From The Game

The floor is cold. June wants to find something. She slides across the floor. Then they’re going to play at ducks. And Miss will tell them more. She sees the others. And she sees Freddie. And she sees the air coming in. June knows that it’s called air. The window is open and the curtains are moving. Inwards. Towards June. The air she sees is hot. The floor is cold.

They have seen ducks. They aren’t called geese. They aren’t called swans. They aren’t called chickens. Ducks. The preschool is near the water. Miss showed them. Ann. They looked strange. Shiny. Some of them. They looked like different birds. Different types. They were fighting. About food. Miss had given them. Give over, Miss said when they rushed across from different places and shouted and the water splashed and they splashed in the water. June was scared. You were scared, said Freddie. You were scared, said George. I was scared, said June. I was scared too, said Freddie. I was scared too, said George. Bread or stuff. It’s not good for chickens, said Reza. They’re called ducks, said Azar. For their tummies, said Reza. I didn’t know that, said Miss.

When you’re hungry you get angry. When you’re angry you get sad. When you’re sad you get sad. When you’re sad you get happy. When you’re happy you get sleepy. When you’re sleepy you get full. Then it goes round again.

The sun shines into June. The long white sheets outside the window blow in through the window like long arms. The sun squeezes in between and shines into June’s eyes and June can’t see anything. It’s hot and it’s summer and this is Waterside Preschool. Not playschool. June wants to find something but she doesn’t know what. The heat comes in like a blanket. The cold on her hands feels nice. How long will it be before she can see it?

They’re standing on the round grey mat. There are more than five children. Maybe more than ten. All children. They’re all standing up. There are lots of them, but no child touches any other child. There are some three-year-olds who will soon be four. Like June. There aren’t any two-year-olds. Or one-year-olds. Or none-year-olds. But there are some from other classes. Four-year-olds. Canoe class. And one from the five-year-old class. Oar class. June doesn’t know their names. But they must be nice.

Some three-year-olds are like babies. They crawl out from the mat. Bert. Mehmet. Maria. Three boys. Babies. Then Lynne crawls out. June’s best friend. Or maybe not her best friend. June plays with her a lot, but there are often others too. June doesn’t know if she wants to, but that’s how it is anyway. Sometimes she thinks it’s good that there are others. June actually likes some of the others better than Lynne. But it doesn’t really matter.

Lynne crawls out. So June does it too. Then she looks at Miss. And then she stands up straight again.

Everyone must be standing before I say, Miss says. Do you remember the little hollow with eggs that Yusuf found? Under the bush? In the playground? By the sailing boat? And how good you all were? All the children, all the teachers, all the parents? Very quiet and careful when they came close and nobody touched. Everyone left the mother in peace. And so the eggs hatched and the mother ran down to the water with the babies almost straight away. There were lots of us who saw. Lefifi, Françoise, Lisa. And the other teacher, Miss Liam. Have I forgotten anyone? June thinks yes, she has.

June, Miss Ann says.

And when we rowed the boat to Church Island, Miss Liam says. Everyone had a lifejacket. There were lots of nests. Or hollows. There must have been lots of babies.

Now we’re ducks, Miss Ann says. Like on Church Island. But a much smaller island. Like the little one behind Church Island. All of the ducks want to stay on the island. But the water is rising. There's more and more water. And the island is getting smaller and smaller. But we all want to stay. So we have to help each other so we can all stay. How can we help each other?

We can hold onto each other, says Dan, one of the big kids. We can help each other, Mehmet says. We can be one big lump, Lynne says.

To start with, you can be like ducks. Look for food, moult – do you remember what that means? – and sit on the eggs, Ann says. The mat is quite big. When I say, you all stand up. Then the water rises and the island gets smaller. All of the ducks want to stay on the island. In the sun. And the warmth. It might be a cold day. Cold in the water. So what do we do then? We’ll have to see!

Will we turn into people, asks Awa, another of the big kids, with arms?

We can use our arms, but we can think that we’re ducks all the same, Ann says.

June has looked out of the window and at the blowing white sheets and felt how the sun isn’t shining in her eyes or on her body any more. Now the light and the moving shadows from the curtains are playing on the wall. She follows a bright light that goes right across the room and ends up on Miss Liam’s cheek. June thinks his face looks very strange, like he’s eaten something disgusting. Then it disappears again and he looks like normal.

June has forgotten why they're standing on the big round grey mat. All of them. Except Ann and Liam. She thinks that she should do the same as the big kids. Like the biggest of the big ones. Dan. She’s going to do exactly like Dan.

Dan is crawling on his knees and has his arms behind his back. He has a good duck sound. She has to get close to him to see what he's doing. There are lots of others in the way. The others are doing other things. Some of them take off their socks and roll them into balls and lie on their tummies on them, like Miss did once. They say my little baby, my tiny babies and things like that. Some of them flap their arms like they're going to start flying. June is near Dan and she’s doing the same thing as he is.

She's a bit behind him so he can’t see. Arms behind her back. Crawling on her knees. But she doesn’t dare to make a noise. She’s very quiet.

What lovely ducks you are, Ann says. Moulting was when the ducks changed their feathers and the daddy ducks looked like the mummy ducks, do you remember? When the old, worn-out feathers fall off and they get new ones. It happens in the summer, now, very soon.

Now you can stand up, Ann says. Now we all stand up, Miss Liam says. And now the cold water is rising, Ann says. And everyone wants to stay on the warm island, Liam says. Ann gets down on all fours, crawls forward and folds in a bit of the round, grey mat. The children nearest the edge move back. Dan ends up too close to June. His bottom is almost in her face. She doesn’t want that. She turns around. Then she can’t see Miss. The Misses.

Not either of them. She doesn’t want to be in the middle. There’s Lynne. She looks happy. She looks at June. Lynne winks strangely at June. June doesn’t really understand what she means or if she means anything or if she's trying to wink at June at all. But it’s like Lynne is looking at her the whole time and she winks so many times, and with one eye at a time, first one and then the other and then the one again, in a way that June can't do at all. June can only close her eyes and wink with both eyes, slowly. Mummy dressed her in the red-and-white checked summer dress this morning. Because it was so hot. Even though she didn’t want to. She wanted the tracksuit trousers. The blue ones. Now she thinks it’s nice. Because it's not too bumfled up, because it's cool. And because she can have her legs in lots of different places without it pulling and feeling weird.

Ann folds up a bit more of the mat and the other children push June from behind. She isn’t ready and nearly falls forwards, but Awa, who’s standing next to her and sees what’s happening, holds onto her. She does it very gently and it feels nice. The crying that was on the way up, because it feels like more than one person pushed her, doesn’t come out. Awa looks at June and smiles. It feels warm. Lynne shows that she wants to hold onto Awa, and Awa holds onto her too. Awa smiles at Lynne. Awa smiles at Lynne like she smiled at June. June isn’t someone special any more. Awa smiles like big children usually smile at small children, whoever they are. The big ones know that they always understand more and know more. June doesn’t like it and she’s scared, but it’s better that Awa holds onto her and she holds onto Awa than if they don’t.

June knows everything. Like every time Mummy washes her and it’s warm. The longer she gets to sit there, the more she understands. She can understand with her hands. She can understand with her feet. She can understand with her smelling, the smells. And that’s bigger than everything. And it lasts longer than everything. If it can go on for a long time, even while she’s getting bigger, she’ll understand everything there is.

June understands most things. Miss Ann is making the children push each other. Ann must go. And ducks, duckies, they must go. And Lynne must go. And Awa must go.

Lynne’s holding June’s shoulder. A bit inside the short sleeves of her dress. Now they’re all holding onto each other, all three of them. Awa, Lynne and June. And they’re in the middle of the mat.