Why didn't I do something?

 She lopes rather than walks. It's a sort of slow motion with intent. Her intention is to take as long as possible to get to her next class, probably French. She probably hates it. I watch her walk past the pylon that holds up the edge of the overhang that reaches out over the sliding doors. I see her through the window of my own classroom where my classmates are seated. I'm seated too but I have no head for the test that lies face down on my table. 

It's August already and the exams seem to be rising up before me like a cloud which ruins the view of a mountainous horizon. So my attention is diverted these days. Diversions keep me sane. The tricks of change help my mind from imploding, from going to places there that I'd rather not reach into.

There she is again. Same slow stride. The doors slip closed behind her. Same long tightly braided black hair hanging from a bowed head. Same hunched shoulders. For this journey past my window, she has loose hold of a laptop. A charger cable dangles precariously from her slack fingers. A text book of some sort, identified by large, black letters and a multi-coloured cover, is half-imprisoned against the smooth surface and is threatening to slide to the ground. 

It doesn't. That's probably because it's hooked itself in her sleeve, unnoticed by her. With her left hand she absently rubs her neck, squeezes her skin and drops it again to let it swing by her side like a trunk, supple and powerful. I take note of her height for the umpteenth time. Only in Year 7 and she's at least a head taller than any of them. Definitely taller than me. From behind she looks a bit like a boy but her movements are gentle and practised.

The bubbling river of junior students has thinned to barely a trickle, a sign that classes have already begun after the morning break. I wonder where she's headed, simultaneously realising that my teacher has commanded us to "begin writing." I un-prop my head from my hand, pick up a pen in my thumb and finger, twirl it a few times and bend my mind to answering the short questions arranged neatly down the five pages of the assessment piece. Year 12. Ugh!

That decision lasts about five seconds.

A teacher has stopped the girl but I just can't make out who it is. A man by the trousers I can see protruding from under a sort of barrier wall near the corner of my building. There's also a shoulder bag dangling half in sight. The girl sways slightly, lifting her feet, her heels in fact, just a little as she moves. She does not speak but sways with increasing agitation.

Suddenly she jerks her head up and says something. One word only, I think, my vision strung along an invisible line of sight to her face. It is bent down at the sides, like one of those sad emojis. She takes a step to move around the adult in front of her but doesn't make it past him. Some force commands her to stop again. She points back the way she had come, her arm describing a semi-circle of direction before dropping to her side again.

The tall girl (she looks taller than the adult before her) is standing still again but she seems ready to  -

'You do want to pass this, don't you?' My teacher. Shit. Yes I do, actually, but I don't tell her that.

'Sorry,' is all I can get out and, red-faced, I return to my own task. At least, I return to it for only a few seconds because I can't resist the urge to steal another glance through the glass. As I stare, I know the memory of what I see will last.

The tall girl is walking back the way she came, if anything more slowly than before. The book flaps to the ground as the sliding doors open in front of her and I can see that it takes a force of her will to bend her long body to retrieve it. It stays in her hand as she goes back inside. The doors slide closed behind her. I can just hear the electric motor as it forces the huge rectangles of plate glass closed. They move together like a sigh, meeting with the sound of a cough.

The teacher behind the wall was now in plain sight. He has stepped out. One step and he has stopped. He is standing very still, his face angled slightly away from the doors, his head almost imperceptibly bowed, as if in thought. 

He doesn't move for a long time. When he does, he slides his hand into his pocked, hitches his shoulder bag and turns away from me towards the staff room.