Book 2, Chapter 2: A Night and a Day in the Classroom

 “She’s gone and left us here in the classroom.” said Dovic.

“Oh boy, oh boy” responded Gazza, “Do you think Miss Lauren will be in the library still? Should we go and check if she’s OK?”

Meanwhile, Lulu had gone to the back of the room and was rummaging around the shelves. “Look at all the good things here!” she exclaimed, “There’s a barrel of monkeys, pick up sticks, Rush Hour and different mazes. We will have so much fun!” and with that, she picked up the pick-up sticks, took them out of the cylinder and dropped them over the table. They had to concentrate very hard and Gazza was disappointed when his trunk accidently bumped the stick and he missed it. Lulu was very good at picking up sticks but in the end, they were just glad they could play games for a little while.

Even though there was only three of them, they decided to play hide and seek. Gazza somehow made it up to the top of the screen while Dovic found a good place to hide between the paper shelves. When Lulu climbed into a Fractions and Decimals poster, Dovic decided to read it and he learnt that half a pizza is the same as two-quarters of a pizza and the same as 50%. He was happy to learn new things, but Lulu and Gazza just wanted to play.

After Dovic had finished learning about decimals and fractions, he went over to the sign and decided to change the letters around. He spelled out the words, “Dovic was here. Favourite.” and Lulu said they were all favourites of Hibiscus. “Oh boy, oh boy” said Gazza, “I am so grateful we can be at school with Hibiscus.”

Before they went to sleep, they went over to the hygiene station. They used hand sanitiser after using the tissues and made sure they cleaned up their mess, wiping the tables down with the spray cleaner and using the green cloths. They knew it was important to wash their hands and clean up after themselves.

When the morning came, they went outside and spent some time in the playground. Dovic found a locker that was open and looked inside it. The books weren’t in there because the students had taken them home so they could do their schoolwork from home and Dovic counted up how many days were left before the students would be back. They climbed over the playground and raced over to the Super-nova. Lulu found it hard to sit up and keep her balance and when Dovic fell off, he landed in the mud. They noticed that the drinking fountains were closed off, but the taps were there so people could fill up their water bottles.

They sat out on the window ledge waiting for Hibiscus to open the door for them so they could go back into the classroom. While they waited, they imagined what it would be like watching all the students line up outside and wondered if they would line up shortest to tallest or in alphabetical order or in some other way. Dovic suggested they would line up in the order they came. When they went inside, Lulu sat in the back row, Dovic chose Xavier’s table and Gazza sat in the middle, wondering if he would ever learn to read. Hibiscus was teaching her class on zoom and suddenly all of the students sang “Happy birthday” to their teacher. Hibiscus looked very happy and thanked her class for being so thoughtful.

“Oh boy, oh boy!” said Gazza, “They’re the best class in the whole school.” Dovic agreed and read the new sign that Hibiscus had made. She’d taken out the letters he had used and formed the words: “CORE 5,4 GRATEFUL AWESOME” and they discussed what that meant. Lulu said, “This class is her favourite and Hibiscus is grateful for each one of them.”

At the end of the day, it was windy and wet so Hibiscus made sure Dovic, Lulu and Gazza were wrapped up snugly so they wouldn’t get wet when they went to the car. Hibiscus put on her face mask, made sure her desk was tidy then left the classroom, moving quickly to the car, avoiding the puddles along the way. They were all looking forward to eating birthday cake when they got home and after the weekend, they were all looking forward to seeing students in the classroom.