MORNING SERIAL

SALIM’S pulled Neil off him within seconds, and the warden’s squaring up, wading in.

“Alright S,” says Neil to Salim backing off. “Keep your knickers on.”

It’s good having Salim on side.

Pigeon nods to the warden that it’s alright and the warden backs off. He doesn’t want trouble either.

They go through to where Allan’s stood waiting. You go in and the closer to the back of the room you are, the harder you are. Where Pigeon and Salim sit, near the front, the desk has been scratched full of names. So many names that Pigeon can’t read them. What’s the point in the letters? The desk is just noise.

Neil barges past Pigeon and wipes something sticky on his face as he goes. It’s the oil they put on the hinges of the doors here, black and dirty; it always gets on your hands. Pigeon wipes it off his cheek. He looks down at the names, the other names, of all the kids who’ve sat at this desk. All the kids who were too soft, like him, to sit at the back. Danny. Mark. And there it is, the name Pigeon likes to look at. Neil.

Still, Pigeon’s looking forward to this. Geography. Geography is massive forces and being part of a bigger picture.

But Neil talks all the way through at the back of the class so he can’t listen or think. Sometimes Neil throws things at Pigeon, even when the teacher’s watching. A rubber, a pencil, an old piece of chewed gum.

“Neil,” says Allan. And then “Neil,” again.

Pigeon doesn’t care. Allan gives them all a worksheet, and on the worksheet there are the tectonic plates moving back and forth and making whole countries afraid. At the end of the class Allan asks for the worksheets back. Pigeon carefully folds his under the table, to take back to his room. The stories have stopped, what’s got Pigeon interested now is FACTS.

Take the first FACT. That Iola killed Him. Even that takes some working out. Did she or didn’t she?