Marked Absent

One (of One).

Tuesday Mid-morning. Situated in wintry Bath-&-Somerset County, an English lit classroom had accommodated all but one of their inhabitants. A dark-skinned Afro-brit teen moved through his learning ritual, checking his notes studiously and gently singing to himself as other classmates chitchatted and shot the shit. 

“Well, if Ashley-O doesn’t apologise to Katey-B, I don’t see how they’ll still get on,” remarked a student. 

“I know, Shells--AND the Xmas do is soon too,” retorted another.

The teen returned to his rituals, checking for time at the antique clock, suspended top-right of the digital whiteboard. 

“Where’s Ms Bamford, odd of her to be late,” chimed a student inquisitively to her friendship cluster. A muffled response expressing the same anxiety retorted. 

*ahem*. 

All eyes in the classroom follow the vocal disruption; there stood Ms Bamford, hands crossed and auburn hair in a bun; her left-heeled foot having crossed the doorway into the space. A navy pinstriped blazer and matching trousers felicitated her frame; a grey overcoat loomed hostilely over her shoulders. 

Ms Bamford continued her stride towards her desk, removing the monstrous overcoat and laying it over her left arm. “Class. Apologies for the delay; a meeting ran over.”

Once her desk laid before her, Ms Bamford set to hang her gargantuan overcoat on the hook behind her chair. “Mr Mabuza—" 

the singing teen looked up – “Do you know the whereabouts of Miss Akong?”. 

*sigh* 

“No Ms Bamford, I don’t.” 

“Mhmm. It’s just that this is the second lesson she’s missed today,” Ms Bamford took a moment to fold her arms. “Her housemother, Mrs Cook, is understandably concerned.” 

“Right…” the teen began bouncing his right knee off the oak floorboards beneath him. He peeped over at Caroline’s desk, hoping that she’d somehow conjure herself there that instance, saving her the worry and him the awkwardness of yet another microaggression. 

Crap, no luck. The teen turned back. 

“As I said, I don’t have a clue where she is.” 

“Yes, well should it come to you, I’d urge you to inform me. Class, please turn to—” “

Wait, how would it come to me, Ms?”. 

Ms Bamford’s eyebrows raised. “Mr Mabuza, I just assumed you two knew each other.” 

The teen’s knee bounce increased in voracity. “We’re in completely different friend groups. Different interests--I only see her at assembly and Sunday Mass.” 

“Yes, well Mr Mabuza the fact remains that—” 

“That we’re both black and she’s the only other black student in your class, correct?”. 

A chair scraped and mouths gaped as the other students watched on in shock. 

“Mr Mabuza, just WHAT are YOU trying to infer?”. 

“I’m not the one asking one student on a piss-cold Wednesday where another is based on pigmentation, am I, Ms? D’you wish to inquire Aidan Gallagher- “Aidan chortled and threw in a supportive “Oi-Oi” – where Tara Moore prunes her hedges or is this line of behaviour reserved for us—” 

“Mr Mabuza, I’ll not have you disrupting the classroom with baseless accusations. You’ll find that I did not make any such assumptions, I simply know that you and Miss Akong had travelled to town a few times; I was confident you’d be the person to ask.”