Forty Scrubs by Joanna George
Chapter Two
I liked Year Ten.
I liked school.
I didn’t like Chemistry or the bullies.
Chemistry and the bullies were too much alike. Both hated me and both liked to mess with my mind.
Year Ten gave me a new meaning to life however, though there were subjects I really couldn’t be stuffed doing like Chemistry, Geography and History. Why couldn’t I just do the subjects I liked such as English and Biology? I had only ever wanted to be an author or geneticist and there was no way I was going to change my mind.
I loved genetics and related to it more than anything else. If it were not for the fact that it couldn’t listen to me I could have made DNA my best friend. All those patterns fascinated me. How one protein base had to be matched to a specific other base to form a particular trait. And how a base matched to the wrong base caused what is called a mutation. A mutation is a change or alteration in nature or form – an anomaly.
I was a mutation.
My best friend at school was Dougall. He was my only friend and I was his only friend so it was only logical we be best friends. We were finishing yet another lackadaisical lesson (a brilliant new word I found on the dictionary website) when I stepped off the stool, closed my three books and stacked them up.
The largest sat on the bottom.
The smallest sat on the top.
The edges sat parallel.
Doug (pronounced Doog, not Dug) and the other kids were so used to my odd arrangements they didn’t say anything anymore. It was like the huge mole on the side of my sister’s neck. I was sure the Higher Power had put it there just to annoy me. I couldn’t help but stare at it when we were young.
‘Jessi, have you ever thought about getting that thing taken off?’ I asked one day when we were sun-baking beside the pool after school. The sun was glowing on the mole making it look like a big brown polkadot. If it were cute and tiny it wouldn’t have been so bad, but the thing was the size of a chocolate button – a misshaped hairy chocolate button.
‘No, I might get cancer,’ she replied.
‘What?’ I’d never heard such an excuse. ‘You’ll get cancer if you leave the thing on your face because of the sun, not if you get it taken off.’
‘No, Mum said I could get it if I get it taken off.’
‘Well, I think she’s wrong there.’
‘It’d only grow back anyway so there’s no point, Keisha. Just leave it.’
Unfortunately I never won the mole argument.
But I couldn’t win one argument when it came to Jessica.
‘So, did you take it all in, Keisha?’ Dougall asked, giving me a cynical grin as we walked towards the classroom door.
‘I wasn’t even listening, Doug. You know I can’t be stuffed with Chemistry. It’s so boring. I don’t know how you stand it.’
He held the door open and followed me out. ‘You know I love all those compounds. Anyway, what have we got now, Keish?’
‘English. You should know that. You have your Macbeth right there.’
As I pointed at his book a boy next to us slammed his locker door open, clearly wanting the door to hit us.
‘Oh, sorry guys,’ he said and smirked. ‘I didn’t see you both there, but you’re both a waste of space so who cares anyway, right?’
‘Grow up already. You should be back at primary school, but I guess the work would be too hard for you,’ I shouted as he waltzed off to catch up with his mates.
‘You should just ignore them. They’re not worth it.’
‘No, Dougall, they make me too god dam angry. Ignoring them is the last thing I’m going to do.’
Students picked on me all the time. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do about it. It had been happening for so long now it felt like Chemistry.
It was something I hated but which happened almost every day.
It was something I tried to forget but the imprint was always there.
Kids loved to taunt anyone who was different. During Year Seven camp the group of girls I had to share a room with came in holding their stomachs and told me they all had a serious stomach bug.
‘Oh my God, Keisha, you’d better not come near us. We’ve been spewing all night. It can’t be food poisoning because we haven’t eaten anything here. It must be a very contagious bug,’ one girl said as she put her hand over her mouth and made a wretched gagging face.
I knew they could’ve been lying but because I was always so anxious about vomit and anything to do with it I was unfortunately inclined to believe them.
I must’ve turned pale because another girl said, ‘are you okay, Keisha? You look like you’re going to throw up yourself? Do you want me to get you a bucket or something?’
I couldn’t speak.
I felt sick.
I was shaking.
Finally I managed to say, ‘er… no, I’ll be okay,’ and ran to the toilet to take my homeopathic nausea pills that were in fact my other best friend. God help me if Dougall found out.
Before I met Dougall, I always sat at the front of the class by myself. When I was in primary school Mum was worried. I knew she thought it was my phobias that stopped me from making friends.
‘Keisha, what will the other kids think of you if they see you cleaning your knife and fork like that all the time?’ she asked me one night when I came home from school and sat at the table cleaning my cutlery in a napkin.
‘I don’t care, Mum, and if I don’t care why do you? I have to clean them because I have to get the germs off.’
Mum never won the cutlery cleaning argument.
‘Come on, let’s get to class, Doug,’ I said, grabbing the elbow of Dougall’s jumper and pulling at it to try and make him faster. His books nearly fell to the floor. He was the clumsiest person I knew.
‘It’s good I’m so organised, you know, because if we were both clumsy we wouldn’t get anywhere.’ I laughed as we walked past three boys huddled around a locker. Looking at Penthouse or Playboy, no doubt.
‘Yeah, well it’s good we both don’t have your disease, otherwise we would never have any fun at all.’
Dougall was usually so tactful but had clearly left his tact at home this morning.
‘For a start it’s not a disease, and secondly, think yourself lucky you don’t have it, Dougall Hunter. There are days I think I’m just going to crack it and go mental or something.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.’
‘You never do.’ I grabbed his elbow again and said, ‘come on, let’s just get to class.’
English was my favourite subject. It allowed me to express my feelings, thoughts and emotions as freely as I pleased. Some of my work was probably a bit too intense but I liked my writing. I liked writing poetry and recently handed in a poem titled I Want to Die, its contents being self-explanatory.
‘Keisha, I think you ought to go and see the student counsellor,’ my teacher said when she kept me back after class one day. ‘The content of your material is a little… um… morbid, especially for a girl your age.’
‘No, I’m okay. I see Dr Robbins quite often. He’s a shrink. I’m okay, really, Miss.’
She left it at that.
She knew she couldn’t win.
I also loved Shakespeare, especially Macbeth. My favourite quote was:
“Come what come may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day.”
It signified many of the days I had.
‘This book is so boring,’ Doug said before slinging an old and tattered Macbeth in front of him.
‘You shouldn’t say that about Macbeth. Shakespeare deserves more credit. What on earth have you done to your book anyway? Did your mum put it through the wash?’
‘No, of course not, but I wouldn’t blame her if she did. There’s such crap inside.’
I shook my head. Sometimes Dougall made me really angry. As much as I tried to encourage literary interes
I knew I should’ve been fair. After all, no-one could ever have encouraged chemical interest in me. If anyone felt the same about English the way I felt about Chemistry, God (or the Higher Power) help them with their essays and stories.
‘Okay, have it your way, but I’m going to enjoy the book.’
Dougall put his wrinkled diary in front of him and started thumbing the pages. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘I’m looking for some space so I can write down compounds.’
His diary was his temple. A temple teeming with scrawled letters, subscripted numbers and plus signs. I imagined the compounds flying out of the pages and throwing themselves together to produce injurious concoctions. The kind of scene you have in Harry Potter.
‘What are you thinking up now, Dumbledore?’ I said leaning towards him to read his jumbled letters.
‘Not sure, but I’m trying to work out how to make dry ice or frozen carbon dioxide last forever. It’s just a matter of getting the atmosphere right.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t have a clue and it doesn’t really interest me, but you continue with your boring compounds if that’s your thing.’
Dougall chewed on the end of his pen while his brain clearly ticked away at a futile combination.
Mr Bryson told us to open our books to Act 1, Scene 7, Macbeth’s Castle.
Dougall took his eyes away from his scrawly writing for a moment. ‘”If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well”. What sort of crap is that? It’s total shite if you ask me.’
I was shocked he could even read the book for all the black fingermarks on the page. ‘No-one is asking you, you moron, so keep your thoughts to yourself.’
I aligned the bottom edge of my folder with the edge of the table. Then I put my black pen to the left side of my folder ready to take down notes. I only ever wrote in black because I once had a bad experience with a blue biro.
I was in Year Eight and had dropped my blue biro on the bitumen at school.
‘Aren’t you going to pick that pen up?’ Dougall asked.
‘Er, no… no, it’s fine, Doug. I have plenty of pens.’
The truth was I remembered a boy younger than me throwing up on that very spot about a year ago.
‘Ok then, but it’s your loss.’ Dougall was quite the cheapskate. He picked the pen up. ‘Waste not, want not.’
I never went near that pen again.
Blue biros were unlucky.
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