Prince of Ponies

“Yes, Herr Weren,” Mira said.

When the bell rang, Mira stayed in her seat. Herr Weren took out a newspaper, kicking his chair back and putting his feet up on the desk.

“Am I allowed to have my morning tea?” Mira asked.

Herr Weren looked up from his newspaper and raised an eyebrow. “Under the rules of the Geneva Convention, I believe you have the right to eat,” he said. Then he gave a chuckle at his own joke, which Mira didn’t understand. But she figured that he meant yes, she could, and so she unpacked her lunchbox from her bag. There was some hummus and carrots and a heavy brown German kind of bread that Mira didn’t like much at all, which her mother brought home from the bakery.

The clock on the classroom wall ticked very loudly. Herr Weren looked up at it wearily, already bored with disciplining his pupil. He put down his newspaper. “I think that’s enough,” he said. “You can go out and play now, Mira.”

“Do I have to?” Mira said.

“What?” Herr Weren was confused. “Yes, Mira, I’m letting you go now.”

“Oh.” Mira’s voice was heavy with disappointment. The truth was, she’d been delighted to get a detention and she was less than thrilled that it was now over.

Herr Weren walked to the door and held it open for her. Mira stuffed her lunchbox back in her bag and slung it over her back. Herr Weren stood waiting. She was moving so slowly, this child!

“Is there something wrong, Mira?” he asked.

“No, Herr Weren,” Mira said.

“Come on, then! Off you go.”

Outside in the playground the other kids had already eaten lunch. The boys were mostly on the field playing football. The girls’ activities, on the other hand, were much more divided. There was a big group of girls playing Fang on the field, and there were more playing netball on the courts. Mira hurried past them. There was a place, just at the end, where she usually sat at break times. No one else went there, and all she had to do was wait and hope that no one came by before the bell rang. Today, though, when she rounded the corner, there were already three girls there. They were playing a game they called elastics. Two of the girls, Hannah and Gisela, stood with knotted pairs of tights stretched like bands round their legs. They stood with their legs braced wide, so that the tights made a taut loop round them, and the third girl, whose name was Leni, had her back to Mira and was jumping back and forth, scissoring her legs across the tights as the other girls chanted a rhyme:

“Jingle jangle

Silver bangle

Inside – out – on!”

Leni was taller than the other two girls, so she had the advantage in this game because of her longer legs. She was wearing blue shorts and a white T-shirt and her ice-blonde hair was cropped in a very short bob, rather boyish in style; the other two girls were both much mousier, with long hair in ponytails.

“Hey!” Hannah caught sight of Mira before the others. “Look, Leni, it’s Cockroach.”

Leni stopped jumping. She turned round and smiled at Mira. It was a smile that made Mira feel sick. She knew what was coming.

“Cockroach!” Leni greeted her. “Have you come to play with us?”