I can’t believe Hannah chose me.
It was the end of term and everything was sweaty and disorganised. Most of the boys had left their jumpers in the field at lunchtime. Our teacher had shouted at them, because it was blatantly too hot to bring jumpers to school. What she didn’t know was that they had done it on purpose. We always used their jumpers as rounders bases and when the bell went today, they left them there. I know they left them there, because they didn’t want to tidy the classroom. They were so obvious.
Rolling up her sleeves and letting out a huge sigh, Mrs Wattkiss started calling out names. “Kieran, choose someone to wash the paintbrushes with.” I felt relieved that the teacher didn’t choose me and I hoped Kieran didn’t either. He didn’t. Hannah was next and you know what happened.
Yes! She had saved me from the boring jobs in the classroom: sharpening the pencils, washing the paint pots and clearing out the trays. Our job was to tidy up the paper cupboard outside the classroom. We couldn’t quite believe we had been trusted to organise a whole cupboard without anyone supervising us! It was a cupboard we had never been allowed to step foot in before and I’d even been in staff room a couple of times.
“Right girls,” said Mrs Wattkiss, pointing at shelves filled with every kind of paper imaginable. There was the sugar paper that teachers used to back displays, reams of A4 paper in every colour and the odd pile of exercise books. Best of all was the fun paper. The paper that only appeared in our classroom at special times of year, always with strict instructions to use it thoughtfully. I had never seen so much paper and it was a mess! Not a tip, like my bedroom but I understood why Hannah had been chosen for the job.
The boys hadn’t returned from the field and there were so many jobs to do. Mrs Wattkiss was stressed. OK, she was still acting like a teacher but it was so obvious. She told us to straighten up the piles of paper and leave any rubbish in the corridor until David and Sarah came back from emptying the recycling bins. And she was gone.
Hannah took charge straight away but I didn’t mind. To be honest, I didn’t really know where to start. It was a narrow cupboard with a long thin window in the wall opposite the door. There were 4 shelves on either side of the window, reaching up to the ceiling but Mrs Watkiss I’d never been that close to Hannah, she’d never seen my bedroom. We had been spending more time together though, since finding out we were going to the same school in September. Rounders on the field and rehearsing for our Junior …
Papercut – blood smeared all over the … I thought I was going to faint. Hannah took out into the corridor and we sat against the wall.
