Psych

6. School (2)

He looked at her. Maybe she had changed her mind.

‘Try to be normal,’ she said with the most motherly voice she could muster. ‘Just…be yourself.’

‘What if I get bullied? What if the rest of the kids make the unanimous decision to declare open season on my life? In case you hadn’t noticed, Aunt Janice, I’m probably the only black kid here. What if…’

She placed a finger on his mouth. She stared solemnly into his eyes. ‘If anything like that happens, my boy, just remember that misconceptions, bad judgements do happen…and so do accidents.’

He stood still for a while. He gave her a quick nod before stepping out of the car and onto the sidewalk.

As he made his way along the path towards the entrance of the school building, he felt invisible. Students would bump into him over and over again like he was one of those walkthrough doors at the mall. The sign, “Welcome to Malrich High School” was now hanging over his head as he walked through the wide open wooden doors.

The interior of the building was exactly what he expected. Just like in the movies, there was a long hallway that stretched as far as the eye can see. To both the left and right sides of the hallway were various rooms and what looked like the students’ lockers. There were hundreds of posters hung on both sides of the wall with information about try-outs, hangouts, duties and other irrelevant stuff he could not care even less for.

He could not help but feel that everyone was looking at him. He just continued walking through the hallway. He was not even sure of where he was going. There was way too much buzzing in the corridor. Did someone just mention his name? He did not dare to look up. 

The floor had been mopped to a crystal clear so much that he could see a perfect reflection of himself on it. There was suddenly a noise. A very annoying sound, like a dying robot from the future. He looked up into the corner of the wall at the far end of the corridor. It was the siren. Like a disturbed colony of ants, the students began to relocate to different rooms in pairs, trios etcetera. Everything was just going past him so fast. As the numbers quickly dropped, Sineas began to feel stupid just standing there.

‘Hey!’ A girl jumped in front of him. ‘What’s your combo?’ She was exactly Sineas’ height. She was a brunette, her hair neatly pinned to the back into a bunny tail to reveal glowing blue eyes. Her eyebrows kept dancing up and down like they had a mind of their own. She had a narrow face and a sparkling smile that made her look oddly naïve. She was wearing a jean jacket on top of a pink velvet top. She also had on a pair of denims that gave her hips a suggestive sort of curve and she was clutching her books tightly to her stubborn breasts. ‘What combination are you doing?’ she asked him again. ‘Sciences, Commercials or Arts?’ She stared curiously into his eyes. Her flashing grin refused to go away.

Sineas looked aside. ‘Uh…’

‘I’m not really sure “Uh” is a subject,’ she said jerking her head to the sides twice still grinning.

He cleared his throat. He pulled his gaze at least halfway from the ground. He had never been in the presence of a white girl before, or anyone his age for that matter, whether black or white. ‘Sciences: Math, Physics and Biology,’ he half whispered.

She widened her grin. Something Sineas wasn’t sure was possible. ‘Great!’ she squealed, ‘that’s where I’m at.’ She walked five steps in front of him. She stopped and turned around. ‘Aren’t you coming? It’s already eight o’clock. Math is this way.’

He gave a staggering nod. Not a word was passed between the two as they made their way towards class. The classroom was only a few metres away to their left.

When they walked in, the Math teacher was already marking the register. The girl walked in first and a few seconds later, Sineas walked through the door. 

His knees quivered. His belly churned in pain. The entire class, from the teacher to the students in the backseat were all whites. There was not another black person in sight. Out of at least thirty-something students and not one shared his colour? The students were sitting behind wooden desks with metal legs covered in rubber at the bottom. Typical classroom furniture. All their desks were grouped into pairs, mostly boy and girl or girl and girl.

‘Sineas Murphy!’ the teacher called out. His yellow, crooked teeth spat out something vile when he called out Sineas’ name. His brown-striped orange tie hanged loosely on his neck like a noose, wrapped around the collar of a blue long-sleeved cotton shirt. He was wearing pants that had a brownish colour which was harder to describe to a fashion designer.

Sineas spotted an empty and isolated desk at the back of the class. He made his way towards it. He placed his backpack on his desk, nervously trying not to respond to the hundreds of pairs of eyes staring hard at him. He did not have to see them; he could feel them. His hands shook violently when he retrieved his books and started arranging them on his new desk. Two of them toppled to the floor.

‘Sineas Murphy!’ the teacher called again.

‘Here, here,’ Sineas answered as he attempted to pick up the second book. It slipped out of his hand and fell back onto the floor again. When he attempted to pick it up, he knocked his head against the sharp edge of the wooden desk. The entire class broke into a roar of laughter. Freak! He heard one boy shout while he laughed. 

Once the books were placed back on the desk, he finally sat down with as much composure and dignity as he could muster. The laughter was still very much alive. He tried his best to keep his eyes away from theirs. They settled on a familiar face. It was the girl he had met in the hallway. She immediately threw her gaze to the books on her desk. She seemed to be the only one not amused by Sineas’ gaucherie.

‘You should be a little more careful, Sineas Murphy,’ the teacher advised him, wiping his glasses with a small cloth. ‘Your aunt told us you would be joining us today,’ he added before putting his glasses back on. His face was festered with light-orange spots. His bony face, with the addition of the thoughtful eyes staring through the glasses would have exposed him as a phone shop geek. ‘My name is Mr. Regwizini. I will be taking you for Math,’ he informed him.

Sineas nodded, still avoiding the smirks and glares from his new classmates.

‘Now then,’ Mr. Regwizini revealed his atrocious teeth, ‘Shall we begin?’