‘Who can tell me what Life Education is all about?’

Mr S swirls around from the interactive whiteboard and smiles a weird smile at the whole class. We all know the answer, but no one is raising their hand. Doesn’t matter what you call it. Basically, it means an excruciating morning listening to Mr S talking about ‘bodies changing’ in way too much detail, complete with illustrations. Labelled illustrations.

Mr S’s smile fades a bit.

‘No need to raise your hand, everyone … this is an informal session.’ He gestures in our general direction. ‘How about you … Jun! Do you want to start the ball rolling?’

There are a few nervous giggles at the word ‘ball’. I look over at Jun. His face has turned a purple colour. I feel sorry for him but at the same time I’m relieved it’s not me.

Mr S ploughs on. ‘Well, Jun. I won’t put you on the spot. Anyone else?’

The room is eerily quiet. No scuffling, no talking, no one painting their nails with felt-tip markers or picking threads out of their uniform.

Mr S explains he will start with some general things we all should know then after a break, we’ll be doing some ‘fun’ team-building activities. At one o’ clock, the girls will go into the music room with Miss Agostino and us boys have to stay here with him.

Miss Agostino is probably about as enthusiastic as we are. Someone in the staffroom probably put her name down to teach life education when she was looking the other way. Mr S would have volunteered himself. Noah says he takes the class every year.

Within ten minutes, Mr S abandons any hope of class interaction and delivers a long, boring lecture about stuff we’ve all known since Grade 2. He hurls a few questions to the room in general and ends up answering every one himself. Finally, the bell rings, and Mr S gathers up his whiteboard markers and tells us to be back for some ‘fun’ games at eleven o’ clock sharp.

The next session is ‘Peer Group Exercises’. First, we’re put into pairs with someone we don’t usually talk to and have to talk to them for five minutes. Then we’re supposed to tell the rest of the class something we like about the other person. I’m paired with Samra from the other Grade 6 class. I’ve never known five minutes to go on for so long. When it’s our turn, I say, ‘This is Samra. I like that she’s School Captain and good at athletics,’ because all she talked about was running and jumping over things, so I didn’t have much to work with. Samra says, ‘This is Jesse. I like that his eyes are a nice colour.’ This makes the whole class giggle and my face go the temperature of barbeque beads.

After that, we have to write something about ourselves that nobody knows, then Mr S will read them out and we have to guess who wrote it.

I write, I saved my brother’s eyesight by clonking him in the head.

I hope no one else has that one.

Mr S writes all our answers on the left-hand side of the interactive whiteboard and all our names on the right. Most of the stuff people wrote is boring, but there are two or three interesting ones. Someone’s front teeth were knocked out and their teeth aren’t real. Another person lives in a converted hospital for infectious diseases with rails on the ceiling where the curtains went and an airlocked room to keep the germs from getting around. Someone else has a rescue dog with eleven puppies in their laundry.

No one matches anyone with their answer. Samra turns out to be the one with fake teeth (I like that better than running) and Wesley lives in the old infectious diseases hospital (interesting). We should have guessed it was Minha that has eleven puppies. She probably has a hundred pets already.

Mr S comes to mine and asks me to explain how I saved Noah’s eyesight. He makes me stand up so the whole class can hear me. Why didn’t I just pick something boring that requires no explanation? I should think before I do stuff.

I start with the bit where I kicked Noah in the head and everyone laughs.

This seems to me like a good time to sit back down, but Mr S is nodding his head, looking interested. He might be wondering how I think kicking Noah in the head improved his eyesight.

I address the rest of the story to Mr S and a poster of the digestive system on the wall behind him so I don’t think about how nervous I am.

I skip over the bit about Dr Dabscheck because it’s boring and so is he.

‘We had to take Noah to an eye specialist in the city,’ I say. ‘The hospital was massive. Like a normal hospital, but it only does eyes. And ears.’

Mr S says, ‘Tell us what happened with Noah, Jesse.’

‘The eye specialist looked a lot like Ian,’ I say, ‘except he was wearing a suit and had a pair of binoculars on his head.’

For some reason everyone thinks this is funny.

‘The receptionist told us off ’cause we were late. So Dad had to fill in all the forms after we saw Dr Green.’

‘Dr Green?’

‘Yeah. Dr Dean Green,’ I say, giggling.

This makes everyone laugh again.

‘I went into the examination room with Noah. We all went in.’

‘Well, of course,’ Mr S says. ‘You must have been very concerned about your brother.’

‘Uh … yeah.’ Actually, I didn’t want to be by myself in the waiting room with the mean receptionist. And Dr Dean Green Binocular-Head was cool. He shook Noah’s hand and mine before Dad’s.

Mr S scrunches up his forehead. ‘I’m a bit confused, Jesse. How is it that you saved Noah’s eyesight?’

‘Oh, yeah. Dr Green looks at Noah’s eye with a light globe thing … and there’s a grass seed in it! In the back of his eye! We don’t know how it got there …’

‘And?’

‘And it was right near the optic nerve or something. It could’ve damaged his eye …’

‘Ahhh, I see.’ Mr S nods his head slowly. ‘If he hadn’t visited the doctor about your little kick, the grass seed might still be there.’

‘Uh-huh. Dr Green said he was very lucky. He had to have an operation on the same day.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Yeah. We had to wait around at the hospital all day but Mum wouldn’t pay to have the TV turned on. She said it wasn’t worth it for one day.’

‘Indeed,’ Mr S says. ‘That’s a very good story, Jesse. I particularly enjoyed the bit about Dr Green looking like Ian.’

I don’t know why. That’s the least interesting bit of the whole story.

The bell rings. All of this has taken us right up to lunch.

Mr S does a quick headcount as people start to leave the room; he’s obviously had trouble in the past with kids nicking off during break.

I’m glad most of the class has left when I get up to the front because Mr S says he wants to ask me something. He must have forgotten this is Life Ed and the other kids in the class and I know each other. Alex waits for me.

Mr S half sits on the edge of Mrs Leeman’s desk. I hope she’s not anywhere nearby.

‘I’m curious, Jesse. About the situation with your brother … How did you feel when you thought your kick had caused Noah real problems?’

‘Oh … not good, I guess.’

‘And when you found out it was something else? The grass seed? How did you feel then?’

Some weird feeling shifts in my stomach. ‘Actually …’

‘Yes?’

I realise then how scared I was when I hurt Noah, how scared I was of Dr Dean Green Binocular-Head and how scared I felt when I thought Noah could lose his eye.

‘I … just as bad.’

Mr S smiles and fiddles around with Mrs Leeman’s stationery a bit to give me a few minutes.

‘But he’s okay now? Eye all fixed?’ he says.

‘Yeah. He had to wear an eye patch for two weeks after the operation.’

Mr S nods and stands up straight. ‘Good, good. I’ll see you boys after lunch then. Don’t be late! We’ve got a lot to cover.’

Yeah.

Wouldn’t want to miss anything.

Before the afternoon bell has even gone, some of the girls are standing outside the music room, talking in excited whispers. They probably talk about this stuff all the time; not only when it comes up on the curriculum.

I would rather do almost anything else.

Instead we’ve got another hour with Mr S and our numbers have dwindled. I consider making a run for it but Mr S is already striding across the quadrangle with a book and markers under his arm. He smiles at us as we stand in miserable silence staring at our shoes.

All nineteen of us.

We slowly troop inside and Mr S takes out a black marker and draws a huge picture on the interactive whiteboard. There’s a drawing just like it in the boys’ bathroom. This one is twice the size, though, and none of us can drag our eyes away from it. Mr S labels it ‘Male Anatomy’ and draws about a dozen black lines from the diagram and announces we are going to name all the bits.

Mr S takes out a red marker and points to the board. ‘Who knows the name of this?’

We try to look interested (but not too interested) as Mr S writes until everything has been labelled. Finally, he appears satisfied with our level of knowledge and picks up a cloth to erase the drawing. He sweeps the cloth across the board with a flourish except only the red names have been erased. He must’ve used the wrong kind of black marker because the picture is still there. Only now that the red names are erased, all the lines sticking out around the illustration make it look like a giant toilet-door echidna.

Wesley (class puker) looks like he’s going to throw up.

Alex and I giggle.

Braden laughs too, which is a bit unusual for him.

Mr S puts on his glasses and picks up the black marker. Bit late for glasses.

Jun volunteers, ‘I think you used permanent marker, sir.’

Mr S peers over his glasses at the offending marker. ‘Thank you for that astute observation, Jun. Maybe you’d like to come up with a few ideas then? Before Miss Agostino and the girls come back from the music room and ask why there’s a … a …’

We all fall silent. He’s right.

Mr S’s marker malfunction is going to bring us all down.

At this moment, we all have the same thought: Miss Agostino and the girls must never see what faces us now.

A kid is sent to the bathroom to get a wet paper towel. Mr S rubs it over the whiteboard which, if anything, just cleans the board and results in the diagram gaining clarity.

Alex says, ‘How about lemon juice?’

Then a whole bunch of suggestions are yelled out:

‘Bleach?’

‘Banana skin?’

‘Margarine?’

‘All right, all right,’ Mr S says. ‘No more ridiculous suggestions. Let me think for a minute.’

Jun says, ‘We have eight minutes left, sir.’

I look over at Wesley, who has turned a familiar pale green. That’s when I have a brilliant idea.

‘I know!’

Mr S looks over at me.

‘You know when someone pukes at school?’

‘Pukes?’

‘Yeah … when someone throws up. The teacher has to go and get this bright green stuff in a bottle and a mop and bucket to clean it up. The green stuff! Just the smell of it nearly makes your eyes fall out. Maybe we could try that?’

Mr S nods. He either recognises my genius or is so desperate he’s willing to try anything.

Wesley is selected as the kid who has just thrown up. He offers to do it for real but there’s not enough time. Mr S says I can go to the office with Wesley because the plan was my idea.

We arrive at the office and Wesley sits on the little bed with flowery sheets looking convincingly miserable. I grab the gloves, mop, bucket and the whole bottle of bright green stuff.

So far so good.

Miss Creighton doesn’t look suspicious at all. She probably has Wesley’s parents on speed dial. (When this happens for real, the actual puker is sent home immediately before they contaminate the whole school.)

Wesley’s a bit disappointed he won’t get to see if the plan works but he can rest assured that the role allocated to his weak stomach is an important one.

When I return to the classroom, the door is locked. I whisper through the keyhole and the door opens a crack. Mr S pulls the bucket inside with me attached to it. He is now in a state of total panic. He pulls on a pair of rubber gloves and pours the green stuff undiluted onto a yellow cloth and wipes it across the board.

The diagram disappears.

So does the surface of the interactive whiteboard.

Underneath the white layer is a kind of silvery metal. Big streaks of silver stand out in glaring contrast to the white bits left around the edges. Mr S stands back a bit. Maybe he’s hoping it doesn’t look so bad from a different angle, but it looks bad from every angle. The interactive whiteboard’s interactive days are over.

‘Why don’t you wipe the whole board over so at least it’s one colour?’ Alex suggests.

Several ideas of how to dispose of the entire thing are put on the table and dismissed as impractical given that the thing is massive. Equipment worth thousands of dollars usually is.

Mr S has regained his composure now that the diagram is gone. ‘I will explain to Mrs Overbeek that I accidentally used the wrong thing to clean the board,’ he tells us. ‘It’s more or less what happened.’

After school, everyone crowds around Minha wanting to know about the eleven puppies. She takes out her phone and shows us some photos of a big brown and white dog. The dog is asleep in a giant washing basket. It looks like there are even more than eleven puppies because they’re climbing all over the dog and out of the basket: white ones, brown ones and black ones. They’re so cute but Minha says they all have homes already.

‘We’re keeping Becky, though,’ she says. ‘The mum.’

She puts her phone away and gets into her dad’s car. About fifty dogs are jumping around in the back.

Mr Wilson comes out of the office building with Mr S and Ian. When they get a bit closer, I’m relieved to hear they’re discussing the staff carpark and not Life Education. I hope Mr S isn’t thinking about confessing. He doesn’t need to worry about any of us blabbing. Before Mr S gets in his car, he says, ‘Okay, see you later’ to Ian.

They must do something together after school.

I’m still relieved, though. The true fate of the interactive whiteboard may never be revealed. It will dissolve into our memory and disappear forever.

Just like the yellow cloth and rubber gloves.