When the Bell Rings

Perched on a cushion at a low table, she was surrounded by various books, odd bits of Lego, wires from a half-finished tote tray alarm, and a half-played game of chess that she would get back to as soon as Alwyn decided on his next move. Not that Alwyn’s move mattered anyway, he was gonna lose, Sarah could see it already.

The clock clicked past another minute.

The game had already spanned the last week-and-a-half as they never had time to finish it and they were always squishing in other things between each of their moves. It didn’t change the fact that Sarah would eventually win, even if it took the rest of the term.

The clock clicked past another minute.

Sarah was now studiously engrossed in a YouTube video detailing the history of voting in New Zealand.

“Hey, Alwyn, did you know that New Zealand was the first country to give women the vote?”

“What?”

“The vote, you know, voting, for the government, New Zealand was the first to allow women to vote.”

“What? Only men voted?”

“Yup. White men. White men who owned land.”

“That’s dumb,” Alwyn said, his eyes not moving from his own screen which was showing several ways of mining a diamond in Minecraft. He was determined to learn how to program an AI to do the mining for a competition. Apparently, he was gonna win something, dunno what, he didn’t care either, he just wanted to be able to do it. It had already taken him every spare moment of the last three weeks to find 27 new ways that couldn’t do it and he was no closer to the solution.

“Alwyn, are you even listening to me?”

“Yes. We were the first to give women the vote. People used to be dumb. All fixed now.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. Boys were so dumb sometimes, all fixed now, shows what he knows, no wonder he keeps losing at chess, he can’t see beyond one move.

“You gonna make a move?” she asked, keen to move the chess game along.

“Huh? What? Oh, no, not right now, I think I’ve almost got this.”

“You have as much chance of getting that as you do of winning this chess game!”

“No fair, gimme a minute.”

“I’ve given you a week-and-a-half worth of minutes. One more is not going to help.”

Sarah glanced at the clock on the wall. They were all the same those clocks. Every school you went to (and she had been to a few) had those white faced, black numbered clocks staring down on those who worked beneath them. The clocks told them when they could eat, when they could drink, when they could play, when they should learn. Sometimes Sarah would defy it by asking to go to the bathroom in the middle of learning time. Poking her tongue out at the clock she would skip to the bathroom and then amble back balancing on the edge of the playground while peering into the other rooms. She was absolutely convinced that there was a clock conspiracy where all the clocks went slower during learning time and much faster during playtime.

More often than not, Sarah would bump into one of the little kids on her defiant trips to the bathroom. She winked at them and said, “so nice to be outside, aye?” But when she got back to her classroom it was like the clock had not even moved and she was placed back under its watchful eye.

The clock ticked past another minute.

Giving up on waiting for Alwyn to make his move in chess, Sarah got back to what she was doing, finding out about voting. The elections were coming up and her mum had said at the dinner table the night before that she didn’t know who she would vote for. How could adults be so ignorant?

Glancing back at the clock, there were 20 more mins to go.

She took a quick online survey about her political alignment, then searched the top four party websites to find out their policies. She compared the education and health policies of all four parties and made a selection on the one that she would vote for. But seriously, reading through political material had Sarah in a permanent state of eye rolling and sighing.

She opened her email and copied several links for her mum to have a look at including the one for her to find out which political party she was most strongly aligned to and then added a note “let’s talk about this at dinner, love you”.

She hit send.

She glanced at the clock again…only two more minutes... Should she annoy Alwyn into making a chess move, go get a drink, read a couple of pages of her book, or just sit here and not do anything except watch the seconds tick by?

Not wanting to waste time and knowing that Alwyn and the chess game were a lost cause until at least tomorrow, she grabbed her book and flicked to where she had folded the page, sighed and sunk back into a world that carried her away from the demands of the clock.

Two minutes in book-land was like a short eternity. Love could be found, nations could be saved, riches acquired. Nights could pass with the waxing and waning of the moon in mysterious skys filled with never-before-seen constellations which guided the hero through trials to victory. Fantasy and sci-fi fueled Sarah’s imagination unlike the insipid age-appropriate books they were made to read in class. What a waste of time they were!

Just as she was yelling in her mind “speak ‘friend’ in elvish you idiots, it’s not that hard” which would open the Elvin doors to Khazad-dûn, but of course she had read this part before.

The clock ticked over to 1.20pm

The bell sounded, the shrill declaration that lunch was over.

It was time to return to class and learn.