The noise about me buzzed, and buzzed, and buzzed. I tried not to fidget with my freshly tied ponytail else it would come loose and get messy again. I sat as still as I could and watched my English teacher, Miss Gray wiped the blackboard clean.
Once done, she turned back to the class and took off her spectacles to clean it, appearing oblivious to the racket about her. Her high pitched voice cut through the buzzing as she said, “Please turn to page 16.”
Pages began to turn, though the noise did not abate and was even heightened by a few loud groans. I stared at the empty page, taken aback. The buzzing in the classroom ceased, then suddenly, a giggle emitted from a corner.
Miss Gray’s eyes squinted and she said, “Samantha, please read page 16.”
Samantha sneered, “There is nothing there, Miss Gray.”
“Obviously you can’t read.” She turned to the next snickering student. “Paul,” she said and pressed down the back end of a pen on the page in front of him. “What does this say?”
“There is nothing there,” he said with a loud laugh.
She slapped him on the back of the head. “Hey!” he yelled and got up to his feet. Miss Gray stabbed his face with the pen. He howled and fell down on his knees, covering one eye.
She walked over to Samantha. “Try to read the page again.”
Samantha stared at the bloody pen then looked up at her with pleading eyes. “But there is nothing there.”
She let out a scream when our English teacher stabbed the same pen into her hand, pinning it to the table before she shook it free and pulled it out again.
Except for a handful of controlled sobbings, our class was deathly silent by now. She walked back to the front of the classroom and began to pace the floor, saying, “I am disappointed in all of you. I can’t believe that I have been here for six months and none of you still know how to read. I will have to keep you all back until someone learns to read properly.”
Carol, one of the most outspoken noisemaker in class, said, “I’m going to tell my parents and you are going to go to jail.”
Miss Gray slid open the top drawer of the teacher’s table and took out a cutter knife. Carol stood up and hissed, “You won’t dare.”
Our teacher turned to Tom and Daniel, and said, “If you boys hold her for me, I won’t make you read.”
They hesitated for a moment, but when Carol tried to bolt for the door, they grabbed her and pulled her hair back, exposing her neck. Miss Gray slashed the knife across it, splattering blood on herself and onto the floor. The boys put Carol, who was now holding a hand over her bleeding throat and rasping, back on her seat, and returned to theirs, relieved that their immunity was now assured.
“Who wants to volunteer to read?” Miss Gray asked and looked about the classroom.
When her gaze reached me, I put up my hand. She nodded. I traced my finger over the page silently. The whole class was so quiet, I could hear Carol’s heavy rasping. Finally I reached the end of the page and looked up.
She smiled and clapped her hands. “Well done, Jodie. You read excellently.” She turned back to the whole class. “Now, I want everyone to read page 16 together.”
Everyone immediately looked down and traced their finger over the page. The door opened, but none of us dared look up. A minute later, the school headmaster burst into the room and found us silent and reading. He had met Miss Gray in the corridor and on seeing the blood on her face and blouse, had assumed that a terrible accident had happened in her English class.
In the rush to get Paul, Samantha and Carol to the hospital everyone forgot about Miss Gray, so that by the time the police arrived, she was gone.
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