Chapter 15

The Easter holiday went by quickly. Andrew kept up his exercise in the morning and was at the school by 9.00 every day. The improvement in his programming was marked. The first couple of days were spent inputting the pieces of code he had copied or written. About 60% of it worked. Most of the copied code worked fine, and where it did not it was clear he had written something down wrong. His own code was a different matter. Somewhere between 10% & 20% worked, the rest was flawed, if not outright rubbish. A couple of routines were complete junk but most of it had bugs to a greater or lesser degree. So the pattern was set. His mornings were spent coding seeing if what he had written would work. HIs afternoons and evenings were spent reviewing printouts and working on fixes to the bugs. It was frustrating but Andrew knew he was learning something new. He was having fun in his usual solitary way. He also worked at the food bank on both Sundays, including Easter Sunday. As Dave had said the week before ‘hunger doesn’t take a holiday’. He enjoyed the time there and had started to meet and talk to some of the other volunteers. All at least fifteen years older than him but it was a start.

The one break in among all this alone time was talking to Tony. Before he returned home from a morning in front of the computer at school, twice each week he walked over to the camera shop. It was nothing more than hanging around, just chatting to Tony. If he wasn’t worried about the chemicals in the darkroom it would have been good to develop a couple of rolls of film. Tony was 27 and although he was old enough to be Andrew’s father the two of them got on. A shared interest in both cameras and music was a strong foundation and on the second week Tony loaned Andrew a couple of albums, a chance to try something new and broaden his horizons. But again, Andrew was not chatting to someone his own age, he still had no friends his own age.

Suddenly it was the Monday evening. The last night of the break and Andrew had school for the first time since June the previous year. His mum had dragged him to the city centre to get some new clothes. He was broader across the shoulders and taller since the previous year and nothing fitted – shirts, trousers, blazer, and shoes, it was a whole new wardrobe. Fortunately as Heriot’s had a uniform the shopping involved going to the approved store and getting the appropriate sizes. His mum at least was sensible, or her version of it. She and the gentleman at the store talked and got new clothes that looked borderline ridiculous on him, they were drowning him. The trousers had a significant hem tucked under for when he inevitably grew and both the shirts and his blazer were several sizes too large. Andrew understood thinking ahead and not wasting money on clothes he would grow out of within months but this seemed a bit much. One thing he worried about was that he felt that it emphasised his slightness. In the end, as with most things when you are a 13 year old child complaining to your mother, his mother won. The other thing that was going to make him stand out was his hair. Andrew had been bald at the start of February and in the intervening two months his hair had come back. The growth was patchy and inconsistent so he had agreed to keep it very short. Not bald but military short back and sides. It was either that or have tufts and semi bald patches. Neither was ideal.

The school knew that Andrew was returning. There had been constant communication with the school as his dad was there every week picking up work and dropping off his homework. Andrew’s form teacher was Mrs. Debbie Hall, a biology teacher. Mid-thirties, blond hair, pretty face. The object of significant amounts of crushing from pubescent schoolboys. She dealt with this like all attractive teachers by completely ignoring it. She was a nice lady. Andrew met her in the office 15 minutes before school started.

“Andrew, I am so glad that you are able to return. How are you feeling?”

She asked with a bright and genuine smile.

“I am feeling much better thanks Mrs. Hall. I have been in remission since the end of January and have been working hard to put some of the weight back on and to build up some strength and stamina. I should be fine.”

“All of your teachers are very impressed with your scores on your end of term exams. You clearly had studied all of the material.”

She handed him a sheet with the marks. Everything over 90 except Latin and it was 88.

“You should have no difficulty in the classes academically. Do you think that you will slot back into your year okay?”

Andrew could see the underlying worry in her face.

“It has been nine months since I have seen my classmates. But I have been in the same class with more than 20 of them for the last four years. I am sure there will be questions. I figured I would answer them honestly. I had skin cancer. It was eventually treated with chemo, thus my short hair and skinny frame. I am healthy now. The only sign is some slight scarring on my lower back. You have to look pretty hard to see it. Other than that not much has changed.”

Mrs. Hall was looking at him with an expression that he could not decipher. They walked over to the form room together. Andrew’s heart was beating faster but he heard Faith and Leslie’s voices telling him to be more confident. When Mrs. Hall arrived at her room Andrew hung back as she went up to the door to unlock it. The interrogation began.

“McLeod, you are back. We thought you had left. What the hell are you doing here? What’s with the stupid haircut?”

Ah, good to be back! They all shuffled into the room and Andrew waited to see where there was a free seat. Mid way down on the far wall, he sat down and waited for Mrs. Hall to say something.

“As you can see Andrew McLeod is back today. Andrew, do you want to tell everyone all at once at get it over with?”

NO. But it didn’t seem like he had an option now, so standing up he summarised quickly.

“I was diagnosed with skin cancer last summer and my treatment meant that I couldn’t come to school. I finally got the all clear after chemo at the end of January, thus the short hair. I am cancer free and back to school. That’s it.”

He sat down quickly.

“Short and to the point I suppose. I am sure that you will have further questions but we need to get to assembly.”

For the most part it quickly conformed to the pattern that he remembered from prior years. The twats were still twats, the quiet kids still said nothing unless asked by a teacher and the guys in the other classes of the year were idiots.

Andrew thought about the set up. At the end of Primary five (grade four) they had been tested. For the first five years of school there were 2 classes with no differences between them. That all changed at the end of Primary five. Based on these tests everyone was streamed into academic achievement groups. Primary six and seven had three groups, A B & C. Everyone was retested at the end of primary school and streamed again. This time into five groups, A through E. A was the brightest and E was not. Andrew had been in the A group for the last four years, mostly with the same bunch of guys. These were the same guys he had met outside Hall’s classroom on his first morning back. They went through all their academic classes together. The ‘A’ class stayed together for all the subjects. They were the nerd class. There were some guys who were good at sport but not many, and Andrew was definitely crap at sports. The groups became tight and although they mingled during lunch and break, other than gym and after school sports they did not have classes with anyone else.

But as the bright nerdy kids they also had the biggest targets on their backs. There was not really bullying at Heriot’s. The school could, and did, expel people and so the harassment was much more verbal than physical. There were different inter-class dynamics but the ‘B’ class hated them. Always second best. Taught at a different pace and made to sit different exams. They were so bitter and didn’t hide it at all. In turn the ‘A’ class of course gave them a lot of shit right back, especially about being stupid. They were all either 13 or 14 years old, and proved it every day!

The guys in Andrew’s class quickly accepted his return and by the end of the week he was back into the routine of school. What changed compared to previous years was that when he went to the library at lunchtime and after school rather than read some fiction Andrew sat and studied. Right from the first day, he stayed on top of everything and read ahead. Classes were easy and by the time he got home for dinner schoolwork was complete. After his Physics class Andrew stayed behind and thanked the teacher for the department letting him use the Apple II during the break. He asked if he could program for one hour in the afternoon twice a week. Andrew was pleased to see them at least consider it and they would let him know. After the first gym class of the year, which this term was basketball – Andrew pathetically demonstrating that this white boy couldn’t jump, or pass or shoot – he asked the teacher if there was a way for him to swim in the mornings. Andrew knew he would not be allowed to on his own and asked if someone could guard him from 7.30 until 8.15. He shamelessly played the cancer survivor card and Kearns, the teacher, said that he was normally at school at that time. He couldn’t swim on his own either so agreed that they would swim in the pool keeping an eye out for each other. He committed to this for the term. Andrew was ecstatic.

“Thanks Mr. Kearns, I have been swimming at the Commonwealth every weekday morning since I got the all clear and I was very keen to continue.”

Kearns looked at him in surprise.

“Every morning Andrew?”

“Yes. I started three days a week but by the third week I started going all five days. I worked my way up to swimming 1000m backstroke and then did the same for front crawl. For the last month I have been swimming 2000m, 1000m of each. It takes me between 60 and 65 minutes usually. I hope to keep improving so that I can get the full 2000m complete within our 45 minutes. I will see you at the pool at 7.30 Monday morning. Thanks again.”

He also received permission to code on the Physics department’s Apple II on Mondays and Thursdays. By the end of the first week of school Andrew was really pleased with how everything had gone, already things were in place to help him with fitness and to challenge him academically.

Then Andrew got into his first fight. This from a kid who was afraid of his own shadow, who had never thrown a punch in his life and definitely had never been punched. It was at orchestra of all places. The problem started with the same couple of pain in the ass fourth years – Simon Coombs and Murray Jones – who had hassled him the previous year. Simon was still the mouthy one and Murray was an even bigger lumbering dickhead. The kind of small time bully that Heriot’s had a lot of. Wouldn’t last five minutes in a public school but here he was still the kind of twat that barged into you, knocked stuff out your hands, all that annoying shit that is part of surviving high school. Andrew was there before them and was setting up his double bass. It was near the door and most of the rest of the orchestra had to pass him on the way to their sections.

“What are you doing back?”

Coombs asked as he brushed past. He had tormented him last year and but now Andrew wasn’t bothered. He thought about the psychotic removal man Grant and suddenly these two clowns were just that, clowns. Instead he just looked at them and then turned away, ignoring them. Jones then deliberately barged into him, banging his back. Typical Murray Jones behaviour.

“Hey, what happened to your hair? Have you just got out of prison?”

Jones laughed at his own joke, for him this was pretty good. The members of the orchestra all knew he had been undergoing cancer treatment, so Andrew just shook his head and continued ignoring them.

“Hey McLeod, are you deaf?”

Coombs wasn’t letting this go.