Doing the integration student tango.

It was one of those out-of-focus days that follow a run of sleepless nights, sitting in the teacher coffee lounge sucking down mug after mug of Nescafe trying to reach some sense of coherence. Beyond that point of terminal exhaustion; marooned on the ocean floor or worse, stuck inside one of those plastic buildings at the bottom of a goldfish bowl. It is hard to function when the world seems that far away.


Someone pounding on the door, shuffling their feet loudly, sighing and pounding on the door again.


"Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeloooooooo-oooooooooooh" It takes a while to register but I know the voice, it belongs to one of our school's most infamous victims of the Ritalin generation: Mick, a boy so profoundly ADHD he makes Speedy Gonzales look like a borderline overdosed heroin addict. "Hey, hey, is anyone there? Hey, heeeeeeeeelooooooooo-oooooooooooh?!"

At the door, worksheet bunched up in his clenched fist, shifting from foot to foot like a nervous boxer swaying in his trademark parka.

MICK:"Seen my aid Mr L?"
ME: "No. Have you lost her?"
MICK: "Nah, I think I am in trouble. You good at science?"
ME: "What?"
MICK: "Can you do my science test for me Mr L?"
ME: "Um, err, what do you mean you could be in trouble?"
MICK: "Our teacher's away yeah and we got this new substitute right. Anyway I didn't think we were getting along good, he kept screaming at me and telling me to sit down and every time I tried to explain myself he just got angry again so I thought I would make him smile by acting retarded. So can you do my test?"
ME: "No, have you been sent out?"
MICK: "Oh nah, everyone was trying to do the test right and I was trying to explain myself and everyone was shouting me down and I didn't want to get into more trouble so I started screaming like I couldn't talk properly. Make 'em laugh, you know... but then I was getting in more trouble so I cut my loses and left but I took my test with me because I don't want to fail. So I thought I could get someone to do it for me, impress them by being smart so I wouldn't get into trouble."
ME: "By cheating?"
MICK: "Yeah but that's not the point... is it?"


And with that he was gone and I was left in a stupor of sleeplessness and confusion.


This is the student who burst into my photography class wearing a hangman's noose of heavy rope screaming 'Hey everybody, I've got a new necklace aren't I a pretty girl?!' He tied one end to the door handle and convinced another student to slam the door as hard as he could just to see what would happen before I could get to him. The same student who learnt the noose trick faking his own suicide in the dining hall at his year 8 camp.I remember the look on his English teacher's face last year when he insisted on handing in a story about eating magic mushrooms with his brother for his school magazine story (which was never published).


He clocks in at barely 4ft tall, a result of the drugs he's been prescribed to keep him from exploding.


In the time before the drugs he used to be a cutter which he attributes to a futile attempt at keeping the world in focus. For the brief time last year when he decided to go it alone and leave the Ritalin behind he started cutting again, sitting on the benches outside the library, his arms covered in gauze he told me that he only wanted to find his personality again, to be normal; he was nearly in tears and it was the first time I'd ever seen him when he didn't look bullet-proof.


The only other time I've seen him falter was after the Japanese exchange students came to town meeting their host families at a whole school assembly.


MICK: "I wonder why no one told me? I would have really liked one."