It was Thursday. The next time was still a couple of days away. It was sunny and warm, after a long wet spell, and some kids were spinning around on the school fields like puppies chasing their tails, having too much fun to head off home, even though school had finished.
Not me though. I was in detention. Again.
Now, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea here. I don’t want you to start thinking that I was a bad kid. I mean, sure, I seemed to spend a lot of time in detention, and I’d been called into the Principal’s office for a stern talking-to on more than one occasion, and I was ever-grateful that they’d outlawed the cane many years ago, but it was almost never my fault.
You know how some kids just seem to attract trouble? Well, I was one of those kids. And I don’t care if you believe me or not.
OK, maybe I did do a few bad things at the beginning, like the joke with the water balloon, the roll of toilet paper, and Mrs Rossler’s handbag, but she’d deserved it anyway for making fun of me in history. And if I’d been sensible, I’d never have done what I did with the school’s prize-winning totem pole, but it was really funny and I hadn’t thought I’d get caught. And, yes, there were a few unauthorised chemistry experiments involving some talcum powder and the school cat.
But it was all just fun stuff. I was not a bad kid.
I’m not saying I was perfect. I wasn’t a genius like Amy Spring, who’d won the national Mathex competition, or a school hero like Blocker Blüchner, the try-scoring front row forward of the under fifteens school rugby league team.
But I certainly didn’t deserve all the crap that seemed to come my way.
So, there I was, sitting in detention, pen in hand, paper in front of me, looking out of the window watching Phil, Emilio and Blocker kick a football around on the top field. I lowered my eyes and flashed evil thoughts at Blocker, and he dropped an easy catch, which made the others laugh. Good, I thought. I wouldn’t even be in detention if it wasn’t for Blocker.
He had chucked a flask of potassium permanganate solution (that purpley stuff) halfway across the science lab to me when the teacher wasn’t looking, but I had fumbled and dropped it. It had smashed and gone all over Tom Prebble’s schoolbag and, somehow, I had ended up taking the rap.
Of course I had protested my innocence, but he was the star of the league team, and I was a known troublemaker. So, who were they going to believe?
I turned back to my detention assignment. I had to write an essay on capital punishment in New Zealand, the pros and cons. Capital punishment, if you don’t know, is the death penalty for serious crimes like murder.
I wasn’t quite sure why they’d chosen that subject for the detention essay. Maybe it was a kind of threat. Maybe they were thinking of introducing it at Glenfield. I decided that I’d better write an essay strongly opposed to capital punishment, just in case.
I looked around the room. There was only one other kid in detention today, Toby Watson. He was staring at his blank refill pad with a panicky expression on his face. I don’t know why writing essays terrifies most kids. All you have to do is decide what your opinion is, then express it clearly in nice simple words that even teachers can understand.
I also can’t understand why they use essays as a punishment. I really enjoyed writing essays, but it seemed as if the teachers were saying writing was a bad thing, a thing so horrible that you’d only do it as a punishment.
Then they go and complain that it’s hard to get kids to write stories and stuff nowadays. Go figure!
Four o’clock came and I had long finished my two page essay. I walked out past Toby, who had only done half a page, and put it on the teacher’s desk as I left.
The next day my life changed for ever.