Page 103 of Sex Ed

‘AND I WANT YOU TO TAKE YOUR MARKS, GET SET AND…’

‘ROGERS, ROGERS!’

Who is that?

‘GO!’ But as the voice on the tannoy says go, I feel an elbow to my ribs, a push. He did what now? I stumble and lose my footing, watching as he runs ahead of the field. I hear booing. Just run, Ed. You know how to do that. You do this every other day. You can’t do anything else in this moment. Just run.

ROGERS, ROGERS!

I’m not hearing that, am I? It makes me pump my arms a bit more until I’m caught up with Tommy on the third curve of the athletics track. There are kids running alongside us. YOU CAN DO THIS, MR ROGERS! I glance to my side. Do I teach you? I don’t even know you. By the final straight, the air burns in my lungs. I’m more of a jogger so this is hard work. The lactic acid builds in my muscles, just this straight and then we’re done. I’m keeping up with Tommy. This is strange. Could I actually beat him?

YOU CAN FUCKING DO IT, MR ROGERS.

That was definitely a child, and that child is going to get into trouble. I run. Possibly the fastest I’ve ever run in my life, flashbacks to a time when I ran down a hill when I was nine years old and ran into a tree and lost a tooth. Run, Ed. Just run it all out, all that emotion, all those feelings, the strange events of the last month. Just run. I make the last push, through a tape measure at the end and collapse to the floor. My lungs hurt. It all hurts. But the noise, the cheering is like a wave. Who are they cheering for?

‘ROGERS, ROGERS, ROGERS.’

I see the shadow of Alicia appear in the light, standing over me. ‘Well, someone has a fan club.’ I look down at my shirt where, in the melee, someone’s put a gold #1 sticker on my chest. I can’t quite breathe, let alone talk but I don’t quite understand what happened there. Who was cheering? And for a brief second, I think and hope it could be one person. Mia. She was the sort of person who would cheer (and blaspheme) like that openly and I used to hate it, I thought it loud and brash, but maybe I didn’t see how much it kept me going. It wasn’t her, though, this time. I sit up and watch Tommy on the floor across the way, cradling his muscled calves, telling someone next to him that he’s pulled something. That’s why he lost. I might smile. Laugh even. I need some water though. Before I die. Someone appears beside me and offers me a hand.

‘Mr Rogers, my G…’ I look up into the light, my sweat blinding me a little.

‘Jerome? What’s going on?’

‘You beat Mr Wood. At his own subject. You are the man,’ another lad says, patting me on the back as I rise to my feet. I’m sweating a fair bit though. I do wish I’d worn a more effective deodorant.

‘You were all cheering. Why?’ I ask them, bending down to put my hands on my knees.

‘Because we like you. We heard what Mr Wood said to you outside our classroom that day, before our exam. That’s not right.’ I turn and Olivia stands there, explaining it all to me. ‘No other teacher made us breakfast either. No one cares. I mean, maybe Miss Johnson does. She brought us sweets.’

‘Mr Wood is a massive dickhead,’ a lad says, and they all laugh. I pull a face to sort of indicate that I agree. That’s not professional. I try to change that, hoping I just look out of breath and distressed instead.

‘Miss Johnson cares. More than you know,’ I tell them.

‘Well, yeah. She’s amazing. We properly stan her. We can’t tell you how much we loved her after we heard she slapped Miss Bell,’ Olivia explains to me.

‘She did what?’ I stop for a moment. She slapped who? ‘She slapped Miss Bell?’ I ask, making the motion with my hands in case this is them speaking in Gen Z slang again.

‘Yeah. Some kids from Year 8 saw it,’ Olivia continues. ‘Didn’t you know about that? She got suspended. Don’t you teachers talk to each other…?’

‘She slapped Miss Bell because she was angry with her for being a sket with Mr Wood behind your back. She was your mate and she legit put her job on the line. For you,’ Jerome tells me.

‘How do you all…?’ I gasp.

‘We’re not stupid, Sir. It’s not some equation in an exam. We pieced it together ourselves. How did you not work that out?’ Jerome continues. I should be angry at him questioning me like this, but I stand there looking into space, wondering, thinking about how I only ever saw Mia keeping secrets from me, not really anything else in between.

I see Beth’s face appear amongst all the kids, shocked. ‘I thought you knew too.’

‘I didn’t. I heard she got suspended because of a data protection issue,’ I say.

‘Who told you that?’ Beth asks me.

‘Caitlin…’ We both look over to see her nursing Tommy and his fake injury. It’s just lies on lies with that one. How has she managed to dupe me so many times? ‘So she found out about Caitlin and Tommy… and slapped her?’ I repeat to Beth, leading her away from the kids.

‘Yeah. She did more than that. They had a proper full-on fight,’ Beth explains.

‘You didn’t say anything?’ I ask Beth.

‘I assumed you knew the real reason why. I did wonder why you pushed her away so hard, though.’

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