SHOW ME... YOUR SMILE!
I was sitting quietly at my desk when a group of boys approached me.
There! Now they will start tormenting me for my weight, which has always caused me a lot
of discomfort at school. Frank, the small group leader, was ready to comment on how fat
and ugly I was, but before he could speak, someone stopped him.
The janitor had just arrived in our class and had, not very gently, grabbed the boy by the
ears and tried to pull him away.
She tried to quiet the class, and as soon as everyone was silent, she spoke:
"You will have a new P.E. teacher since the previous one was involved in an accident and
won't be able to teach for a while; try not to make too much noise because, if the new
teacher finds you difficult to handle and leaves, you won't have any more teachers for this
subject".
Said this, the janitor left the class listlessly, giving way to a very strange-looking teacher.
He was skinny and tall; his complexion looked like a corpse, and his face had a mixed
expression between annoyed and impassive.
He sighed loudly and, without even bothering to ask our names, he started to speak:
"Good morning, I'm Mr Show and today is my first day at work in this class, so I believe that
explaining is useless ".
Hurray! My classmates and I looked at each other, smiling and looking forward to two hours
of freedom.
"In fact, we are going to do a test".
All our joy disappeared as soon as he said those words.
"Come on, get changed. We're going to the gym to take a test to qualify your physical
abilities."
Frank jumped to his feet: "You can't give us a test without warning!"
The teacher didn't listen to him and went to the gym, still with a very serious expression on
his face.
I struggled to get up from my desk and started to follow the teacher, but once out of the
classroom, I realised I had forgotten my gym shoes, so I went back to class. When I arrived at
the door, a noise caught my attention.
I leaned over to see what it was, as everyone had left the classroom, or so I thought.
John, a very short but stocky boy, turned as soon as he saw me:
"Hey, what are you doing here?"
He put away a sharp object he was fiddling with.
"I could ask you the same question".
The boy sighed: "I don't want to do the test... so I decided to dig a tunnel in the wall to
escape from school, don't tell the teacher!"
I looked badly at my classmate: "You'll get caught".
At that point, I decided to leave, but a third figure appeared at the classroom entrance.
"So do you want to run away? I want to come too".
It was Anne, one of the prettiest girls in the class, but she never talked to me. I just knew
that she was always busy with ballet lessons, and she didn't have time to socialise.
"I'm sorry, but the girls can't come," John commented dryly.
She came closer to us: "But I want to come. I've heard your whole plan, and if you don't
involve me I'll tell the teacher".
My partner unwillingly waved at her to join us, even if I was more and more puzzled.
He handed us one of his tools, and we started to drill holes in the wall.
At one point, we heard something clanging, and then water began to gush out of the wall.
"Okay, don't panic. I'm sure it's nothing serious," said John, scratching his head.
A powerful jet of water came out of the wall drenching the three of us.
"Nothing serious, you said," muttered Anne, who, immediately after that sentence, came
out quickly from the classroom, coming back shortly after with a ball in her hand. She
motioned for us to move and placed the ball on the ground. She took a breath and kicked
the ball, which got stuck precisely in the spot where the water was spilling out.
John rejoiced, thinking that we would not be discovered, but afterwards, the wall cracked.
We all turned around and noticed that the hole was expanding until it yielded completely.
In a short time, the school flooded completely, and the headmistress, soaking wet, caught
us.
A moment later, we were in her office, where the P.E. teacher joined us.
The headmistress gave us such a long lecture that at one point, I didn't listen to her
anymore.
The only thing I understood was that he was giving us a very severe punishment: "You will
stay at school until you have fixed the damage and dried all the water, even staying here all
night if necessary. And Mr Show will be there with you since he has not properly supervised
his pupils! "
Shortly after, we started to repair the damage, thanks to John's manual skills, and cleaning
up the flooded corridors while the annoyed Mr Show watched us sitting on a chair. We went
on for hours and hours, only finishing late in the evening, and by the end, we were all
exhausted and hungry.
The teacher had not said a word since we had started cleaning and staring at us distantly.
"What can we do now?" I asked, walking towards him. But I couldn't reach him in time
because I clumsily tripped over Anne's ball, which was still on the floor.
I ended up on the floor. I wasn't hurt, but unintentionally, I made him fall on me when John
tried to help me. As if that wasn't enough, Anne dived on us to check that her ball wasn't
damaged. It seemed to me that a shy smile appeared on the teacher's face, but it was only
for an instant because shortly afterwards he hurried out of the classroom.
"He's so weird", I commented.
At that point, the three of us decided to gather in our classroom to spend time. I tried to
overcome my shyness and asked John and Anne a question.
"Guys, I've been thinking... we don't know anything about each other even though we've
been classmates for several months now: why don't we talk about ourselves? About who we
really are?"
John spoke first:
"Well, yes, you're right! As you have seen, I love tools, disassembling and repairing things.
But I can never sit still, and I hate being assessed: that's why I refused to do the test.
Nobody can tell me what I'm worth. Only I know.
Anne began to speak after him:
"So, I've been doing ballet since I was five, but let's just say... it's not really what I want to
do. I would like to play football, but my parents expect me to be the principal dancer at "La
Scala". They say women have to be fine and polite; that's why I came with you: to prove
otherwise!"
They both looked at me and smiled, as if they wanted to encourage me, then I supposed it
was my turn: "I'm here because I was dragged along by you, but the idea of doing a test
about my physical abilities scared me... I'm sick of being made fun of for my appearance!"
Without realising it, I had raised my voice, and my face had almost turned purple.
I started to talk about how every day I found notes full of insults and threats in my locker,
not to mention the images I often received on my phone: photoshopped pigs with my face
and offensive memes.
I confessed everything: the fact that, a few months ago, I had stopped eating and ended up
in hospital because of it. I told John and Anne that I didn't feel good about myself.
Sometimes I avoided going out because I was afraid of people's comments.
At the end of my speech, Anne had tears in her eyes, and John was also very upset: they
looked at me in amazement. They knew I was being made fun of, that's all. Sometimes they
too had laughed with their classmates at unfunny jokes, but they couldn't imagine all this.
They told me that if they had known, they would have done something... they would have
talked about it to the teachers or defended me.
And one thing, in fact, they did immediately. They hugged me tightly.
For a moment, I felt understood and welcomed by people who, until the day before, I had
never expected to have by my side.
Just as we were talking, there was a sound of breaking glass. What had it been?
It was coming from the science classroom, so we headed there. There was a poster on the
door, which I could have sworn, was not there before. It was an advertisement for the
circus, which had come to town in the last few days. In the foreground, there was the
cheerful and colourful image of a clown who ... it's not possible: it was our P.E. teacher!
While we were staring at the poster in amazement, the teacher appeared in the classroom,
dressed as a clown.
Are we sure it was him? When we got closer, he answered us. Yes, his voice was his own!
He told us that his first job was as a clown. He loved to make people laugh, but he had to
abandon that career and devote himself to something else. At midnight, he went back to
being a clown every night, but only for five minutes. It was the only moment in which it was
possible to see him smile.
And his smile at that moment was dazzling: Show's expression was completely different
from that of the unhappy professor we had seen in the morning.
Suddenly, however, the lights went out throughout the institute. The teacher had
disappeared.
John tried to shed some light with his torch and illuminated a note, left on the desk, which
read:
"Circus Show ,3 Dante Street ".
Where had the professor gone? And why did we find that note instead of him? Were we in
danger in that school, alone, at night? Or maybe we finally had the opportunity to face our
insecurities?
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