Skeletal by Katherine Hayton Page B

years of schooling.
    I could always beg and borrow to get the stupid plastic calculator. The one that had to have specific branding to be acceptable because otherwise the teacher might need to learn how to operate more than one. Or understand what it was they were passing on from the textbook. God forbid.
    And if I succeeded at that, then I’d feel the same way I’d felt earlier today. Except double or triple and for a hell of a lot longer. If I wasn’t allowed to just have something that was new and right, then I should take it. Better the guilty conscience than the burning anger. Eating away in me. I didn’t want to die of cancer in my thirties because I spent my teen years seething with anger I wasn’t allowed to express.
    When I turned back around the corridor was still empty. I decided to take that as a sign and carry on carrying on.
    There was a moment when I opened the music room when I thought that I’d walked in on a teacher. My mind spun through a half-dozen excuses, all of them lacking, and then realised that it was a music stand that someone had chucked a fabric cello case over.
    There was a triphammer operating in my chest now. Knowing my luck with anything lately I’d pass out when I got my hand on the incriminating item, and then wake up in school prison.
    But it was too late now. If I didn’t get in and out soon the janitor would be heading around and locking it all up for the night. How the hell would I get out of that one, eh? I wouldn’t.
    I knelt down by the locked door, behind the piano, and quickly inserted the hairpin I’d been carrying since Ms Aiello’s counselling session from hell.
    The lock was almost identical. I wondered if the keys that staff held onto so dearly were actually just copies of each other, and could all be interchanged.
    When I walked through the door I instantly saw the stack full of stationery. There was also a stack of sports clothing, branded with the school logo. I couldn’t imagine having to pay for another uniform just so I could play a game. What a waste of money.
    A pile of exercise books sat on top of a sealed cardboard box full of the same. I pushed and pulled a few boxes, and then found another cupboard with loose pens, staplers, rulers and – jackpot – scientific calculators. I pulled one out, and grabbed a slip of spare batteries to go with it, just in case.
    It was when I turned to head back out that I heard a voice call out. I froze in place. I’d closed the door behind me but if anyone checked I’d be caught in the act. Ms Pearson would have a joyous celebration, but I’d be in the shit.
    I scanned the tiny space. There was another door, which I presumed led to another classroom – the English room, if my spatial ability was up to par – but apart from that I was stuck.
    I pushed a stack of boxes to my right, trying to make no noise at all and almost succeeding. It left a gap that I slid into and crouched down. I could just make out the door, and pulled my head back, tucking my legs and feet into the small space as best I could. I closed my eyes in case my not being able to see them stopped them being able to see me, and waited.
    It was odd, but my heartbeat had slowed and quietened down. Maybe I’d gone so far into panic that it hadn’t been able to keep up in the end, and was now just barely moving, like an overweight teen trying to make it through the last hundred metres of the 1k run.
    There was no sound, followed by more no sound. I relaxed further back into my tiny trap, my spine becoming loose like jelly. Instead of the blackness behind my eyelids I could envisage my body as it changed into protozoa, into amoeba. Tiny and jelly. Jelly and tiny.
    The door banged and my eyes flew open in surprise. Footsteps that sounded like thunderclaps. I pushed back against the wall as every part of body wanted to strain forward to peer around the corner and see. And be seen.
    Shuffling. Closer, closer.
    And then further away.
    The door banged shut and I