Before I left for school the phone rang. I unplugged it and left it that way.
As I walked to school, I thought about my dream. Mr Grills was in it. I have never had one quite like it before. I am used to being chased by monsters and ghouls—or by Dad, who, in my opinion, in my dreams and in reality, was both—never by handsome lascivious men qualified to teach science.
There was an awful lot of fondling and kissing going on.
In my dream, Mr Grills was an impeccable kisser. His strong upper body had me pinned against a blackboard. He was grinding his pelvis into mine, moaning as if he was in pain, but I knew he wasn’t. At least, not in the kind of pain that prompts one to see a doctor; pain that comes from yearning for unattainable things.
His dark gossamer hair and warm supple lips were all over my face; his large, well-turned hands were all over my body.
From far off there came the rigorous sound of pens scratching on paper. I opened my eyes and saw a number of students at their desks, busy taking notes. “Mr Grills!” called Maisie. “I can’t see the board. You’re in the way!”
A nice dream, but disappointing.
As I neared the school gates, I stopped daydreaming and tensed. I expected to find Caleb there, leaning ostentatiously against one of the posts. Grinning wolfishly and slobbering like a dog with a tasty new bone to bury. But I didn’t see him anywhere.
Nor, for that matter, did I see him the rest of the day. He was a no-show, and for that I was relieved and thankful. I don’t like the attention he gives me. It makes me uneasy.
Do I prefer being insulted by him than propositioned? You betcha I do.
But the subject of Caleb and me nevertheless surfaced in the girls’ change room during P. E.
Kitty, stepping into her black cotton gym shorts, wondered aloud where he was. She was looking directly at me, as if I was the only one in the room able to provide a plausible answer. Beneath her traditional academic uniform she wore a small white tee with the words ‘HOW ’BOUT YOU DIE AND GET FLY BLOWN’ printed on it. Nasty, just like Kitty.
I remembered the first time I saw Kitty. I had noticed her approximately half an hour before she’d noticed me. In fact, it was as soon as she’d strolled through the gates that first nerve-racking day of high school.
It was during the first school assembly, which took place inside the gymnasium, that Kitty Kepler, this enviable but ruthless bitch, first saw me. She’d taken an immediate dislike to me because I was too tall and too heavy for my age and, as she was to discover later on, I sweated profusely and sometimes forgot to wear deodorant. I’d taken an immediate dislike to Kitty because she’d had it in for too-tall, too-heavy people who reeked of body odour—and because she was popular and used that popularity to goad other students into disliking me also. Students who made lousy writers, scientists and mathematicians, but who were naturally gifted and highly skilled at casting aspersions on my character and treating me like I was the dregs of humanity.
A toilet flushed and Kitty’s best friend, Rhoda Winnow, stepped lithely out of a stall.
Rhoda is semi-tall, raw-boned and dark-complexioned with waist-length curly brown hair. She isn’t as beautiful as Kitty—who has probably tampered with more hearts than a cardiologist—but she can be just as catty and undermining as she. “He never misses sport,” she pointed out to us.
“Something must have turned him off it,” said Kitty.
“Don’t you mean some one?”
“No. Some thing. An inferior species.”
High-pitched laugher sounded.
“Funny,” I garbled. I finished tying up my shoelaces and rose from the bench. They quickly blocked the doorway so I couldn’t leave.
I looked back over my shoulder. The stalls were empty. The benches were now unoccupied. There was no one in the change room but us three happy-faced charmers.
Terrific, I thought. No backup. But I am used to defending myself. It’s me against the world. Always.
Kitty took a menacing step forward. “What’s the deal?” she accosted me. She is more than a head shorter than me, so she couldn’t look tough even if she tried. Besides, she is too delicate, too ethereal to be a respectable bully. Her face is deceptively angelic, surrounded by a halo of flaxen hair.
“What deal?” I asked, because I honestly didn’t know.
“One minute you want Caleb, the next you want an old pervert of a teacher who’s probably married anyway. I mean, he doesn’t wear a wedding band, but some guys like to take it off when they’re around other girls—especially underage girls.”
“I never wanted Caleb,” I said. “Did he tell you that?”
“So what if he did?”
“He’s delusional.”
Rhoda snorted. “You can’t talk. You want Grills. What does that make you?”
“The subject of another of your lies.”
“I don’t lie.”
“Fine. You’re an honest saint.”
She smiled thinly. “You just be sure to remember that.”
I felt my own lips curve upwards, a wormlike parasite creeping up my face. “Meanwhile, Kitty has a brain and my body is a vehicle for the ghost of Jack the Ripper.”
Rhoda sneered. “You’re such a loser, Marshall.”
“Yeah? Well, this loser would like to leave now.”
“There’s no fire,” said Kitty. “There’s no immediate danger of dying here.”
“So stay awhile,” added Rhoda. “Talk to us. We’re prepared to listen and be sympathetic to a no-hoper like you.”
“I have nothing to say to either of you.”
“I heard you went home with him yesterday,” said Rhoda.
From outside in the lobby, Mr Neap urged us to hurry up.
Kitty said, “Later,” and, giggling puerilely, the two of them went outside onto the courts. I waited about thirty seconds before joining them.
Mr Neap flung a yellow or red bib at each of us.
“Netball!” one of the boys complained.
“Netball or theory,” said Mr Neap. “Which of the two would you prefer?” Theory, I thought, but I didn’t say anything.
I was the red goalkeeper. Kitty, I couldn’t help but notice, was the yellow goal-shooter. Yet even before we were assigned our positions, there was friction on the court. This just reinforced the fact that we were born to be very close enemies.
Kitty jostled and cursed me every time she could, especially when I slapped the ball from her hands. Her failure to shoot a single goal only proved to bolster her animosity. Fancy that.
When the ball was at the other end of the court but on its way back, she elbowed me in the ribs. “Grills is a sleaze,” she confided. “Did you know that he only goes for sluts? And it doesn’t matter how smart they are, they’re all brainless to him.”
I pushed her away from me and said, “Of course you’d know.”
“Hey, I’m just laying down the facts here. I’m not speaking from experience, although I probably could be, the way he keeps gawking at me. Honestly, Marshall, I don’t know what it is that you see in him, because personally, he makes me feel kind of dirty. Maybe I should report him, hey, slut.”
Kitty disgorged the last word as if it were a bit of phlegm that had been caught in her throat for an exceedingly long period of time. Then someone passed her the ball.
With a diabolic grin on her angelic face, she snatched it up in her hands before whirling around to face me. The ball came at me fast—too fast for me to duck out of the way—a grazed orange thing growing as big as the moon. It ricocheted off my mouth, splitting my lower lip. Blood spilled down my chin in a single stream.
The ball bounced away and nobody chased after it. I dropped to the floor, pained and disorientated. A coppery flavour flooded my mouth; it induced the more repugnant taste of bile.
Mr Neap blew his whistle to stop the game, and the sound was deafening. He wears it around his neck like a priceless pendant, an heirloom. I have never seen him without it.
He jogged over to us, his large stomach jiggling. “What’s going on here?” he demanded.
I blinked up at his stubby legs. His sneakers were grubby, but the socks pulled unevenly above them were as white as untouched snow.
“The ball slipped,” explained Kitty, her green eyes pleading innocence and her fiendish grin evaporating.
“Marshall, are you okay?”
No, I wasn’t okay, but I couldn’t speak. My head seemed to be floating in an impermeable mist. A forest of people towered over me. I blinked up at their wraith-like faces, dazed like a drunkard.
“I saw it,” said Rhoda. “It was clearly an accident.”
“Anybody else see what happened?” asked Mr Neap.
People turned to one another without saying anything. Either no one had witnessed it, or they were too scared to voice the truth.
Then, like a broken toy train becoming animate again, I felt the blood pulsate through my veins. I felt a muscle twitch somewhere in my neck. I peered down at my lap and slowly unclenched my fist. I was unable to see the small indentations my nails had left across the palm of that hand, but able to feel them. Oh, yes, I could definitely feel them. I could feel everything, especially rage.
Mr Neap sighed wearily. “Well, at least apologise,” he said to Kitty.
But in my troubled mind it was Dad who said it. Apologise… They’ll take you away, and I’ll let them.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, even though I wasn’t. No, I wasn’t sorry at all. But I repeated the words, and Kitty distinctly told me to go to hell.
My head shot up, my eyes met her hard, condescending gaze. Half a second later I jumped to my feet, and keeping my head and shoulders low, I ran at Kitty, intending to head-butt her in the stomach, intending to throw her off her feet.
I wished to magically brandish a knife—ideally, the murder weapon I hide beneath the mattress—and stab her over and over again with it. I saw myself stabbing her perfect face, slashing her perfectly made-up lips and gouging out her perfectly made-up eyes—slicing her perky little breasts like two knobs of Easy Cut ham.
Mr Neap and two of the bigger boys anticipated my move. The one standing closest to me reached out a meaty arm. His hand on my shoulder was like the talon of a prehistoric bird, roughly jerking me back against a vibrating wall of flab. The other boy swooped in as if he had huge pterosaur wings and planted himself in front of Kitty to shield her, his beloved queen.
I wrestled with the boy’s hand and tried shoving the other out of my way. Kitty’s harsh expression turned to one of fear. Mr Neap said, “Right,” took hold of my arm and escorted me out to the change room. “I think you’ve had enough physical contact for one day. Go and get that lip of yours fixed.”
I slowly took off my bib and handed it to him.
Alone in the change room, I approached one of the sinks. My lower lip throbbed. It felt like a swollen slug on my face trying to wriggle its way inside my mouth.
I peered in the mirror above the sink and saw all the blood. Blood on my chin, blood covering my teeth, blood staining my collar. I looked savage. I looked fearless and bloodthirsty, like a wild carnivorous animal.
I quite liked the way I looked, but everything hurt and really, all I wanted to do was sit down and cry.
I did nothing wrong, I thought. Kitty is the bad seed. She has to suffer.
I made another tight fist and, leaning slightly forward, held it up to the coolness of the mirror. “I’ll kill her,” I snarled. Just then, someone’s reflection swam in the glass behind me. I thought it was Kitty. I punched the reflection and the mirror disintegrated. Someone gasped. I spun around, blood from my mangled knuckles splashing the cement floor. It was Jessi Jumelet, and the sight of my blood was enough to incapacitate her.
I tasted venom in my mouth and wanted to poison Kitty Kepler with it. I spat it out.
Jessi turned and ran from the room. I heard her shout: “Mr Neap! She’s gone crazy!”
I was calmly wrapping thin strips of toilet paper around my wound, which was leaking all over the place, when Mr Neap rushed in. His small eyes grew impossibly wide. He had trouble believing what he was seeing. I had trekked blood across the room. I had turned the dirty cement floor into abstract art. Very inspirational, I thought.
Mr Neap strode forward, careful not to step in any of the crimson puddles and ruin my creative work of art. He was also careful not to step on any sharp fragments of mirror. “What have you done now?” he chided.
“Nothing,” I said. “I’m fine.”
“Show me.”
He made me unravel the toilet paper. He winced.
“Come on,” he said.
I used the bottom of my oversized t-shirt to absorb the blood dripping from my hand.
Outside, everyone stared and whispered, and I could hear what most of them were saying. None of it was good.
“Where are we going?” I asked Mr Neap.
“To find someone who will drive you to a clinic.”
“But I’m fine.”
“You are not fine, Justice. You probably need stitches.”
We hurried up the stairs and into the main administration building. In the faculty lounge, Mr Neap coaxed me into a plastic straight-backed chair. “Wait here,” he said.
Mrs Drammen, a teacher I loved in my first year of high school, was standing by the refectory table fixing herself a cup of tea. I tried smiling at her, telling her I was okay, but my lip stung and instead I grimaced. Mrs Drammen dropped her spoon.
“Justice?”
I didn’t have to turn. I knew that voice.
Mr Grills knelt in front of me, as if I was his queen and he worshipped me. His exquisite face was dark with worry; it filled my world.
“What did you do?” he asked me.
I showed him my hand. I didn’t trust myself to speak.
Once again, blood welled up out of the wound.
“Yow,” I think he said.
Mr Neap reappeared beside him. “She put her fist through a mirror.”
“On purpose?” Mr Grills directed the question at his colleague.
“I don’t know what happened exactly.”
Looking at me, Mr Grills raised a corner of his mouth. “Bad hair day?”
I almost sniggered.
“Why would you do such a thing?” he asked.
I cudgelled my brains for an answer but couldn’t find one.
You tell me, I thought.
“I’m guessing she momentarily lost control,” said Mr Neap. “Kitty Kepler accidentally hit her in the face with the ball. Justice nearly assaulted her because of it.”
Kitty Kepler wilfully hit me in the face with the ball! I wanted to tell him.
Mr Grills, she’s such a bad person. She needs to be punished.
“Accidentally?” doubted Mr Grills. “You’re not the type to vent such anger over a simple accident, are you?”
I shook my head.
He peered deeply into my eyes. “Does it hurt much?”
I sniffed and was amazed to hear myself talk. “Not much.”
“Someone ought to call your parents.”
I swallowed audibly, twice. “Dad’s at work.”
“What about—”
“She’s dead,” I interposed quietly. “I don’t want you disturbing Dad. He’s had a lot to deal with lately. You’d only be making things worse for him.”
“But he needs to know what happened.”
“He’ll know tonight. Please, Mr Grills.”
After some very careful deliberation, he said: “Well, all right. You’re okay with the t-shirt for now?”
I nodded. “I’ll keep it tight.”
“Good girl. I’ll be right back.”
Mr Grills left my side, only to return seconds later with a cup of water. “Come here and rinse your mouth out,” he said. He led me across the sunlit room to a stainless-steel basin, which contained a couple of unwashed mugs and a turret of unwashed plates. He stood back and watched as I took a swig of water, swished it around in my mouth like mouthwash, and expelled it out into the basin. The water had turned a bright pinkish colour like raspberry lemonade.
“Once more,” he said. Then he took the cup from my hand and gently dabbed my chin with some paper towelling.
“You’ve done this before?” I enquired.
“Done what? Nursed someone back to health? You’d be surprised how often,” he replied.
I tipped my head to one side, in a contemplative manner, and smiled at him. A small portion of my hair fanned my left cheek. The rest of it dangled toward the ground like a half-attached wedding veil. “No. I wouldn’t.”
Mr Grills was free to drive me to the medical centre. He was likewise gentle helping me in and out of the car. I asked him to stay with me when the doctor sewed me up. He said, “Sure. If it’ll make you feel better.” It did. He talked so much I hardly felt the needle penetrate. He even made the doctor and me laugh. I felt brave with him, indomitable. I got five stitches. The doctor bandaged my hand and daubed a yellow-brown ointment on my lip. Mr Grills patted me on the back and told me I was the perfect patient.
Out in the car park I said, “Do I have to return to class?”
“Not today, you don’t. Besides, how will you write?”
“Oh, I’m fortunate enough to be able to write with both hands.” I paused speculatively. “I don’t want to fall behind, Mr Grills.”
“The perfect patient, the perfect student,” he said, smiling faintly.
“With an imperfect soul,” I blurted. And then I was sobbing, hard enough that my shoulders quaked.
This sudden unabashed display of emotion really frightened me, because I thought I had more control than that. I can’t afford to fall apart completely, especially in front of others.
The tears wrecked what little remained of my make-up, but Mr Grills didn’t seem to care. He didn’t even seem at all surprised to see that I was crying. Maybe he’d expected it of me, had in fact seen it coming for a long, long while.
He came to me and put his arms around me, loosely at first, as if unsure of how I’d react. He was barely touching me.
I leaned into him, giving him permission to hug me more fiercely. He did. He felt better than I ever imagined he would.
“What makes you say that?” he asked softly, his lips brushing against my ear.
“I’m not who you think I am, Mr Grills,” I said tearfully.
“So who are you, Justice?”
I shook my head against his neck. I refused to tell him.
I’m the devil incarnate.
He pulled my face away so he could look directly into my eyes. Our noses were practically touching. “No one can help being who they are,” he said.
“Why is that?” I cried. “Why can’t everyone be nice? Why must we hurt others?”
“Are you referring to a particular person or incident, Justice?”
Again I shook my head. Then I said, “I don’t know. I’m not sure about anything, anymore.”
“Something haunts you,” he said.
I didn’t know what to say to that.
“It wasn’t an accident, was it?” he asked me.
He could have been talking about Dad—not Kitty.
“No,” I said, to both.
“They treat you badly,” he stated.
I peered into his eyes and saw such goodness in him. “Do I deserve it, Mr Grills?”
“Deserve it? Oh, no, no, no,” he murmured. “Justice, you deserve better than anyone I—”
I kissed him. I bruised his succulent lips with mine. I imbibed his warm breath as if it were my last intake of air, as if I’d perish the second my mouth parted from his.
You know me so well. You know me better than anyone.
I love you, Mr Grills.
“Justice.” Looking very astonished, he eased me back against the boot of the car. Then he looked guiltily about, making sure no one had seen us. No one had.
“Mr Grills?”
“Get in the car,” he ordered.
I got in, feeling sick. Feeling like I was going to vomit again.
He hates me.
Let me die now.
Mr Grills slammed the door shut, jammed the key in the ignition and twisted round in his seat to look pointedly at me. “What are you doing?”
I wiped my wet cheek with the bandage, but avoided wiping my mouth. I could still taste him on me and I wanted the sensation to last. “Should I apologise?”
“No. You should explain to me what—look at me, Justice.”
I looked at him. “What can I say? It was a slip of the tongue.”
His face remained solemn. “This is no joking matter.”
“I know. But we ought to just laugh it off, don’t you think?”
“Why did you do it?”
I shrugged my shoulders dispassionately. Again, I didn’t have an answer.
“I am your teacher,” he said, being very concise, as if I didn’t know it already.
I stopped smiling like an idiot, turned and stared vacantly out the front windshield.
He feels the same about me. I know he does.
“Justice?”
He just has other priorities. He has a job to do, shoes to fill and all that.
“Justice, please. Say something.”
I studied a pair of seagulls careening through the air, crying shrilly and wheeling about like a couple of show-offs vying for attention. Finally, as if from far away, I said, “I was attempting to prove her wrong.”
“Prove who wrong?”
“Kitty.” Just saying her name was enough to make my blood boil.
Mr Grills didn’t ask me to elaborate, not straight away anyhow, as if there was really no need for me to do so—as if everything sort of made sense to him already.
Maybe he understands, I thought. Maybe he knows what Kitty’s like. And maybe I’m not alone. Maybe he hates her, too.
The thought appealed to me instantly. We could thrive on our hatred together. Make Kitty regret every bad thing she’s done.
I turned from the window, from the freewheeling seagulls, to face him. He looked neither angry nor upset. He looked perplexed.
I realised he was waiting for an explanation after all. He was just being unduly patient with me, which was not unlike him. So I took a deep breath and plunged. “Do you want to know who caused it? The fight between Kitty and myself?”
“Who caused it, Justice?”
“You did. Indirectly, of course.”
“Me?”
“It was something she said about you. Something hateful.”
“What?”
“She called you…Kitty called you a sleaze. She said you’re only interested in brainless sluts.” I looked down at my injured hand. “I’m sorry.”
Mr Grills was speechless. And probably hurt, I guessed.
I wanted nothing more than to hurt Kitty for making me do that to him.
“But I know I didn’t have to prove anything. I know you aren’t like that. Not at all. You’re…you’re too good for anyone. If I’m the perfect student, Mr Grills, as you say I am—although I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you’ve changed your mind by now—then you’re…I don’t know. The very essence of your being is perfection. I have never met anyone like you.”
I didn’t want to see the expression on his face. I didn’t want to know what he was thinking or feeling. I just wanted to escape. But I couldn’t. Not before I had said all there was for me to say.
I added, “I really hate her for what she said about you.”
“I don’t want you to hate her,” Mr Grills said quietly.
“But I do! I really do.”
He was silent again—brooding.
“Mr Grills, please, forget what I did. And forget what Kitty said. But don’t forgive her. She’s not worthy of your forgiveness. She’s an attention-seeker and a liar! What she said isn’t true. We all know it. Even she knows it.”
After a long, insufferable pause, he asked, “Why were the two of you talking about me?”
“Why?” I echoed asininely.
“Yes. Why?” This time he sounded angry.
“She thinks…everyone thinks that I like you.”
“And do you?”
I hesitated. Then I said, like I was in a great deal of pain, “Since forever.”
Mr Grills started the engine. “I’ll take you back to school.”
I nodded meekly. “You have ointment on your lip.”
“What? Christ!” He craned his neck to peer in the rear-view mirror and rubbed furiously at his mouth with the back of his hand, but the ointment was dry and refused to budge. He cursed some more and I didn’t blame him.
He yanked a tissue from the glove compartment and spat in it. Fortunately, that seemed to do the trick. He threw the tissue away and drove.
After that we chose not to look at each other or speak another word.
I don’t know who was more embarrassed. Okay, probably me.
In the teachers’ car park, Mr Grills walked ahead of me, like I didn’t exist.
Somehow I managed to lose sight of him in the main building. The corridors overflowed with kids on their way to their fourth-period classes. I turned left—in the direction of the gymnasium—while Mr Grills, I think, turned right. He just seemed to vanish.