Bunking Off

Sahara Ndubu couldn’t work out why her classmates were laughing so hard, why paper and pen missiles were being throw in her direction or why Mrs Ellis couldn’t control the class. Well no actually Mrs Ellis could never control the class, it was why the school was so low down in the league tables her mother fretted over. Sahara knew what she said was true, babies came from their mother’s tummies right? And God put them there right?

Apparently not.

The lads were waving their arms at her and whooping. Sean leapt up off his chair and shoved his face in hers.

‘Want to know what makes babies?’

His words were menacing, his eyes threatening something she couldn’t work out what, and Sahara was scared. He was tugging at his trousers and pushing his groin into her thigh. Mrs Ellis grabbed him away from the girl and herded him out of the classroom. He was happy to leave. She didn’t even have to lead him down the corridor, he knew where they were going. He checked his watch, 9.45, it was still only second lesson, so there was a good chance his father was still sober and capable of picking up the phone for the headmistress to tell him his son was being suspended again. Whatever, Sean didn‘t care.

By 11.00 though Sean wasn’t so sure he was going home. He could just walk out, but he knew that meant the school calling social services, and his father went spare when they started poking around in the family’s business. So he sat. He waited. He waited until 11.30am when he was finally sat in front of the headmistress. They’d played this game many times before, so much so that they’d cut the charade right down to the bone. Now it was just the necessities that occupied them. 

Mrs Dobson was tired of Sean Andrews, at thirteen he was still young enough for her to see the kid in him if she looked hard enough. But she’d seen so much and grown so weary of him that she couldn’t distinguish that child anymore. All she saw now was the man he would become. 

‘What happened?’ Her tone was monotone, disinterested.

‘Nothing’ 

‘Why did you attempt to undo your trousers Sean?’

He shrugged and looked at the floor.

‘You father was incapable of discussing your behaviour with me Sean, so we’ve had to call your mother. She’s on her way.’

He leapt out of his chair and leant over the desk ‘What the fuck did you do that for? My mother’s a fucking trollop!‘

His father always told him this. She hated Sean. His father always told him this also, and she had done nothing to disprove this assertion. Whenever Sean went round to her house she wouldn’t even let him in, yet his brother and sister lived with her. 

‘Any more of that and your suspension will be increased.'

That meant a visit from Social Services, his father was going to go nuts.

‘I don’t give a fuck!‘

‘Two weeks.’

‘I fucking hate her. I’m not going anywhere with that slag.’ He was shouting now.

‘Four.’

Tears of frustration welled-up and he slumped back in his chair. Could the day get any worse?

‘You’re a waste of bloody space Sean.’

Sean tuned his mother’s voice out of his ears and pushed the front door of his house open.

‘We’re going to get Social Services crawling all over us if you carry on like this’. She pushed him into the hall. ‘Christ this place stinks of booze. Alan?’ She called out for her husband. ‘Alan!’