Feral Truths and Tangled Threads: Library Level Truancy

Or, How I Hid in the Art Room for Two Years and Still Failed Anyway

Feral Truths & Tangled Threads
Raw, personal essays weaving together intimate stories and cultural reflections that uncover the complexities of identity, power, and belonging.

Some people bunked school by leaving. I bunked by staying.

I’d slip out of whatever class I was meant to be in—usually maths or science—and just relocate. To the library. To the back room of the art department. Anywhere the roll wasn’t being taken. The trick was to look like you belonged. Walk with purpose. Carry a folder. If anyone asked, I was on a study period. If no one asked, even better.

At some point, I stopped registering it as bunking. I wasn’t wagging school—I was just spending more time where I actually wanted to be. Where I felt capable.
Where things made sense. I didn’t realise until much later that this was its own quiet form of resistance. Or maybe resignation. Possibly both.

Maths Was the Beginning of the End

I’ve always hated maths. And science—not because they weren’t interesting, but because I couldn’t get my head in the game. I couldn’t see how they would help me. I started school knowing how to count to fifty. But by fifteen, I was in what we called the “cabbage maths” class. You can imagine the vibes.

It was a two-year School C course, slowed down for those they didn’t think would pass. Then, right at the end of the year, they told us to take the exam anyway—“just to see how we went.” I got somewhere in the mid-40s. We hadn’t even covered half the material. Maths just wasn’t my jam.
It was more like expired marmite someone forgot to scrape off the toast.

And that would have been fine, except I loved physics. But physics had a co-requisite: maths. So I couldn’t take it. And I didn’t go back for the second year of maths either. I just... quietly opted out.

The Library, the Art Room, and the Day Mum Walked In

From there, the slow fade began. I started showing up less and hiding more. I had two favourite places: the library, and the back of the art room.

In the library, I’d read. For hours. Quiet, invisible, tucked into corners. I loved the calm. Loved the stillness. It was one of the only spaces where I didn’t feel behind.

Once, mid-bunk, my mum walked in. It was a school library, so it was strange to see her there—chatting to the librarians, trying to borrow a book. I felt a little squeamish, suddenly aware I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. She didn’t know that, of course. But I still slunk down in my chair and buried my face in a novel.
She noticed me. Of course she did. She was my mum.
Sorry, Mum.

Then there was art. Painting was my safe space. Always had been. Funny that I ended up going to art school to become a photographer—but painting? That was my first language. I’d spend full days in that room, avoiding class like it was a communicable disease. It was the one subject I expected to do well in.

So imagine my surprise when I didn’t.

Failing the Thing I Loved

At the time, NCEA art portfolios were marked externally. From what I’ve heard (unverified but plausible), they were laid out in a massive gym in Wellington and judged in thirty-second intervals. Teachers walked past with a stack of numbers in hand and slapped down a grade between one and five.
Mine? Apparently not worth stopping for.
I got 48%.
Didn’t pass.

I had put everything into that work. Spent more time in that room than most people spent in class full stop. I was proud of what I made. But it didn’t land. Maybe the markers didn’t get it. Maybe it was too subtle, or too much, or just not fashionable enough that year. Whatever it was, it gutted me.
Not even maths had made me feel stupid. This did.
It takes a special kind of pain to fail your comfort subject.
Like burning toast and then setting off the fire alarm with your tears.

The “Fairy Pools Incident”

There was only one time I properly bunked—off school grounds, no uniform, full commitment. A group of us girls packed casual clothes in our bags, got changed, and headed to Fairy Pools for the day.

We swam. We laughed. We were brilliant. And then we had to get back in time for the buses—we were country kids, so if we missed the school run, we had no way home.

We were walking back along the main road into Kerikeri when a bus passed us—packed with students from the year above. And standing at the front of the bus, like the ghost of consequences yet to come, was the deputy principal.

But the worst part? A few cars behind the bus was my mum.

In a moment of pure panic, I ducked behind a bush.
Later, she told me if I’d just kept walking, she wouldn’t have even recognised me in the clothes I was wearing.
But I panicked. And I hid.
Which, obviously, gave me away.

The bus ride home was an hour.
Then came the walk. One full kilometre down our gravel driveway.
Plenty of time to stew in dread.

By the time I reached the front door, I’d drafted six different apology speeches and a backup plan to fake my own death.

When I got home, I was grounded for a month. No phone. No privileges. And in a house that had only just gotten a landline back after a few years without one, that felt like solitary confinement. I had no contact with the outside world unless I passed them in the hallway.

School, in contrast, barely reacted.
A quiet chat. A “you’ve never done anything like this before,” and a “you probably feel like a bit of a numpty.”
No detention. Not even a written note home.
They just assumed I’d learned my lesson.
And to be fair—I had.

The Clarinet Schedule Shuffle

Another form of bunking—arguably my most creative—was music. I had itinerant clarinet lessons that rotated weekly through different periods. One week it was period one, the next it might be third or fourth. We were grouped by ability, but I had my own system: avoid science and maths at all costs.

I’d say I had a test, ask to swap periods, or just show up and pretend I’d forgotten the schedule. I wasn’t exactly lying—I was just gently editing reality to favour my own survival. The clarinet teacher didn’t seem to mind.

That year—Year 11—I was also in the concert band. I got a solo for the end-of-year prizegiving. I played it. Nailed it. Felt amazing. Like I had done something that finally counted.

After the performance, the science teacher came up to me. He said,

“I didn’t know you were actually good. I just thought you were trying to get out of science.”

And here’s the wild part: he wasn’t being mean.
He was genuinely impressed. He told me he thought I had a future.
He was shocked—but also sincerely proud.

I mean—he wasn’t wrong.
But still. Ouch.

The “Geography Ego Problem”

One of the weirdest parts of all this was how consistently I got away with it.

I wasn’t sneaking out windows or faking notes. I was just... quietly not turning up. And no one really stopped me. No one hauled me into an office or called home. I kind of just opted out of the parts of life I didn’t like, and everyone seemed weirdly okay with that.

By Year 12, my geography teacher told me not to bother sitting the final exam. I’d been to maybe a handful of classes all year. Fair call.

But I took the internal test anyway—and passed. Not just passed, but got one of the better grades in the class.
Inflated ego? Yes.
Inflated sense of self-worth? Definitely.
Inflated sense of invincibility? Absolutely.

I genuinely thought I was smarter than the system. That I could dip in and out when I pleased, succeed on vibes and instinct alone.
So when the external came around, I didn’t study. I figured I’d already proven my point.

Spoiler: I did not do nearly as well.

It was my villain origin story.
I went in thinking I was the underdog genius.
I came out with a merit and a bruised sense of superiority.

Soft Rebellion

This kind of truancy is hard to detect. I wasn’t ditching school. I wasn’t getting into trouble. I was just slowly pulling myself out of the system from the inside.

By Year 13, I was barely going at all. I’d take entire weeks off. No one really said anything. My mother had reached a point of resignation where she’d stand at my bedroom door in the morning and ask, in a defeated sort of voice,

“Are you going today?”
No.

That was the whole conversation. No fight. No punishment. Just silence and a slow acceptance that I was slipping, and no one could—or would—pull me back in.

I wasn’t where I was meant to be. But I was somewhere.
Usually with a book. Or a paintbrush. Or a clarinet.

It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t strategic. It was just how I coped.

And yeah—I failed the thing I loved.
But I also found out who I was when no one was watching.
And that’s stayed with me longer than any percentage on a results sheet.

Postscript: The Pendulum Swing

It took me a long time to grow out of that version of myself.

The one who avoided, disappeared, did everything on instinct and ran the other way when things felt too hard. The one who quietly opted out and got away with it—until she didn’t.

I’d like to say I found balance, that I learned to regulate, that I became the kind of person who knows how to rest without guilt.

But the truth is, sometimes I think I went too far the other way.

These days, I work. A lot. I always have something on the go—several somethings, usually. I say yes more than I should. I take on too much. I feel guilty when I take a sick day. There’s always another deadline. Another thing I should be doing. Another inbox to check.

It’s like I’m still trying to make up for something. Still trying to prove I’m not lazy, not drifting, not that kid in the art room hiding from algebra.

Some days, I miss her.
She didn’t answer emails.
She didn’t overcommit.
She didn’t get ulcers thinking about unread Slack messages.

She knew how to pause. She knew how to sit quietly with a book and ignore the world. She knew how to vanish without explanation. She was fragile, sure—but she was also kind of free.

I’m not her anymore.
But I carry her.
And she carries me back, now and then, when I forget how to rest.

About the Series

Feral Truths & Tangled Threads invites you into a space where fiercely honest personal narratives meet layered cultural and political reflections. These essays explore how the wild edges of experience connect to broader stories of identity, history, and community.

These are stories that don’t shy away from discomfort or contradiction—holding space for the wild edges and the intricate connections that shape our worlds. Feral Truths & Tangled Threads is an invitation to witness, reckon, and reflect.

About the Author

Hayley Walmsley is a conceptual artist, writer, and curator based in Ōtautahi Christchurch. Whakapapa to Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou, and Ngāti Pākehā, her work explores identity, memory, and decolonial narratives through layered storytelling and cultural critique. She is the founder of Provocation Station, an evolving platform for conceptual art and critical reflection. Recent projects include the exhibition Migratory Patterns, and she has essays forthcoming in SCOPE: Art & Design and Tirou. Through her writing and curatorial practice, she invites audiences to engage with the complexities of place, belonging, and power.