4.2
‘Blimey, Satya, haven’t you heard of an umbrella?’ There was a smile on Ben’s face when he said these words. He meant them in jest, proving it with exaggerated enunciation. He almost said blooming heck instead, thinking it funnier, but her gait was too quick, her advance along the corridor too unforgiving. ‘So I take it it’s still raining then?’ he laughed after her.
His repartee brought her to a standstill but not to deliver an affable one-liner to share in his moment of comedic genius. She glanced down at herself, drenched and itching all over, wondering at his ridiculous timing. Of all the idiotic things to say to one so clearly distressed, she thought, that had to rank number one in the Guinness Book of World Records for teenage cretinism. Face screwed up, she spat out the only retort that seemed fit for a moment like this. ‘Do us all a favour, you prick, and go and jump off a bridge.’
‘Okay, yeah, so I deserved that,’ muttered Ben, remembering why his inexplicable optimism had felt so strange. ‘I was only joking,’ he muttered, eyeing his feet dejectedly. ‘Just trying to make you smile.’
Satya peered at her reflection in the pane of glass in the empty award cabinet used only for storing dead flies, desperate to confirm that she had not imagined her saturated morass. No, she thought, she was definitely soaked through. ‘Well don’t bother, I’m not interested,’ she croaked back at him, ‘Leave me alone, right? You know, get lost.’
‘Okay, so you’re having another bad day,’ he murmured, shrinking backwards.
‘No I’m not, actually,’ she shouted at the top of her voice, shaking her head vigorously as she paced back to him. ‘That’s just for you,’ she cried, pushing her forefinger into his face and jabbing it back and forth. ‘Because you’re a dickhead,’ she added determinedly, ‘Yeah, you heard. A spineless, pathetic dickhead. So get lost, right? Get lost.’
As she left him behind, striding away with unfamiliar poise, she wished now that she had returned home to change her clothes, rebuking herself for her inane stubbornness. She might even have then told her mother that she was feeling unwell, an almost true fact that might as well have occurred to her just after the boys on the back seat took aim with their cantankerous hand gestures. Had she done so, she could have avoided this heavy discomfort and the repulsive smell that now followed her, and the crawling itch of the fabric on her skin. Instead, she just looked ludicrous, she told herself, wandering on so distraught.
‘Fuyoooh, Satya, you were ferocious just then, izzit,’ observed Siti Noor, deploying her jocular Manglish to disarm her. Her adorable face alone could have pacified her, those soft rounded cheeks glowing with an indescribable light, but she pressed on regardless. ‘Has Mat Salleh upset you big time?’ she asked with a cheeky smile, her delicate eyebrows arched, sliding in front of her to hinder her onward path.
Satya peeked at the cheeky Malaysian girl and then down at herself once more. ‘Am I invisible or something?’ she asked. ‘Can’t you see the state of me?’
‘Just clowning, Sat-ya,’ she replied. ‘You should try it.’
‘I’m soaked to the bone, Noor, and probably about to get hypothermia.’
‘All the more reason to clown around,’ said Siti Noor, grinning at her even more, ‘It’ll warm yer cockles.’
Listening to her, Satya exhaled loudly and pushed past, frustrated by so much puerile absurdity at a moment of such contemptible humiliation. Leaving her behind, she would seek out a working electric hand dryer and a mountain of green paper towels in the changing rooms next to the sports hall, hoping for some sort of respite from her soggy despair. At least in there she might be able to hang her clothes to dry on one of the big fat cast iron radiators known for pumping out suffocating heat all year around.
On the other side of the door, she peeled off her jacket and jumper and tried to position herself into the slipstream of the white plastic box on the wall, its awful roar bellying its feeble draft, its paltry warmth indiscernible. She stood like that for ten full minutes, until she realised that it did not make a blind bit of difference. She would not get dry like this, she realised, stuffing a paper towel down her collar instead.
‘Oh Satya,’ began Siti Noor once more, creeping up behind her and startling her, ‘are you in a pickle or what? Lucky you have a friend like me. I come bearing gifts.’
‘Not more comedy, I hope.’
‘It depends,’ she replied. ‘Lost property. If we can’t find something that fits, we’ll have to have a good laugh to console ourselves.’ Crouching down on the tiled floor beside her, Siti Noor began delving through the fetid box of clothes she had retrieved from the sports hall office. ‘Don’t ask me how someone managed to lose a skirt,’ she snickered, handing her one that looked about the right size, ‘just be grateful they did.’
‘It stinks,’ complained Satya, passing it back.
‘It’s that, your wet clothes or my PE kit,’ replied her friend, offering her a pair of swimming trunks instead.
‘Okay, I get the message,’ muttered Satya in defeat, grudgingly accepting the pile of castoffs.
She would change behind a toilet cubicle’s locked door, more to flee her acute embarrassment than in pursuit of modesty, first replacing her skirt, then swapping her shirt for a whitish t-shirt. She had a choice between a skirt that was too big and one that was too small; she tried both, but chose the former, seeking freedom of movement over style. The t-shirt she decided on was a bit too tight, but it was the only one that did not smell like an old dishcloth. It would soon hide under a sweater borrowed from her friend, she tried to convince herself, as she squished herself into it, holding her breath.
‘So tell me about your grand entrance,’ called out her friend, listening as the door’s lock slid back, ‘What were those fireworks all about?’
Pushing her arms into Siti Noor’s jumper as she re-emerged, Satya frowned and wheezed a tired lament. ‘Oh, don’t worry about me,’ she muttered emptily, ‘I just slept very badly last night, that’s all. I could hardly sleep at all. I just lay there all night, staring at the ceiling, desperate to drift off.’
‘Was it the storm?’ asked her friend, recalling the rolling thunder just after midnight and the beating on the glass that had followed it. ‘It woke me too,’ she told her.
‘Not that storm,’ she replied sadly, ‘but yes, a storm, a tempest, a great tumult. Yes, my family. My life. This school. Everything.’
‘And that’s why you snapped at laki Benjamin?’ asked Siti Noor. ‘You really had a go at him. Exploded.’
‘Oh no,’ said Satya, ‘I blew my top on that guy because he’s a dickhead. Because that’s what you lot told me, right? You told me he’s an idiot, so he’s an idiot, right?’
‘Well, I guess so,’ muttered the girl, shrugging her shoulders, ‘But I thought you weren’t listening to us. Thought you were friends.’
‘Since when? No, not that prick. Why would I be friends with him?’ For a second, she laughed aloud. ‘Unless you know something I don’t, Noor,’ she tittered.
‘No, I don’t know, whatever,’ whispered her friend, gathering up the heap of lost property. She may have found it a jumble, but she would make sure everything went back neatly folded, despite the pong. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, yeah,’ she added, pairing a bunch of socks, ‘but swearing doesn’t suit you. It makes you look ugly.’
‘How can I not take that the wrong way?’ gasped Satya.
‘Well, you know, I’m saying when you don’t swear: it suits you better. So I’m saying nice you is the true you. Isn’t it?’
‘I only swear for that fool,’ she replied firmly.
‘But I know that’s not the real you. The real you: I met her in September. I liked her more. I thought your faith was important to you.’
‘That was before stuff happened.’
‘But you shouldn’t let this place change you. Just be yourself, Satya.’
‘I am myself. This is me. I’m kind to my friends, but I have no time for idiots.’
Siti Noor was folding a filthy pair of trousers now, matching its legs along its seams. ‘But you know you don’t have to play along, don’t you?’ she said, adding the garment to her tidy pile. ‘All that stuff everyone said about Ben. Don’t take it so seriously, yeah? Just be your own person. There’s just history between Ben and Anjana, that’s all.’
‘You don’t say,’ laughed Satya, tending to her own clothes, all spread out on the radiator, ‘How on earth would I have known?’
‘So you don’t have to hate him on her behalf.’
‘Don’t worry,’ sighed Satya, ‘I’m hating him for myself. It’s no big deal. He’s an idiot.’
‘He’s not a complete idiot, you know? You could go easy on him.’
‘Oh, do you think?’ chortled Satya aloud. ‘Or maybe you don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She stared back at her friend uneasily. ‘I’m grateful for the jumper,’ she said, ‘but please, keep your opinions to yourself. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Not at all. You haven’t got a clue.’
There would be no time for a callous rebuke, stealing her top back again and wishing her acquaintance a heavy cold or a dose of pneumonia. ‘I mean, what sort of weirdo folds a pile of manky clothes?’ she heard Satya jeer back at her.
‘A weirdo who just came to your rescue, perhaps,’ she replied. ‘At least I didn’t jump in a swimming pool on my way to school,’ she added. ‘At least I don’t look as daft as you,’ she giggled, skipping away to return the tidiest lost property box known to man to its home amidst Mr Barker’s pandemonium. ‘So long, partner,’ she laughed back on her way out, abandoning her.
