And push into my brand-new world.
he really great thing about having the head of drama as my new form teacher this year is – thanks to my role in last year’s production of Hamlet – I already know her.
The not so great thing?
She already knows me.
“Harriet Manners!” Miss Hammond looks up from her desk so enthusiastically that the beaded fringe on her tie-dye scarf gets caught on a pencil pot. “You’ve returned to us for the second time! How utterly wonderful!”
Oh, sugar cookies. I really hope she’s not going to bring out the book I gave her. I don’t want my first introduction to the class to involve the word loo.
“You guys,” she continues chirpily, waving a hand around. There are so many bracelets, she sounds like an enormous Slinky. “For those who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting her before, Harriet Manners has veritably boomeranged back after a glamorous adventure in Nooooo Yaawwwk!”
I flush a little bit harder.
“Apparently Americans eat more bananas than any other fruit,” I blurt anxiously. “And twenty-five per cent of them think the sun orbits the earth.”
Oh my God. What is wrong with me?
“Which isn’t why I came back,” I add quickly, the back of my neck starting to prickle. “I like bananas.”
I like bananas.
Yup. There are over a million words in the English language, and I chose those three in that particular order to impress a group of strangers.
I am never reading a fact book again.
The students in the class murmur “Hey, Harriet” while they try to make sense of me too.
“Why don’t you plop yourself down there?” Miss Hammond says, pointing to a free seat. “We’re doing a team-building exercise first thing, so it’s perfect timing! You’re going to fit back in like a kitten in a straw basket full of other kittens. I can tell already.”
Still blushing, I walk cautiously to the corner of the class and place my satchel on the floor. Then – trying not to notice the thirty-two eyes still following me – I take out my new folders: three colours with dividers for easier organisation.
Followed by my new school diary and a set of biros.
Five pencils, an eraser, three highlighters, glue, a hole punch, ruler and Post-its. A tape-dispenser and compass. A calculator and protractor.
A full, rainbow-hued box of felt-tip pens. A traditional fountain-pen.
With little ink-pot.
Finally, I add a couple of shiny blank notepads with pictures of dinosaurs all over the front.
What? I just really like being prepared, that’s all.
When it’s all laid out neatly and at perfect right angles on my desk I feel much calmer again, so I fold my hands tightly on my lap and survey the slowly expanding class with a growing sense of excitement.
I vaguely know some of them already.
The two leads from the play last year are on opposite sides of the classroom: Christopher (Hamlet), sullen and still wearing a black polo-neck, and pretty Raya (Ophelia, obviously) with a glossy black ponytail, camel-like eyelashes and permanently pouted lips. I also recognise Eric, the school football captain, now slightly pirate-like with a shaved head and a gold hoop earring, and my old classmate Robert, who has apparently developed an interest in hair gel – the front of his hair looks like if he ran fast with his head down he could probably kill somebody with it.
Two of Alexa’s key minions – Liv and Ananya – are seated together at the back: one with pale skin and a bleached white top-knot, the other with dark skin and a large, black high-bun. They’re wearing the same floral onesies in contrasting colours and are united by identical, intensely bored expressions.
But much more excitingly, there are also at least a handful of faces I don’t recognise at all.
Which one of these is going to be my new kindred spirit?
The girl with pink glasses? She looks like she’s on first-name terms with her optometrist too. The girl with neon purple hair and a rainbow-coloured nose ring? I’m a big fan of bright colours too. How about the boy with freckles and a red bag? I, too, have freckles and a—
OK, I think I might just be clutching at similarity straws now.
Finally, almost every chair but the one next to me is taken.
“Oh, shoot a hamster,” Miss Hammond says, slapping her head lightly with her wrist. “What a twit I am! I left the register in the staffroom.” She stands up and jingles a few times. “Back in two ticks, peeps.”
And – in a whirlwind of orange and pink – our form teacher disappears into the corridor.
The room immediately starts bubbling with noise again, and I cautiously start staring hard at individuals and then giving them my brightest, friendliest smile. The kind that says I can’t wait to ask you questions and then remember the details!
A few of them actually smile back.
You know what? I like sixth form already. People are glancing at me, but it doesn’t feel hostile.
It feels curious; quizzical and interested.
I can feel my entire body starting to relax.
I was so right: this was exactly what I needed. A fresh start. A new beginning. The closure of an old page, and the opening of a new one. The unfolding of a different story.
Except it isn’t.
Because, just as I’m congratulating myself on making such an excellent – albeit fruit-enthused – first impression, the classroom door opens again. And in walks the Captain Hook to my Peter Pan; the Voldemort to my Potter.
The Cruella De Vil to my hundred spotted puppies.
Alexa.
o.
o no no no no no.
O NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NONONONONONONO NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO NONO.
f you yelled for one year, seven months and twenty-six days, you would produce enough sound energy to heat one cup of tea. Hook up my brain right now and I should be able to boil ten in three seconds flat.
This can’t be happening. It can’t be.
Alexa isn’t doing any of the same subjects as me. She has a totally different schedule: English, History, Geography. I was sure she had a different form room. I rang and checked with Mrs O’Connor to confirm that I’d been moved to another class, just in case.
And emailed. Five times. With a supporting text.
I thought I was finally free.
With a flick of the grown-out blonde hair which Nat chopped off for being horrible to me nearly a year ago now, Alexa strolls into the room and looks at us through heavily lined eyes.
“Hi,” she says with a small cat-smile.
“How are you all today?”
She’s the only person I know who can make a general greeting sound like a specific death threat.
“Lexi! Over here!” Ananya sits up straighter and sticks a hand in the air. “Thank God you’re here: this class is so boring.”
“Ohwowowow,” Liv squeaks, bopping up and down in her seat, “areyoukiddingLexiyoulookamazingtodayIlove yourskirtI’vetotallygotonejustlikeitexceptit’sredanda differentlengthandshapebutit’sprettymuchidentical.”
When an elephant lies down it only needs to breathe four times a minute. Every time Liv gets excited, I can’t help wondering if she has a similar lung capacity.
Alexa ignores them and swivels to look in my direction.
I’m not kidding: her entire face has just lit up. As if she’s six, it’s Christmas morning and I’m a solid gold bike somebody’s left under the tree.
The frog in my stomach has suddenly gone very still.
“Do you mind if I take this seat?” she says, sashaying towards me in sharp-heeled black boots: the kind you can skewer somebody’s soul with.
“Yes,” I say as clearly as I can. “Immensely.”
But apparently it’s a rhetorical question, because Alexa kicks back and puts her feet on our desk, knocking my compass on to the floor.
I’m going to leave it there. I don’t think drawing my bully’s attention to a sharp metal o
bject with a stabby point is the smartest possible decision at this precise moment.
“I’m so delighted you’re finally back,” she says flatly, picking one of my notepads up and staring at the T-Rex on the front with a wrinkled nose. “Overjoyed, in fact.”
“Are you?” I say tightly.
“Totally.” She’s now fiddling with my ink pot. “School’s so dull without somebody fun to play with.”
Which would be quite sweet if we were five and she didn’t mean the way a tiger plays with a three-legged goat or a cat plays with a mouse just before she rips it apart.
Skeletal muscle consists of 650 striated layers connected to bones, and I’m so cold and rigid now every one of my fibres feels like it’s made out of stainless steel.
This is a disaster.
Actually, no: it’s a catastrophe; a cataclysm; utter ruination. A meteorite could be about to obliterate England, and it would still be second on the Worst Things That Could Possibly Happen Today list.
There’s no way I can make new friends and start again with Alexa snapping at my heels. She’s going to make everybody hate me before I even get a chance.
Again.
“And I just love the look you’re going for today,” she adds in a voice so loud it could blister paint. “Ducks are so hot right now.”
Ducks? I look down in confusion at my white jumper, orange leggings and yellow shoes and then flush bright red. She’s right: I look exactly like a member of the Anatidae family.
That is not the sophisticated first impression I wanted to give at all.
“Hey, you guys,” Alexa continues at the top of her voice, gesticulating with one of my pencils. Everybody in the class is now staring at us in silence. “For those of you who haven’t met Harriet Manners, we’ve known each other a really long time, haven’t we?” The frog in my stomach is now totally frozen. No. No no no no. “A really, really long time. Eleven years, in fact.”
“Alexa—”
“Oh, they’re just going to love our childhood memories, Harriet. They’re adorable. Do you remember when we were five and you peed yourself on the story-time carpet and they had to buy a whole library of new books?”
“OMG!” Ananya laughs from behind me. “I remember that, Lexi! That was hilaire.”
“So gross,” Liv squeaks. “Like, ewwww.”
I feel sick. “It was milk and I squeezed my carton too hard.”
“What about the time you took your skirt off during Year Four Cinderella and ran around the stage in your knickers?”
Oh God. Oh God oh God oh God –
“The button fell off and I didn’t notice.”
“And goodness, everybody,” Alexa says, taking a nice big breath while she unsheathes her claws and gets ready to rip my metaphorical intestines out. “Just wait until you hear about the time that Harriet Manners—”
The door smacks open.
uys!” Miss Hammond breezes into the room, carrying roughly twenty-five toilet rolls. “I just found these and had the best idea for our team-building game. This is going to be so much fun and—”
She abruptly stops and peers over the top of them. As if she’s protected by the world’s softest, strongest, most absorbable wall.
“Alexa Roberts?”
“Hey, miss! Wow, is your tummy feeling OK? Are they all for you?”
Miss Hammond is slowly changing colour.
Six months ago, Alexa single-handedly attempted to destroy Hamlet before getting detention every day for a month. From the energy crackling between them now, it looks like neither of them has forgotten about it.
“What are you doing in here?” Miss Hammond says sharply, dumping all the rolls on the desk so hard that three bounce straight on to the floor. “This is Form A. You’re in Form C, with Mr White.”
“Am I?” Alexa stands up and flicks her hair. “Oh no. I must have got lost on my way there, somehow. Or maybe I was just drawn here by some invisible and irrepressible force.”
She smiles and I can’t help thinking that if Alexa put this much obsessive compulsive behaviour into her schoolwork she’d have graduated school by now. And university. And possibly obtained some kind of PhD.
“Out,” Miss Hammond snaps, pointing at the corridor. “Now.”
“But miss …”
“Now.”
“I just think …”
“Immediately.”
“Fine.” My nemesis stalks towards the corridor, and then turns round. “But I think it’s really important that you all know about the time that Harriet once—”
“Nobody cares, Alexandra,” Miss Hammond snaps, slapping her hands on her desk. “And if you come near this room again, you’re suspended, effective immediately. Do I make myself clear?”
“But—”
“No buts. Scoot.”
Miss Hammond crosses the classroom quickly, slams the door on Alexa and pulls down the blind so we can’t see her. Then she turns back to a stunned, silent class and smooths down her skirt.
Like a warrior in 100% organic cotton.
“Right,” she says softly, and her voice is all sunshine and kittens in baskets again. “Grab a toilet roll each, guys, and let’s get out on the playing field, build teams and really connect.”
I’ve never brought an apple in for a teacher before, but – as almost the entire class smile at me sympathetically and start grabbing their bags – I think I might just do that.
I’m getting my fresh start after all.
o, here are some facts about toilet roll:
It was invented by the Chinese in 600 AD.
Britons use 110 rolls each a year, which is the equivalent of six miles of tissue.
72% of people hang toilet paper with the first sheet going over the roll.
The US military used toilet paper to camouflage their tanks in Saudi Arabia during the Desert Storm war.
Novelty paper includes: glow-in-the-dark, money, Word of the Day and Sudoku.
How do I know this?
Let’s just say a few months ago I had a bad cold combined with a long car journey with Toby that I’ve never fully recovered from. I’ve sworn not to blow my nose anywhere near him again.
Miss Hammond appears to be even more excited than Toby about its possibilities.
She giddily ushers all of us outside: past the enormous tug-of-war being conducted by Mrs Baker, beyond a taciturn Mr Bott and small groups constructing tables out of newspaper, far away from Mr White and rings of students passing balloons between their knees and laughing.
(Every couple of minutes there’s a loud BANG that I suspect is not unrelated to Alexa.)
“Right,” Miss Hammond says cheerfully, planting a stick in the ground with a stripy pink sock taped to the end. “We had a very enlightening teacher training session yesterday, didn’t we, Harriet?”
The whole class turns to look at me.
Excellent. Now I look like an undercover teacher trainer.
“And we were reminded of how we are all part of the same beautiful puzzle. Held together by the invisible threads of harmony and happiness.” She pauses. “Please stop hitting Robert with the roll of tissue, Eric.”
“But we’re just bonding, miss,” Eric objects, doing it again. “Our thread of happiness depends on it.”
“Lovely! That’s the spirit!” She beams at us all and then gestures at a blonde girl to take her roll off the top of her head. “So we’re going to play a little game to help us form lifelong connections. After all, there’s no me in team!”
“Yes, there is,” Christopher objects. “It is literally right there.”
“And meat.”
“Mate.” “Meta.” “Atem.”
“That’s not how you spell atom, idiot.”
“See how you’re already working together?” Miss Hammonds claps. “So in a burst of inspiration, I am calling this game The Riddle of the Mummy.”
Liv’s hand goes up.
“Mine is in Vegas right now, miss. She goes there after every summer
holiday to recover.”
“Er, excellent, Olivia! And your eventual arrival, Mr King, is always a pleasure, however unpredictable.”
A boy in a yellow T-shirt shrugs and takes a place at the back of the group.
“So,” Miss Hammond continues brightly, “I’m going to ask you all riddles, and in teams of three you’ll try to answer them as quickly as possible. The team that gets it right first gets to take three steps towards The Sock of Survival.”
I can feel an excited, fizzy feeling starting to run down the back of my neck.
I love riddles.
They’re like facts, except backwards and you can solve them and that’s even better. Plus, competition really helps to sharpen my mind and bring out the best in me. Miss Hammond couldn’t have picked a better way for me to make new friends if I’d sent in a handwritten request form.
Which I didn’t, just to clarify.
“To make things a bit more jolly,” she continues, beginning to wind the end of a loo roll round her ankle, “I’m going to turn myself into an Egyptian mummy and chase you, to help motivate you to keep moving forward! If I tap you on the shoulder, you become a mummy too and you’re out of the race. And so on and so forth.”
Oh my God.
This is getting better and better. I love ancient history too (although mummies technically originated in South America but maybe that’s not super relevant to the game right now).
Miss Hammond keeps winding the tissue until it’s binding her legs together like a penguin after knee surgery.
“The team that reaches The Sock of Survival first – without all turning into mummies – wins!”
A flurry of hands immediately go up.
“What do we win, miss?”
“The satisfaction of knowing you did it together!” There’s a pause while all the hands come down again, and Miss Hammond adds slightly reluctantly: “And a ten-pound voucher for the school tuck shop.”
A murmur of approval goes round the class.
I’m now buzzing so hard it’s as if I’m filled with bees or electric toothbrushes, and not just because the prize is sugar.