“How long has this been happening?” I asked Sinclair immediately we left the cafeteria, enroute to the principal’s office.
Levina has refused to say a word since we left, but that was okay. People reacted to situations differently.
If I would take a bet, she was contemplating her father’s reaction when he finally heard the news.
There was a minute silence, during which I inhaled the strength to shout at him if he chose not to talk about this troubling matter. But then, he started speaking.
“For a while now. It’s not regular, but it happens occasionally, sometimes in the cafeteria, sometimes in the training field. Actually since her father had been elected the school’s principal.”
I sharply turned to look at him. “And how many years is that?”
“Five years.”
My tongue tasted something bitter and bland.
She has been bullied for five years?
How had the father stayed unaware all this time? How had no one thought to slither the piece of information to Mr Lethon? Did they hate him and his daughter then?
I turned aside to look at Levina. A tear had just slipped past the confines of her eyes.
I squeezed her hand to form some sort of camaraderie; saying without words, that she will be fine.
“And what did you do when you got elected as head boy? You just watched? How long have you been a headboy?”
Sinclair sighed in frustration and defeat, as if knowing what I had planned to do concerning him immediately he was done with answering my questions.
“Two years. I have been the headboy of the school for two years, and during that time I had to pretend that I wasn’t seeing anything…” He stopped here, and I clenched my fists, ready to punch him no matter how weak my punch might be, if he didn’t complete that statement.
I didn’t care what the knowledge did to him or his conscience. His conscience seemed to be stumped out when Levina was bullied.
“I had to pretend that the school was fair and equal…” He chuckled now, drily though. “The lie has been used so often, that it now sounds like the truth..”
I furrowed my eyebrows, remembering when I had asked him why he was headboy instead of the twins. He had mentioned that the school’s system was fair and all that bullshit.
“It’s the one of the reasons I hated Raul. How he hated bullying, or so he usually claimed, but couldn’t do anything to restrain his sister from hurting others. It was annoying, so annoying that he had the power to stop his sister, but he had chosen to stay by the sidelines like us.”
I gritted my teeth. Raul was the worst.
“You know I met him once about the matter. Yes, I was his senior, but I had begged him to stop his sister from bullying, not only because it was hurtful to watch, but because it gave the others the audacity to attempt the same thing.”
And wouldn’t I know that? I remembered what had happened in my case.
How it had started with the triplets and had then progressed to more than seventy percent of the school’s population that had found it a side attraction to bully me.
“Raul ignored me. I was talking to him, and he walked right past me. I felt humiliated. And then I threatened to make a report. That had been the first and the last time that I had used the threat, for Raul had just looked at me calmly as if making a dare. I knew then I couldn’t do it. Duty to family triumphed over my duty to the school as a headboy. I couldn’t make a report for fear of my family, knowing the twins were capable of telling their mother to do anything. I couldn’t make a report because the principal’s job was also….”
He couldn’t continue because Levina snarled at him like an animal then.
I stopped walking, just like she had to strike that action.
“Sinclair, don’t patronize us…” I said softly, my anger beginning to mount on an eagle’s wings.
Sinclair had the good grace to bow his head in shame. But the mistake had already been made.
“We can get to the principal’s office by ourselves, headboy. We don’t need your help or input.”
I turned away from him after my speech, not caring for the hurt that flashed through his eyes.
When he had mentioned his family, I was touched, even understood his point.
Even though it hadn’t still been a good purpose to watch a girl being bullied for five years, it had somehow reached the mark, until he had talked about him caring about the principal. That had been the deal breaker.
How could he claim that? How could he claim to care about the principal? How could he claim that it had been the reason why he had stood by why the latter’s daughter had been bullied for five years?
Didn’t he think of the implications or he thought of us as brainless idiots, hoping to touch us by saying that, by hampering on what had caused Levina not to tell her dad about the issue?
I noted the small things that people do, which revealed a lot about their orientation and personality. Sinclair wasn’t the perfect headboy.
I watched Sinclair open and shut his mouth three consecutive times. I and Levina watched him. Levina with a scowl on her face, as if she hated the headboy as much as Raul.
Sinclair, seeing that there was no need convincing us to forgive him, at least at the moment, sighed and apologized to us, before turning around swiftly and walking in the direction of the cafeteria.
Of course, he was probably hungry. I was too. But this was more important.
“Let’s go.” I muttered, taking Levina’s grunt as agreement.