The 10 P.M. Question Read Online Free PDF Page A

imagination. He talked like this a lot.
    “Offenders have nothing on the preadolescent,” he said to room 11 from time to time. “Take your average school — a cesspit of deviousness. You guys demand all my counterintuitive skills.”
    Being counterintuitive was something Mr. A had brought with him from prisons and probation service. It meant going against your immediate and natural instincts, thinking cleverly before you acted.
Acting, not reacting
— that was Mr. A’s mantra. Being counterintuitive was practically his religion.
    “You know, he’s not a Mormon or a Catholic or a Muslim, he’s a Counterintuitor,” Frankie said to Gigs.
    “Or a Counterintuitivist,” said Gigs.
    “Or a Counterintuitivationist.”
    “Or a —” But here they ran out of steam.
    According to Mr. A, his job was to enlarge their vocabularies and teach them how to get on with people — with the whole of the rest of the world, in fact. Even the people they didn’t like.
Especially
the people they didn’t like. If it killed him, he said, they were all going to leave his classroom knowing some words longer than two syllables
and
how to think their way through tricky relationships.
    Of course, how to sing a lot of songs from start to finish was important too, he added. Also how to write a coherent sentence, how to research history, speak another language, and throw a ball well. These things undoubtedly made for the completely rounded person, said Mr. A, but vocabulary and counterintuitiveness were the first two commandments in his classroom.
    Frankie thought a spot of counterintuitiveness might come in handy just now with Gigs. What he
felt
like doing was fashioning a paper dart with “What’s wrong with you, knob-shine?” written on it, and aiming it at Gigs’s chest. But it would probably aggravate his mood.
    Instead, he sketched a comic strip of Seamus Kearney trying unsuccessfully to spell
knob-shine
and Bronwyn Baxter trying to strangle him. A magpie dive-bombed the two of them. Underneath, he wrote
B and S: a marriage made in hell.
He folded the strip into a dart and sent it gently across the table to Gigs.
    Gigs opened the dart and gave a glimmer of a smile.
    Sydney giggled. “Good drawing,” she said. “Do you take art as an elective?”
    “Yeah,” said Frankie, pleased. “What’re you taking?” He watched Gigs drawing something to send back.
    “Writing,” said Sydney. “I’m pretty good at writing.”
    “Love yourself, why don’t you?” said Solly, from across the table.
    “Just stating the facts,” said Sydney. “I’m hopeless at everything else — changed schools too often.”
    “How come?” said Frankie. “Your dad get transferred?”
    “He lives in Holland,” said Sydney. “Nah, my mother’s a nomad. She gets a rash if she stays in the same place too long. But, she’s promised to stay here at least a year. She’s promised on my grandmother’s grave. My sisters can start school and I can finish at least one project.”
    “Enough, Pepys!” Mr. A called from the front of the classroom. “Concentrated work for fifteen minutes, please. Usual drill — definition and sentence. Then we’ll talk book projects.”
    Gigs’s dart came wafting over to Frankie. It had FYEO in black marker on the wing. FYEO meant “for your eyes only.” He opened it slowly, turning it away from Sydney.
    “Hey,” hissed Sydney, “you want to do this book project with me? He told me about it before class.” She gestured toward Mr. A. “Sounds good. I’ll write and you can do the artwork.”
    She beamed at him. Her eyes nearly disappeared when she smiled, Frankie noticed.
    “Um,” he said, scanning Gigs’s message. It was a cartoon in Gigs’s primitive but distinctive style — stick figures and exclamation marks with legs harassing everyone. Everyone in his cartoons had an identifying feature. For instance, the Frankie character always wore a cricket cap, the Mr. A character had a scar jutting horizontally