Everything I Broke

The Teacher Didn't Even Notice

I attended Saint Katherine's elementary school in De Aar, a small village somewhere in South Africa, and nothing was happening in my life. And then, one day, my mother told me she had divorced my father. I was waiting for it to happen, and I didn't mind it at all. In fact, I liked that I didn't have to see him ever again.

So, we moved in with my uncle in Cape Town, and after going to this whole new place I thought I could be who I wanted to be. Jokes on me.

I think it was December, and I had my winter break. Since I didn't really go out during that time, when we started school in January, I didn't know anyone. There was this girl, though, that seemed much more interesting than the rest of the students. She was beautiful, even though she was white (Back in De Aar everyone had a lovely, brown colour).

People were afraid of her, and that was what I wanted to achieve.

That was my rule: scare everyone away.

It turned out that she was in the same class as me and I learnt that her name was Lucy. For me, Lucy was like an unapproachable goddess. Only in the beginning though, because while we did some stupid activity to get to know our classmates, she kept staring at me.

I didn't know how to react, so I tried to pay attention to Morgan, the guy the teacher paired me up with, even when he was annoying. I kept zoning out either way. "Naira, are you listening to me?"

"Sorry, I got distracted," I apologised and tried to move on with the stupid conversation we had.

"Is it that girl that keeps staring at you? Lucille?" He whispered so she wouldn't hear us.

"Wasn't her name Lucy?" I asked.

"It's the same thing," He said and shrugged his shoulders.

"It's not."

"Lucy is short for Lucille,"

"Yeah, but the name they gave her is Lucy, not Lucille,"

"It's short for Lucille," He repeated.

"Are you seriously going to argue about that, Morgan?" I snapped.

"Sorry." He probably felt bad, but at that point, I didn't care. I ended up asking him what his hobbies were. I forgot what he told me later because I didn't care. He turned the conversation to me anyway, and it sounded more like an interview. Lucy didn't stop staring, and Irene, the girl she was paired up with, got angry at her and left.

And the cherry on top was that the teacher didn't even notice.

I learnt why Lucy was staring at me a week later. Well, not exactly, she just pushed me in the school pool. Everyone was laughing at me, and I went to my locker to grab some dry clothes.

You can imagine that after something like that, I was upset and bothered. Well, my ego was bothered. Either way, I wanted revenge, which wouldn't be me talking to a teacher. It was simple, but putting a sleeping pill in her water bottle was all I needed. Plus, mum kept plenty of those in the bathroom.

Needless to say that with me being me, it didn't turn out well.

Lucy fell asleep in class and didn't wake up after our professor yelled at her for a good two minutes. Everyone started freaking out, and our headmaster called an ambulance.

They soon realised she was fine, and that would be the end of it. However, Irene had seen me putting the pill, so I got detention for five weeks and nearly got arrested for attempted murder. I only got away with it because I started crying and well, they realised I was just a kid. Now that I think of it, it must be easy to murder someone when you are still young. I should have known that.

Anyway, mum wasn't pleased with the fact that I was already in detention, in the second week of the school year. She started lecturing me about anything she could think of and, somehow, ended up talking about "the buffoon that leads America". I was sure it's because he is an alien. At least I liked to think he was an alien, because if there are people as dumb as him, then we are screwed.

The next day was the first day of my detention, and I was surprised when I saw Lucy sitting in the back of the room reading. The teacher hadn't arrived yet, and I decided it was the perfect opportunity for my actual revenge. So I grabbed her book and hit her with all my might. When she got up though I realised that I was going to die. Not only was I shorter than her, but also I was so skinny she could lift me and toss me out of the window.

I am sure that her plan was way more vicious. Luckily for me, the teacher arrived when Lucy was on top of me. And that's how both of us got one more week of detention. My mother would kill me when she learnt about that. As if Lucy wanting to toss me out of the window wasn't enough.

In those weeks of detention together, (that ended up being eight) we got into two more fistfights. I also poured water on her, she trimmed my favourite skirt; I cut her hair; she threw my lunch away; I set her backpack on fire, and so on. Plus, after the last day of detention, we got in one more fistfight that gave me a bloody nose.

Mum wasn't amused when she saw me.