10
10
N ORMALLY, THE CLASS AFTER lunch is a nice, sedentary way to end the day. The classroom is softly lit, and the lesson is about religion – a subject that doesn’t demand too much of you.
In this class, you learn about the belief systems of Planet Earth. You learn that some say there was one god who created Planet Earth. You learn that some say there were many gods who created Planet Earth. You learn that some say everyone is born bad. You learn that some say you will be born over and over again. You learn so many things. Like a power shower, you let it wash over you.
‘Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination,’ the chaplain is saying. ‘Does anyone know what that means? Anyone at all?’
A deathly silence permeates the room. You don’t know what it means. You know that lying – as in saying false things – is a sin, but you don’t know what the word ‘abomination’ means. You might have heard it before, but you don’t know. i
‘Bobby, thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination. What does this passage mean, do you think? What’s an abomination? Do you know?’
The silence continues. The teacher has evidently not registered that Bobby is not here. He gestures at the table Bobby usually sits at.
‘Bobby? Pipe up, son. Can’t hear you.’
‘I don’t think he’s here, my lord,’ a girl at your table says.
The teacher regards the girl weirdly. ‘My lord?’ he repeats, concernedly. ‘There’s no need to refer to me as “my lord”.’
Titters ripple throughout the room.
‘Where is he?’ the chaplain asks. ‘Gone to the toilet?’
The girl doesn’t say anything. She shrugs, having evidently reached the end of her where-is-Bobby-based knowledge.
‘Well, he must be having a poo because he’s taking quite a while, isn’t he?’
Titters re-ripple, louder this time. The children like this man and his use of the word ‘poo’. You do too. You don’t laugh, though. You are looking at your Bible. It has really thin pages and the text is really small. Usually, Bobby is the only one who understands it. If he were here, he would definitely know how to respond to the chaplain’s question. You don’t. Instead, you practise your signature over Leviticus 18:22.
‘Do you know where Bobby is?’ the chaplain asks you.
You emerge from your reverie. ‘I haven’t seen him since he threw my food everywhere at lunch.’
The chaplain raises his eyebrows. ‘Say again?’
‘I haven’t seen him since he threw my food everywhere at lunch,’ you say again.
‘I didn’t mean literally…’ the chaplain says. ‘Well, I guess that explains why some of you look so questionable today.’
There is a general murmur of agreement. The class does indeed look rather lunch-stricken. More than one student has a significant amount of tomato sauce on their shirt.
‘I suppose I’ll have to inform the powers that be…’
‘God?’ a boy asks.
The chaplain shakes his head. ‘Not on this occasion,’ he says seriously. ‘On this occasion, it’s just Sue.’
Twenty minutes later, you and the rest of the student population are outside sitting down on the ground, waiting for the emergency assembly to commence.
The playground is concrete and gravelled and not designed to be sat on sans chair. That said, it is common practice for this school’s whole-school assemblies to be outside. In the dining hall – one of the two places that are big enough for everyone to sit down – there are mice and a variety of disgruntled dinner ladies mopping floors and wiping tables. In the sports hall – the other place that is big enough – the scaffolding propping up the ceiling gets in the way.
In any case, your schoolmates sit lined up in rows. They talk quietly among themselves. They are not raucous. They know better than to misbehave when an emergency assembly has been called.
You scan the crowd. Bobby is nowhere to be seen.
Eventually, the head teacher stands in front of the school and puts her hand up and says, ‘Thank you, thank you.’ The school silences itself.
The head teacher then speaks slowly and clearly. ‘Now, I’m going to ask you something very important,’ she says. ‘And I want you lot to take what I am saying very seriously. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, miss,’ the school choruses.
‘Does anyone know where Bobby is?’
Some individual children respond with individual responses of ‘No, miss.’ Others ask their neighbours if they know where Bobby is.
The head teacher raises her hand again. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ she says again.
Despite her ‘Thank you, thank you’, the hubbub continues. If anything, the children are louder than before.
‘Excuse me!’ she shouts. ‘Pipe down!’
The school re-quietens itself. The head teacher lingers in the silence, then says, ‘If you know where Bobby is, put your hand up.’
There is a long pause during which no one puts their hand up or even seems to breathe very much. In the distance, a wood pigeon coos.
The head teacher continues, ‘If you don’t know where Bobby is, put your hand up.’
All the pupils put their hands up.
Another teacher chips in. ‘And if you don’t know who Bobby is, put your hand up.’
No one puts their hands up, though you suspect that some people should.
The head teacher then says something to another teacher who says something to another teacher. They all appear to agree about something or other. There is a great deal of nodding.
She then points at you. ‘Come to my office.’
Your stomach sinks. At first, you don’t move. Then the kid next to you shoves you in the ribs.
‘They mean you,’ he says. ‘Move it.’
You hesitate. Then, shaking, you get up. The whole school watches as you go.
‘I DON’T KNOW IF he’s my friend,’ you say.
‘He stood up for you at lunch.’
‘He was sitting down.’
‘Don’t be deliberately obtuse.’
‘I don’t know what that means.’
The head teacher sighs. ‘He stood up for you. That’s what friends do for each other. I am pretty sure he’s your friend.’
You open your mouth to speak. ‘But—’
‘Ah, ah, ah!’ She raises her hand. ‘Enough.’
You frown. You didn’t know that sticking up for another person was a sign of friendship. You thought it was something that people did in films. But now you are reconsidering the past few weeks, you have to admit Bobby might be something like your friend. He has been nice to you in general, letting you copy his homework, sharing his Coca-Cola, even bringing you sweets from home one day. These are always what he calls old-man sweets. Werther’s Originals. Parma Violets. Rhubarb and custard. Mint humbugs.
You sink back into your chair. You have been in this place once before. The room, not the chair. It’s the head teacher’s office, but it’s more of a cupboard than an office. The head teacher is sitting behind her desk as she looks at you sternly. Her perfume smells sickly, like what you would imagine the colour pink would smell like.
‘Do you know what I am going to ask you?’
You shake your head.
‘I am going to ask you if you know where Bobby is.’
You wonder if this is her way of literally asking you where Bobby is or if she is simply informing you that she will imminently ask where Bobby is.
‘Well?’ she says.
You shake your head again. You don’t know where Bobby is, though now that you are in this office you can rule this office out.
‘Has the cat got your tongue?’
You think of cats (how stretchy they are), their tongues (how rough they are), and their tails (how mysterious they are). After many seconds spent trying to decipher the expression ‘cat got your tongue’, you accept that you have come up short. ii
‘Cat?’ you ask.
The head teacher leans in. ‘Are you going to speak? Are you going to tell me what you know? With words? By speaking to me using your words?’
You say nothing.
‘What do you say?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes, what?’
‘I am going to speak to you using words.’
‘What are you going to speak to me about using words?’
‘About Bobby.’
‘So, you have seen Bobby?’
‘Yes.’
‘You have?’
‘No.’
You can feel some of your noises brewing within you. This conversation is frustrating. The head teacher – it’s like she’s trying to not understand. Like she’s being deliberately obtuse.
‘I don’t know where he is,’ you say.
The head teacher drums her fingernails on her desk. ‘I think you know where Bobby is. I think you’re just not telling me. This is serious. Do you realise that?’
You sigh. You can tell that this conversation – as serious as it apparently is – is a lost cause. You open your mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. The head teacher continues to look at you. In your opinion, the expression on her face is unfriendly. You have survived unfriendlier stares before. But still, the unfriendliness bothers you.
‘I’m going to leave you here,’ she says. ‘I’ll come back later.’
‘When?’
‘Soon.’
‘OK,’ you say, though you don’t like the idea of staying in this room for an unknown length of time. You are a little bit thirsty and this room is a little bit warm. Also, you don’t know what you are allowed to do here, how you are supposed to pass the time. Being alone with your thoughts doesn’t tickle your fancy. You would prefer almost anything else. Also, what does ‘later’ mean? iii
The head teacher stands up to leave. You wonder if you can follow her. You do some rocking. You do some noises, then some breathing. Then the head teacher mutters something under her breath. The something sounds like ‘Jesus Christ, not again’. Then the deputy bursts in.
‘I found him!’ the deputy says. ‘In the sports hall. Up the scaffolding.’
The head teacher blinks at her colleague for a few seconds. Then her eyes flicker in your direction. ‘Might I suggest you check your enthusiasm, seeing that we’ve got a guest.’
The deputy clearly wasn’t expecting you to be here. Upon registering your presence, he takes a moment to collect his thoughts.
‘Oh,’ he says.
You relax. It seems that Bobby has been located and that you will no longer be locked in this suffocating cupboard. Perhaps it will be time for you to go back to your religion class. Or maybe it’s even home time. You don’t know. You’ve lost all sense of time. In any case, you find yourself wanting to do a little twirl. There is a lightness in your insides. Something like relief. Something like happiness.
‘Well, we’ve located the missing boy.’
‘OK.’
‘We just need to get him down now.’
‘OK.’
‘He seems a bit reluctant to come down of his own accord.’
‘Is that so?’
‘What are you smiling at?’ the deputy says.
You try to stifle your smile but find that you cannot. In fact, the more you try to suppress it, the more you feel it morph into a laugh. You shake your head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, I think I know who’s going to get him back down,’ the deputy says.
The head teacher raises her eyebrows. ‘Should be worth a shot. Either that or the—’
‘Fire service.’
‘Yes.’
The deputy then points at you. ‘All right. Follow me.’
IT TURNS OUT THE deputy is correct. Bobby is hiding in the sports hall, up the scaffolding. As far as hiding spots go, it’s surprisingly good. After all, in a game of hide-and-seek, what normal person would think to look up?
‘It’s up to you now.’
‘What?’ you say. You are confused. As far as you are concerned, something being up to someone usually means that it is their choice whether they want to do whatever it is that is being proposed. However, there doesn’t seem much room for choice here.
‘Go get him down.’
‘How?’
The deputy doesn’t answer this directly. Instead, he says, ‘Did you know that in Victorian times, they got little children to climb up chimneys to sweep them?’
‘Yes,’ you say, not seeing how this comment is relevant to the situation at hand.
‘OK, then. He’s your friend. Go up there. Coax him down.’
‘How?’
‘Speak to him. Talk him down. Use your powers of persuasion. Persuade him to see sense. Coax him back to safety. You can do it. I believe in you.’
You look at the rusty scaffolding. As the scaffolding is not a purpose-built climbing frame, there are significant gaps between the handholds and the footholds. And these really are only potential hand and footholds. The structure is really just a part-smooth, part-rusting monstrosity. It looks like it has been there for decades, holding up the crumbling ceiling, the creaking walls. You wonder how Bobby got so high.
You clear your throat. ‘Bobby, can you come down?’ you ask. Your voice is quiet, but you know it manages to travel. There is a short silence, then Bobby’s tiny brown eyes look down at you, holding your gaze for what feels like a very long time. He gives you a little wink.
You continue: ‘We will be really nice to you when you come down. We will do a nice thing together. Or separately. Whatever you want.’
‘This isn’t working,’ the deputy says. ‘Go up there and get him down.’
‘But how will that help?’
‘We have these mats everywhere, you see? They’re there so that, if you guys fall, it won’t hurt.’
You frown.
‘Grab him and bring him down.’ The deputy raises his eyebrows in a way that is clearly supposed to communicate something to you but doesn’t.
‘I’m not good at sport,’ you say. ‘If I climb up, I will probably fall and then die.’
‘No, you won’t,’ he says. ‘You won’t fall. We’re here, anyway. And the mats are here.’
You open your mouth to speak but then think better of it. You guess you might as well give it a go. You take your school shoes off, because you want to use the grippyness of your bare feet. After this, you do some stretching. Then you look up again, really crane your neck. The structure towers above you. Bobby is all the way up there. You can make out his dark curls. You grip two metal bars and hoick yourself up – one metre, two metres, higher, higher, higher, high. The rust is rough on your bare feet. The metal structure is cold. It’s lucky you are a little tall for your age – if you were of average height, you wouldn’t be able to reach the bars so easily.
Halfway up, you make the mistake of looking back down. The structure had looked tall to you previously – but not this tall. The teachers in the doorway below you look tiny like ants. You take a deep breath. The deep breath in question doesn’t feel like it’s deep enough. You try another one. Same problem. You are scared. Except for your brief experiences in planes, you have never been up so high.
You try to steady your shaking hand, decide to throw Bobby a loud whisper. He is now just a couple of metres upwards and sidewards from you.
‘Bobby, why are you up here?’ you say in a loud whisper.
Bobby doesn’t look at you but you see that he has something wrong with his face. It is redder than normal and his eyes are puffy. As I imagine it, he doesn’t know how to answer your question, how to say he did a stupid thing followed by an even stupider thing. He also doesn’t know how to tell you he is feeling really bad – like he wants to sit at the top of this decaying school forever and a day, till he turns into a statue, till he expires in a puff of rust.
‘Why are you up here?’ he asks, deflecting the question back at you.
‘To talk you down.’
Bobby frowns. ‘I’m not a suicide.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You don’t know?’
You shake your head.
‘Oh.’
There is a pause. Below you, the teachers are talking about something or other. You can’t make out what the conversation is about – their voices are getting tangled in the cavernous acoustics. The reverberations are unpleasant, fill your head.
‘I wouldn’t stand there. It’s wobbly,’ he says.
‘Where?’
‘There.’
‘Oof,’ you say, regaining your footing. ‘Thanks. We should get down. If I start climbing down, will you follow me?’
Bobby nods.
‘Yeah?’ you say.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Need a wee anyway.’
‘OK,’ you say, grinning.
On the way back down, you tread on the wobbly slat again, which causes you to slip. When Bobby sees you slip, he instinctively outstretches both hands to grab you – something that causes him to also slip. If you were nimbler or daintier, you could have recovered from this mistake, and the teaching staff wouldn’t have watched as you and Bobby fell many metres onto the floor.
But here you are. The teachers are gathered around – all of them saying words to the effect of what were you thinking, what were you doing, that was way too fast. As you suspected, blue mats that were designed to cushion your fall do no such thing. You reel on the floor, the whole room spinning and spinning spin spin. Beside you, Bobby is lying strangely quiet. Moments later, he pipes up, starts to make a sound you’ve never before heard a person make.
Further reading:
Is Your Child Just Pretending to Be Ill?
10 Signs of a Broken Arm
All in the Arm: How to Overcome Your Arm Injury
Footnotes
i You have not heard the word ‘abomination’ before. In any case, it means something disgusting or loathsome.
ii This is an idiom. Idioms are strings of words, divorced from their typical meanings. In this instance, ‘Has the cat got your tongue?’ just means ‘I am annoyed you are not speaking.’
iii Depending on the context and the mood of the speaker, ‘later’ can mean in a few minutes, in half an hour, in an hour, in several hours, by tomorrow evening, or never.