It’s not the first time someone’s slipped me a pair of inflated tits under the table. And even though Miss Green’s on to him, I’m pretty sure it won’t be the last time Jacob pulls up some hardcore on his phone and passes it round the class like a tin of Quality Street at Christmas.
And if it weren’t for his juiced-up excitement, I could hand it straight back, but there’s this film of sweat from Jacob’s palms, and what with that and the shock of that mesh of bodies going at it like hairless animals in a screen-sized cage in a zoo, the phone falls to the floor in an all-eyes-on-me kind of clatter, and Jacob rolls his eyes, like, seriously, Izzy, as if I’m the idiot here.
It’s stupid really, how I can look at the phone as I pick it up but not at Jacob as I put it down on the desk, how his hard stare makes me feel as naked as those women in the film.
‘Honestly, you lot –’ Miss Green doesn’t clock Callum Gun’s hands miming just what he’d like to do to her bum as she walks from the whiteboard towards me – ‘how many times have you been told? No phones in class.’
‘Sorry, miss.’ Though Jacob’s voice is a sorry-not-sorry kind of smirk as Miss Green picks it up, turns it over and sees the mass of skin, the wet mouths and the perfectly timed shot of the man getting just what he came for. ‘I’ll delete it, miss,’ he says, but we all know that if he does, there are a thousand more where that came from – those films he called ‘life lessons’ when I saw him watching one on the bus a few months back and he did that V shape with his fingers, tongue between them, the other boys sniggering and, yeah, some of the girls too. ‘Come on, miss,’ he says now, ‘it’s a laugh, innit.’
But Miss Green, the inside of her bottom lip pulled back between her teeth, doesn’t look like she thinks that’s true.
‘Don’t be a prude, miss. It’s just bodies.’ He winks. ‘Natural, innit.’
I catch Grace’s eye, like, say something.
‘Ask Izzy, miss,’ Jacob mutters.
I swear my face melts into my body, melts into the floor.
Only it doesn’t, not really. There’s too much of me, too many inches of thick shame to disappear, and though Grace’s hand on my thigh is an anchor, it’s not enough to steady the shake, which starts in my fingers but spreads like gossip through the college corridors to the rest of me, cos though the click of Miss Green’s heels on the floor might have prevented her from hearing Jacob’s jibe about me, the rest of the class received it loud and clear.
Not that it’s anything new. Because, no kidding, it’s five weeks since that party, and Jacob’s still getting off on how easily I shrivel when he’s around.
‘Watch yourself, Mansfield.’
If Jacob’s voice was a sorry, not sorry, Grace’s is a you will be. But his shoulders are, like, whatever, as he stands, all that six foot two of him, following Miss Green to the front of the classroom, where he leans over her desk and in that voice, deep as hell since three or so years ago when he and his mates hulked from boy body to man body, he apologises, just sincere enough this time.
Miss Green tells him, ‘Any more of that and, honestly, Jacob, I’ll have no choice.’
‘Thanks, miss,’ he says, head down as he turns away from her, slipping the phone into his pocket, where he makes a pantomime grab of his dick. He mouths in my direction, ‘You love it.’
Max Dale shakes his head, like, you nob, Mansfield.
But he’s smiling.
Everyone’s smiling, right, cos it’s natural, innit? Anything else, and you’re just a prude.