Mable Got a Papercut

-1-

Whilst doing her homework, Mable got a papercut.

“Muuummmm...mummy...mum, mum, mum! I cut my finger. It stings. I need a plaster.”

“Let me look...oh, I can’t even see it and it’s not bleeding, you’ll be fine. Now come on, are you finished with that homework and ready to go?”

“But mum, it really hurts.”

“No it doesn’t. Let’s go. We’ll be late.”

“Bu...”

“No buts. Get your bag. Let’s go!”

“Can’t carry my bag, my finger hurts.”

“Use the other hand.”

“Feels strange.”

“You’ll get used to it. Seriously, get in the damn car, we’re going!”

Mable sat in the back seat cradling her finger. It did hurt and it was stingy and she did need a plaster. Her frown deepened until her eyebrows almost touched her nose. Her lips tightened and she tried to squeeze some blood out of the sore stingy papercut. No blood. She put the red, sore, stingy, throbbing finger in her mouth and sucked on it.

Pulling up to the curb, her mum said “have a great day!” as Mable awkwardly heaved her bag out of the car with the wrong hand.

“K, bye.”

“I’ll be here to pick you up after.”

“K.” She slammed the door with more force than was needed and stomped in to school.

-2-

“Mable, Mable, Mable!” Pania yelled from the other side of the playground. “Wanna play handball?”

Forgetting the finger, her eyebrows returned to their normal position and a smile touched the edges of her lips.

“YES!” she yelled back, “I’ll just dump my bag!” Mable ran to the classroom, threw her bag onto the bag hook and bolted out to the playground to where Pania was waiting.

“Hurt my finger this morning,” she declared.

“Sucks,” Pania commiserated.

“Yeah. But my hand is fine so I can still play handball,” she smiled. So they played handball and others joined them as they arrived at school and Mable ended up as King just as the bell rang.

“VICTORY!” she declared.

“Rematch at play?” Pania asked.

“Of course, and I will beat you again,” she said with a laugh, knowing it was highly unlikely cause Pania was definitely better than her. But that was okay.

They lined up outside the room and then filed in to sit on the mat. The routine was the same very single day. Mat time. Reading time. Writing time. Play time. Maths time. Lunch time. SSR time. Other stuff time. Home time. Their teacher was giving them a run down of the day. Mable was already thinking about play time and how she might keep her spot as King in handball. If only she could get Gary to form an alliance they might be able to keep each other safe for the whole time but that was unlikely ‘cause he always sided with Sam and they ganged up on her and Pania. Maybe she would let him copy her maths, that could work...

“Mable...Mable...are you with us this morning?” her teacher was asking.
“Oh yes, I’m here, I got a paper cut this morning, my finger hurts.”

“Not bad enough to stop you from playing handball.”

“You use your hand for handball, not your finger.”

The teacher gave Mable the look.

“It’s not fingerball, yanno?” Mable pushed her luck and the rest of the class giggled.

“Enough,” her teacher warned.

“Fingerball could be fun, we could play with tiny balls in tiny squares,” the class was laughing more. Her teacher’s face was getting slightly flushed.

“Outside Mable! Until you find your manners.”

“I don’t think I’ll find them out there.”

More laughing.

“Then go see Mrs Smith, she might be able to help you find them.”

Silence.

This had gone too far.

“I’m sorry,” said Mable. And she actually was. She didn’t want to go to Mrs Smith.

“Too late to be sorry.”

“Fine, I’ll go and I’ll tell Mrs Smith that you are a bad teacher and you don’t listen to anything and you don’t teach us anything and you are mean and you are bad!”

And she stomped out of the room, brows low, lips tight, her face more flushed than the teacher and her finger throbbing.

Slipping into the office, the office lady smiled at Mable’s scowling face. “Are you okay, Mable?”

“No, I’m sick. My teacher sent me to the sick bay.”

“That’s no good, what’s wrong?”

“I have a papercut,” she said quickly followed by, “and a headache,” which was not a lie.

“Go on into the sick bay then and have a lie down, I’ll get a cold cloth for you and call mum.”

“Don’t call mum. I’ll be okay. She’s busy.”

“If you’re not well, you should be at home.”

“Nah, I’ll be fine, in 10 minutes.”

“In 10 minutes?”

“Yeah, I just need 10 minutes and then I’ll be fine.”

“Okay, I’ll set the timer for 10 mins and then I’ll come check on you.”

Mable went into the sick-bay, kicked off her shoes and lay down on the bottom bunk-bed. The sick bay bed was creaky and smelt funny, like a classroom at the end of a long hot summer day and maybe just a bit damp. There was a sick bowl just in case and some artwork the little kids had done for the walls. There was a small fridge in the room where they kept the ice-packs and a green first aid kit and a small sink and a set of plastic drawers for the epi-pens for the kids who were allergic to stuff. Gary had his in there ‘cause he was allergic to peanuts. That’s why no peanut butter sandwiches, ‘cause Gary might die…maybe that’s how she could stop Gary always being in alliance with Sam, bring a peanut butter sandwich to school, they had peanut butter at home, that could work. Mable wondered how long she’d been there. Maybe if the office lady got busy she would forget Mable and she could just lie here ‘til playtime. No such luck. Mable heard the timer go off and the footsteps of the office lady.

“How are you feeling now?”

“Maybe another 10 minutes to be sure I’m okay.”

“Maybe I should call your mum.”

“But I’ll be fine before she gets here and then she’ll be angry. Just 10 more. Please?”

“10 more. But that’s all,” she said turning back to the office leaving Mable with the funny smells and a craving for a peanut butter sandwich.

Mable wondered what Pania was doing in class. She wondered what they were all doing. It would probably be writing by the time she went back. Writing was okay, but her finger hurt. She breathed in the sick bay smells and sighed. She sat up, swung her feet to the floor and padded over to the sink in her socks. Putting her head under the tap she had a drink and then returned to the bed. She actually felt better and her finger was not even throbbing anymore. She smiled at the little kids funny drawings on the wall imagining what they were. They were colourful and looked like they were fun to make. When she first started school her teacher had brought in the chrysalis of a monarch butterfly and they had all sat around the table to watch it hatch. Even Harry who never sat still watched that butterfly slowly puffing out its wings and then they had to draw it and Mable had drawn the chrysalis and her teacher had told her that she was supposed to draw the butterfly and Mable had asked “why?” and the teacher had got annoyed so she added a butterfly to her drawing and the teacher had put a sticker on it. Stickers were good at school, if you got enough of them. Mable showed her mum her stickers and they made her mum smile. Getting stickers made Mable smile too but getting them had sometimes made her angry like when she had to play with Jasmine at play-time but she just wanted to play handball with Pania, Gary and Sam. But she did get a sticker that said “I’m a Good Friend” and her mum made lasagne for dinner.

The timer went off again and the office lady came in.

“Ready to go back?”

“Yep” Mable declared.

“Have a good day Mable,” the office lady called after her as she skipped back to her class.

Nearing her classroom Mable remembered that she was supposed to see Mrs Smith in the office and not go to the sick-bay. If she had really gone to Mrs Smith she would not be skipping back to her classroom, she would be returning composing an apology to her teacher in her head and looking forward to rubbish duty at play-time. Mable slowed to a walk. She’d done this so many times that she knew what to do. Go back in quietly. Don’t disturb anyone. Wait ‘til her teacher was free and then go apologise sincerely for being rude. Go and get on with whatever everyone else was doing. Her teacher would never know that she had been chilling in the sick-bay rather than getting told off by Mrs Smith. So that’s exactly what she did. Her plan went off without a hitch and almost before she knew it she had her writing book and a pencil and was sitting beside Pania ready to write a report about the science experiment they had done yesterday – the one where you put a peeled hard-boiled egg on top of an old milk bottle and then a lit match in the bottle and as the oxygen is used up the egg is pulled into the bottle. Well, that’s what was supposed to happen but Gary is also allergic to eggs and so they had to use a fake egg ball thing and it didn’t work ‘cause the ball was too hard so they had just watched it on YouTube instead.

“I was sitting there.” It was Gary. Mable looked up from carefully underlining the date in her book.

“Move your feet, lose your seat,” Pania chanted. And Mable and her laughed.

“But I was, I just went to check this with the teacher,” he said.

“Move your feet, lose your seat,” Mable chanted

“Rrrrr…” and his eyebrows drew down towards his nose and his lips tightened and the book in his hand came down suddenly on Pania’s head, chaos erupted in their corner of the classroom…

“HE HIT ME!”

“SHE STOLE MY SEAT!”

“WHAT’S GOING ON OVER THERE?

“HE HIT ME!”

“SHE STOLE MY SEAT!”

“ENOUGH! All three of you bring your books and come here,” their teacher said, “you can work beside me where I can keep an eye on you.” Knowing better than to argue again today Mable slumped onto the mat and awkwardly tried to keep going with her report.

“You should have just moved,” Gary said.
“Shut-up Gary,” Mable responded.

“Mable said shut-up,” Gary directed at the teacher.

“So did you,” Mable retorted.

“All of you will work in silence. All of you!”

Mable didn’t have the energy to argue, Pania was too good to argue, and Gary was too scared. They all sat in silence and did their writing keeping one eye on the clock for how long it would be until the bell rang and they would get out of prison.

Mable and Pania looked at each other’s work, copying in silence while keeping it secret from Gary. Gary didn’t deserve their help. He should have just sat somewhere else. When they were finished the report, Mable slipped out a piece of blank paper from the back of her book and started a new cartoon strip. Pania watched as Mable wrote ‘Gary the Bum Face’ at the top and then drew both of them sitting at the table and then Gary with a bum-face telling them that he wanted to sit there and then drawing Gary sitting on his bum-face upside down on the chair with is legs in the air like octopus tentacles. In the background was their teacher with a speech bubble saying,

Pania snorted.

The teacher looked up.

Mable slid the cartoon into the back of her book, looked up at her teacher and smiled, “we’ve finished,” she said, holding up her book as proof while carefully holding the cartoon in its hiding place.

“It’s amazing what you can do when you concentrate.”

“Sure is,” Mable agreed

“It’s nearly playtime, how about you two pack up, pick up ten pieces of rubbish each and then you can go.”

Relief surged through Mable, she had made it to play-time. Surely, she could make it through the day.

-3-

Playtime was easy. Gary was still mad so they decided to do their second favourite playtime activity and make daisy chains on the field. Their teacher loved it when they brought her in one and no one would bother them out there ‘cause Gary was allergic to grass as well.

They split a fruit roll-up and chocolate chip biscuits and washed it down with luke-warm-water from their drink bottles then got to work on the daisy chain. They picked a whole pile of the small white blooms then carefully split each stem with their nails and threaded through the next one in the chain. Every now and then, a stem would rip all the way through and an expletive would slip from their lips; shit, bum, fuck, Gary-bum-face. By the end of play time, they had several meters of daisy chain that they carried between them back to class. When their teacher returned from the staffroom to stand in front of their two straight lines outside the classroom, Pania and Mable went and draped it over her, wrapping it several times across her shoulders as her smile grew wider. Everyone knew they would now get an extra chapter of their class book and she would do all the good voices while she was reading and Pania and Mable would get to sit on the cushions.

As predicted, their teacher read two full-chapters of the class book. Stopping after one for the required begging for more from a classful of puppy-dog-eyes. After glancing at the daisies draped around her shoulders, she agreed. Then it was maths time. They played several rounds of 21 which Gary won and even Pania and Mable smiled at his delight. Everyone was happy. No one yelled. And when the classroom speaker signalled the start of lunchtime announcements much maths had been done and Pania and Mable were even sitting at the same table as Gary and Sam playing with the squeezy boxes.

The announcements reminded them that there were soccer trials on the field and they should bring their lunch and drink bottle, the library was open for the juniors, and the ukulele group had a very important practice after lunch eating. Not planning on going to any of those things, Pania, Mable, Gary and Sam agreed to play handball. That required getting one of the handball courts, so they all packed up quickly and sat up super straight. It worked. They were first out the door and secured the handball court.

-4-

Pania and Mable swapped sandwiches, they had one of their own and one of the other’s. It was no peanut butter sandwich, but cheese and jam from Pania’s lunchbox was yum and Mable’s ham sandwich was indulgent. They played and ate and ate and played. One hand for handball and one for the sandwich, concentrating on what was coming and where they would direct their shot. The game was pretty even, each of them having turns in the king position. A couple of others wanted to join in, and they were happy to let them so they could sub on and off. When the bell went, they all shook hands and said “good game” to each other before heading back to class to line up in two straight lines.

Their teacher returned from the staffroom removing her duty jacket and asked, “who won handball?”

“We all did!” Sam said. And that smile spread across their teacher’s face again that told them it was going to be a pleasant afternoon. But first, SSR. They all filed inside, took out their books and found places around the classroom to read. Their teacher did too. Keeping an eye on her, Mable slipped another blank piece of paper from inside her book to start a new cartoon. This one had things that made their teacher happy in each of the pictures. There was the daisy chain, and their class all smiling together, and coffee, and a picture of her cuddling her cat, and one of her baking cupcakes, and the last one had a picture of Mable giving her teacher the cartoon strip. She would finish it at home where her good pencils were and give it to her teacher tomorrow.

“Okay, books away, time for science and another experiment AND I practiced this one last night,” the teacher announced, “but we need to do it outside, it could be dangerous so I need you all on your best behaviour. Line up at the door, Sam can you get that plastic box from beside my desk, you’ll need your hats please, let’s go.” Everyone rushed to line up at the door. Gary pushed Pania out of the way to get there first. “Hey! No pushing!” Mable yelled.

“HE PUSHED ME.”

“SHE GOT IN MY WAY.”

“WHAT’S GOING ON OVER THERE?

“HE PUSHED ME!”

“SHE GOT IN MY WAY!”

“ENOUGH! We can’t go outside to do an experiment like this. Everyone back to the mat. Sam, wait by the door with the box.” Everyone, but Sam, returned to the mat.

“Now,” she said. We knew what was coming. The talk. The talk about how we should treat others. The talk about safety. The talk about respect. The talk. But it was only Gary who needed the talk. He was the bum-face.

“Gary-bum-face,” Mable said under her breath.

“Mable said Gary-bum-face!” Sam announced to the class.

Laughing.

“It’s not a laughing matter, thank you.”

Everyone’s brows were drawing down and their lips getting tighter. Now they were angry at Mable.

“Sorry Gary,” Mable said. She didn’t want to be the one to ruin the afternoon.

“Now Gary?”

“Sorry Pania,” Gary mumbled.

“Can we do this without drama?”

“Yes,” the class chorused.

“Right, let’s try this again. Pania please be one line leader and Sam you are the other. You can call names to join the line when you think they are ready.”

Pania and Sam called names until everyone was lined up in straight lines and ready to go out for our dangerous science experiment.

It was a cool experiment. We heated some water in an old coffee can and then, using protective mits, put the lid on and put it in an ice-bath and the whole thing imploded! Our teacher was saying something about air pressure and hot a cold and related to weather but we just wanted to know if there was another coffee can so we could do it again!

All of a sudden the end of the day had come and it was a mad rush to tidy up and pack up and hand out the Lucky Book Club order forms and find missing shoes and matching socks and Pania didn’t know where her drink bottle was and Mable thought that it must be still out on the field so they ran out to get it and missed the bell. When they got back, everyone had left. They showed their teacher that they had found it, grabbed their bags and ran out.

“Bye Mable!”

“Bye Pania!”

Mable spotted her mum’s car and ran over. Wrenching open the door she threw in her backpack and jumped in, waving to her friend as they pulled away from school to head home.

-5-

“Is that homework?” Mable’s mum asked as Mable coloured in her cartoon strip at the kitchen bench whilst eating afternoon tea.

“Nah, just for fun.”

“Have you got homework?”

“Just reading, I’ll do it later.’

“What did you get up to today?”

“Nothing much. My finger doesn’t hurt any more though.”