Putting Your Foot In It

There's a new kid on the block and I think he's dangerous. The way he wears his hair, long and greasy and falling over his face, unnerves me. It's like a long black curtain concealing his expression and his intent. It's completely at odds with the way he walks, bouncing along, his hips swinging as if dancing to an imaginary boombox. His clothes are head to foot black but he's not a Goth. He doesn't seem to hang with a gang either so that's not why I find him disturbing.

Even with the hair and sometimes a hoodie over it, occasionally there's a glimpse of piercing blue eyes. He never blinks when I pass him on the street. I try to cross over before he sees me if I can but there will always be times when we will be close to each other. It's a small town. He has this way of appearing unexpectedly round corners. It makes my heart pound like a steam hammer and I'm in fight or flight mode until he's passed me. I doubt I'd do either.

It really is the spookiest thing. He appeared from nowhere about a month ago, yet it's as if I see him everywhere I turn. Always with the same swagger. One day he even said hello which was weird. I didn't know what to say, or even if I was expected to say anything but no matter. He'd gone before I could decide.

I'm not normally so paranoid. I'm a teacher at the local high school so I'm used to teenage boys. My teacher friends, Jo and Sam, can't understand my feelings about him.

"What's the problem?" asked Jo. "I've seen him around and he doesn't freak me out."

"Yeah Karen. It does sound a bit like you're pre-empting him being a bad boy. You know most of our students dress the same as him, wear their hair the same as him outside school and he's never actually done anything wrong so far as you know," said Sam.

"So far as I know," I replied, saying each word very slowly. "That's part of it. Call it sixth sense. You two haven't interacted with him in the same way I have."

We agreed on most things but not on this. He gave me a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. Even his name was creepy. Dhruv. Couldn't he be called Dan or Charlie?

There's a database of students Head teachers and Deputy Heads have access to for information on new enrolments. It lists all the new student's previous schools, his marks and attendance. I'm not authorised to use it but Jo is Deputy Head and I'd seen her log in. I didn't know if it would get flagged up in some way, causing trouble for Jo, but although I hated to potentially get her into trouble, my need to know as much about him as I could was overriding everything else.

With a name like Dhruv he wasn't hard to find, though the location of his last school was a surprise. Plymouth, over 250 miles away. I called and luckily it was Jenny, his sixth form teacher, who answered my call. She was very forthcoming and gave me chapter and verse. Lots of personal information that wouldn't be in his school records.

His mother, Amira, had come to the school with him for his enrolment in 2016, when he was twelve. She was of Indian descent and told Jenny Dhruv was a family name, going back generations. They were new to England having been recently accepted as asylum seekers, yet both mother and son spoke excellent English. It helped that Dhruv's father was a British citizen but even so it had taken five years to get out of Iraq.

Dhruv's father had been stationed with the British army there. He couldn't marry Amira as he had a wife back home in England. His marriage had not produced any children so he was delighted to have a son and kept in touch with Amira and young Dhruv as much as he could, until his unit was sent back home in 2011. Dhruv was seven. His father left money in a bank account for the two of them to get to England whenever they could. Iraq was a dangerous place. He rang them often, both in Iraq and after they'd arrived in England.

Dhruv was a very promising student, well turned out, very polite, intelligent and expected to get high marks in his A levels but everything changed in 2022. Early into his final year Amira succumbed to cancer and died suddenly. Dhruv was placed with several foster families but kept absconding and his attendance record was poor. At seventeen he disappeared from the area.

"Dhruv was very solitary throughout his time with us. I think he found it hard to mix, knowing he was very different to the other students, although there were never any incidents of bullying. Has he made some friends now?" asked Jenny.

"I don't think so. I never see him with anyone else."

"Well I hope I've helped but why did you want to know about him when he's already left school?"

I felt flustered and was glad Jenny couldn't see how red my face was. I hadn't prepared for this question but I wasn't head of the drama department for nothing. Thinking on my feet I pretended I was talking to another teacher although there was nobody there.

"I'm on the phone Peter. Can't someone else deal with it?" I left a gap for the non-existent Peter to reply. "Okay I'm coming now," I said.

Returning to Jenny I ignored her last question. "So sorry for the interruption. Bit of an emergency. A student has cut themselves in the chemistry lab. I'm one of the first aiders so I must go. Thanks for all your help though. Bye."

My teaching day was over so I grabbed my things and left. I was shaking and I struggled to make the car key go into the ignition. Lying didn't come naturally to me and there was so much new information to mull over. I burst into tears wondering what all this meant for my future.

I'd wanted to know as much as I could about Dhruv, now he was living with us. I found him so easily on the student database because his surname was Jackson, the same as mine. My husband, Nathan, was his father but he had never told me Dhruv existed nor the extent of his involvement in his life. His affair with Dhruv's mother wasn't a one night stand, it was full blown adultery. Their relationship had lasted eight years whilst I was blissfully unaware in another country. I also knew nothing about the phone calls. Now here I was, with my husband's nineteen year old son living in our house and I knew very little about him. Was it any wonder that I was on edge?

The front door was unlocked and as I opened it I heard a loud bang. I raced up the stairs to find Dhruv, standing over Nathan, holding a smoking gun. Only guns recently fired produce smoke. It was Nathan's grandfather's service pistol from the Second World War. I hated having it in the house but I could see it meant a lot to Nathan. My brain was wandering off at tangents because it didn't want to know what had happened but then Dhruv looked at me with real concern, distress and shock in his eyes.

Realising what he was holding he dropped the gun. "I don't know why I picked it up Mrs Jackson. I didn't fire it. I don't even know how."

It was his longest sentence to me since he arrived. He was soft spoken, not at all what I'd been expecting. Meanwhile my own vocal cords refused to work.

"Dad was showing me how to clean it. Said one day it would be my job. When he was gone."

My awful thought about Dhruv killing Nathan was receding. After seeing how upset he was about the gun and his father, I realised my mind had been working overtime since he'd moved in with us. His concern was genuine. No doubt about that. I reached out and hugged him and he smiled. We were going to be good friends. Then Nathan groaned. Stupid man. I guess it really hurts if you shoot yourself in the foot.