The Truth About Love

chapter eleven

It's been five minutes. Five minutes and I'm already regretting every decision I've ever made in my life. Or to be specific: every decision I've ever made which has led to this precise moment in which I'm sat in a meeting, listening to Rani drone on endlessly about why we should choose to support an Indian elephant sanctuary for this year's Halloween fundraiser.

And it's only made worse by the fact that she's decided that I no longer exist. At least that's the impression she's giving off right now by turning her body fully to face everybody else on the table and blocking me out of the conversation completely.

Waving her arms enthusiastically in the air she pleads, "Mr Small, if you had only seen that baby elephant- or calf to be more precise- come out of its mother's womb you would have been just as mesmerised as I was. Did you know that there are only 15,000 Indian elephants left in the whole world?"

"Actually, 20,000 would be a better ballpark figure," I mutter under my breath as I scroll through the WWF website.

Abruptly halting her emphatic arm movements, she finally decides to stop depriving me of her attention and twists her back to face me. She blinks forcibly several times before saying through gritted teeth, "did you have anything to say, Asha?"

I suppress a smirk and blink back at her meekly, "nope."

She rolls her eyes heavenward before continuing to shun me again. "Anyway as I was saying, before I was interrupted, this is a cause that is very close to my heart so it would mean the world to me if you would take it into consideration for the Halloween fundraiser."

We all awkwardly sit in silence staring at Rani's power point, comprising primarily of her posing next to some poor elephants who definitely didn't consent to being background props in her photoshoot.

The last excruciating photo of Rani pulling a duck face finally disappears, leaving a blank end of powerpoint screen. Mr Small clears his throat. "Thank you for that delightful presentation, Rani. You clearly put a lot of effort into it and you're right- that goat in the background in the first picture does look an awful lot like Mr Drew's newborn son."

I suppress a laugh. Mr Drew, the head of geography, brought his wife along with his newborn son Tarn to the end of year event last year. I don't know what's more unfortunate, the name that the poor child has been given by his parents or the fact that he happens to resemble a random goat somewhere in the middle of North India.

"Does anyone have any other suggestions?" Mr Small looks at me directly, because apparently he has no faith in neither Fraser nor Peter.

"I think Rani's idea is great but I think something more topical like the recent Black Lives Matter movement would be better." I imagine Rani is pursing her lips in front me.

Peter brings up a few websites from some anti-racism charities that I emailed to him last night, "these charities focus on educating schools about anti-racism, tackling topics which simply aren't covered enough in PSHCE. I think it would be beneficial to the whole school, particularly those in the younger years who are still trying to understand the world around them and could benefit a lot from being provided with the correct resources early on."

Mr Small nods his head as I finish speaking. "Thank you for both of your suggestions ladies- you've both clearly put a lot of thought and effort into it. I think the fairest way to choose between the two ideas is through a vote among all the senior prefects.

My phone pings. Peter has already created a poll on the senior prefects WhatsApp chat. He's a quiet yet outstandingly efficient man.

I try to stop my lips curling into a smirk when I see that my idea already has five votes while Rani's is yet to receive any.