alex held his breath and then held up the paper in front of his eyes.

  It was blank.

  The kids looked cheated.

  “This is what snow looks like,” he said. “I like snow.”

  He turned the picture to the left and to the right so all of the kids could see and they all wanted to look and they all looked so confused and before they could start mocking him and pointing and laughing, The Teacher cleared her throat and shushed them.

  “Can I see?” she asked.

  Her voice was like snow.

  It was soft.

  It was cold.

  Alex turned to The Teacher. He looked at her quickly and turned away. She frightened him. The other kids saw her as this gentle princess who floated about the room and was kind and sang to them and told them stories. Alex though could see nothing but her left eye. It twitched uncontrollably like a broken light. Her other eye was normal. It looked like anyone else’s eye but her left eye, it scared him.

  All Alex wanted to do was run.

  He didn’t know why.

  It made him feel like he was doing something wrong.

  He felt naughty.

  “This is wonderful Alex. You have an incredible imagination. I can’t wait to tell your mother. She’ll be so proud of you.”

  Normally the children would lean in to collect their paper and receive their kiss on the cheek. Alex stepped back and took the paper from her hands. She was still smiling at him and she wasn’t upset that he didn’t let her kiss his cheek or maybe she was, but she didn’t show it. She just smiled as he walked uncomfortably back to his table at the back of the class.

  An alarm bell rang.

  “Ok kids, it’s time for music class. Everyone get your lyric books and lineup by the door.”

  The children all joked with one another as they set aside their pictures and then scoured through their drawer for their lyric books. Most of the kids’ drawers were pretty messy, the boys’ anyway. They all found their books quickly and then they pushed their drawers in and then pushed their chairs in behind their tables and then they lined up neatly in a single file at the front of the class, in front of the door.

  The Teacher stood by the door and she kissed every child on the cheek as they walked out of the room. Alex was somewhere near the back. His heart was pounding. He couldn’t find his lyric book. He didn’t want a kiss.

  What could he do?