The Extra Mile

You get up on a day that really should be left alone but what choice do you have? That's just life, isn't it? Getting out from under the covers when all you really want to do is huddle down and hide? How much easier that would be.

You sit on the edge of the bed for a moment to just be, scratching your head where your hair meets your neck and envying the dust motes their freedom as they circulate randomly in the dawn light.

You stand up and feel the creak in your knees. You stretch and the creaking travels like cracking ice up through your body. You feel old although you are only 51. You wish that you didn't have to work, wish you could return to sleep, but how will you feed yourself? There is only you now. Everyone else has left - wife for new husband and new life; kids with wife and new husband and new life; dog with kids and wife and new husband and new life. You have this and this alone and you have yourself.

You used to be a man, a provider, a father, a man of history and knowledge who taught young people, who listened to all the wonder of the world that you had learnt, listening as you imparted it with gusto. Life didn't like that design for you and tore up its blueprints in your face with a haughty laugh and redrew you a new existence where you lost track of what was going on around you until your wife went looking somewhere else. Then, to console yourself you drank too much, got angry, became more and more unreliable and unpredictable until the words, "I'm afraid we're going to have to let you go" were delivered with the right measure of purpose and pity and like fuel, they incensed you all the more until you had nothing. You burnt your life to ashes although it took you a long time to realise that it was you who had done it.

As you stand in the shower, you revisit those days and recognise that you are not that person anymore. You have a new job in a school and you get up now, even when you don't want to - and you don't want to. You are slowly rebuilding the trust of those you love although you see their wariness in the hesitant replies in conversation and for the little ones, the shy steps of avoidance they take, hiding behind their stepfather's legs when they see you. That hurts but you don't let it skewer you like you used to.

You eat lightly because you don't like to go to work on a heavy stomach and you leave your house in the half light of shadows combining with newly formed rays. You get in your car and drive, you and a few others the only ones on the roads. You think about getting a coffee from somewhere but you'd rather get to school and get the job done.

As you pull into the car park, it's just you and you pick a space closest to the door where you'll use your jingly jangly keys to go in and start work. The school like you: they like your dedication. "We need more people like you", they say, "who go the extra mile." It feels good to be appreciated.

You've got a lot to do so you get to work. You usually leave Humanities until last for old times' sake but today you head there first. You shouldn't really as there is a schedule, honed and rigid which gets the job done quickest but you have a hankering this morning to get there and follow that whim. You'll get it done and do it well, so where's the harm? If you were honest with yourself in this instance, you'd admit that you're hoping to see Miss Evans, the Geography teacher in H2 who is pretty and kind but your brain and your heart don't dare to hope that you might have a chance with someone so nice. You'd like to be noticed although part of you is terrified. You'd like her to know you're a teacher too but that's opening up a place where you rarely go now, another life you once had, relegated to the memory box.

Life has taught you not to dwell on dark moments and you get what you need to do your job before heading to the classrooms. These corridors will soon be filled. Now, though, they are quiet and a little eerie. They've known noise and like it and its absence makes them mournful and empty. You've realised that certain shoes squeak on the floor and you don't wear those anymore. They used to make a sound that grated through the quiet of your mornings and you like the silence. You don't wear headphones. You're grateful for the fact that you enjoy being in your own head again because there was a time where it was the last place you wanted to be left alone.

Swish. Mop. Swish. Mop. The rhythm of the motion of cleaning is soothing, you find. It should be beneath you according to society's expectations for an educated man with the idea that you have so much more to offer. It should be a job only for the lowest of the low but you like the simplicity of it and the accomplishment that comes from wiping things clean, making things tidy. And besides, you know the lowest of the low. You've lived it and are only just climbing your way back from there.

You're in the Humanities' janitorial cupboard, looking for cleaning fluid and your back is turned when a shadow goes past the door. You've already run the hot water to replenish your bucket and it's a good job because otherwise you'd have had your head blown off.

You're not a noisy worker so you find the fluid, put some in the steaming bucket and lift it from the sink without a scrape, placing it on the floor by your non-squeaking feet. You go to the door which was pulled to, not closed, and open it, ready to step out, ready to clean away the marks left by the soles of hundreds of school shoes and the stickiness of fingers on the door handles and the crumbs of hastily eaten corridor snacks.

You're not a whistler. Placing your bucket on the floor, you stand up straight and in that motion, you see the dark figure standing still in the centre of the corridor. All in black, you notice, from top of head to bottom of toe. A man sheathed in black. Black as night. You see how he stands rigid. It is unnatural, tense, you think and your senses prickle.

You contemplate shouting but something stops you and then Miss Evans appears. She's early today. You think she must have a lot to do. She's come out from her classroom at the other end of the corridor, her hair shining and golden. Between you and her stands this dark figure, motionless, forbidding. She hasn't noticed him and is looking down at the sheaf of papers that she's holding in her hands and as she does so, a gold strand of hair falls forward against her cheek and she lifts one of her hands to push it back behind her ear. You think how lovely she is.

The figure is no longer motionless and later, you will marvel how it all happened so quickly as you replay it in your head, the hand raising, the flash of light on metal as the gun becomes apparent which triggers the panic that startles you into action.

You are no athlete and yet, as you launch yourself from where you're standing towards the figure, you are fast, a force of nature propelled by need and fear and anger. The figure still does not know you are there, their back facing you, and you are fast, so fast, and you are low and you have the speed of a Maserati as you plough into the darkly-clothed man with the gun who has dared to come into a school and is going to shoot the lovely Miss Evans.

A shot rings out, a woman screams and something shatters. You have stopped the figure and are on top of him and the gun has clattered away. You want to see if Miss Evans is okay but you are wrestling with someone strong and you are winded by the force of your impact and so you shout "RUN!!!" with a fury and urgency which bellows from you and echoes down the empty corridor like you're a giant of a man.

You are punching and holding and gripping and swearing. You can taste your own blood. Your nostrils are filled with the scent of someone feral. Your head is hit but you don't let go and you let your anger swell and you ride it like a stallion. You wish this man would just keep still as your muscles burn with the effort of containment and you can feel his urgency, the same as yours, as he tries to fight for his life and his freedom before he can be questioned about his actions.

You hear shouting, lots of shouting and a female voice saying "Quick!", high-pitched and emotion-filled. Your ears are filled with the sound of running feet and then it's not just you versus the figure, there are men everywhere, stronger and uniform-wearing and sirens are sounding in swooping cycles, up and down and radios are crackling.

"Are you okay?" you hear and you are looking into the beautiful concerned face of Miss Evans as your adrenaline is slowly diminishing and you are no longer superpowered, and you are gazing at her through the one eye which has not yet closed and lisping through a mouth moist with blood in a voice you barely recognise as your own.

"I think so," you hear yourself say.

And then, that wonderful moment ends and you are whisked away in a flurry of high vis with the memory of Miss Evans' concern and her admiration and her gratitude etched on your brain where it wants to belong, with her teary eyes and her wan smile looking back at you. And you are glad, infinitely glad, that though you hurt like a motherfucker and your face is mashed, reflecting as it does the physical fight of your life, you are glad, so very glad that you didn't leave the day alone and that you went the extra mile.