The poor bastard finds himself lost in the deep chasm of the school lunch queue. Half an hour had passed, but he only seemed to be getting further back, it was like being in a dream – just louder, more repugnant and he didn’t wake up in a cold sweat, but a rather hot and uncomfortable one. It was edging closer to half past one and he was due for a detention, what would Mrs. Avanade do if he was late? This was his first detention, maybe she will only make him stay for a bit longer? – No, not with Alan’s luck.
Life in year seven was not exactly what one would refer to as ‘blissful’, you would think that Alan would have become toughened to the harsh reality of constant bullying and the warm ‘sensation’ of urine running down his pants, but alas, he was what the younger generation of today would call, a ‘pussy’ . He was in high school now, “School of advanced education” as his mother referred to it as whenever family would visit, partnered with a face so proud not even the dam busters could tear it down.
Alan, dropped his tray and jumped out of the queue, he raced in and out of the other students and fled towards the detention classroom – on the other side of school. He had two minutes to get there, it took three minutes to get there but he could make it in one and a half if he ran across the field. But nobody was allowed on the field unless they had a physical education class, maybe if he closed his eyes tight, he would turn invisible and nobody would see him– no, he might tense too hard and end up shitting himself, and he didn’t want to sit in his own excrement for an hour and a half. There was only one option, he would have to risk embarrassment and trip over so that he would have to go to matron’s office and then be excused from detention, it was the only way. Alan rummaged through to find every morsel of dignity, if any, and headed for the stairs.
He could see through the window in matron’s office that the students outside were pointing and laughing at him. He couldn’t understand why he wasn’t cool; he played Jazz on the Saxophone, wasn’t that cool enough? His parents though it was. Alan was awoken from his dopey, open-eyed daydreaming by the incoherent squawking of Mrs. Avanade, “You nearly had me worried there, I thought you wouldn’t be conscious to attend my, now re-scheduled, after-school detention. I have been here for twenty five years; don’t think I haven’t been foxed by that one mister!” Alan sighed and dropped his head to find a detention card land in between his feet. He was so confused, worried, in agony all at once that simply the murky green colour of the card provoked him to unleash his breakfast all over the blue and white chequered floor. Alan wiped his mouth and looked at what he had done, it reminded him of fried eggs, then he took a whiff and let leash again.
*** *** *** *** ***
A six foot one figure emerged from the bottom of the hill and as this stallion of a man tore his sleeveless vest off, effortlessly, a magnificent ripped torso emerged. Alan switched off the television; he never really liked action hero movies anyway, they reminded him of the fact that he wasn’t a man yet. He was getting close though, he was fifteen now and had started using deodorant and he didn’t have to get clothes from ‘Adam’s’ anymore, he could shop at ‘Marks and Spencer’. He could look like Ian Wright or Alan Hanson from the ‘Signature’ fashion range. Maybe he too could, one day, present Tuesday night Champion’s League football on ITV4.
‘Alan, tea is ready, are you sure you don’t want something to eat before you go to Naturewatch Club?’ the faint wailing of his mother seeped up through the floorboards into Alan’s room where he was shining the lenses of his binoculars that he got for his birthday. He turned fifteen last week, and for his birthday, he went bowling with his parents and grandparents. Graham, his dad, scored a whooping great total of seventy-six which beat Alan’s fifty-nine. Alan’s dad was cool; he played the violin and spoke five different languages including Cantonese and Mandarin.
Alan enjoyed ‘Naturewatch Club’ it was the only place where he felt that he fitted in. If he tried to mingle anywhere else, he would hesitate and, most of the time, talk about nature. Once, he managed to find a moment alone with a girl he liked in school and out of anything he could’ve talked about, ‘The Transport For London Organisation’ seemed to be the ‘hot topic’ in his head. Since then, he has had no further contact with people of the opposite sex or even people in general. It was the summary of his life, never fitting in and proving to be of an inconvenience to other people. Maybe he should just..
No comments:
Post a Comment