Read Online A to Z of You and Me by James Hannah - Free Book Online

front of the class.
    â€œWhich one of you is missing a nearly full packet of these from this morning’s session?”
    We sit aghast. I look at Mal.
    A pack of twenty Embassy No. 1.
    He sits there impassive, watching with absolute innocence as his cigarettes are dropped with a light pat back on the desk, and Miller takes up his favored place, leaning against the slender edge of the blackboard.
    â€œWell, there they are,” he says. “Whoever wants to come up and collect them may do so now.” His eyes seem to settle on Mal, before the bell for the next lesson rings off down the corridor, but nobody moves.
    An impossible, unnatural silence descends as the game of chicken settles in. Outside, the corridors begin to fill and churn with kids making their way slowly to their next lessons, with maximum noise.
    â€œI know,” says Miller, “you think I’m going to let you go.”
    Shimmering silhouettes of students’ heads begin to imprint themselves on the frosted wire glass of the classroom door.
    â€œI know you think I’m going to have to let in the next class. But I don’t have to do anything.”
    Mal looks at me, and I look at him, and an idea begins to form.
    Miller makes his way slowly over to the door and opens it. His presence immediately hushes all activity out in the corridor. He slowly fixes the door shut and returns his attention to us.
    â€œI have let classes stand out there for the full fifty minutes before today, and I’d be willing to do it again now. So.” He sits down and once more picks up the packet of cigarettes. “So.”
    Miller loves to have his enemies, and he’ll be even more triumphant to get the new kid. I’m sure he’s been zeroing in on Mal ever since Mal started sitting near me. And he seems all right, Mal. He’s got a lot about him. Miller’s just a twisted, bitter old has-been. Everyone hates him, and he knows it.
    I don’t look at Mal. I raise my hand, and it takes Miller a while to see it. Some of the girls see it, but they’re too scared to draw Miller’s attention to it.
    â€œSir,” I say.
    Miller swivels his eyes first and then turns his head to face me.
    â€œYes.”
    I want to say this without fear.
    â€œThey’re mine.”
    The class finally drains out and down the corridor, and Mal takes hold of my heavy schoolbag and shifts it to the next class ahead of me.
    Noted.
    Miller is already carefully maneuvering himself between the desks and discarded chairs in my direction. I know what his response is going to be. Not anger, but sympathy. Annoyance, yes, a longer detention, no doubt, but sympathy because of my home situation, and him not wanting to step over the line.
    The classroom door clicks shut behind him, and he softly begins to speak.
    â€œI must say, I’m disappointed…”
    â€œWhat did Miller actually say, then?” asks Mal, sticking two rolling papers together meticulously, the zips on the sleeves of his leather jacket jangling as an accompaniment. He lays the papers on his bag while he roots around in his coat pocket for his pouch and tin.
    I’m sitting on the floor at the end of his bed, sucking on the thank-you beer he bought me. I’m a bit pissed.
    â€œWell, I thought he was going to start going on about my dad and about cancer and all of that stuff. But he didn’t really go there. He started talking about how he’d fallen in with a group of friends who’d got him to smoke a cigarette once, but that he hadn’t liked it, and it had made him sick, and he didn’t know why people ever did it.”
    Mal laughs dirtily at the ceiling. “That tells you all you need to know about him, doesn’t it? Made him sick ? I bet he gets home and whips himself every night after work.”
    â€œHa! Yeah.” I begin whipping myself with an imaginary lash. “ I must not let anyone spell diaphragm wrong .”
    Mal cracks up