Mr. Coleman saw Will’s hand slinking beneath the sea of arms.
“Actually,” he said, “you know what? Let’s play a game, shall we? Instead of telling us what your parents do, how about you show us.”
“What, like a video?” said Jindal.
“Why would I have a video of my mum at work?” said Atkins.
“I’ve got one of my dad battering a shoplifter when he worked security at Zara,” said Kabiga as he scrolled through his phone.
“I’m not talking about videos,” said Mr. Coleman. “I’m talking about using your imagination!”
A low murmur of discontent passed through the class at the mention of the word imagination.
“Like charades?” said Mo.
“Precisely, Mo,” said Mr. Coleman. “Like charades.”
“Why can’t we just say it?” said a kid at the back of the class.
“Because that’s boring! That’s what all the other classes are doing. This will be more fun.” Mr. Coleman glanced at Will, who gave him the faintest smile of acknowledgment.
“You got a weird idea of fun, Mr. C.”
“Look, I’ll go first, okay?” said Mr. Coleman. “I’ll show you what my dad used to do for a living.”
He took off his jacket and draped it over the back of his chair.
“Your dad was a stripper?” shouted somebody. Laughter filled the classroom.
“Very funny,” said Mr. Coleman. “I haven’t started yet. Okay, here we go.”
He sat down on the chair and picked up a pair of invisible drumsticks. Then, clacking them together above his head like a Monsters of Rock headliner, he launched into an unexpectedly enthusiastic albeit entirely silent drum solo.
“Guitarist!” shouted Cartwright.
“Drummer!” shouted everybody else.
“Exactly!” said Mr. Coleman, wiping the sweat from his brow.
“Same thing,” muttered Cartwright.
“A percussionist for the London Symphony Orchestra, to be precise. You should have seen him, he was quite the player.”
“I bet he was,” said Mo. “Girls always fancy the drummer.”
“How do you know?” said Kabiga.
“Because he is a girl,” said Claire Wilkins, who sat behind Mo. Everybody sniggered.
“That makes one of us,” said Mo. The room erupted with chants of “Burn!” and “Savage!”
“I didn’t mean that kind of player,” said Mr. Coleman, belatedly realizing his slipup. “I meant player of the drums. Although he was quite popular with the ladies, actually. Not quite so popular with my mum though. Anyway, who wants to go next? Mo? Come on, show everybody how it’s done.”
“Easy,” said Mo. He took a seat in Mr. Coleman’s chair, held an imaginary steering wheel in front of him, and proceeded to honk his horn, yell in Punjabi, and flip off the various other drivers committing multiple infractions on whatever imaginary road he was driving on.
“Taxi driver!” yelled the class.
“Well done, Mo,” said Mr. Coleman as Mo returned to his seat. “Please remind me never to get into your dad’s taxi.”
“My dad’s an estate agent,” said Mo. “My mum’s the taxi driver.”
“Then please remind me to say wonderful things about you at parents’ evening. Will, your turn. Get up here and show us what you’ve got.”
Will shuffled to the front of the class. He stood around looking sheepish for a minute before grabbing an imaginary shovel and halfheartedly driving it into the ground.
“Coal miner!” shouted somebody.
“Gold digger!” shouted another kid.
“Drummer!” shouted Cartwright.
Everybody laughed, including Will. He put down his invisible shovel and started laying bricks instead, this time with more enthusiasm, but he looked more like he was scaling a wall than attempting to build one.
“Rock climber!”
“Spider-Man!”
Will, laughing even more now, turned to Mr. Coleman for help. The teacher smiled and shrugged.
“Don’t look at me, Spider-Man!”
Will picked up an imaginary hammer and pretended to bash it into a nail.
“Handyman!” shouted Jindal.
Will pointed at Jindal and prompted him to elaborate.
“Carpenter!” shouted Jindal.
“Builder!” shouted Cartwright.
Will pointed at Cartwright and gave him the thumbs-up.
“Well done, Will. And well done, Cartwright!” Cartwright beamed like he’d just got a C-minus in a maths test. “Take a seat, Will, I think you need a rest after that.”
Some of the kids patted Will on the back or playfully thumped him in the arm as he made his way to his desk.
“Right,” said Mr. Coleman, exchanging a nod with Will. “Who’s next?”
The game went through a few more rounds (there would have been more, but one kid spent at least ten awkward minutes trying to find a way of showing the class that his mother was a gastrointestinal endoscopist) before the bell rang and everybody commenced that most paradoxical of migrations, the one where students rush from one class and drag their heels to the next.
“Will?” said Mr. Coleman as Will and Mo tried to fit through the door at the same time. “Can I have a quick word?”
The two boys shared a look of dread before Will returned to the classroom to face whatever punishment was coming for whatever it was he’d done wrong.
“It’s okay, Mo,” said Mr. Coleman when he saw Mo lingering in the doorway. “I won’t be needing your mediation services today, thank you.”
Mo looked at Will, shrugged, and closed the door behind him. Will took a seat.
“Nice bit of acting back there,” said Mr. Coleman. “You could be a movie star. Well, a silent movie star anyway.”
Will smiled. He stopped fidgeting and waited for Mr. Coleman to find the right words for what he wanted to say next.
“I know this is none of my business, Will, and I’m sure you’re probably sick of people giving you advice or telling you what to do, but, well, I just want you to know that I get it. The silence, I mean. I can’t pretend to understand what you’re feeling, or what you’ve gone through this last year, but I do know a little bit about what it’s like to lose somebody close to you.”
Will looked down at his hands and gently picked at the corner of his thumbnail.
“My grandfather died when I was about your age. He was more like a parent than a grandparent though. My dad was always busy with orchestra rehearsals and my mum was a nurse who often worked nights, so my grandfather basically raised me for the first ten years of my life. His hair was gray and his eyes were gray and everything in his wardrobe was gray, but when he walked into a room it was like the sunshine had walked in right behind him. He was old even then, but I still thought he’d be around forever, because, well, you do, don’t you? So when he died it came as a massive shock, like a train had come out of nowhere and slammed right into me. I didn’t speak about him for a long time afterwards. Not to my mum, not to my dad, not to my friends. I just didn’t know what to say. Talking about him in the past tense seemed so strange that I couldn’t bring myself to talk about him at all, if that makes any sense.”