The Class That All Stayed In

The face was on the third desk from the door, and it was drawn in blue pen.

It had round glasses. It had a moustache with the ends curling up. Whoever had done it had spent real time on the moustache, and had got it very good, which was unfortunate for everybody.

Mr Sequeira stood and looked at it for a while on Monday morning, with his book still under his arm and the chalk still in his hand.

Then he asked who had done it.

Nobody said anything. The fan went round. Outside, somebody’s whistle went on the field, a long way off.

“Right,” said Mr Sequeira. “Then everybody stays in at break.”

Here is the thing about that week. It was the best weather of the whole year. It had rained in the night and stopped. The ground had dried just enough. The sky was that washed blue that only comes for about four days in October.

At eleven o’clock the bell went and nobody moved. Forty bags stayed on forty chairs.

Tanya put her head on her arms on the desk. Through the window she could see the far end of the field, where Class 5 were doing something with a rope. She could see the big tree with the small hard leaves. She could see a crow walking about on the wall as if it owned the wall.

Forty minutes is a long time when you are eight and there is nothing in it. No ball, no rope, no wall to sit on.

That was Monday.

On Tuesday, Ishaan folded a piece of paper.

He did not do it to invent anything. He was just folding it, over and over, into a smaller and smaller triangle, the way you do. Then he flicked it with one finger and it shot across the desk and off the other side.

Zoya caught it against her book. Then she put her two thumbs up like a goal and said, “Do it again.”

He did it again. It went between her thumbs.

That was the whole game, and by Wednesday it had rules.

You got three flicks. If it stopped hanging over the edge of the desk, that was worth extra. You could not lean past the front edge. Vikram made a second triangle out of a maths worksheet. Vikram’s was heavier and went further. So by Wednesday afternoon everybody was arguing about the correct weight of a triangle, which nobody in the world had ever argued about before.

On Thursday, Mr Sequeira came in during break to get a book and found the whole class playing it, four to a desk, extremely loudly.

He stood in the doorway with the book still in his hand for a second.

Then he took his book and went out and shut the door.

Nobody ever owned up about the face on the desk.

Tanya thought it was probably Vikram, because of the moustache, which was exactly the kind of moustache Vikram drew. But she thought that on Tuesday, and she still only thought it on Friday, and a thought is all it ever was. She never said it to anybody.

The face got cleaned off on Thursday evening by the man who does the floors. It came off in about four seconds, with a wet cloth and one thumb. That somehow made the whole week worse.

On Friday it rained.

It came down properly, in one go, at about half past ten. The field went dark and shiny. Everybody would have been called in anyway.

The bell went at eleven. Nobody got up, because nobody had anywhere to get up to. The windows went grey and the field turned into one big puddle.

Zoya turned round in her chair. Ishaan was already folding.

By quarter past, there were eleven triangles going across nine desks, and the rain was hammering on the roof. Vikram was explaining the correct weight of a triangle to two people who did not want to know.