17 February 2013 / 19:12
It’s after supper and the light in Noah’s new room feels different. Less sunny glare, more warm glow. It touches on the fabric of his easy chair and lets it shine deep blue. It glances off his sisal rug, slate grey, the one he was encouraged to bring to make his room feel more like home. The only problem is, the rug doesn’t belong here. Nor do his wall charts, not even the clothes in his cupboard. They should all be at home. That’s where they belong, and so does he. Nothing is going to make him feel ‘settled’.
Here, all he can see are lawns, stretching on and on beyond his window, dotted with white benches. He knows what those are for, he’s seen mothers and fathers sitting on them with their sons and daughters.
How much talking goes on, though? Is that where he’ll have to sit? With his parents and Maddie? Will Ms Turner observe him from her rooms, watching to see if he is talking? Or ‘interacting’, as she calls it. That’s one of the reasons he’s here. To learn how to interact with people, to fit them into his life. Not an easy task, not when Noah already has so much to squeeze into the blocks of his day. How much time does she want him to spend doing this interacting? How many people is he supposed to talk to on a daily basis, and for how long? And who will these people be?
Noah is compiling a list for Ms Turner, for when he sees her at 09:00 on Monday. That’s tomorrow, and Noah has hardly had a chance to work anything out. He needs to think about getting to breakfast on time. He needs to allow time to get from one place to another, count his steps as he does, note them down. He’s expected to make his way around Greenhills without any guidance about how to adjust to this new world.
‘Settling in’, says Ms Turner. But how is he supposed to settle in to a place he doesn’t understand when he hardly has time to breathe, let alone plan? ‘Mr Bill will tell you everything you need to know, Noah,’ she told him.
But Mr Bill isn’t here now, is he, Ms Turner?
Noah makes a decision. He walks to the cupboard and takes out his washbag and his towel (both from the 2nd shelf down, for now). He removes a pair of loose cotton pyjama pants (navy) and a pale blue t-shirt from the shelf above. He takes his blue towelling dressing gown off the back of his door. It said in the Greenhills brochure that he should bring one and his mom bought it for him specially. He keeps one hand free to open the door (down-up-down-up-down) and then it’s 2 steps across the passage and 3 along and he’s standing in front of the door that says ‘Boys’ Bathroom’ with a picture of a tub with bubbles in blue. When Noah opens the door, there’s a row of shower cubicles with blue plastic curtains. There’s a row of toilet cubicles and some sinks below a large mirror. Gleaming white tiles and fluorescent strip lighting. No bathtubs.
He hangs his dressing gown, pyjama pants, t-shirt and towel on a hook outside the shower. The right order for when he gets out. Then he unzips his washbag, takes out shampoo and liquid soap, and puts them on the small shelf inside the shower. He pulls the handle of the water mixer forward, strips quickly, hangs his clothes on the next hook along, then steps in. Tomorrow he will take off his clothes in his room, loop the towel around his waist and wear his dressing gown. That’s probably why they put it on the list.
The water temperature’s almost right. He adjusts it towards ‘Hot’ and takes note of the position of the handle.
Noah starts the timer on his waterproof watch.
1. Wet and
lather hair: 1 minute.
2. Soap body: 1 minute.
3. Rinse off: 1 minute.
And then – his routine is so messed already – he uses 1 minute extra to stand under the jet of water, feel it needle his shoulders, draining the tension that has been building all day.
4. Towel dry and dress: 3 minutes.
5. Brush teeth: 3 minutes
upper teeth: 1½ minutes
lower teeth: 1½ minutes
Once he’s finished, he’ll go back to his room and recalculate bathroom time. Only, on his chart, he will call it ‘Shower Time’.
1 day down at Greenhills. Tomorrow it will all begin properly with Week 1, Day 1. And then there will be 11 weeks and 6 days to go.