The mouse and the model are laughing at us,
We'll risk it, we're desperate, for someone to trust.
~
'It most certainly is!'
And it was.
Of course, just because it was, didn't necessarily mean it was is.
I put the pen down, rub my head and turn to the boy next to me. "Does that make sense?"
He looks over at the paper. "Not in the slightest."
"Oh-"
"But! Actually, you've got is and was next to each other."
"But! Actually, you've got is and was next to each other."
I frown. "Is that wrong?"
Before I can stop him, the boy with straight, straw-coloured hair has snatched up the sheet of paper and scrunched it into a ball. "Haven't you ever noticed how much better you feel after chucking out the stuff that weighs you down?" he leans back on the chair legs, looking at me out of the corner of his eye.
I honestly cannot say that I have ever felt that way Or that I have ever chucked anything out. "Hang on-"
"And!" he lets his chair fall forwards, "that sometimes, it's not what is getting you down, it's the other way round. It's what you're getting down about. See?"
His brown eyes sparkle as he smiles.
I ponder this. Can it be true? Maybe we have a choice?
"The opposite of 'you're' is not 'is'," I reply because the prospect of choice is too much at the moment. My head throbs harder at the endlessness created from such mass variety, and the continuous effort required to keep it up.
"Ha! What would you know?' he exclaims in a gleeful gesture of friendship, "You've got ink all over your fingers and no paper."
"You took my paper!"
He leans closer, suddenly- so suddenly that he topples slightly but seems not to notice- with a cheeky grin, "Heard about Mara?"
I glance over at the new girl. Every day this week she had come with a red headband, a different pattern each day but always red. It went beautifully with her shiny brown hair.
"Yeah?" I said, eager to hear some headband-colour-type scandal, maybe involving a boy or a stint in prison.
"Yeah," he said, leaning closer, "she ate those mushrooms out in the garden, those red ones?"
I turn, sagging slightly like a deflated balloon at the mundane direction this conversation had taken, "oh..."
"Yeah? So when she ate them, you know when that was?"
"Yesterday?"
"Last year. And she was a thirty year old man called Gurtred."
