Haven't They Grown(64)
‘Throw the panini in the bin, and then leave this classroom, please,’ says Hosmer. She doesn’t sound angry any more, just cold and remote.
‘No, I won’t,’ says Murad. ‘I’ll leave if you want me to, but I’m not throwing my lunch away.’
‘And I’ll leave too, but only once you’ve apologised for your racism,’ says Zannah.
‘I haven’t got a racist bone in my body, Suzannah.’ Hosmer sounds tearful now.
‘It might not be a bone,’ Zan quips. ‘Maybe it’s a racist intestine.’
‘Or a kidney,’ Murad says.
I nearly drop my phone when there’s a sudden burst of loud noise. Miss Hosmer has started to shout in a hysterical way that borders on shrieking. I can’t make out her words but it’s something about going to the head right now. The clip ends abruptly, while she’s still in the middle of yelling.
‘Jesus,’ I say quietly. ‘So …?’
Zannah’s ready. She starts talking faster than I’ve ever heard her talk before. ‘So, what happened next is, I held up my phone and told her I’d recorded it all. She started screaming at me, how dare I record her without permission, how dare me and Murad accuse her of racism when she was the least racist person in the world, she was going to go and get Mr Stevens right now and we had to wait there while she did, that was our only chance, or else if we dared to leave the room before she came back with Mr Stevens, we’d be expelled, and she wouldn’t care about the impact on our GCSEs to expel us right before them. All of that – how we wouldn’t even get good references. It was scary, Mum! Not only her psycho screaming, but the threats – like, I reckon she could make Stevens expel us if she really wanted to? He hasn’t got a clue what’s going on half the time, and he relies on her to run the school, basically. Then she was about to leave the room to go and get him, and she turned back suddenly, marched over to me and yelled, “Give me your phone!” Before I could agree or disagree, she pulled it out of my fucking hand and ran out of the room. I ran after her, because, like, she can’t just do that? I couldn’t see her. She wasn’t on the corridor, and I should have been right behind her. You know where I think she was?’
I shake my head, stunned. Zannah cannot get expelled. That can’t happen. This is a disaster. Dominic will think this is the end of the world.
‘Hidden away in a classroom or a stationery cupboard, deleting the recording off my phone. She pulled it out of my hand before I’d had a chance to turn it off, so she had full access, no passcode needed. And guess what?’ Zannah blinks away tears and sniffs. ‘When Stevens turns up and I tell him I’ve got footage of Hosmer being racist and then denying it, and he asks to see it, there’s nothing there. No film. All gone. I tell him Hosmer’s deleted it, she denies it—’
‘Wait. Did she deny making the racist comment?’
‘Yes!’ A tear rolls down Zannah’s cheek. ‘She flat out denied it. Said me and Murad had made up this lie, and it was serious and you can’t just call people racist, you can’t just lie about people, and I mean, like … exactly! You can’t just lie!’
‘But we can prove she’s lying,’ I say. ‘I’ve got the film on my phone. How did you—’
‘Soon as she started screaming at us, I thought, “Shit, why did I tell her I had it recorded?” I was angry and I wanted to scare her, but then she lost the plot and starting yelling about me recording her without permission, and we’re not even allowed to bring phones into school in the first place. They’ve decided to be really strict about it this term. I thought, “She’s going to confiscate my phone”, so I quickly put it on my knees under the desk and emailed the proof of her racism to you, while she ranted like a loony and stomped round the classroom.’
‘But, Zan, we’ve got the film. We’ll go and see Mr Stevens and—’
‘Mum, I’ve accused a teacher of racism. Not just any teacher, either – one of the few who can actually teach. Don’t you get it? They’re more likely to expel me if I make them look bad than if I’m bad. They’ll find a way – like the fact that I shouldn’t have recorded Miss Hosmer without permission or even had my phone with me …’
‘Zan, calm down. This is going to be fine.’
‘I’ve been told I have to go and see Mr Stevens at eleven, on my own. We’ve told him our side already, and then they said they wanted to talk to each of us again, separately. They didn’t like it when we were together because we backed each other up. Murad’s in with Stevens now. He dropped his phone into my pocket before going with them, so I contacted you …’
‘So that I’d bring my phone in with the video on it,’ I say when Zannah stops to breathe.
‘No, so that I could ask you what the hell I should do, before I see Stevens. I don’t know what to say. Part of me thinks if it was that serious he’d be ringing our parents, and he isn’t, but, like, it felt very serious? And he and Hosmer love bringing parents in to make them as disappointed in us as the school is – so why’s that not happening? I think he’s going to offer us a deal: we apologise for disrespect, admit we lied about Hosmer being racist and then we’ll get let off with some minor punishment. If we don’t say we lied about the racism and the recording, we’re going to get expelled.’ Zannah pushes her hair away from her face. ‘What should I do? I mean, I could just lie. It’s not like I’ve never lied before.’