Move by Conor Kostick

was like drowning.
    ‘Your pen.’
    There was no escape, which was something even more frightening than the fact that Mr Kenny had lost the run of himself . I handed him my biro.
    ‘Here’s a lesson for you, O’Dwyer. How would you like to be written upon, to be mocked?’
    The pen shot out at me and drew a mark above my lip. The class went totally silent, horrified.
    ‘Stand still boy!’ Mr Kenny’s shout was ferocious and his hand grabbed the hair at the back of my head, holding me in place. The pen hurt as it covered my chin, my cheeks. Around my eyes he drew circles for glasses. At last, he released me, stepping back to admire his handiwork. My face burned, not with pain but humiliation. Never had I been so ashamed. Tears came to my eyes and it was even harder to check them when I sawintense satisfaction in Mr Kenny’s expression. Frustration and anger welled up inside me. If I could have found a universe where the roof fell on his head and killed him, I would have moved to it. But everything was closed to me, everything except this moment, this suffering.
    The bell rang and Mr Kenny promptly swept out of the room, leaving a totally stunned class behind him. No one even coughed.
    At last I felt an arm on my shoulder. It was Zed.
    ‘Come on, mate. Let’s try to get that off.’
    He steered me out and down to the toilets.
    ‘What a lunatic. That’s gotta be illegal. What a complete gobshite.’ Zed was trying to console me, but I was so shocked and outraged I couldn’t speak.
    It took a while for the shame and anger to subside. When it did, I found a very different emotion creeping up on me: fear. Someone had trapped me in that moment, bound me even more tightly than the day of the Valentine’s card, and if they could do that, what else could they do?
    ***
    The way Mr Kenny had gone to town on me probably fuelled what happened two days later. Our form teacher was Mr Brown, the French teacher. He was strict, but pretty fair, so we had a certain amount of respect for him. One morning, as he took the register, Hazel Cartwright put her hand up.
    ‘Hazel?’
    ‘Sir, when are we getting information about our class trip?’
    ‘Ahh.’ Mr Brown closed the register and stood up. ‘I’m sorry to say that since there were no volunteers to take you, there will be no class trip.’
    This news was a shock and an audible murmur spread around the class. All fifth-year classes got a trip away, usually to Paris or some European city. Of course we had to pay, but it was supposed to be great craic, at least that’s what all the sixth years told us. Some of our class had been saving already, even though we didn’t know where we were off to.
    ‘Sir?’ Hazel called out to him just as he was reaching for the door.
    ‘Hazel?’
    ‘Why don’t you take us?’
    ‘I dislike class trips. But as it happens I felt sorry for you all and did offer that if another member of staff would accompany us, I would be willing to take you, providing our destination was in France.’ He looked at us over his glasses. ‘Unfortunately your reputation is such that my offer was declined.’
    With that, Mr Brown hurriedly left the room, perhaps a little ashamed about the betrayal of our class by the other teachers, or perhaps he felt he had been indiscreet in telling us about the attitude of his colleagues. It was understandable of course, and I was as much to blame as anyone. Actually, I was more to blame than the others. I’ve told you how being able to move allowed me to terrorise Mr Kenny. Well, there was other stuff too.
    We used to have ‘morning prayer’ at our school. One of the nuns, usually Sister Rita, would speak through the tannoysystem before registration, offering us a few thoughts every day, about who should be in our prayers. She was good on the stories of saints and also on reminding us about those worse off than ourselves. Soon after the start of fifth year, Zed and I had gone to her and explained that we wished to do the