“You okay, sweetie?”
“Yeah, I’m… I’m fine, Mum.”
Sian knew better than to reveal her true feelings to her mother by now. One hint of sadness, anxiety or any emotion outside the “happiness” part of the mood spectrum, and she’d be bombarded with a torrent of questions, ostensibly in an attempt to make sure she was “all right” but which almost inevitably made her feel worse than she had in the first place. Consequently, she’d taken to bottling things up somewhat. She knew it wasn’t altogether healthy, but it had been a successful coping mechanism so far, and she wasn’t about to change now.
Besides, the fact that she was feeling a little dejected wasn’t, for once, due to anything in her own life. Instead, she was feeling bad on behalf of someone else; specifically, her teacher Miss Charles, whom Sian had felt was perilously close to the edge today.
Sian pondered to herself that this was, sadly, nothing unusual for Miss Charles, whom she liked and respected very much but secretly felt probably wasn’t cut out for life in a school like Longmore. Not that this reflected badly on Miss Charles in Sian’s mind; Sian herself often found herself thinking that she wasn’t really cut out for life in a school like Longmore, either. But it was the hand that life had dealt her, and so she’d deal with it, whatever it took. It built character. At least, that was what she always told herself.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, Mum, I promise I’m fine. Now I’m going to go and do my homework.”
Before her mother could protest, she trudged up the stairs to her bedroom, closed the door — carefully, so as not to sound as if she was slamming it — and turned on the radio. It was time for the show she liked with the songs from musicals; she’d always been a fan of songs from the shows, partly because of her own studies, but had never intended to become the sort of person who listened to them in her free time. The fact that this show typically coincided with the point in the day where she would typically do her homework meant that it was a regular companion, and it had got to the stage where it was a comfortably familiar, pleasant presence to work alongside.
She unzipped her bag and took out her planner, opening it on her desk in front of her. There was only one thing she needed to do today; the rest could wait until next week. Finishing off those Maths questions needed to be done for Monday, though. It was her own fault — she’d gotten herself involved in a particularly lively and animated conversation with her friends Jasmine and Nicola rather than working in Maths today. Their teacher Mr Abraham didn’t mind them chatting usually, but did insist that everyone complete all the work that was set by the time the next lesson rolled around — and the next lesson was Monday. She could do it over the weekend, of course, but Sian objected to doing homework on Saturday and Sunday unless she absolutely had to; she’d rather give up her Friday night instead, even if it was for Maths.
Sian hated Maths lessons. She knew this was an opinion that wasn’t worth expressing, however, because almost everyone in her class seemed to hate Maths — and this was the top set, too. She found her distaste for the subject frustrating, because she understood that it was something that was important to everyday life in various ways, but she also knew that today there were more tools than ever that meant people would never have to remember what “some old houses creak and howl through old age” meant ever again.
She let out an exaggerated sigh, reached into her bag and drew out her Maths textbook and exercise book, then opened them both to the pages she’d marked earlier. She picked up her pencil and was just getting started on the first problem when her phone chimed. It was a chat message from Jasmine.
heard tht miss charles wuz proper mental earlier lol, it read. did u see it? xx
Sian pondered how to reply — or even if to reply — for a moment. On the one hand, she liked Jasmine and always enjoyed chatting to her; on the other hand, she also liked Miss Charles and didn’t really want to gossip about her.
No, I didn’t, she replied after a minute, with her customary perfect use of spelling, punctuation and grammar. She refused to compromise her own standards for the sake of convenience. Knowing Edward, though, I’m not surprised.
It was a gentle lie to try and steer the conversation away from Miss Charles. She had seen Miss Charles go “proper mental” earlier, of course, but she didn’t really want to talk about it, and in fact it was recalling the incident that was making her feel so anxious right now.
She put her phone down and picked up her pencil again. It wasn’t long before her phone chimed again, but she grit her teeth and told herself that she wouldn’t look — much less reply — until she had conquered the first of the questions she had to complete this evening.
The question, as it happened, was rather easy, and so in a matter of moments the phone was in her hand again.
yea, came the reply from Jasmine. edwards a dick lol sounds lyk miss charles wuznt redy 4 him xx
Can you ever be ready for Edward? she replied. I don’t understand why he even comes to school. Not that he does very often.
By the time the reply came back from Jasmine, Sian had conquered the second problem, too.
well its cuz his ma got fined for him being off all the time lol, it said. he may be a dick but i guess hes still scared of his ma xx
You could be right, she sent back. My battery’s low and I’m about to have dinner, she lied in an attempt to end the conversation. I’ll talk to you later?
The third question took a little longer to calculate, and Jasmine’s reply arrived in the middle of the process, making Sian jump. She frowned, and managed not to look at her phone until she finished, though, secretly feeling quite pleased with her own self-discipline.
ok babe, read the reply. ttyl xx
Sian flicked her phone onto silent and tossed it onto the bed. There were four more questions to go, of increasing complexity, and she wanted to get them out of the way sooner rather than later. She knew all too well that it took a good two or three times of saying goodbye — or fake goodbye, at least — to get rid of Jasmine, though a long silence often did the trick, too.
The radio had started to play Memory from Cats. As much of a fan of musicals as she was, she couldn’t stand Cats, and particularly couldn’t stand Memory, so she flicked off the radio and completed the rest of her homework in silent protest to no-one in particular.
* * * *
Later that evening, after she’d had dinner with her mother and father, Sian lay on her bed gazing at the ceiling. She thought of this as her “thinking position”, though in actuality it was more an “anxiety position”; she tended only to lie staring into space like this when she was worrying about something or someone. And she couldn’t get Miss Charles out of her mind.
She kept replaying the scene from earlier over and over in her head. She wondered if she should have stood up and said something — probably not, she thought; although she counted herself quite lucky that she was one of the few people in her year who was both academically gifted and relatively popular, she didn’t fancy her chances against the seething ball of rage that was Edward. Edward was too unpredictable; he might have listened to her, he might have redirected his anger away from Miss Charles and towards her, or he might have gotten even angrier.
Sian didn’t understand Edward, and that scared her. She was the sort of person who liked to figure people out as soon as possible so she knew how to act around them. She was generally quite good at reading people shortly after becoming acquainted with them, but with Edward’s frequent long absences from school, she’d never really had the opportunity to get to know him, and, if she was being honest, didn’t really have the inclination to get anywhere near him when he was present.
She understood Miss Charles, though. She could tell that Miss Charles was suffering, and that made her sad, because not only did she like Miss Charles as a person, she respected the amount of knowledge Miss Charles had of her subject. She liked spending time with Miss Charles, and she liked studying music with Miss Charles. It was just a shame that the experience had to be spoiled by people like Edward. She didn’t even know what Edward was doing in that class; the boy had no musical talent whatsoever, and his assertion that he was “a drummer” translated, in her experience, to him being able to do little more than bang out an unsteady four-on-the-floor beat at an uneven tempo and high volume.
She closed her eyes, and saw the classroom again.
“Fuck you!” Edward yelled.
“Now, Edward,” Miss Charles said, her voice wavering. “If you need to take a moment outside to calm yourself down, please do. Otherwise, please return to your seat.”
Sian could tell that Miss Charles was scared. The young teacher’s hands were shaking, and she was propping herself up against her desk for security — something Sian had noticed she did when she was nervous.
“Fuck you!” Edward screeched again, driving his fist into the wood of the door and apparently feeling no pain from the impact. Sian saw Miss Charles flinch and shrink away from him slightly — she certainly didn’t blame her for that, because she’d felt scared too. This wasn’t her first encounter with an Edward rage, unlike Miss Charles, but experience didn’t make them any easier to deal with.
“Urgh, stop it,” muttered Sian to herself, rolling onto her side on the bed and holding the pillow around her ears, as if doing so would cause the memory to stop replaying itself. It didn’t work, of course — it never did — but that never stopped her from trying at times like this.
Eventually she sat up. Lying in thinking position wasn’t achieving anything; she just wanted to distract herself with something — anything. She pulled out her phone and looked at it; she scrolled through Twitter and Facebook but found nothing of interest, then checked her favourite YouTube channels for any updates, but it seemed like everyone she might want to watch was having Friday off. Eventually she settled for a favourite cat video, watching it four times until it made her giggle out loud and start to feel slightly better.
She lay back down again and closed her eyes, trying to force her mind’s eye to see the cat jumping in and out of cardboard boxes rather than Edward screaming “Fuck you!” at the top of his voice.
It’s the weekend, she said to herself. And it’s not your problem. Just relax.
She took a deep breath in, held it a moment, then released it. She did it again, then again, then again — and finally sank into a dreamless sleep.
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