Chapter 16: The Only One

Thursday 17-May 2007

Knock knock.

Chris looked up towards the door. Who would be visiting at this time of the morning? His mum hopped up and hurried to the door.

"Good Morning, Eric." He heard from the entrance.

Eric? Chris was still trying to figure out who that was when his mum led Mr Cartwright into the room. Mr Cartwright was carrying his bag that contained most of his books and his phone.

"Ahh, Chris. Good morning. How are you?"

"I'm okay, thank you sir. Actually it looks worse than it is." Chris had got a real shock when he first looked in the mirror that morning. His face was uncomfortable from the swelling, and it hurt a little to do some things, but it looked far worse. Spectacular, that was the only way to describe it. His parents had insisted on taking some photos, much to Jay's and Bec's amusement.

Mr Cartwright sat down at the table next to Chris and enquired about Chris's wellbeing with genuine care, listening carefully as Chris and his mum explained what the doctor had said. He agreed with Chris's mum that Chris should have the rest of the week off, and said that he'd ask Sue to email him her recordings for those two days, since they shared most subjects on those days. He assured Chris that Sue's recordings were clear enough to listen to.

Then he moved onto the subject that Chris had been rather dreading since his headmaster first walked into the room.

"All right, Chris, what would you like to tell me about the fight?"

Chris almost responded with a surly, "Nuthin'", but managed to stop himself in time. Mr Cartwright deserved better than that. And if Chris really seriously didn't want to say anything about the fight — and he didn't ‑ then he'd have to be forthcoming about everything else in order to get taken seriously.

"Thank you for asking me, sir, and also thank you so much for the way you arranged that detention before. I really appreciated it. I've thought about what I want to tell you about the fight, and the answer is very much that I would like to tell you absolutely nothing."

Mr Cartwright regarded Chris gravely. "Are you sure that's appropriate?"

"Sir, I can see how it's not appropriate from your point of view, but it's very much necessary from mine."

"'Necessary'. Why is it necessary?"

Chris saw the trap in that. In order to explain why it was necessary, he'd have to explain about Shahia, and he simply wasn't going to. This was going to be a very difficult conversation, he could see that already. He started several different sentences in his mind, but they all lead into difficulties. In the end, he settled for the truth.

"The problem is that in order to explain why I won't talk, I would have to say what I'm not prepared to say."

Mr Cartwright smiled. "Well put. Will you promise me that this won't happen again?"

No. How could Chris promise that? It wasn't up to him. He had to stick to his word and hurt Jerry every time he pushed Shahia around. He figured that he'd have to go through this all over again at least once. But first, he was going to do a bit of boxing training, learn how to protect his head. He knew how this would come across, but he couldn't do anything else. Did he have to do this today? Reluctantly he shook his head.

"Well, that puts you in a difficult situation, young man, and it puts me in a difficult situation too. If you can't give me a satisfactory explanation for what happened, and you won't promise that it won't happen again, I may be forced to expel you."

Chris was alarmed now, genuinely alarmed. This was really serious trouble, but still he wasn't going to talk.

His mother broke the silence. "Chris, getting suspended or expelled won't help you meet your goals here."

At least she didn't say what they were. He turned to her. "I could still go to school anyway, just not be officially there. That would still work."

His mum's voice was sad. "No, Chris, if you get expelled, you won't be allowed on the school grounds."

Chris looked to Mr Cartwright, who nodded. Now he was extremely stressed, completely trapped, and he realised that he was shaking.

"Eric, can we put this off to another day? I understand why Chris won't say anything in this case ‑ he's not doing it lightly ‑ and I don't think he's quite ready to deal with the stress that this is going to cause him."

Mr Cartwright nodded. "That's reasonable." He turned back to Chris. "Chris, we'll talk about this another day. I'll talk to your mum tomorrow about when. In the meantime, I want you to think about this seriously. I understand the code of silence that you students have, and I try to respect it when I can. I have when you've come to see me in the past."

He paused while Chris thought about that. Chris frantically tried to think through his alarm, and realised that it was true. He nodded.

"But this doesn't apply in this case. I know who missed school after lunch yesterday. Two of the top sportsmen in the school have fought: one ended up in hospital, and the other, our best footy player, one with a real prospect of becoming a professional footy star, is out of the team for several weeks with knee ligament damage. This is real serious: it's not just a normal scrap that I can issue general warnings about. I'm going to have to write up health and safety reports on this, and they'll have to be good enough to be able to go to court. And it seems to me that there is a genuine underlying problem."

Out of the team for several weeks? Chris allowed himself a brief moment of satisfaction internally, but he made sure it didn't show on his face. Shahia's stone face was quite useful just at this moment, though the pain in his face did make it easier. But he sure agreed with Mr Cartwright that this wasn't just a normal scrap.