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Anne Fine

Goggle-eyes

1

Helen came into school today in the worst mood. She looked peculiar, and her eyes were red and puffy. She wouldn’t speak to anyone, and if anybody spoke to her, she simply shrugged and turned away. She buried her head in her arms on her desk lid, and waited for first bell.

‘Is anything wrong?’

A muffled, ‘No!’

‘What’s up, Helly?’

‘Nothing!’

She lifted her head and practically spat it out. We were a bit shocked. She has to be the gentlest person in our class, normally. There must have been something terribly wrong.

And you could tell that Mrs Lupey thought so, too, when she came in.

‘What’s up, Helen? Anything the matter?’

Another muffled, ‘No!’

She didn’t even raise her head, or try to sound the slightest bit polite.

Mrs Lupey looked round at all the rest of us. With Helen’s head safely buried on her desk, she let a look of: ‘Does anyone here have any idea what’s wrong with her?’ spread over her face, and we all shook our heads and shrugged.

Then first bell rang.

‘Seats, please,’ said Mrs Lupey. ‘Register. ’

There was a note tucked in the register, sent down from the office. We waited while she pulled it out of the envelope, read it, and made a little face, glancing at Helen. Then she picked up her pen.

‘Number off!’

‘One,’ called out Anna Artree. ‘Two,’ shouted Leila Assim. That’s how we do our register. It’s one of Mrs Lupey’s Great Ideas to Save Time. Everyone’s numbered in alphabetical order, and then each day we rattle through the numbers from one to thirty-four. I’m twenty-two.

‘Eighteen. ’ ‘Nineteen. ’ ‘Twenty. ’

Silence.

(Helen is twenty-one. )

Usually Mrs Lupey doesn’t fuss. If we get held up on a number because someone’s rushing through last night’s homework, or scrabbling on the floor for something they’ve dropped, she just glances up to check they’re there, and then she says the number herself, and we just carry on. This time she didn’t.

‘Twenty-one?’

Everyone looked towards Helen, who was still trying to bury herself in her desk lid.

‘Mission Control calling Twenty-one,’ said Mrs Lupey. She was watching Helen closely. ‘I know you’re out there, Twenty-one. Speak to me. Please. ’

Silence. We were all watching now. When Helen Johnston acts as awkward as this, then something’s very wrong.

Mrs Lupey gave her a moment, then:

‘Please…? Pretty, pretty please…?’

‘Oh, shut up!’ Astonishingly, Helen leaped to her feet and scraped her chair legs back across the floor. She lifted her desk lid and slammed it down so hard her pens flew off in all directions. ‘Leave me alone, for heaven’s sake!’

And rushing across the room, she wrenched the classroom door open and banged out, leaving it swinging on its hinges.

Everyone stared.

‘Well!’ Mrs Lupey said ruefully after a moment. ‘I handled that really well, didn’t I?’