Darkroom Read Free Page B

together. He took out a dog-eared book, opened it and started to read it in silence. One after another, the students became aware of his presence, and even though they didn’t all stop what they were doing, they turned their eyes on to him, and spoke more quietly, and gradually the dance steps petered out.
    It was ten minutes before he said anything. ‘Today,’ he finally said, taking off his thumb-printed glasses, ‘we’re going to talk about
time.
What time is, and what time does to us, and how we express our feelings about it.’
    â€˜About time,’ said Freddy Price, and everybody laughed.
    â€˜Well, I’m sorry if I’m two weeks late,’ said Jim. ‘I hope that Mrs Lakenheath kept you entertained. I wasn’t really expecting to come back here at all, as a matter of fact. But that’s time for you. You stroll off into the future, whistling to yourself, and before you know it, you’re right back where you started from.’
    Sonny Powell raised a long black arm. ‘Pardon my saying so, sir, but it don’t seem to me like you is exactly overjoyed to be back.’ Sonny was 6ft 7in tall and everybody called him the Shadow because of his obsession with his Saucony Shadow running shoes, and because he overshadowed everybody else in the class. ‘Like, if you don’t feel like learning us or nothing, we don’t mind just carrying on doing what we’re doing. Let sleeping dogs sleep, if you know what I mean.’ He bounced his basketball three or four times just to make the point.
    Jim stood up and walked to the classroom window. ‘Tempting, I have to admit. But the trouble with
that
idea is, I came back here to West Grove Community College because I need to find out something about myself.
I
need educating, even more urgently than you do. Now, none of
you
may be interested in learning anything, and quite frankly I don’t care if you don’t. If you want to stay ignorant and illiterate, that’s entirely your choice. But
I
need to learn something, and I’m sorry if it’s an inconvenience, but I need your help to do it.
    He turned around to face them. ‘This class may be called Remedial English, but it isn’t going to be all about spelling, or reading, or writing. This class is going to be all about living in a world that doesn’t give anybody an even break; and what to do when your luck runs out – if you had any luck to begin with – and all of the tricks and traps and petty cruelties that make you wonder if it’s worth getting out of bed in the morning.
    He had his students’ attention now. Even Vanilla King had stopped in mid-nail-polishing, her brushful of Tangerine Sparkle poised in the air.
    Jim said, ‘This class is going to be all about survival. How to stay alive and well on a highly dangerous planet.’
    â€˜What, you going to be learnin’ us road safety and like that?’ asked Roosevelt Jones, from the back of the class. Roosevelt was short and stocky, with a shiny shaved head and mirror sunglasses.
    Jim shook his head. ‘I’m not going to be telling
you
anything. You’re going to be telling
me.
If you must know, I’ve forgotten how to keep going. I’ve lost my faith that everything’s going to turn out for the better. I don’t believe that it’s going to be another bright sunshiny day.’
    â€˜We can’t learn you nothing, man,’ said Shadow. ‘You the Teach.
You
suppose to be learning
us
.’
    Edward Truscott put up his hand. ‘Actually, you don’t “learn” somebody something. You teach them. Otherwise, think about it, you wouldn’t call him the Teach. You’d call him the Learn.’
    â€˜Are you messing with my head again, geek?’ Shadow demanded, with exaggerated anger. ‘If education turns a person into
you,
you pasty white string of spaghetti, then I don’t want none of it.’
    Jim