Niven Govinden - Graffiti My Soul

‘I’ve had better. Mrs Harris gave me a B for my History essay, when it was clearly A-grade calibre. You know, in our parliamentary discussion last week, she said she didn’t agree with coloured people being MPs? Said it wasn’t representative.’

‘I’m not talking about your coursework, Veerapen.’

‘Or a blatently racist teacher, by the sounds of it. She was saying those things to get a rise out of me. Isn’t that illegal?’

‘Look, I can only help you if you tell me what’s going on. I’ve had reports of disruptions in all your classes this morning and I want to get to the bottom of it.’

‘Nothing to get to the bottom of. None of this has anything to do with me. I can’t be blamed just because your teachers have no grasp of discipline.’

‘I’m never sure whether I should give you special treatment because of your circumstances, but I can, if that’s what you’d like me to do.’

‘You’re the Year Head. You should know what to do.’

‘You pushed your History teacher, Veerapen.’

‘Like I said, she gave me a B. I wasn’t particularly happy about it.’

‘Do you think pushing a teacher is acceptable behaviour?’

‘It’s not as if she listens to what I’ve got to say. And there wasn’t push, just so you know. I brushed past her to get to my seat.’

‘I think we both know that it was more than that.’

‘She was trying to get me to sit at the front and I wasn’t even doing anything. It was everyone else who wouldn’t stop talking. She’s got it in for me, like I have to be made an example or something.’

‘She must have asked you to move desks for a reason.’

‘I was telling Lizzie Jennings to shut up, that’s all.’

‘I heard you were telling her more than that.’

‘I told her to shut her fat fucking mouth. That what you wanted to hear?’

This is the only the second time I’ve ever been in Year Head’s office, the first being when I cut Pearson’s head open. From the outside, when you walk along the path to the science labs and peer in, it looks huge. So misleading. When you’re actually in there, it’s as poky as hell and nowhere near as plush as the blue curtains and leather seating suggest. A cupboard with a desk and a couple of Matisse prints ripped from a magazine sellotaped onto the wall (his flowers, not the naked women. We have them at home, that’s how I know.) Her desk is covered with paper and books, but all school stuff, nothing personal aside from today’s copy of The Guardian , a bunch of pickled daffs in a vase that is algae-heavy, and a burnt CD that starts with a ‘C’ — could be either Coldplay or classical. No family pictures like you’d imagine a woman her age to have. Not sure if that’s because she likes to keep her life outside the school just that, or if, as everyone in our year likes to believe, that she’s a possible lesbian.

I know that if I breathe right and relax, I’d be able to see things more clearly. Focus on the goals. But it’s too tempting to stay wrapped up in my rage, too easy. Everyone’s always saying how much better it is to keep on the right side of things; what they don’t mention is how hard it is to bring yourself out of that state just so you can behave correctly. It’s harder than just flicking a switch. I’m a mass of fine electrical wires, powered to cooking point, brain preparing to sizzle.

She asks me again if there’s something I’d like to tell her. That ordinarily an assault on a teacher, no matter how small, can result in immediate suspension, but that under the circumstances my behaviour this morning would be overlooked. But — and there was a big but — I had to open up and tell her what was going on. She’s hearing the stories but doesn’t know who’s behind them; the gossip has gone way beyond its remit at this point. She also wants to know if there’s any truth in them, because the seriousness of the allegations makes it something she cannot ignore.

‘There isn’t anything to ignore,’ I tell her. ‘Sour grapes ’cos the running’s going good. No one seems to like it when the Paki gets the spotlight.’

‘Veerapen, don’t talk like that. Never talk about yourself in that way.’

She obviously hasn’t seen any hip hop videos made in the last ten years.

Also, I can’t respect anyone who’s only learned to pronounce my name properly in the last six weeks. Year Head’s stumbling over a few basic syllables makes Brendan’s efforts sound natural.

I’m only getting her riled up because I don’t want her to start some discussion about how a kid may get confusing feelings about members of the same sex as he moves into adolescence. I’m fifteen, I don’t need those kind of lectures. Especially from a woman who’s a lesbian on the quiet. Make a sentence with these words: calling, pot, kettle. Why are adults all such hypocrites?

Mum had a similar conversation with me a few months ago after some twat I didn’t even know called out a name while we were queuing at the car park machine in the Bentalls Centre. Walked right up to my face and said it. I didn’t get out of that chat as easily. I had to swallow my smirks and pretend to open up, something that I won’t be doing again.

We sit in silence for what feels like an hour. I concentrate on Jase’s blood stain, which still hasn’t been cleaned from the carpet.

‘You’d better get going or you’ll be late for registration,’ she says finally.

Knowing that it’s safe to look up, I see she’s out of her seat and pointing to the clock.

‘I’m going to ask your teachers to keep a close eye on you this afternoon, and if there’s any more trouble you must come and let me know.’

‘OK,’ I go, not ’cos I’ve got any intention of blabbing or sharing any information with her. Not ’cos I want to let someone who isn’t a family member know how I am falling out of my depth into something that feels frightening and uncontrollable, but ’cos it’s the easiest thing to say.

‘OK. Most definitely. Fo’ shizzle m’nizzle.’

I slip into the library on the way back to class and check my emails. Figure I can scrounge a couple of extra minutes and blame it on Year Head. There are two. One sent bulk to the whole of our year, the other one comes up as private. Both JPEGS. The bulk: one with me and Casey with my tits out down the track. Doesn’t bother me as much as it should. They’re already talking about it, this isn’t gonna change that. It’s only when I think of Moon that I get the hard knot in my stomach that threatens to turn me inside out. Knowing that, quite willingly, she felt that she had to pass that evidence on, and to him. In the glare of the second JPEG, my own worries are nothing, they don’t even compare. Possibly why I got it privately. Pearson has guts, but not that much guts. A picture scanned from the local paper archives, of Jason’s dead sister being carried into the ambulance. She’s already in the bag, but that doesn’t make any difference. I know what I’m looking at. Sick bastard.

Send him a txt to wash over the sick feeling: his dad on the floor in the street with the toe of my trainers in his face. It ends now.

Gwyn takes me for lunch at the Italian place. It’s expensive, so no one there knows us. She walks with me extra slowly ’cos the bandaged leg has got infected and is hurting like hell. I’m saying nothing about transference either.

She doesn’t tell me how much she likes me, only that she saw me snogging Peter Platinum, the runner who’s all eyes and teeth, after that race meet in Guildford. She’d come to pick us up from the station, and saw how I was straggling behind, waiting for my opportunity to get my three seconds of tongue whilst the others were getting their shit together. If I tell her that was the first time I’d ever touched a guy’s lips, she wouldn’t believe it. And he was the one who’d made the moves. The way he’d been checking me out in the changing rooms. One of those times when you think, fuck it. Let him have what he wants. I know he’s an old ugly fucker, but there’s no other candidates round here. I don’t even like the guy. I just wanted to know what it would be like.