To the Principal’s Office
Anisha Sahu
I kept my head down, scribbling away furiously at the piece of paper. What time was it? No, I had to finish my sentence before checking or I’d forget what I was writing.
Faintly, I heard the teacher’s footsteps and my partner clicking her pen. That didn’t matter. Nothing else mattered but my pen and the paper, my imagination running wild and free leaping out of the classroom and down the corridor, bursting through the boundaries, ducking under the tables of the headteacher’s office, dodging in and out of the PE cones on the muddy field and finally hurtling over the gate into a free world. One without a soul in the world… just me and my imagination leaking into the world like my pen leaked on paper.
Maybe I could share a piece with everyone but for now it will have to be for you. That’s until my characters are set free from the page, and I can share my passion with everyone. My imagination was racing so much I hadn’t realised how many times my name was being called. I also hadn’t realised the incomprehensible nonsense I was scrawling down in my notebook – somewhere between doodles and just pure scribbling. Anyway, that didn’t matter either. I was lost in my own train of thought, and nobody could take me out of it.
When I wrote, it was like this invisible bubble formed around me, getting stronger and stronger with each word I wrote until it drowned out all my classmates and teachers’ voices. The bell could ring a hundred times and it would all be a blur to me. I glanced left and right for a fleeting second. The person on my left was chatting to their friends and the one on my right was tapping my shoulder.
OH MY GOD! Feeling my face go red hot in embarrassment, I sank into my chair. Snatched from my thoughts, I blinked furiously as the teacher approached me, red with fury.
She picked up my notebook full of stories and flicked through it thoughtfully. “You don’t mind sharing this with the class, do you? It’s just that, you seem to feel that you can write this nonsense at any given time… you’re ever so keen, aren’t you?” she asked in a mock innocent tone. I fought the urge to say several rude words, but I clamped my mouth shut before I could make that mistake.
My face was ashen with shock when she flipped to the beginning and began to read in a booming voice so that it was impossible to ignore her. Thirty beady eyes bore into mine as she spoke, and an eruption of whispers broke out. Oh god… I had forgotten about all the insolent pictures and descriptions of the teacher I had wrote on the first page.
“Interesting…very detailed drawings Avery. In fact, they are SO amazing, I’d like you to show them to the headteacher. NOW.”