The Trouble with Polly Brown (8 page)

“I am new to this school, and as of yet I have no timetable on which to rely, so I'm entirely at your mercy,” he said with pleading eyes as he pulled a soppy face that would suggest he was as helpless and defenseless as a week-old puppy dog.

Well, if he thought the “I'm really helpless trick” would work on Polly, he was sadly very mistaken, for she still failed to communicate as much as a friendly vibe or utterance as rather rudely she continued to stare right through him.

“Hello, anyone there? I'd be extremely grateful and indebted to you if you would do all within your power to help me.” The polite and friendly voice continued on, a keen sense of urgency now betraying more than a hint of exasperation.

Still Polly managed to have a blank expression written all over her face as she stood right in front of him to take a long, hard look at his features. He was tall, a bit of a beanpole really. His hair was jet black and slightly unruly, and Polly was convinced that if Mr. Batty saw that it went way past his shirt collar, well, he would be in serious trouble, and at the very least he would be ordered to cut off the ponytail or face the consequences! Otherwise, he was indeed a very presentable specimen, for she observed that his jacket was pristine clean, his trouser seams immaculately pressed, his shoes brushed to a shine, and as for his tie, well, that too was as perfectly straight as his beautiful ultra-white teeth!

Polly was certain that he was at least a few years older, and so if she was heading for twelve, well then he must be fourteen coming on fifteen. His eyes were a pleasant muddy brown, and his nose was inoffensively chiseled. To add to the dramatic impact, his lips held a slight pout that had Polly musing he must surely play some form of wind instrument. Add to all this the ruddiest cheeks she had ever seen outside of the winter months, and it all went to make up an unusual but strangely handsome boy.
Yes, he must have aristocracy hidden somewhere in his ancestral line
, Polly bemusedly thought as pictures of famous composers such as Mozart and Brahms with their weird hairdos and long, hooked noses erratically flashed through her mind.

“Sorry, what were you asking?” she queried as she now appeared to directly, if not a little condescendingly, look him in the eye. His face changed, as if he instantly wished he'd stopped someone else—in fact anyone else—who was walking down the corridor, instead of her.

“Science block. Any idea?” he dared to once again ask, all the while pulling a playful long face.

Still Polly was slow to answer as she struggled to come out of her constant daydreaming, which over the years she had expertly honed to an art form.

“Umm, physics…Now, let me see. Is it down the left-hand corridor or the right?”

“Sorry, I should have introduced myself. My name is Will; full title, William Ogilvy Montgomery, at your service. And if you'd be so terribly kind as to help me out, well, then, I promise to return the favor,” he said as he anxiously placed a hand on her arm in his very admirable attempt to keep her full attention. “I'm excellent at helping out with mathematics and/or French homework, and even though my history has in the past been described as both evasive and boorish, I will willingly offer any help that is required. So tell me, what's your name?”

“Oh, I'm Polly, Polly Brown to be precise.”

“Well, nice to meet you Polly. I do hope we can be friends,” he said in a voice much too cheerful for her liking. He then proceeded to further shock her by keenly holding out his hand in what was presumably intended to be a kind and friendly gesture. A shocked and confused Polly stared down at his outstretched hand as she battled to find the right words.

“Oh, um…Yes, well I guess we could be friends,” was her sickeningly slow response, as it slowly began to dawn on her that someone was trying heroically hard to be nice to her and, better still, might actually want to become her friend. Polly finally jumped to attention and timidly placed her hand out to shake his. “Thank you, er…er…”

“Will, William Montgomery,” he quickly interjected as he continued to help her out.

“Er, yes. Will. That would be really nice,” she said, giving a gentle smile as she finally dared to limply shake his hand.

Will smiled back, but mainly, it appeared, from relief. “Well, Polly, as my mind-reading skills have yet to be honed to perfection, I do still need your expert help in pointing me in the right direction,” he said, giving a light laugh.

“Oops, sorry,” she spluttered, suddenly feeling shy and a bit of an idiot. Finally she became helpful enough to direct him toward the science block. “Go through the double doors, and then turn left. Don't stop until you reach the end of that corridor. At the end of the corridor you need to take a sharp right into a link corridor, and then halfway down that corridor you will see a rather battered-looking blue door that leads into the science block.”

“Thanks again, Polly,” he said, breaking into a very generous smile, a smile, I might add, she truly didn't deserve.

“Don't mention it. Glad to be of some service,” she said, entirely breaking with tradition by feigning a half smile.

“Well, I hope to catch up with you later,” he said as he hurried off in the direction Polly had shown him. Polly nodded, her smile becoming wider as she watched the crazy new boy unwittingly bump into a large group of pupils, as he wasn't properly looking where he was going.

“Maybe we could meet up at lunchtime?” Will shouted back in her direction as he stooped to pick up a pile of his books and papers that now littered the floor of the link corridor. Polly's face immediately went a significant scarlet in color as she considered his kind proposal to meet up. She therefore waved a quick good-bye and then with much relief turned on her heels to venture down a different corridor, as she had a class that she would be late to if she didn't hurry up.

“My goodness, he's drop dead gorgeous!” she giggled to herself. “This could turn out to be a good day after all,” she declared as with a rarely seen smile on her face she hugged her books tightly to her chest and proceeded to march most determinedly toward the biology classroom.

Polly entered the noise-filled classroom long before her teacher and so quickly made her way toward an empty desk near the back of the room. Then, dropping her schoolbag down beside the chair, she slumped wearily down into her seat and found the time to ponder just how good a mood her unpredictable teacher would be in on this fine Monday morning. She did not have to wait too long to find out. Mrs. McGillicuddy entered the room in her usual frantic manner and shuffled toward her desk with the purpose of dispensing with her two heavy, stuffed-to-the gunnels carrier bags.

Polly observed the bags and immediately began to play the game that she always played, which was to attempt to guess quite what was in the overloaded bags and therefore absolutely necessary if her harebrained teacher was to safely make it through another day without any sudden, unexpected catastrophe. “Here we have a pair of matching candelabras recently valued by Sotheby's to be worth an astounding six thousand pounds. Do we have a buyer? Going…going…gone. Yes, sold to fellow classmate George Edgebaston for a modest forty-six hundred pounds. And what do we have next? Ah, yes, a metal cage. This cage comes complete with drinking receptacle and a seriously rusty hamster wheel that promises to keep the flab off your hamster's hips and so could easily be considered the ideal home for a mouse, hamster, or pet rat. This prized possession will cost you a mere two shillings and sixpence. So, do we have a taker? Next we have a rather splendid cracked cereal bowl, still encrusted with the remains of this morning's bran flakes. Oh, dear, what a mistake. For she clearly didn't mean to bring this in; rather, it was intended for the washing-up bowl!”

Polly could easily play this stupid game for the whole lesson and often did, as she automatically switched off as her teacher droned on and on about dreary things such as lymphatic systems and epithelial tissue. I mean, what was the purpose of learning all about the functions of the human body, and from such a hysterical woman, when everything else in Polly's life lay on the floor in tatters.

Did she need to know what her kidneys did or didn't do when all she wanted was to survive another day without a beating or further unjust punishments? No, it was settled. Just coping with all the anxiety and torment raging inside her daily was more than enough to keep her totally occupied without being forced to learn hundreds of challenging names of body parts as well as their bodily functions. These tongue-twister names were obviously made up thousands of years ago by a number of very bored professors who could have put their talents to much better use by making up a variety of new board games. Instead of which, all over the globe poor, desperate schoolchildren were gnashing and grinding their teeth as they struggled to get their tongues 'round words that would put most people into an instant coma and were absolutely ghastly, if not impossible, to spell correctly. There were words like
subcutaneous, mitochondria, cardiovascular
, and other terminology that might as well be Polish or Greek as far as Polly was concerned, for it was all gobbledygook to her. So with Polly's anxious mind already in overdrive, it was time as usual for it to go into total shutdown.

With her shabby, old-fashioned, fur-lined coat now hanging rather sloppily over her chair and the blackboard thoroughly wiped down, Mrs. McGillicuddy turned and ordered her pupils to stop all unnecessary conversation, for the morning lesson had now begun.

“Pay attention, everybody! Kindly unwrap your eyeballs and then proceed to place them carefully on the metal trays sitting in front of you,” she commanded in her usual frenzied, high-pitched voice. She then marched around the room in her thick, calf-length tweed skirt and heavy Doc Martens boots, stopping at every desk en route to supply each student with a pair of tweezers as well as a small, silver-colored sharp knife that was required for dissecting small objects.

Of course, when she arrived at Polly's desk, there was not a measly eyeball in sight, just an empty tray with Polly sitting at her empty desk looking decidedly sheepish.

“Brown, I order you now to produce your eyeballs.”

Polly remained silent.

“Brown, please do as you're told and get out your eyeballs,” she fumed.

“Um, guess what? I don't have any.”

“Unbelievable. Quite, quite…unbelievable,” her teacher roared as she began to foam from the mouth. “Well, I guess we'll have to remove the ones in your head, if you really don't have any for this lesson.”

“I'm so very sorry,” Polly awkwardly muttered.

“Sorry means nothing when coming from your lips, girl,” her angry teacher spat out.

For the next awkward twenty seconds her teacher stood frozen to the spot as she waited for one of Polly's usual most insightful explanations as to why there were no sheep's eyeballs staring up at her from the steel tray.

Polly could only shrug her shoulders as she spluttered an apology.

“Girl, get up from your seat and go stand facing the wall at the back of the classroom!” her teacher screamed, her eyes virtually exploding from their sockets. Polly watched as in just a matter of a few seconds her teacher's whole body began shaking violently, as she experienced her own very private volcanic tremor that, given time, would release seismic amounts of pent-up energy. If recorded, they would measure way beyond any Richter scale.

“I'm so sorry, miss, but, well, is there any way one of the other pupils could loan me one of their spare eyeballs to dissect? For if you look over toward Eleanor Boodlebutt you will see a number of eyeballs that before you entered the room were being used by some to bide away the time with a quick game of marbles,” she said as she directed her teacher's gaze toward Eleanor's desk, which had, as she so rightly stated, a number of abandoned eyeballs stacked into a small, ghoulish pile. “So please, miss, say yes,” she begged. Polly's voice then began to falter as she stared directly into the demonized eyes of her now severely strained teacher.

“Brown, how dare you be so insolent as to even think you can answer me back! Let me tell you now that even if there were enough leftover eyeballs to build an impressive monument to Winston Churchill, I would still refuse to permit any of the other students to help you out. And the simple reason is that I would consider such charity to be in your case a most futile exercise that would only serve to further develop your already sharpened skills in sheer laziness,” she spat, her huge eyes rolling 'round and 'round in mind-boggling and perfectly synchronized hypnotic circles.

“Yes, miss,” Polly whispered.

Her teacher then moved closer until she was almost cheek to cheek with poor Polly, her lips quivering like warmed, wobbly red jelly as she mercilessly continued on with her most severe reprimand. “Yes, Polly Fester Brown, I would have you made aware that your rudeness knows no bounds, for you are a continual sufferance to me. You, my girl, are not only slothful, but you are also the only student who regularly turns up at class without your homework completed or the necessary equipment required,” she roared.