SOCIETY DIDN'T SAVE THE KIDS

PART I

PART I | NUTTY NINA

Nina Huang, the first of what would soon be unofficially termed the troublesome three - was also the first to find herself in after-school club.

On her second day of Reception, after all the other students had escaped the school grounds for home, the five year old girl had walked alone into an even lonelier room; titled after-school club. Her hair pulled apart from its once French braid; the tie around her collar not unlike a chokehold, and her cheeks ruby against her pale East-Asian complexion, when she made her way to the only other person in the room: a student teacher, seated behind a desk at the front of the class, far too nice for the school she worked at.

'Is this after-school club?' Nina asked, with the sort of false confidence attributed to most adults in uncomfortable situations.

With a smile on her face, the student teacher, Miss. Masood, replied; 'Yes it is. Please, sit anywhere.'

Nina had. Seating herself in a chair, farthest from the teacher - who deflated a little upon this realisation. Nina didn't care, though. Her mind troubled by world changing matters like if her father would get here on time; or if every day of school would be as hard as the last two. The more she thought about it, the more outlandish and pessimistic these thoughts grew; the more overwhelmed she was by an ocean-tide of doom.

She fought against it the only way she knew how; punched the table in front of her, harder and harder and harder until her knuckles were the same red colour her cheeks were. All while Miss. Masood - who was unable to intervene because of school rules - watched.

Watched the girl teachers had already deemed violent and crazy. The girl who in the weeks to come would be minimised to the title of; 'Nutty Nina.' The student teacher wondering all the while what drove the small girl to inflict such meaningless violence on herself and everyone around her - unaware, that violence was rarely without meaning.

And for the next hour or so, this was how it was: the two of them, teacher and pupil, woman and girl, accompanied by the room's silence and the noise of their internal thoughts. Miss. Masood occupied with a novel whilst really she watched Nina, and Nina completely occupied with the most nonsensical ways in which her life could implode as she punched the desk in front of her.

In a way, for Nina, this became therapy, this childish form of self-harm, so much so that when Nina's father - a hungover Asian man, with grey stubble - entered the classroom to collect her, she had drawn blood from both her knuckles.

A fact her father seemed unbothered by, when he said, 'C'mon, Nina, let's go,' exiting the room again.

Nina followed. Rose from her chair and ran after her father - afraid he would leave her otherwise. Miss. Masood a watchful bystander all the while.

When they both left, the young teacher stared after them, finally aware that maybe Nina's violence wasn't so senseless after all.