He’s walking right towards me, and Mrs Anderson.
This is crazy. I only ever spot him occasionally in Assembly. He’s never out there at breaktime, he doesn’t play in any of the teams, I’ve never come across him in the bike sheds, or anywhere else at school. And now I’ve encountered him twice in three days. Saturday, when he rode past Turnpike Stables and now again here today, literally on a collision course.
I’m a hundred percent certain Mrs Anderson doesn’t know I’m following her. Stupid thing is, I wouldn’t even be here if I wasn’t feeling cold, and I wouldn’t be cold if I’d taken my blazer out to the playground like Jess did. This is what Daddy would call a fluke.
Nathan is just passing the lucky bean tree and is getting closer. So does he hang out behind the classrooms at breaktimes? No matter. If I’m going to say something to him, I’d better start thinking exactly what.
Hello is a good start. Then I could move on to My name’s Tessa. Gill leads me at the riding school. First is true of course, but the second isn’t. Not anymore. I ride by myself and Gill just tells me lots of things about horses. Next, I could say I saw you riding your pony on Saturday, or You don’t look like Gill. Or is that rude?
It’s true though. Gill has a face shaped like a heart and it’s always bright and laughing. She has gold hair and blue eyes, and she’s thin and willowy, like an enchanted princess from a story or maybe a flaxen-haired Barbie doll. Nathan is thin, and I’ve never been close enough to see the colour of his eyes, but he has dark hair and that floppy forelock that falls over his face, like one of the ponies in Mr Thelwell’s books. His face is quite squarish and sort of nice but it doesn’t do much smiling. It doesn’t really do anything.
He’s walking along the path like he owns it, his hands in the pockets of his shorts, but he’ll have to step off in a second as it’s too narrow for both him and Mrs Anderson. She must be wondering if he’s even seen her, surely? He’s looking straight past her to me and this is causing me a problem. I was right in the act of winding myself up for conversation and now my brain is backtracking. Don’t say anything, it’s telling me. In fact, don’t even be here at all. Turn around and scarper. My legs ignore the recommendation and just keep on walking.
He hops off the path. He doesn’t take off his hat, like the boys are supposed to, and say, “Good morning, Mrs Anderson,” and he doesn’t even take his hands out of his pockets. He just, like, ambles past her as if she doesn’t exist, still with his eyes on me.
So when she stops dead, I have to grind to a halt behind her with nowhere to go. My legs really should’ve listened to my brain and run away.
I can’t see her face but everything else about her is giving me a warning of what’s coming. She grows a little taller. She turns to stone, her fists clenched at her sides. Her voice, when it comes out, is like one of Miss Ashton’s lunge whips cracking in the air.
“Owen! Where are your manners?”
He pauses in mid stride and there’s a second or two in which nothing happens. It’s like I’ve got glue on the soles of my shoes, because nothing will move, not even time. At least he’s dropped his eyes from me now.
Very slowly, he says, “I don’t know, Ma’am. I may have left them at home.”
I have three simultaneous reactions to this. One is apparently totally oblivious of the circumstances and tells me, Hey, Monty Papadopoulos was wrong. He can speak. Isn’t it curious how he has a boy-version of Gill’s kind of refined Rhodesian accent? Another one is stunned because everyone knows you simply don’t say things like that to teachers. The third one is so impressed it completely overturns the second, and Miss Goody-Two-Shoes-Tessa, who should be shocked into silence, goes, loudly and clearly, “Wow!”
After the word’s come out my jaw stays hanging open like I’m some gormless idiot. If she’s heard me, she’s ignoring me for now. She’s dithering about like she’s on hot bricks, which makes me give out this ridiculous snort. Nathan’s mouth is doing something strange, almost like it’s going to laugh, but it never quite gets there.
Then he does take his hat off and tilt his head towards her, but he says nothing and starts walking again, back on the path. He dodges in the same direction as me and we both have to sidestep again, and again.
Don’t look at him. Clamp your lips together and make an effort to concentrate on those little baby weeds between the paving slabs at your feet. Your left shoelace is coming undone. Don’t look at him.
Above all, don’t wait to find out what Mrs Anderson is going to do next.
I take off across the lawn and skid into my class locker room. Signs saying Don’t walk on the grass are all very well but I need the shortest escape route possible and I’m still cold. Or I thought I was. As soon as I get my blazer on I realise I’m roasting hot.
After nearly five minutes of lurking behind the door, feeling stupid, I creep back to the playing field by the gravel path along the back of the building.
Jess has given up on me and is with Heather and the Barnes twins.
“Well here she is!” she says. “Did you go home to fetch your blazer?”
I should tell her what kept me so long, but is there any point? On the face of it, it’s a simple story, but it has complications behind it somehow. A string of connections that won’t make much sense to her.
So Timothy says he’s a loner, with no friends, and no-one who wants to be friends with him. Richard says there must have been something wrong with his brain at birth and he must have had to repeat either Standard One or Standard Two because he’s ten already and most of the others in his year are only nine. And Michael Palmer, who’s in Standard Three with Nathan, reckons he won’t ever be any good at anything and should be in a special school. Well, he doesn’t come across weird, or special. He looks perfectly normal to me. Did he laugh just now or not?
“Don’t be silly,” I tell Jess. “Of course I didn’t go home.”