Rhinoceros 6
On the wall of Alan’s form room was stuck an attendance chart for his form. It was out of date, but still offered a ballpark reflection of the probability that various boys would turn up. Alan noted that Ryon stood at thirty per cent. Seventy per cent chance that he wouldn’t, then.
A bang of a shoe on the door. Alan jumped up and unlocked it. “Knocking works just as well,” Alan said. A rat-faced boy with freckles slid in and looked warily around the room, like a fox sniffing out chickens.
“Where’s everyone?” his scratchy voice approximated.
“You are everyone at the moment, Alix,” Alan said with a sigh and threw himself back onto his chair.
“Wouldn’t’ve come if I knew no-one was here,” sniffed Alix.
Alan laboriously typed a dash into a box on the register while Alix wandered to a window, stuck a finger up at something or someone in the car park, and then lay on his front across Alan’s desk. “Ant ad no sleep, not one second, all night…” Alix wore the ubiquitous track suit bottoms and trainers with an old t-shirt. It had an arrow on it pointing upwards, and the faded words: Do I Look Bothered?
“Call of Duty?” Alan asked.
“Yeah, man.”
“The one with the zombies?”
“Yeah, man.”
“And the rabid dogs?”
“Yeah, man.”
“A bit like life, then?”
“Naw, more real an’ all.”
A gloomy face appeared at the wireglass window in the door. It’s eyebrows made gothic arches over dark eye sockets, and lines of world-weariness creased a hangdog face into frozen sullenness.
“Door, Alix.”
Alix leapt up with surprising swiftness and opened the door. A chill wind blew in with Kerin; his clothes hung from his frame in the same way as his skin hung from a death’s head.
“Going twos at break, Kerin?” Alix resumed his supine mode. It amazed Alan how successfully cigarettes eased social cohesion amongst teenagers. He felt he was missing out on something.
Kerin ignored Alix. “Mr Scope, I wish to complain.”
“Is it about a parrot?”
“Eh?” Kerin was smart, and loved to wind up staff with his nerdy skills. One of the features of ADHD, Alan reflected, is an inability to sit through an entire programme or film, and yet play online games all night. It's the dophamine, or something, reward centres in the brain.
“Never mind.” Alan waved away the bad joke. “Complain about what?”
“About the shitness of this school that can’t even order a taxi on the right day at the right time.”
Alan sighed. “It would be easier, Kerin, if you lived in the same house on two consecutive days.”
“Whatever.” Kerin was already bored with his own conversation. “Can I have two minutes on the computer?”
“Not if you are planning to hack into the school server again.” Kerin knew all the staff passwords. Even the ICT technician was baffled. But Alan, secretly, perversely, was in admiration of Kerin. It was a survival skill in the modern world, after all. And he had fixed Alan’s home laptop – throwing in some clever software free for good measure – so Alan felt justified in not telling the Head about it all.
“Are you suggesting I am untrustworthy?”
“No, but you should apply your talents more effectively – hacking the FBI, for example.”
“Ad no sleep, man,” Alix exhaled.
“Have you taken your medication, Alix?” Alan asked.
“Dunno.”
“Meaning no?”
“Maybe.”
“Go see Miss Thrower and get a spare tablet.”
“Fucksake.”
“But without the swearing.”
“Fucksake, an all.”
As Alix opened the door and stomped down the corridor, kicking doors as he went, a large and stocky shape loped into the classroom and stood, solid and unmistakable, in the centre. Alan saw Ryon in his peripheral vision before he’d even consciously registered him; it was like he had managed to turn his fractured memories into flesh and blood. Alan opened his mouth soundlessly. He opened his mouth again: “Ryon…”
Ryon stood still. Glowering? Waiting? Or just Ryon, his blank and empty concrete shape taking up space without energy?
“What you been up to lately?” Alan asked, a sense of vague hope fading with each breath. He realised that his mouth was dry and the contraction of his throat had caused his voice to crack into a pig-like squeal.
Ryon shrugged. His face was a perfect coalition of random and expressionless features. There was a long silence during which some smaller members of the animal kingdom came into being and died.
Then the bell sounded and Ryon trundled out of the room leaving Alan staring at the substantial vacated space.
***
Within the small comedic world of Greenlands Alan had an OK morning. He mostly taught on autopilot. Macbeth went about his increasingly unbalanced murder spree with the help of a gratuitously gory worksheet, and a limerick on snot was constructed by his lower set supported by a spoonful of pre-written lines from Mr Scope. Porl, the spotty faced, yellow eyed boy on his third care home in six months opted to work in the cupboard. Brandern was quietly and efficiently restrained until he gave up the laser pen he had used to blind motorists on his way into school. Great flaccid segments of time pregnant with pointless arguments and excuses not to work floated by Alan’s nebulous state of consciousness. Still, he survived, and at dinnertime he traversed the turbulent corridors down to the staffroom like a somnambulant canoeist beating the rapids. There were several nagging questions which had not had the opportunity to surface and permit examination yet.
But more to the point, Alan was struck by his own passivity. Surely another rational being would have seized the reins by now and enacted a process of rigorous change? But Alan couldn’t see the right moment to do this.
“Have you decided to move?” Mick asked bluntly.
“Why would I do that?”
“Tainted ground, Alan. Sullied by scum, you could say.”
“But he left the flat exactly as he found it.”
“So you say. Next week, you’ll be tidying up and you’ll put your hands on a turd behind the bedside table.”
“Mick!” Mary sharply cut in, “I shan’t be able to remove that image from my head all day.”
Mick shrugged. “Happened to a friend of mine.”
“What? A thief crapped on his floor?”
“Yeah, I think so. Might have been the cat, though.”
Once Alan had negotiated further surreal comments and murmurs of interest from colleagues, he had the chance to unwrap his sandwich bag alongside his thoughts.
What could he possibly read into Ryon’s blank demeanour? After all, Ryon is not the most demonstrative of individuals. A grunt might form a complete conversation on a good day. Has he got the camera? If he has, has he looked at it? Or sold it? Christ, is it in the hands of some stranger somewhere? If he has looked at it, does he understand its meaning? Is he waiting for something? Should Alan initiate the conversation? What if Ryon has the camera but has not looked at it? He certainly will if his curiosity is aroused. Can Alan afford to wait? Or bear to? And more to the point, the fuck did he shoot that footage?
Alan was suddenly aware of an expectant silence, and looked up to a sea of astonished faces. It seems he had blurted out one of those questions aloud to the whole staffroom.
