Jellybeans (CH02 Draft 02)

Chapter Two


David didn’t have time to think about the mysterious jellybeans during the day. There were so many things for him to do at school, like drawing – which he hated because he knew his drawings weren’t as good as those done by the rest of the class – or counting – which he loved because he could remember lots of numbers and they always made sense to him. Then there were all the puzzles to do and the toys to play with – the most difficult decision David dabbled in that morning before lunch was whether to build a garage with the blocks to put the cars in or whether to build a bridge for them to ride over.

Mrs Thomas, who scared David a bit because she had his father’s name, made the children sit in a circle on the mat at lunch time while she handed out the lunch boxes. David sat next to Jimmy, his best friend, and prepared for the ordeal that was lunch at school. He looked in his lunchbox and wrinkled his nose; break with cheese and ham. He opened his juice bottle and took a long slug of Oros and then looked at his lunch again; the sandwiches were still there.

“David, eat your lunch.” Mrs Thomas’s voice was kind, but there was a sharpness in her tone that reminded David of the stabbing pain in his foot when he had stepped on one of his mom’s sewing needles that one time.

He picked up half the sandwich and turned it over in his hands. It was a rectangle; David knew this because it had two long sides and two short ones. The crusts were still on and David wrinkled his nose again; he didn’t like crusts, why did his mom never remember. And the bread was brown, which was the worst bread because it had bits in it. David hated bits in his food. He put down the sandwich and picked up his yoghurt; a pink one. He smiled.

“David. Eat your sandwich first.” Mrs Thomas swooped down and with the swiftness of a hawk snatched the yoghurt from his hands. David blinked and wiggled his fingers, but they still weren’t holding his yoghurt. He looked up and met his teacher’s eyes, huddling a little bit within himself as a witness to that gaze. Her eyes were normally a dark blue, but today they were black and evil – the eyes a witch was supposed to have. “I’ve had enough to deal with today David, enough.” Mrs Thomas put her hands on her hips, still holding the yoghurt. “I don’t need another battle with you over lunch. Not today.” She glared at him. “Eat. Your. Sandwich.” As she said each word she poked the bread in his lunchbox so that three dents appeared and the cheese shone through. “No sandwich, no yoghurt.” Mrs Thomas moved on to break up a fight between two other pupils and David stared for a long time at the bread in his lunchbox. Shaking, as if he was fighting a huge monster, David picked up a half and brought it to his mouth. He tried forcing his mouth open, but his teeth were glued together. He closed his eyes and imagined that he was a dragon and the sandwich was a sheep. If he was a dragon he would just eat the sheep, even though it was all woolly and full of dirt. His mouth opened and the sandwich moved forward. Breathing heavily, David forced the sandwich closer and closer to his mouth until eventually he took the smallest bite possible. He chewed and the bits in the bread got stuck in his teeth, hurting the wiggly one. The cheese was too sweet, and he gagged a bit. He put the sandwich back into his box and took the cheese off. He tried another bite. It wasn’t so bad without the cheese, but the bits still stick everywhere in his mouth and between his teeth and it feel like hard worms were crawling in his mouth.

“Right, play time everyone.” David started to pack away his sandwich. “David, you stay behind and finish your lunch.” HE looked down into his lunchbox, which still held half a sandwich and half of the half he was eating. He sighed and picked up the piece he was busy with and continued taking bite after bite. The bits made his teeth hurt, and when one of them accidentally slipped between two of his teeth they slipped and he bit his lip. Blood mingled with the bits and David’s neck began to feel like burning ice. The piece of bread shook in his hands and doubled in front of him as his eyes began to fill with tears.

“David, eat your sand…” before Mrs Thomas could even finish the sentence David had thrown up all over the carpet and himself. He heaved and heaved until every last part of that terrible sandwich was out of his stomach, but he couldn’t stop gagging because of the bits and the blood. Someone picked him up by the back of the shirt and carried him into the bathroom, where he was made to rinse his mouth out several times until his gag reflex had returned to normal. Looking down, he saw the bits of sandwich stuck to his shirt and pants and shame filled the capillaries on his cheeks. Mr Germanis, the caretaker, was standing beside him scowling, lightening flashing in his eyes. Where the white part should have been was a tangle of red lines, and even they looked angry today.

“You know how much work you’ve just created for me, boy?”

“M…Mr…”

“No, boy. Clean yourself up.” He handed David his bag with his spare clothes, and David peeled off his soggy Spiderman t-shirt and undid his jeans until the clothes were merely a smelly heap of memories piled onto the floor. He looked into his bag and sighed. His brown pants, the scratchy ones, and the blue t-shirt with the smiley face – that’s what his mom had packed as spare clothes for today. Didn’t she know that those pants scratched his legs and made him itch? Didn’t she know that the smiley face on that shirt looked like a clown and scared him because of this?

“You dressed yet, boy?” David jumped and quickly pulled his pants on over cold legs. The blue t-shirt quickly followed.

“Where…where must I put my clothes?”

A plastic packet was pushed under his nose and he gingerly picked up this Spiderman t-shirt between two fingers and tried putting it into the bag. The bag wouldn’t stay open, it needed two hands, and soon he found himself sweating as his attempts to fill the bag failed.

“Oh, just give it here, boy.” A large gnarly hand grabbed the bag from David, tearing the plastic slightly, and his shirt was stuffed inside. His jeans followed suit. Once more the bag was thrust at him, and he stood in the bathroom not knowing what to do. He looked up at Mr Germanis, hoping for some guidance, but the pudgy man merely pointed at the door and David left the room quickly. He was hanging the packet on his jacket peg when Mrs Thomas came into the hall.

“Not there David, it will make everyone’s clothes stink.” Ashamed, David looked down at his feel, bag dangling at his side while his other hand twitched finger-over-thumb, finger-over-thumb, finger-over-thumb until he was no longer aware that he was performing the action. Mrs Thomas snatched the bag from him, her blood-red nails swiping at him with such speed that he flinched involuntarily. She just paused and stared at him, eyebrow raised, with a look of outrage mingled with disgust on her face. David took half a step back and stood there rocking from front foot to back foot, not sure whether to stand his ground or run and run and never come back. Mrs Thomas narrowed her eyes even smaller than that of the Chinese student in the class, and David wondered if perhaps she was a witch. Underneath the pale paste that clung to powder particles as it fled her face in flakes each day, was she really green? David carried on rocking back and forth, thinking about witches. Were they always green? What made green such a bad colour? Grass was green and it was fuzzy to walk on barefooted, that wasn’t bad, so why was green bad? A hand on his shoulder stopped his musings and shocked him back into reality. The hand, talons gripping red as if they were drawing his blood, squeezed his shoulder just hard enough to begin to hurt. Once more his bright green eyes met the narrow black stare of his teacher and he tried hard not to shake.

“Outside. Now.” Like a rat freed from a trap he turned and ran through the class and out into the play area. He went to the corner where the swings were and sat down on an unoccupied wooden plank. The girl on the other swing, someone from the other class, sniffed the air and then ran away giggling. David dropped his head – she would tell everybody he had been sick. His left hand grabbed the chain of the swing tightly, as if that chain was the one thing that could save his life, save him in that moment. He leant his head against the chain above his hand. Gently he used the toes of his shoes to swing himself back and forth slowly. Occasionally he heard snatches of the other children’s conversation and laughter containing the words ‘sick’ or ‘smelly’, but for the most part David tuned out the world around him and entered a place in his mind where nothing anybody did or said could affect him. He imagined himself swinging gently on a beach of gold sand and an ocean bluer that his shirt – so blue it looked like paint. It was warm, it was quiet, it was sunny…he was alone.

“You ok?” Jimmy, his best friend, cast a shadow over David as he stood in front of the swings. “What happened? I heard you were sick? Was it the sandwich?”

“I’m fine.” The sound of the bell brought both boys back to reality. “I wish fairy godmothers were real,” was his last though before the class was marched inside for the next set of lessons.