After all that, he’d forgotten the frigging marbles at home! He knew there’d be a price to pay for that at break-time. Two weeks at this school had been enough to teach him that no one, not even Jacques with the kind eyes and shy smile, no one got away unharmed when they promised something to Noah… and failed to deliver.
There was only one way out of it. Miss break-time. Fake an illness. Would it work? Would the teacher grasp enough of his stuttering French?
The teacher finally looked up, just before his arm went to sleep. He hadn’t wanted to speak up.
‘Yes?’
‘Je peux sortir? J’ai mal au…’ What was the word for it again? Never mind, he’d say it with a French accent. ‘Au… tummeee.’
‘Je peux sortir, Madame,’ the teacher corrected him sternly.
‘Madame… tummee.’ He didn’t know what possessed him to repeat the word. Perhaps he thought it would inspire some sense of urgency. Instead, laughter rose like waves on a dried and sunken beach. Some of it was abandoned, hysterical. The teacher’s frown deepened. Some of it was derision, as usual, at his lack of language skills, but for once he could live with that.
Of course he wasn’t allowed out. Not then, not later. But that day he discovered his weapon of choice: disarming through laughter.
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