Black Sheep (7 page)

I shook my head, trying not to show how scared I was. “Nah, man, it’s safe,” I said hoarsely. “I...I’ll pass the message... I’ll pass the message!”
Gathering up my strength, I shoved Leon off me and the boys all shifted, ready for Leon’s signal. But Leon just smirked and put his knife into his pocket.

“Yeah,” he sneered. “I know you will. Coz you’s a batty man like that best mate of yours, Jukkie.” The other boys all sniggered as I scrambled for my bag. “Go
on, run, run like a bitch!”

Boy, I wasn’t about to stick around! I grabbed my bag and legged it, in through the school gates and all the way to the toilets, where I spent a few minutes heaving. Knives, man. Knives
and I just were not meant to be together. If I didn’t know better, I would think I was allergic to them.

As I washed my face and looked in the mirror at the water dripping down on to my school shirt, I heard Leon’s voice: ‘You’s a batty man, like your best mate, Jukkie.’

I shook my head and wiped a tissue over my face. This beef with Larkside was getting proper ugly.

DWAYNE

Third lesson was Maths with Mr Dawson, my worst teacher. I actually wasn’t too bad at Maths but I couldn’t stick that Mr Dawson. I’d started off the year all
right, but there was just something about him that put me right off. By the third week, I was like everyone else in the class: sending text messages, throwing spit balls, drawing tags in their
Maths books or bustin’ joke behind Dawson’s back.

But that day, I just wasn’t in the mood for the madness. I was thinking about Misha and what she would think if she saw this crappy classroom with its busted chairs and graffiti carved
into the desks. Misha’s school sounded proper posh. I imagined it all big and stately-home-looking, with green lawns all around it. All the girls would be wearing them old-fashioned blazers
and be able to speak at least three languages.

Misha was always asking me about school – what could I tell her? That I hated it and couldn’t wait for the year to be over so that I could hit the road and make some serious Ps? Nah,
that would be a disaster. Misha
believed
in school. She believed them when they told her that all she had to do was study hard, go university, get a good job and buy a house. And maybe it
was true – for her and people like her. As for me, I knew that it was all a big lie.

“School’s just a holding cell for us black boys,” Tony used to say. “Just a place for them to keep us until we’re old enough to go jail. But not us, eh, guys?
We’re smarter than that. We ain’t never gonna get so cocky that we let the 5-0 take us down.”

But what was it Misha had said? ‘Rewrite the script, Dee. If you don’t, who will?’

I looked up to see Mr Dawson handing out sheets of paper for a pop quiz.

I cracked up when Mr Beanpole himself, Greg Tiller, screwed up the piece of paper and threw it into the bin. “Oh, look, sir!” he called out. “Pop goes the quiz!”

Mr Dawson shook the hair out of his eyes. “Any more of your nonsense, Tiller, and you’ll be going to see Ms Walker, d’you understand? Now go and retrieve your quiz and get
yourself back to your seat!”

I looked at the paper in front of me: circle geometry. I smiled. Circle geometry made total sense to me. While I looked over the questions, it was as if I could feel my brain getting to work,
connecting things, making sense of things – I got it.

‘Rewrite the script. Ace the test.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t act dumb, man, you heard me: ace the test.’

So I did. I answered every question, double-checked, found a couple of careless mistakes, corrected them, and then sat back, grinning.

‘You did it, blud. Nice one.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Shut up.’

Silence.

‘That’s better.’

Mr Dawson told everyone to stop writing. The time for the quiz was up. Then he asked Stuart ‘Swottie’ Henderson to read out the answers. I could feel my heart start to beat fast as I
reached the end of the paper and looked back at the row of ticks along the side.
I had aced the test.
I really had!

Mr Dawson called out, “OK, who got full marks?” I swear, he sounded so bored, I wondered why he had given us the quiz in the first place. He was looking towards Swottie and the other
kids in the front row, Azad, Miranda, Kwesi and Suad. They all raised their hands, like they always did.

Then I did something crazy, something I would never have done before: I raised my hand, from all the way at the back of the class. Mr Dawson looked up and saw me – and his mouth just kinda
fell open. Then he pulled himself together and frowned.

“Mr Kingston,” he whined, as if he was talking to a retard, “is there a problem? Did you not complete the test?”

I forced myself to speak even though I was regretting ever having raised my hand. “I...I did, sir.”

Rashad was looking at me, all screw-face, as if to say, ‘What you doing, bro, raising your hand in class? Are you out of your mind?’

Mr Dawson flipped his hair out of his eyes and sighed loudly, saying, “Mr Kingston, we shall all have the opportunity to ask questions later. Right now, we are trying to see who passed and
who failed!”

“But that’s why my hand is up, sir.”

“What?”

“I passed, sir. I got full marks. Remember? You told the people who got full marks to raise their hands...”

Mr Dawson’s jaw dropped for the second time and he shook his head a couple of times, looking from the swots sitting in front of him to me, the tall black boy with the expensive trainers in
the back row. Then he narrowed his eyes and marched over to where I was sitting. He snatched up my paper and looked over it. Then he looked down at me and his lip curled.

“You didn’t do this, Mr Kingston,” he said, just like that. “This is not your work.”

“What?”

“You don’t expect me to believe that you actually understand anything about circle geometry, do you? I mean, let’s face it, Mr Kingston, you’re no whizz kid!”

Oh, then I started to feel the rage build up inside me and my face began feeling hot.

Mr Dawson continued, “I suppose it’s to be expected, a desperate attempt to get some passing grades so near the end of term but the trouble is, it’s too late. Do you
understand?
It’s too late.
Anyway, I know your lot; you’ll never amount to anything...”

“What d’you mean ‘
your
lot’
?” I asked. I was proper bubbling now.

“Yeah, man!” said Rashad. “What the hell is
that
supposed to mean?”

“Racist!” someone shouted at the back. Everyone started talking at once.

“Can you believe he said that, though?”

“He’s out of order, mate!”

“Bang the teacher! Bang the teacher!” The other kids starting banging on the desks and drumming their feet on the floor.

Mr Dawson stepped back, anxious now, his eyes flicking about the room. “All right, everyone, calm down! I didn’t mean it like that, there’s no need to make a big deal out of
it!”

After a while everyone calmed down, but they were still grumbling.

“Now, Kingston, the sooner you confess to
cheating
on the pop quiz, you sooner we can get on with the lesson.” And he turned to walk back to his desk.

“But, sir, I didn’t cheat!” That was when I pushed my chair back from my desk. “I didn’t cheat!”

Mr Dawson didn’t even turn to look at me. “Save it, Mr Kingston, you can either admit to cheating on the test, in which case I will award you an ‘F’ grade, or you can
continue to deny it and be awarded an ‘F’ grade
and
a visit to Ms Walker.”

I felt the pressure build up inside me and I heard the whistling, whistling in my head, like the sound of a really fast train on a massive collision course. Just then, it was more important to
me than anything that the teacher admit that I had passed, that I wasn’t a waste of space, a loser.

I stood right up and my chair went flying, clattering to the floor. I was so mad, I was shaking, my nostrils flaring like crazy. I held my paper out towards Mr Dawson. “Sir!” I
called out. “Test me again if you don’t believe me. Go on, test me!”

The others backed me up: “That’s right, Sir! Just test him, innit.”

Mr Dawson turned slowly to look at the class. “I’m afraid that would be a waste of class time. Now, kindly take your seat, Mr Kingston, or you will leave me no alternative but to
issue you an official warning.”

“Allow this, man!” I shouted. I could feel my eyes start to burn. I tore the test paper in half, threw it on the floor, grabbed my coat and bag, and charged out of the room.
What
a waste of time, man!

“Mr Kingston! Mr Kingston, I’m warning you!” But the slamming door cut off Mr Dawson’s voice.

Outside the school building, I stood in the car park, my shoulders heaving, the heat pounding in my head. I was proper vex’– what was the point of trying if they
never gave you a chance?

I looked out into the car park, trying to find Mr Dawson’s dark blue Fiat. It was right at the end, near the fence. I didn’t have to think twice.

‘Don’t do it, blud!’

‘Shut up!’

‘Don’t do it, man, he ain’t worth it!’

‘I said SHUT UP! No one disrespects me like that, yeah? No one!’

‘It ain’t worth it, blud.’

‘Yes it IS!’

My house keys jingled in the silent car park as I pulled them out of my bag. Then, slowly and carefully, I pulled one of the keys along the side of Mr Dawson’s car, again and again. The
sickening screech of metal on metal hurt my ears but I didn’t stop until I had left a whole heap of silver lines in the dark-blue paint work.

Then I heard a voice shout out, ‘Kingston! What the hell d’you think you’re doing?’

That’s when I ran.

DWAYNE

“Dwayne, Dwayne Kingston, isn’t it?” Ms Walker, the new head-teacher who struck fear into even the baddest students, was glaring down at me.

“Yes, Miss,” I mumbled. I looked down into my lap and hunched my shoulders. This was the last place I wanted to be, sitting in the head’s cluttered office with my mum huffing
and puffing next to me.

Mum poked me, hard. “Speak up and sit up
straight
, boy!” she hissed. She was vex’ that she had had to take the morning off work to come and speak to Ms Walker about
her wort’less son.

“This is just a waste of my time,” she had grumbled, as we got on the bus.

I glanced up and saw Ms Walker looking at Mum. Then she pursed her lips and sat down, turning to me. I looked down straight away.

“Mr Dawson says you were rude and disruptive in his class yesterday,” she said quietly. I was surprised – I was expecting her to yell at me, go crazy and that. But she
didn’t. She just kept on talking. “He says you caused a scene. And another member of staff said that they saw you vandalising Mr Dawson’s car. What do you say?”

‘Tell her!’

‘What?’

‘Tell her exactly what happened!’

‘Nah, man, I ain’t telling her nothin’!’

‘You’d better tell her, mate, or your chances of getting out of this will be even less than they are now. You’re already on a losing streak. Speak up now, before it’s
too late.’

Silence.

‘OK, suit y’self. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

Then Mum spoke up. “Ms Walker, I don’t mean to be rude but this really is a waste of time. Dwayne doesn’t care about school. He doesn’t care about exams or teachers or
any of that. So you might as well just give him whatever punishment you like and send him back to class – and let me get back to my job. I don’t get paid for taking time off to talk
about Dwayne’s bad school record – can’t you tell a hopeless case when you see one?”

“Jeez, thanks for the vote of confidence, Mum.” I felt a lump in my throat and I turned away from her. She really had given up on me; I could hear it in her voice. I don’t know
why I cared but, right then, I did.

Then Ms Walker turned to Mum. “Well, Mrs Kingston, although it might seem the sensible thing to do, I am not ready to write your son off just yet. I would still like to hear his version of
what happened with Mr Dawson.” She looked over at me, obviously expecting me to come up with my side of the story.

So I told her about the test, about getting everything right, about Mr Dawson refusing to believe me, accusing me of cheating, refusing to let me take the test again.

“I was vex’, Miss, proper vex’. It’s not fair to accuse someone and not even give them a chance to defend themselves. Do you know what he said to me, Miss? He said that
my lot – boys like me – will never amount to anything! But how can we if even our teachers don’t believe in us?”

Ms Walker nodded. “You have a valid point there, young man. Black boys in this society face many obstacles as it is and low expectations from teaching staff just add to the problem.
Don’t you agree, Mrs Kingston?”

“To tell you the truth,” replied Mum with a sour look on her face, “it all sounds like excuses to me.”