Read Lessons from the Heart for Free Online

mirror yourself, ape features? Why don’t you just mind your own business?’
    Anyway, all this is running through my mind when the fit begins, which is called the onset. And this is what monitors are for – to stop the kids having fits on the bus while the teachers are right up the front holding hands under an overcoat and pretending to read.
    Still, I’m quite pleased with myself, because not only do I leap up as soon as the convulsions begin but I grab a wooden ruler off another boy as I go down the aisle of the bus, and that way, I think, I can keep the kid’s tongue down without losing a finger myself. And there’s no chance to call Miss Temple or Mr Jasmyne because by the time I get there, the kid’s jerking uncontrollably, his head and neck and shoulders all working, and I push him back hard against the seat and hold him still for a second, and his eyes are still rolling and their whites showing, and I shout at him to see if I can reach him.
    â€˜Can you hear me?’
    And all the kids in the seats nearby kneel up or screw around and even push me from behind to see what’s happening.
    â€˜Sit down,’ I yell, and from the corner of my eye, I see Miss Temple’s head appear at last around the edge of her seat, and I wish she’d just hurry. But the kid must be able to hear me, I reckon, because his eyes have stopped rolling and just for a second the convulsions seem to have stopped.
    â€˜Can you open your mouth?’ I rest the wooden ruler on his bottom lip. ‘Just try and get it open.’
    The boy can’t or won’t open. He just shakes his head from side to side, his lips pressed whitely together. But he looks calmer and in control suddenly, except for his eyes which are still wide with fear.
    â€˜Are you all right?’ I say, because the jerking’s stopped for the moment, and I withdraw the ruler.
    â€˜What are you bloody doing?’ he says then.
    â€˜You were having a fit,’ I tell him, as Miss Temple finally gets to us.
    â€˜A fit?’ he says. ‘ You’re the one having the fit. Why don’t you mind your own business? Lorr-ah,’ he adds, squeezing the hard, black raisins even tighter and pushing his lower lip and jaw out so far that the rice pudding’s disappeared and I’m left looking at the orangutan that’s just swallowed it.
    â€˜Thank you, Laura, I’ll manage this now,’ Miss Temple says, and I move back as she begins to get the story from the kids in the seats around. Their voices run over the top of one another as they tell her: ‘Well, you see, Miss Temple … Maurice Jonkers, he swallowed a jube … actually it was a wine gum … no, it wasn’t, it was a jube, I was the one sitting next to him … anyway, then he got hiccups … and then Billy Whitecross … well, he began to pretend he had hiccups too, just to mock him … and he started to do all this jerking about and things … and rolling his eyes … and then Laura, well she tried to put this ruler down Billy’s mouth … cos she thought …’
    Little prick, I think, as I reach my seat. What a rotten little prick. And I slump down in my seat and think, what am I doing here, I’m going to hate this whole trip, and if I had any guts I’d go up the front right now and tell Dimbo that I’d just been to the toilet and found I’d had a sudden outbreak of cholera, and the whole bus would have to go into quarantine for three months if I didn’t get off right now, and I’d get a train back home and go to bed and pull the blankets up over my head for the rest of my life.
    â€˜You did the right thing anyway, Laura.’
    â€˜Yes, Miss Temple.’
    â€˜It could have been serious.’
    â€˜Yes, Miss Temple.’
    â€˜Perhaps just check with me first next time? It can save us all getting too anxious or carried away.’
    â€˜Yes, thank you, Miss