When she looks up from her desk, she feels herself turning cold.
Here it is going to happen now.
From the first day she started teaching here, she knew that this day would come.
So many times did she imagine herself in exactly this situation, try to prepare herself mentally for when it finally happened, but nothing could have prepared her for the numbness that falls over her like a heavy black cloth.
He appeared in her classroom door so suddenly, that she wonders if he does not walk like other people.
The school has been out for more than an hour now but she stayed behind to catch up on some marking.
Now, instead of working in peace, she is confronted by one of her greatest nightmares.
The silence in the building is deafening.
After the noise that seems a constant factor during school hours, the absolute silence that run through the empty halls makes her realize how utterly alone she is at this very moment.
She could scream but that would be in vain and would probably infuriate him and whatever is coming, would be even worse.
Family and friends tried to warn her about coming to teach on the Cape Flats.
"Mitchell's Plain is no place for a white woman," they said.
"You will get into trouble and not even the police will come to help you," she was warned.
But she could not ignore the pull of her conscience.
Seeing the children with their dusty brown faces and hungry eyes, she knew she could not turn her back on them.
So when she was offered the opportunity to teach here, she knew she would take it, no matter the risk.
She knew that no matter how bleak the picture was or how scary the details were that well-meaning people kept relating to her, she would come here.
She would teach.
She would make a difference.
Five years have passed since the day she first walked through the doors of the main building.
In this time she had witnessed so much violence; police finding drugs and homemade weapons when they raided the classrooms every few months.
She had witnessed girls sitting in her class, their pregnant bellies clearly visible to the world to see, on display like a prize they had won in a cruel contest of which the aim was to catch a husband who could help lift her whole family out of the misery of cold and hunger and always lurking homelessness.
Just to find that it was a boobie prize which just left the world with another mouth to feed, another child with a barely literate, single parent who would drown her sorrows in a bottle of cheap liquor for some escape.
And etched in her mind like a burnt-in, never-fading wound, are the memories of students who had died - two murdered and another one dying from a drug overdose.
She becomes aware again of the tall, thin man standing in front of the window, hands in his pockets, staring at the dusty school grounds outside her classroom.
God, he is still just a boy! She knows him well.
It has been three years since he walked into her class the first time.
He has not passed a grade in the last three years.
He is a lot older than his classmates.
They are all scared of him.
A brooding silence always surrounds him.
Even when the rest of the class turns into an unruly mob, he would sit quietly at his desk, facing away from wherever the attention is at that moment, sporting nothing but a frown, it would seem that he was sitting in his own, isolated world where no ruler would be allowed but him.
The fear encompassing her has her sitting quietly, staring up at him.
Fleeting visions of him using his raging fists against a classmate, holding a knife against a girl's throat or his mother coming to school with an eye swollen shut, seeking help for his violent outbursts against her crosses her mind.
Is that what he has planned for her? Her mind goes back to him jumping up, shoving desks aside as he walked out of her class halfway through a lesson today.
He has done it so many times that she just got so fed-up, she did not even bother to let the office know he had left.
But now he was standing here in her classroom, the rest of the building deserted - it was time for payback.
She steels herself against what is to come, telling herself to stay calm and not show her fear.
"Can I help you with something, Justin?" "Miss...
I can't read, Miss.
"
Here it is going to happen now.
From the first day she started teaching here, she knew that this day would come.
So many times did she imagine herself in exactly this situation, try to prepare herself mentally for when it finally happened, but nothing could have prepared her for the numbness that falls over her like a heavy black cloth.
He appeared in her classroom door so suddenly, that she wonders if he does not walk like other people.
The school has been out for more than an hour now but she stayed behind to catch up on some marking.
Now, instead of working in peace, she is confronted by one of her greatest nightmares.
The silence in the building is deafening.
After the noise that seems a constant factor during school hours, the absolute silence that run through the empty halls makes her realize how utterly alone she is at this very moment.
She could scream but that would be in vain and would probably infuriate him and whatever is coming, would be even worse.
Family and friends tried to warn her about coming to teach on the Cape Flats.
"Mitchell's Plain is no place for a white woman," they said.
"You will get into trouble and not even the police will come to help you," she was warned.
But she could not ignore the pull of her conscience.
Seeing the children with their dusty brown faces and hungry eyes, she knew she could not turn her back on them.
So when she was offered the opportunity to teach here, she knew she would take it, no matter the risk.
She knew that no matter how bleak the picture was or how scary the details were that well-meaning people kept relating to her, she would come here.
She would teach.
She would make a difference.
Five years have passed since the day she first walked through the doors of the main building.
In this time she had witnessed so much violence; police finding drugs and homemade weapons when they raided the classrooms every few months.
She had witnessed girls sitting in her class, their pregnant bellies clearly visible to the world to see, on display like a prize they had won in a cruel contest of which the aim was to catch a husband who could help lift her whole family out of the misery of cold and hunger and always lurking homelessness.
Just to find that it was a boobie prize which just left the world with another mouth to feed, another child with a barely literate, single parent who would drown her sorrows in a bottle of cheap liquor for some escape.
And etched in her mind like a burnt-in, never-fading wound, are the memories of students who had died - two murdered and another one dying from a drug overdose.
She becomes aware again of the tall, thin man standing in front of the window, hands in his pockets, staring at the dusty school grounds outside her classroom.
God, he is still just a boy! She knows him well.
It has been three years since he walked into her class the first time.
He has not passed a grade in the last three years.
He is a lot older than his classmates.
They are all scared of him.
A brooding silence always surrounds him.
Even when the rest of the class turns into an unruly mob, he would sit quietly at his desk, facing away from wherever the attention is at that moment, sporting nothing but a frown, it would seem that he was sitting in his own, isolated world where no ruler would be allowed but him.
The fear encompassing her has her sitting quietly, staring up at him.
Fleeting visions of him using his raging fists against a classmate, holding a knife against a girl's throat or his mother coming to school with an eye swollen shut, seeking help for his violent outbursts against her crosses her mind.
Is that what he has planned for her? Her mind goes back to him jumping up, shoving desks aside as he walked out of her class halfway through a lesson today.
He has done it so many times that she just got so fed-up, she did not even bother to let the office know he had left.
But now he was standing here in her classroom, the rest of the building deserted - it was time for payback.
She steels herself against what is to come, telling herself to stay calm and not show her fear.
"Can I help you with something, Justin?" "Miss...
I can't read, Miss.
"