You’ve got five minutes, Year 7,’ Miss Peters says. ‘Chop chop.’
Five minutes.
Always five.
We’re leaving in five minutes.
Just give me five minutes.
HARVEY, WILL YOU JUST LEAVE ME ALONE FOR FIVE MINUTES SO I CAN GET SOME PEACE!
I look at the clock. Dunno why. Makes no sense. Just numbers. A face which doesn’t look like a face and hands which don’t look like hands.
The ticking echoes in my head. Chop chop. Chop chop. Louder and louder. Why do they put time in a box like that anyway? Why do they try to cut it into bits? Time is slippery. It’d be like trying to eat soup with a knife and fork – only worse. Time can’t be chopped. It can’t be held in a box.
Everyone’s writing. I dunno what. Summat about a book. Or nouns. Or…whatever.
Pencils scratch. They sound like insects. Scurrying over the page. They’re all over me. The insects I mean. Makes me itch. I wanna shake them off. I guess I flinch cos Cara flicks her eyes at me, snorts, pulls herself away to the edge of the desk like I’m a used tissue or a bad smell. She pulls her elbows in. Thrusts her arm across her work. Like I’d copy her. Like I’d even care.
I reach for the pencil. Yellow and black. Aren’t they warning colours? Reckon I heard that somewhere. Like wasps. I tap it on the desk. Feel the glares. They can glare all they like.
What sound would a pencil make if I snapped it? What would it feel like to crunch it between my teeth? Wood splintering. The taste of lead. All of a sudden, I gotta know. I slide it into my mouth. Bite down, just a bit. My teeth cut through the paint, sink in the wood. It gives a little, softer than I thought. Like butter.
‘Miss!’ Cara gives the word three syllables. ‘Harvey’s eating a pencil.’
Miss Peters looks up. Sighs. Closes her eyes for a second then fixes a smile on her face. ‘We don’t eat pencils, Harvey,’ she sings.
We don’t eat pencils.
We don’t shout.
We don’t run.
We don’t shove.
We don’t walk on the mud.
We don’t stare out of the window.
We don’t draw on our maths books.
We don’t wipe our noses on our sleeves.
We don’t…
We don’t…
Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.
I let the pencil drop. It bounces then stops. I stare at my page. Grey lines slicing across. Straight, perfect, silent. The path of an arrow. The bars of a cage. A train slicing through the snow. Speeding away.
My toe itches. The seam in my sock pressing into it. Kinda wish I could bite it too. My toe, I mean. But Mum says that’s not good manners and also, that I shouldn’t show off. We don’t bite our toes, Harvey. Showing off is bad. Manners are good. Thoughts are loud. They go on and on and on. I try to turn them down. Shut off my ears to the endless chatter. I focus on my toe instead. Imagine biting it.
‘Just a few more minutes,’ Miss Peters announces. ‘Remember what we talked about.’
I smell her before I see her. The sweet chemically punch of her perfume. It mingles with the smell of gravy – the smell of Thursdays. Roast beef. Tough – like the sole of a shoe. (We don’t eat shoes, Harvey.) I can feel her there now. Next to me. At my elbow. My stomach shifts and I wait. Can feel her looking. It’s like the air kind of tenses around me. Then I hear her. She taps her teeth together, just once. I keep my head down.
‘Shall we do the first one together?’ she tries, her voice tight. She’s tryin’, I’ll give her that. ‘Look…’
She points. Her mouth opens and closes. I can see her tongue, fat and pink. But I dunno what she’s saying. The words float away like bubbles. Some shatter on the wall. Others loom over my head, just out of reach, dark and menacing.
A pause. She’s finished. Waiting for something. For me, I guess. But I don’t move. I bite down. If I ignore her, will she leave me alone?
‘Can’t you just try, Harvey?’ she pleads. Something quivers in her voice. I look up. Catch her eye for a second. Then turn away. Can’t look at her. Anywhere but her. The walls shout. Yellow, green and red. A pyramid. Numbers. ‘At Millwood Academy, we always try our best’.
I wish I were a tortoise. I could pull my head into my chest where it’s dark and where I could hide. (We are not a tortoise, Harvey. We do not hide our head.)
I push my thumb and forefinger together. Press hard. ‘I dunno what to write,’ I say. It comes out louder than I meant. People look. They don’t need to say what they’re thinking. I know. They think I’m an idiot.
She pauses. A second? A minute? Can’t tell.
‘Weren’t you listening? What did I just say?’
I shrug. Feel her stiffen. Another tap of the teeth. She exhales slowly, sagging like a week-old balloon.
‘Just do it, Harvey. Or it’ll be extra homework.’
Reckon I’m a balloon too. One of those modelling ones. The ones they twist and twist until they become sommat else. Like a dog. Or a giraffe. Or a flower. I’m being twisted too. But balloons can’t always be summat else, no matter how much you twist and force them. Sometimes they just burst. Pop. Explode.
I clench my fist. Squeeze hard. The room squeezes back. My skin the front line of a battle, me against the outside world.
The clock echoes – chop chop, chop chop. Pencils scratch. And somewhere, deep inside of me is a roar. A scream. I swallow it down. It sticks in my chest. I can’t breathe.
‘Just one more minute,’ she sings.
One minute. One thick, sticky, choking minute. Enough to drown in.
I press the pencil into the paper. Hear the grind of lead. Feel the wood creak and groan. One more push and it breaks.
‘Miss! Harvey broke a pencil.’
At Millwood Academy, we are calm.
We don’t shout.
We don’t scream.
We don’t roar.
But five minutes is up. And I do.
Joanna Todd is a primary school teacher and writer from the Midlands. As well as writing educational resources for schools, she is currently working on a middle-grade adventure about jellyfish and growing up with the support of the Golden Egg Academy.
