Page 12 of Textbook Romance

And with just one word, Mia sums up all that feeling perfectly. I wrap an arm around her.

‘Thank you for the cake, lovely Ed,’ I say, nodding to him.

‘He made that especially. I hope you’re sharing,’ Mia says.

‘My husband left me for one of my best friends, so no…’

Mia cocks her head to one side to see me derive some humour from something so bleak, a reassuring look that tells her I might be alright in all of this. Maybe.

‘Well, how about an easy period two?’ Drew tells me. ‘I’ve been asked to settle in a new cover teacher, starting today. Maybe he can come in on your lesson, observe, he can help you out.’

I shrug my shoulders. ‘I guess. We will mainly be giving out books and sticking. I’m not sure how much he’ll get to observe.’

‘He’ll get to see one of my finest control thirty kids who haven’t been in a classroom since July. He’ll see plenty.’

Drew smiles at me. We’ve been down this street before, we’ve encircled the block several thousand times but it’s kind of him to still have such unerring faith in me.

‘Oh, I think we know him,’ Mia suddenly says, excitedly, jumping up and down and clapping her hands. ‘Did that sub start today?’

‘Yes. Mr…’ Drew checks a register in front of him. ‘Jack Damon.’

Jack

‘Sir, are you new, Sir?’ a young lad asks me. I am not quite sure what to say. This boy looks about fifteen but the sort who knows the lay of the land in a place like this. If I say yes, he may use this against me. I feel like I need to gain his approval. I can’t show fear. Do I fist bump him? Or maybe I shout at him for wearing trainers. My hands remain in my pockets. Shoulders back. Don’t let him smell the first day fear radiating off me. He can tell I’m wearing a shirt straight out of the pack, can’t he? I should have hung it up.

‘How did you know?’ I ask him, tentatively.

The young man swings his Vans rucksack over his shoulder, clocking my staff lanyard. ‘It’s the new style lanyard, innit? See?’ he says, tapping his forehead.

‘Like a modern-day Sherlock Holmes,’ I comment.

‘Man’s got powers of reduction, innit?’

A girl next to him cackles, hitting him across the head. ‘It’s deduction, you muppet.’ She looks me up and down and I put my hands over the mugshot to hide my very awful picture. It was taken by Claudia in the office. The one from the wedding who I think holds a grudge because I never returned to the dancefloor at that wedding. She just pushed me against a wall today. She didn’t even say ‘cheese.’ I saw a flash and felt my nostrils flaring.

‘Well, maybe you could do a new kid a favour?’ I ask them. ‘I need to get to the maths block.’ Please don’t send me to the bins.

‘I guess you’re not a geography teacher then?’ he jokes.

That was actually quite funny, so I laugh at my own expense. ‘No. But I don’t get this numbering system. I’m supposed to go to X5?’

‘Yeah. It’s over next to the sports hall, through the second courtyard,’ he tells me. ‘X classrooms on the bottom floor, Y floors on the top.’

‘Like the maths, innit?’ the girl interrupts. ‘Someone thought that was funny.’

‘Is it not funny…?’ I ask.

‘No, it should all be Z classrooms because maths makes me sleepy, you know?’ the boy says, laughing and clapping at his own humour.

I laugh. That was good. The girl is less impressed, and I quite like her for it. ‘Do you have names?’

The boy suddenly looks affronted. ‘Am I in trouble for dissing maths?’

‘No.’ I put a hand out to shake his. He looks at it instead. ‘I was actually going to say thank you for helping me and that it was nice to meet you…’

‘Bobby,’ he says, still looking at my hand, wondering if it’s a trick or not.

‘I’m Keziah.’

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