Page 47 - WTP Vol.IX #3

OMG!
What had I done!
I knew it was my fault.
Pull up the drawbridge, batten the hatches, bolt the stable door.
I didn’t talk to Mrs Chestnut or look at her for the rest of term. I didn’t even sign her goodbye card. When
it came to my desk, I just pushed it along with my pencil because I didn’t want my fingerprints on it in case forensics found me responsible for her having to leave. She arranged SATS re-sits for me, I didn’t go in that day. And on her last day, I pretended I had a bad period so Mum let me stay at home and watch the shopping channel.
Suzie Accepts The Situation.
So, After The Solitude...
“T
Age 11, big school. First day, Uncle Dennis sees me in the corridor and winks at me; I spend the rest of the day in the toilets saying fuck fuck fuck a thousand times. End of year: skived exams.
Age 12, didn’t want to join the choir or the netball team or drama club or anything in case I was rubbish. Exams: didn’t go in.
13, couldn’t get my head round youth club. All those scary girls with orange faces and boys who only talked about football and cars and didn’t know what was meant by personal space. Exams—no.
14, ran away from home again. Long story.
15, back home, lots of people trying to help me: teachers, Camhs, doctors, Mum, weirdos on the in- ternet. Dad wrote me letters from Dubai, telling me how hot it was, but the envelope was stamped HMP Wrexham. GCSE’s? Nope.
16, re-sits. Actually didn’t turn up. I remembered my dad’s words, ‘Don’t bother with hopes, they never come to anything’.
17. Now it’s now. Seven years later.
Home, on my own, haven’t been to school for weeks. Persistent absentee they call me.
Tomorrow... re-sits of A-Level resits that I never sat in
(continued on next page)
he beginning—the
the margarine tub, was me coming out of my mummy’s tummy.”
marble plopping out the round hole cut in
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