by R. A. Spratt
‘I get that your family doesn’t love you,’ said Patel, ‘but how did you get expelled?’
‘Patel, take your chair and sit five metres from the doorway!’ ordered Mrs Cannon. ‘If you are going to be emotionally insensitive, you do not deserve to be in disgrace so close to the door.’
Patel dragged his chair back.
‘Well, I didn’t do anything wrong,’ said Friday. ‘All I did was uncover a scandal.’
Ian smiled. ‘A leopard never changes its spots.’
‘Why would it?’ said Mirabella. ‘Leopard print is totally in right now.’
‘Every year at Collège Du Léman there is a big academic competition,’ said Friday, beginning her explanation. ‘A team of students, one from every grade at the academy, takes on a team of eminent academics from around the world.’
‘Why would the academics agree to that?’ asked Ian.
‘They get paid a lot of money,’ said Friday. ‘Plus they get a free week-long holiday in the Swiss Alps.’
‘And you were selected to represent year 8?’ guessed Susan excitedly. Like Mrs Cannon, she was really getting caught up in Friday’s dramatic tale.
‘No,’ said Friday with a wry smile. ‘I wasn’t even considered.’
‘Really?’ said Mirabella incredulously. ‘That school had a kid even more nerdy than you?’
‘Yes,’ nodded Friday. ‘Rose Alvarez. She was only thirteen but she was already the number one Scrabble player in Peru. We were about even on mathematics and the sciences. But she had an edge on me in the humanities.’
‘Let me guess,’ said Ian, ‘because she had humanity.’
‘Bravo! Nice word play, Wainscott,’ said Mrs Cannon, applauding. ‘But don’t distract Barnes from her story.’ She pointed and glared at Ian to emphasise her point.
‘Rose was picked ahead of me,’ said Friday, ‘so she was off training with the team every day. It really was a big deal at Collège Du Léman. The competition would get a lot of international press. Many parents only sent their children there because of the reputation of the competition, so the school threw all their resources behind the competitors. The students loved it too. The players were spontaneously applauded as they walked about the school.’
‘I can see how that would get on your nerves,’ said Ian.
‘Actually, it didn’t bother me at all,’ said Friday. ‘While the players were the focus of attention, I could blend into the background and be ignored. People totally forgot about the weird new kid. It suited me just fine.’
‘So what happened?’ asked Melanie.
‘The competition day arrived,’ said Friday. ‘Academics flew in from all around the world. An astronomer from Chile, a botanist from Madagascar, a nuclear physicist from France, a mathematician from Japan and a Shakespeare scholar from Botswana.’
‘The Shakespeare scholar wasn’t from England?’ called Patel from his distant position.
‘No, all the best English scholarship is done in distant countries where the art of communication in the English language is still held in high regard,’ explained Mrs Cannon, calling out of the door to Patel.
‘Is that why you never teach us anything?’ asked Susan. ‘Because you don’t hold the English language in high regard?’
‘Oh no, dear,’ said Mrs Cannon, shaking her head and smiling to herself. ‘I never teach you anything because I’m lazy, and because I think it’s far better for you to figure it all out on your own. What’s the point in me telling you when you could learn for yourself?’
‘Every student at Collège Du Léman had to turn up to watch,’ continued Friday. ‘The student team sat behind a table on the left of the stage and the academics sat at a table to the right. And it began.’
‘It sounds so boring,’ said Mirabella, rolling her eyes.
‘It was actually,’ agreed Friday. ‘The competition went on for over three hours. It was so tedious. I spent the first hour analysing the body language of the academics. The second hour counting the number of timber panels in the ceiling and calculating the lumber costs of construction. Then in the third hour I tried to focus on listening to the bird calls outside. I kept hearing this high-pitched whistling call and it was bugging me. It was unlike any bird I’d heard before. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I was trying to work out if it was some variety of tit or shrike that I’d never come across.’
Even from a distance they could hear Patel chuckling. ‘She said “tit”.’
‘Okay, you had us with the scandal, the evil Peruvian thirteen-year-old genius and the helicopter excursions,’ said Mrs Cannon, assuming teacher mode. ‘But if you’re going to talk about bird calls, you’re going to lose your audience.’
‘But bird calls are interesting,’ protested Friday. ‘They are uniform and predictable. Some birds make a single call like a crow’s “caw”. While other birds have a double call like the owl’s “twit-twoo”. But they don’t vary. An owl doesn’t say “twit” and a crow never says “caw-caw”. This bird I could hear was mixing it up. Sometimes it would call once, sometimes twice, sometimes three times and sometimes four.’
‘So, big deal! There was a confused bird,’ said Mirabella. ‘What’s that got to do with the story?’
‘The competition was a multiple choice quiz,’ said Friday. ‘Each question had four alternative answers, options A through D.’
‘I still don’t get it,’ said Trea Babcock. If she’d had a smartphone she would have started playing with it at this point, she was beginning to get bored.
‘The bird was cheating! It was feeding the student team the correct answers,’ said Friday.
‘Huh?’ said Mirabella, encapsulating the sentiment of most of the class.
Friday explained slowly, so everyone could follow the leap in reasoning she was about to make. ‘When the bird called once, someone from the student team would hit the buzzer and say “A”. If it called twice they’d say “B” and so on.’
‘But how did a bird know the answers if the quiz was so hard?’ asked Mirabella. She was almost wincing at the effort of trying to understand this concept.
Mrs Cannon looked at Mirabella. ‘Sometimes I worry that somehow your physical beauty has clouded your ability to use your brain.’
‘It wasn’t a real bird,’ explained Friday, she had more patience for teaching than her teacher. ‘Someone was making the bird noises. It had to be a student with a smartphone who was looking up the answers.’
‘And none of the teachers noticed?’ asked Ian sceptically.
‘No, that is the brilliant part of the scheme,’ said Friday, she was starting to get excited by the scientific detail. ‘The bird call was too high pitched. None of the adults in the room could hear it. Hearing deteriorates at a consistent rate. The average twelve-to eighteen-year-old can hear frequencies in the 18,000 to 22,000 megahertz range. But the youngest teacher in the room was thirty-two. And a thirty-two-year-old can only hear frequencies 26,000 megahertz and below. The average age of the academic team was mid-fifties. They would only be able to hear frequencies 32,000 megahertz and below. It’s brilliant. Through high frequency sound you can send messages that only children can hear.’
‘Children and dogs,’ said Melanie.
‘Yes, children and dogs,’ agreed Friday. ‘But dogs would probably struggle with the multiple-choice quiz format.’
‘What happened next?’ asked Mrs Cannon. ‘You can’t end your story on a cliffhanger, that’s just cruel. Were the students expelled? Did the academics fly into a rage? Was there a fist fight?’
‘What did you do?’ called Patel, from his distant position.
‘Shush,’ chided Mrs Cannon. ‘You’re still in disgrace.’
‘Sorry, Mrs Cannon,’ called Patel.
‘But do tell us what you did,’ said Mrs Cannon as she turned back to Friday.
‘I leapt to my feet,’ said Friday, ‘and accused the student team of cheating.’
‘You did that at a school you’d only just transferred
to, where no-one liked you, just because you heard bird calls?’ marvelled Trea.
‘Yes,’ said Friday, but then she frowned. ‘The next part, however, did not go as I expected. The headmaster yelled at me to shut up and get out.’
‘It was a lot like our school then,’ called Patel from outside.
‘Except he yelled it in German,’ said Friday.
‘Such an angry language,’ said Mrs Cannon, shaking her head.
‘I turned to the entire student body and said, “Come on, you all must have heard the whistles. Tell him it’s true”,’ said Friday.
‘And you were vindicated?’ asked Melanie hopefully.
‘No, they all just stared at me blankly,’ said Friday. ‘It was obvious what I had to do.’
‘Slink from the room in embarrassment?’ guessed Trea.
‘No,’ said Friday. ‘I needed more proof. I needed to find out who was doing the whistling. It had to be someone who couldn’t clearly be seen from the stage. Someone who was blocked from the view of the teaching staff. Someone unusually short.’
‘There was a midget at the school!’ declared Mirabella, proud that she had figured something out.
‘Yes, actually, there was,’ said Friday. ‘Technically I believe they prefer to be called “little people”. But she was sitting in the front row so it can’t have been her.’
‘So who was it?’ asked Melanie.
‘It was easily deduced from statistics,’ said Friday. ‘The tallest people on earth come from the Netherlands, and one of the shortest nations is Peru.’
‘But Rose was up on stage,’ said Ian. He had been following along.
‘But her twin brother, Nico, was not,’ said Friday. ‘He was sitting in the middle of the year 8s behind a particularly tall lacrosse player. Timing was crucial. I ran over and tackled him before he could dispose of any evidence. Luckily, he panicked and threw the whistle up in the air as I smashed into him. It hit a fan blade and ricocheted away, embedding itself in the pine panelling of the wall. Being Peruvian and therefore diminutive, I was soon able to wrestle his mobile phone away from him. I brought up his browsing history and there were all the answers to all the questions that had been asked.’
‘And yet, after all these heroics, somehow you ended up back here?’ observed Ian.
‘Yes, well, at that point things got complicated very quickly,’ said Friday. ‘It turns out Peruvian ambassadors are very litigious. Nico’s father immediately filed a lawsuit to sue the school, and he had charges pressed against me for assault. The headmaster then expelled me for bringing the school into disrepute.’
‘But you uncovered a cheating scam,’ said Melanie.
‘I know,’ said Friday, with a tilt of her head. ‘From the lack of shock when the headmaster found out, I suspect that he knew all along. It was a vast conspiracy. All the teachers knew about it. Even some of the academics knew about it. They didn’t care, it was a win-win for everybody. The school got a publicity boost, the academics got a lovely holiday. The last thing they wanted was a twelve-year-old girl uncovering the fact that the whole thing was a fraud.’
‘Couldn’t you sue them for wrongful expulsion?’ asked Melanie.
‘Yes, I probably could,’ said Friday, ‘but it’s hard to do that from a police cell. In the end, the Peruvian ambassador and the school agreed that they wouldn’t press charges if I left the country immediately. And that is why I’m back here.’
‘But what about your family?’ said Melanie. ‘Won’t they all have to leave Switzerland now?’
‘No,’ said Friday. ‘Quasar got married to a Swiss mathematician. They are expecting a baby. That baby can be the anchor baby now.’
‘You’re redundant,’ said Ian.
‘Yes. Yes, I am,’ said Friday, meeting Ian’s eye.
‘Welcome back,’ said Ian, with one of his top nine most endearing smiles.
‘Thank you,’ said Friday. She looked out at all her classmates: her friends, her rivals, her eccentric teacher and her favourite good-looking arch nemesis/love interest. It felt so comfortable to be back here again. ‘Highcrest really is my home now.’
‘I’m impressed, Barnes. A wonderful story! Bravo!’ said Mrs Cannon. She turned on the rest of the class. ‘For homework, I expect you all do something that interesting in your own personal lives.’
‘And then do we have to write about it?’ asked Harvey, horrified at the scale of the assignment.
‘Goodness no,’ said Mrs Cannon. ‘Just having the experience will be exhausting enough. I wouldn’t set you too much of a work load. That would be hypocritical.’
‘I’m pleased you’re back,’ said Melanie, giving Friday yet another hug.
‘So am I,’ said Ian.
‘You are?’ asked Melanie. ‘We’ve been waiting for you to admit it for ages.’
‘Of course I am. There are four headmasters arriving tomorrow,’ said Ian. ‘It’s going to be fun watching how long it takes for you to drive them all mad.’
Friday had a hard time getting to sleep that night. This was partly due to the tumult whizzing round in her brain. Rejection by her family, rejection by Europe’s most elite high school and now the hostility of Highcrest Academy was a lot to handle. Although, on the whole, she did find the familiar hostility comforting. But the main reason she couldn’t get to sleep was jet lag. Her brain was still on Swiss time. So it was long past midnight and she found herself staring at the ceiling of her new dorm room.
Normally Friday would read a book. But she had read all the books she had in her suitcase. The rest of her belongings were being shipped back from Switzerland. She just had the small suitcase of clothes that she travelled with. There was nothing terribly entertaining about three pairs of jeans, a few t-shirts and two brown cardigans. Melanie was no help. She was predictably fast asleep.
Friday decided to get up and explore their new room. In terms of space and furniture it was almost precisely identical to their last one. But the location was different. This room had a large double window that overlooked the front of the school. It gave a view of the long sweeping driveway, and the lawn and the ornamental gardens on either side. This dorm room was also on the second floor, and when Friday opened the windows and leaned out she was pleasantly surprised to discover a weather vane fastened to the ridge pole directly above them. A weather vane that would be perfect for fastening a rope ladder. And she just happened to have a rope ladder at the bottom of her suitcase. She believed in being prepared.
Ten minutes later, after nearly falling out of the window only three times, Friday had thrown up a rope and pulled the ladder into position so that she could climb up onto the tiles. Luckily the pitch of the roof wasn’t too steep and it hadn’t rained recently, so by clinging to the tiles with white-knuckled fear, Friday was able to scramble to the top.
Once her hyperventilating eased and Friday was able to turn around, the view was spectacular. As she clung firmly to the weather vane, Friday had a 360-degree vista of the entire school surroundings. The swamp to the south, the woods to the east, and the other woods to the west. And when she turned back to the north she could see all the way down the driveway to the school gates in the distance.
Highcrest Academy had seriously impressive grounds. But that was not the view Friday had come to admire. She took off her backpack and took out a telescope. Venus would be in the northern sky and she wanted to have a look at it.
Friday found planets comforting, because unlike most of the people in her life, planets could be relied on to turn up at precise locations at predictable intervals. Friday didn’t need a compass to set her telescope. She knew the school gates were due north from her position. If she found them, then raised her telescope fourteen degrees, she would see Venus.
But Friday never got to see the solar system’s second planet from the Sun, because when she trained her telescope on the school gates she saw something much more fascinating.
‘Melanie! Melanie, wake up!’ Friday cried. Friday then rea
lised she was still up on the roof and Melanie couldn’t hear her. Luckily, getting down from a roof is a lot easier than climbing up. She slid down the tiles like she was on a slippery dip and clambered back down the rope ladder in seconds.
‘Melanie, you’ve got to wake up,’ called Friday, as she swung in through the window.
‘Oh my goodness,’ said Melanie, sitting up in bed. ‘Are you Peter Pan? Because if you are, you look a lot like my roommate, Friday.’
‘I am Friday,’ said Friday.
‘Then why are you swinging in through the window like Peter Pan?’ asked Melanie.
‘There’s no time for that,’ said Friday. ‘Someone is trying to break into the school. Come on!’
The girls hurried down the corridor towards the dorm supervisor’s room. Well, Friday hurried, Melanie ambled unenthusiastically behind her.
Friday pounded on Mr Franklin’s door. He was even less impressed than Melanie to be woken up.
‘What is it, girl? What do you want?’ asked Mr Franklin. ‘If you’ve set fire to popcorn cooking it with a hair dryer in your room, frankly I don’t care. Just put out the flames with a woollen jumper and come and see me in the morning.’
Mr Franklin started to close the door but Friday shoved her foot into the door jamb. This hurt.
‘Ow!’ said Friday.
‘Allow me to close this door,’ said Mr Franklin. ‘Unless you want me to report you for gross insubordination.’
‘You need to call the police and the Head master,’ said Friday. ‘Someone is trying to break into the school at the main gates.’
‘What?’ said Mr Franklin.
‘There’s no time to explain,’ said Friday, already starting to run towards the staircase. ‘Just call the police!’ she yelled over her shoulder.
As Friday and Melanie ran down the driveway towards the gates they could see that the culprit had not yet managed to open them.
‘They can’t undo the lock,’ said Melanie.
‘It’s a top-level gate and lock,’ said Friday. ‘The security was increased when Princess Ingrid came here.’
