The Owl

“Has anyone heard an owl before? Maybe at night time?”

Several hands shot up accompanied by earnest, wide-eyed faces. I leisurely raised my hand, keeping my elbow on my desk.

“And as anyone ever seen an owl?”

All hands fell except mine. There was a rustle of scratchy school uniforms as my classmates looked around the room to see who was left. I raised my hand a little higher, looking intently towards Ms Kilburn.

I knew she could see my hand, and the thirty pairs of eyes fixed upon it. Her eyes skated across the room, refusing to settle on my outstretched fingers for an agonising moment. My arm was now fully extended, how could she not see it?

Her eyes settled on me at last, with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

“You’ve seen an owl, Tom?”

Quickly now. Where could you have seen one? Somewhere everyone knows you’ve been, then it’s more feasible.

“On holiday in Devon! I heard it first, and then I tried hooting like an owl to get it to come closer, and it swooped right down towards me!”

Devon, perfect! Everyone knows I went there to see my grandma last half term.

I was getting flustered as Ms Kilburn's smile dropped, but her eyes stayed on me. I drew quick, shallow breaths every few words. Every time I drew a breath, she looked as though she might interrupt. I needed to finish the story or someone might think it wasn’t true. I needed to solidify the image in everyone’s minds.

“It was a barn owl. You know, the ones with the white faces?”

A few of my classmates nodded sagely at one another, while others had begun to lose interest.

“And the next night I saw it there again, and I didn’t even hoot for it!”

Too far, Tom. If you’re going to keep up all this up, you need to stop drawing from cartoon plots.

As I realised I’d gone too far, I looked up at Ms Kilburn. I knew that she knew, although I hoped I was wrong. She didn’t like me, or at least she didn’t enjoy teaching me. She was friends with Miss Rashid, who didn’t like me either.

All my classmates thought Ms Kilburn was one of the nicer teachers. She would bring in homemade cake before the Christmas holidays, and when it got too hot in summer, she would take us outside and play ‘learning’ games, where we never learned much at all.

Now though, she was looking at me intently, menacingly. She lingered a moment, before snapping back to her usual self.

“Well, isn’t Tom lucky! I’ve never seen one, but I have seen some of their prey!”

She carried on with our lesson on food chains, during which I paid little attention, other than staying alert to any allusions to my owl encounter, in case I had the opportunity to flesh it out more. Perhaps Ms Kilburn would believe me if I kept my story straight.

Eventually the bell rang and we packed our bags, and began to add ourselves to the throng in the corridor. I was having some trouble closing the zip on the side of my rucksack, and was left straggling behind. As I undid the zip and tried again to close it over my textbooks, I felt Ms Kilburn’s gaze settle on me once more.

“Did you really see a barn owl in Devon, Tom?”

She spoke very quietly. If I hadn’t guessed what she was about to say, I would have missed it. My head was full of quick responses, and they all forced me to ignore the possibility that she knew.

“Yeah, it was really cool.”

As I spoke, I looked up at her, square in the eye. This time her face was searching my own, and my fear began to override my crowding thoughts. I didn’t dare to look away, but the longer I maintained eye-contact, the more flushed I became.

“Tom, if you’d like to tell me something, it’s not too late to say it.”

This was it. This was the moment I’d dreaded and also craved. If I admitted to her what she already knew, I could start fresh, and never lie again. I wouldn’t be kept awake at night, trying to remember how every lie twisted into itself and other lies. I wouldn’t find holes in my own narratives, and pray that others didn’t notice them as I did. I could tell my neighbour that I hadn’t seen his missing cat on the high street, and my doctor that I hadn’t had a mysterious headache for months, and the school that Miss Rashid hadn’t asked me to go to her house for dinner.

But then who would I be? Tom, who lied and lied just to get attention. Tom, who got Miss Rashid fired. Tom, a sad little boy who didn’t see a barn owl in Devon, who didn’t even go to Devon. Instead, he stayed at home for half term, and no one asked him to come to their house to play.

I looked back down at my bag, the zip mercifully pulling past my books at last. I knew I could never admit to what Ms Kilburn was all but saying. The barn owl was real, and as it had flown down towards me I had felt real fear, and real amazement at its bright face and terrible claws.

I wanted to run, but I walked as calmly as I could to the classroom door, stopping at Ms Kilburn's desk.

“We’re going again in the summer, maybe I’ll see it again!”