English lessons had taken on a new dimension since Mr Hobson’s arrival, to the female half of the class at least.
Suddenly, chairs were occupied as soon as the bell went and the classroom shimmered with the amount of lip gloss being applied. It was funny to watch, there was no denying it.
Donna Riley stood at the front of the admirers’ queue, her skirt getting shorter by the lesson. What I didn’t expect, though, was to be enrolled in her plan to impress him.
‘I need you to help me,’ she beamed, no trace of embarrassment on her face as she sat beside me.
I was tempted to look around, to make sure she wasn’t speaking to someone else.
‘Do you reckon you can get him over here more often? To our desk?’
‘Who?’
‘Hobson, you fool. You’re good at this English stuff, know what buttons to push. So I need you to ask the right questions. Ones that’ll get him over to us.’
I was stumped. She wasn’t someone you said no to, not unless you had a death wish, so I grinned knowingly, nodding along.
Somehow I got my expression wrong, as she fixed me icily.
‘I don’t want you trying too hard to impress him or nothing. You just need to get him over here at least once a lesson. That way he’ll keep noticing me.’
‘What’s the best thing to ask him?’
‘I don’t know. You’re the brain. Just ask him about apostrophes or something. Nothing impressive, mind. I need him to see me, don’t forget.’
I tried the expression again, more successfully this time, which was a huge relief.
And so, for the next couple of lessons, I played my bit part in Donna’s plan, waiting for her to nudge me under the table, egging me into some crappy question that I already knew the answer to. It usually got Mr Hobson over to us, and as expected Donna did her best to flutter her eyelashes or giggle at what he said, whether it was funny or not.
To be honest, I don’t think he had a clue what was going on, but he was a lot more patient with me than he was with her, humouring me despite my ridiculous questions. I thought I still caught him looking my way, fixing me with this hesitant smile for a second too long, but I pushed it to the back of my mind, thinking he was probably just waiting for my next inane question.
I was doing my job, pleasing Donna as much as I could, but eventually, about three weeks in, the wheels fell off.
‘From reading your creative work,’ he crowed, ‘it’s become clear that a number of you don’t understand the importance of dialogue. How it can sometimes tell you more about a character’s state of mind than even the finest piece of prose.’
He was met by a sea of blank faces. But I knew where he was going.
‘So,’ he continued, ‘I’m going to show you a scene from a film. But my question to you is “Why?”’
Shoulders shrugged. Heads dropped to avoid making eye contact and I felt a dig in my ribs from Donna.
‘Do you know?’ she whispered, but as I leaned over to fill her in, we were interrupted.
‘Miss Riley!’ came his voice, a hint of irritation in it. ‘Do you already know the answer?’
Donna stared at me pleadingly, but what was I going to do? Send her a text? I just shrugged and mouthed ‘Sorry’.
‘What about you, Daisy?’ I thought I heard his voice soften, but could’ve been wrong. ‘Come on. Share it, will you?’
I felt my cheeks burn as eyes spun towards me, waiting for me to make Donna look stupid. I was ready to shake my head and blend in, when he interrupted again.
‘I think you know the answer to this, Daisy, don’t you? Even if you don’t, give it a go.’
And before I could stop myself, I spoke up.
‘Because in cinema dialogue is all you have? You haven’t got prose, so you have to let the characters fill in the gaps with what they say.’
‘Hallelujah,’ he shouted. ‘Spot on. Take a bow. Now, all of you, I need you to watch this scene. It’s only three minutes long, but it tells you more than ten pages of description could.’
And as he dropped the blinds and hit play, I felt a buzz of appreciation ripple through me. As well as a fierce glare from Donna.
She found me during the lunch hour. She didn’t take me aside to a quiet place and give me a slap. That wasn’t the way she rolled. She was into ritual humiliation, the thing I feared most.
‘Everything OK?’ I asked, already knowing the answer, feeling eyes falling upon me, sensing a battle.
‘OK?’ she barked, with an expression usually reserved for the kids she despised. ‘What do you think? I looked like a complete twat in there. How do you think I feel?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I offered, feeling my guilt levels rise. ‘I tried to give you a heads up, didn’t I?’
‘Not very hard, though, eh?’
‘What do you mean? He was looking right at us. I could hardly write it down for you, could I?’
‘Obviously!’ she huffed. ‘But there is such a thing as saying nothing at all, you know.’
‘What?’
‘You could’ve done what I did. Said nothing and looked stupid.’
I couldn’t help but laugh. ‘But that’s crazy.’
Before I knew it, the gap between us shrunk to nothing.
‘No, I’ll tell you what’s crazy. It’s crazy that I asked for your help and that you chose to throw it back in my face. Doesn’t that seem like an odd choice to you?’
It did. I knew it did, as I’d seen what she’d done to other kids who’d done the same. I couldn’t let that happen to me, not if I wanted to hold everything together and keep everyone at a safe distance.
‘I’ll sort it out,’ I gabbled, wiping a mixture of my sweat and her spit from my face. ‘He’ll have forgotten all about it by the next lesson and I can throw you some good examples of dialogue working. He’ll love that.’
She looked at me like I was talking Japanese.
‘Too late for that now,’ she sneered. ‘They mark your card soon as they meet you, this lot. Best thing you can do now is keep a low profile. Stay out of my eyeline and out of his good books. I’ll be watching you. You hear?’
I didn’t have a chance to nod before the bell rang and the corridor swelled with other kids, leaving me to fight my way against the tide, towards the exit. I knew where I had to go to sort out my head and it wasn’t here.