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Special Needs

“Nothing.”

we’re loud! Then we find our tongue! But when it’s answering a question in class or homework, then we don’t know a thing. We do the wrong homework. We have cloth ears. It’s me you want to provoke and make a fool of? Me you want to mock?! That’s the thanks I get for all the effort I’ve put into you!”

“Well then, like you, nothing’s the matter.”

I didn’t want to say she was lying, because it’s not nice to talk to the teacher that way, so I said:

I could feel my ears burning.

“I hear…”

“You know, if you don’t have anything clever to say, and clearly you haven’t, you can leave the classroom. Anyway, we’ve got shorter classes today because of the meeting. You leave first to avoid the crush of children on the staircase.

“What? That it’s snowing? Like in your homework?!”

“No, no, that…your… heart...is…racing!”

Naturally, there was no way to avoid disaster. And the disaster was mine. She turned beetroot red. And the redness spread to her ears and neck. But the roar of laughter in the classroom had only just begun! Even Professor Nikola laughed and said: “I didn’t know that Emil was capable of teasing, and at the teacher’s expense too…” I couldn’t hear anything anymore from the uproar in the classroom. Professor Nikola bit his lower lip, as if trying to stop himself from laughing. It was only the teacher who didn’t find it funny, and neither did I. “Shame on you!” she began. “Whenwewant to be rude, oh then 152

And don’t forget to take your butterflies!”

For thosewhodon’t know, there’salsoadifferent kindof silence. There’s loud silence. It comes after bad weather or a storm. You can see and feel its after-affects all around. Only this time it wasn’t branches, leaves, rubbish or dead birds. This time it was her words that trailed behind me to the sound of my shoes: clomp, clomp… The whole class was looking at them. They always looked as if they were seeing them for the first time. I didn’t need eyes in the back of my head to know that. “You’vecertainlygot awaywithyou, Gordana”, I heard Professor Nikola say. “I don’t think he’s even aware of what he said and there’s nothing nasty or mocking about him, in fact, if we’re 153