It's Time: Plottier

I think it’s time that I shared with you a very interesting time of Lox and my high school careers, seeing as said career will be finished shortly and I won’t have much of an excuse to revisit it.

In year eight and nine (before I tired of it) I did debating after school and in year nine our tutor was this guy called Kelvin. It seems weird now but apparently he was 18 when he taught us. He seemed to be constantly uncomfortable in our lessons (perhaps not used to teaching a large number of squeaky 14-year-old girls?) and I liked to make fun of him. So did Lox. She loved to come up with pranks to pull on him and she called them plots. So one day I wrote this little short story for her and called it Plottier for said reason. (I feel as if I am giving away all of our in-jokes, Lox. I’m sorry. This is all for you <3)

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Plottier

For Loxie

Kelvin Yu was not, perhaps, the most physically gifted male in his year group, to say the least. He was quite short and scrawny with a comically high voice, which amused itself by saying the word ‘like’ almost as often as the stereotypical brat often portrayed in American teen angst movies. His hair stuck up at all angles in a fashion that J.K Rowling would be proud of, and if he was to be reincarnated everyone believed that he was to be a mouse. The baby of his group, his skin was conceivably pale from the many hours of studying he had partaken in during his senior years of high school in order to achieve his UAI of 99.65. As it was, this was an astonishing fact, his tagline that he pulled out quite often to, really, any girl that he met. He seemed to cry out at any possible opportunity, “I may be scrawny, small and own an awfully girly voice, but at least I have the means of securing a high income!” And it was true. He was rather clever, and everyone knew. He was a debating tutor, after all, and had an incomprehensible knowledge of anything to do with anything happening around the world at any given period.

Kelvin taught at his old school. Sydney Boys’ was practically the only school in all of the Sydney state that he could feel comfortable teaching at. That’s just how it was. A given. A set fact that could not be altered in any way, shape or form. It was known, agreed, specified, prearranged, certain. Whatever word his thesaurus brain could arrive at, his job was it. Until, of course, a distress cry came via the form of a curiously misspelt text message from a friend of a friend; a debating coach from Sydney Girls’ High.

“Kev,” it said, confirming Kelvin’s initial impression that the text was from someone he didn’t truly know, “we @ SGHS hav 1 coach <. Need nu 1. Plz come or else will all hav 2 teach more kids. Repli ASAP. Luv, Gina.”

At first, Kelvin had blinked. Twice. Then he had put down the phone. Sydney Boys’ was his home. He couldn’t teach at more than one school anyway. Right? But then he looked for the third time, and thought of the pay. He replied quickly to this Gina in affirmative. He was going to teach at Sydney Girls’ High.

And now the day had arrived. He scanned the sheet he had been emailed, sight-reading hastily in order to find his name. Finally he saw the bold-lettered “Yu”, and quickly ran his finger across the muddled table to see which year he was to teach. The number seemed to explode out of the page. He felt his body going weak. His class was year nine.           

The group of students that Kelvin taught at Sydney Boys’ was a year nine group, too. It was merciful bliss if ever he could get them to listen for a moment, let alone use the correct structure for first aff. He couldn’t imagine the terror of a gossipy, loud and squeaky class of hormone-driven fourteen- and fifteen-year-old girls. What if their voices were squeakier than his?

In the car park of the girls’ school, Kelvin sat in his tiny blue car with the dent in the boot door. His class began in less than five minutes. Kelvin began to get terrifyingly nervous. He ran his hands through his hair until it stood perpendicular to the roof of his car. He bit his nails until they had all been ripped off. He must have checked his fly now for the hundredth time, and of course he had practiced using a low voice. Nothing was to go wrong.

Confidently he swung the door of his car open and leapt out. He could hear shrieking laughter coming from the classroom above. A girl with dark hair looked out, and screamed in such a high voice that it rivalled his.

“OH, MY GOD!” She screamed. “He’s a guy!”

Kelvin coughed a couple of times and flashed the girl a bracing smile. Quickly, not wanting to be seen near the shrieking girl, he slammed the door of his car shut and walked away. Or at least, he attempted to walk away; his shirt had gotten stuck in the door and he was wrenched back against his car almost indecently. The girl in the window laughed loudly before clapping her hand over her mouth and ducking down. She had seen him seeing her.

Kelvin cursed his chances and proceeded to remove himself from the car roughly, thus ripping the back of his shirt. His jacket covered the rip mostly but Kelvin truly wasn’t having a great day. And he hadn’t even properly met Louise yet. His life was about to get much Plottier.

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P.S. This isn’t entirely a true story.

P.P.S. I did write this when I was 14. Please don’t blame (current) me for its oddness.

Bruv just came into my room and proudly spurted a brilliant pun. “I went camping the other day ... it was intense!” (In tents? No?) How I do love him.

Love you like fridges in suits (I won’t give away all our in-jokes just yet).

x