Chapter Text
No one at his school seems to have heard of Prince Cristopher. Tragic, really, because he wasn’t just a remarkable man, he also penned the most enduring anthem that surely resonates with humanity everywhere.
And while it is entirely possible middle schoolers were the last thing on Prince Cristopher’s mind when he wrote those powerful lines, their poetry absolutely strikes a chord!
Because Monday mornings can be manic.
In fact they generally are.
The same, for that matter, can be said of Monday afternoons. Especially if you’re the type to make your Mondays pay for all the things you’d let slide over the weekend. And it really doesn’t make things any better if you can’t be assed to lie or sweet talk your way through the ensuing run-ins with teacher after teacher. In fact, you might even wind up waiting on a chair outside the Principal’s office - again - for having missed out on some lame Geography project over the weekend- again! And the odds of that happening increase stratospherically if you let the fifth telling off you were facing today get to you so badly that you finally let the Mondayness of Monday take over your better judgement. And that’s when you stagger up from your chair with a majestic eye roll and for want of a better word… ‘explain’ yourself.
As it turns out, Barbieri was not looking for constructive feedback on why the project he’d assigned was entirely lame. He just wanted you to shut up and do it. Or not do it and apologise nicely. Whichever - Signor Barbieri would honestly have been fine with it.
What he was not fine with, apparently, was a student contributing to his personal growth with a review of his assessment method. That, it seems, got you sent to the Principal…Well maybe that, and the fact that the review was peppered with constructive adjectives like ‘moronic’, ‘lame’ and ‘boneheaded’.
Introducing Elio Perlman, Year 8 student, sitting outside the Principal’s office at the Aldo Moro Liceo Media this Monday afternoon.
At this point, the Principal should have a chair outside her office with Elio’s name on it already. He’s more than earned it - and, now that he thinks about it, it’s quite an insult he should still be sitting on some generic old chair.
And he’s already been waiting here ten full minutes!
She should at least get comfortable chairs.
Just as Principal Giordano finally calls his name, the bell rings for the last period of the day.
And there goes the French lesson.
Elio walks in, hands in pockets, backpack slowly slipping off his shoulder, skewing his vest further, utterly defeating the white shirt underneath.
She looks up at him from her desk, an impeccable monument to propriety, her back straight, wrists resting lightly on her desk, ‘Tuck your shirt in properly, Perlman, and don’t slouch. If you’ve learnt nothing in 8 years here, you should at least have learnt how to present yourself.’
‘Well…maybe I have learnt nothing, ma’am,’ he says sinking uninvited into the chair opposite the Principal’s desk.
If the way he’s sitting, leaning back into his chair, feet apart, one arm resting on the back of the chair, says anything, it’s that this kid has definitely learnt the art of antagonising.
Her hands land flat on the desk, ‘Because you refuse to learn anything.’
He hasn’t been in the room longer than two minutes and Principal Giordano is already losing it -
Record time - kudos, Perlman.
It has never occurred to Elio Perlman that Mondays are no less manic for Principals. He hasn’t done the Math to realise that Principal Giordano’s generation has in fact been the first to have screamed to the Bangles religiously every Monday morning for decades, either.
Her eyes sweep over him disapprovingly and then she takes a deep breath, ‘You’re enjoying making a failure of yourself, and you think it’s funny. But failure is not funny, it’s just failure, Elio.’
They really shouldn’t let one be Principal if that’s the best pep talk one can come up with, should they?
He shrugs, ‘Maybe if they stop giving us stupid assignments…’
But she cuts him short, leaning a little forward in her chair, eyebrows raised, voice sharp, ‘Who are you to decide what’s a stupid assignment?’
Elio sits up - boy, does he have an answer to that one.
‘I’m someone who’s too old to think it’s somehow ‘science’ to make a model of a volcano…’ he audaciously air quotes ‘science’, ‘We’ve been doing the same lame-assed project since we were eight.’ Then he grins unexpectedly before she can reply, leans towards her desk and lowers his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, ‘And I’ll let you in on a secret Ma’am - it’s was not really baking soda, vinegar and food colouring that killed all those people in Pompei!’
He wiggles his eyebrows, trying his best to rile her - because Elio Perlman has a maxim: Go big. If you’re being hanged anyway, aim for the sheep.
Elio has suspected for some time that Principal Giordano has some form of twitch. Sometimes the corner of her mouth moves weirdly, as though unbidden.
There’s a pause before she takes a deep breath and somewhat less riled than a minute ago she replies, ‘You are twelve years old, Elio, and you definitely don’t know any more about your educational needs than the people who have been trained for it.’
He sinks back in his chair and shrugs once more, ‘They may know more, but they sure don’t show it.’
We really need to get this kid on our debate team. She glances at the clock above the door, Definitely, I don’t need him here right now, though.
It’s nearly three o’clock and dismissal is in half an hour. There’s two other students - promising ones - who she needs to see and persuade to enter a national science competition before tomorrow’s deadline. And that meant this boy should not be getting her time right now. For if Elio Perlman could ever be won over, it definitely wasn’t going to be today with the clock literally ticking in her face.
So she opts for efficiency:
‘I’m emailing your parents about this, Perlman.’
Great! That’s the dinner entertainment sorted.
At least that means Elio’s finally dismissed to join French class. He pushes his chair back, gets up, grabs his bright yellow haversack by one strap, and drags it on the ground behind him all the way to the door. But when he gets to the door he turns around, stands up straight and, swaying ever so slightly from side to side, in the best first-grader sing song voice he can muster says, ‘Good afternoon and thank you, Principal Giordano.’
And if Elio didn’t know better, he’d say she’d just covered a giggle with a cough right now. Except Principal Giordano might know a lot of stuff - as attested by the array of certificates on the wall behind her - but Elio is pretty sure none of them has taught her the art of giggling.
He slams the office door hard before he shoots down the corridor, hoping to get to French class before Aldo claims the seat next to Marzia.
Right now even Elio may have lost the art of giggling. After the day he’s had, he’s probably getting to French class only to get ‘a look’ from Marzia for having let her down - yet again -…and after that when he gets home, his parents will have got an email from Giordano- yet again.
Monday mornings are never fun.
But neither for that matter are Monday afternoons.
And currently, the prospects for Monday evening aren’t looking too bright either.
A twelve year old can live through a million little tragedies in just one Monday…and at the time they feel no less serious than any adult problem.
Yet whether we’re twelve or a hundred-and-twelve - we definitely have one thing in common - we’re generally too caught up in the here and now to even realise it when a butterfly flaps its wings.