by J S Hollis
clara pushed a glass of water away from her. “my very strong view is that school is as much about community and friendship as it is about results. these vschools breed workers, not individuals. sebastian, you need to be with other real students.”
“k.”
“i know you think i dont understand how your world works but trust me, i work with it every day.”
“their generation does have a different view of community,” cecil said.
“thats true. but, in all honesty, i fear he will hide away at a vschool.”
“thats the risk.“
“and every home taught kid ive ever met found it difficult to adjust. i worry sebastian will become too insular.”
“well going to school with his neighbours could be seen as insular, and vschool pupils are not exactly home taught.”
“you know what i mean, cecil.”
“do you have anything to add, seb?”
he shook his head.
“i think i am going to have to go with your mother on this one.”
S knew cecil would side with clara. clara plotted Ss life. cecil had other lives to control. but given the significance of the decision, S felt guilty for not doing more to convince his parents otherwise. if he had won the argument, he wouldnt have been lying on this camp bed wishing it would swallow him up.
but he couldnt be to blame. cecil hadnt stabbed clara because of him. at least, he didnt think so. although maybe he would have liked to have been the cause. it had to be something else. something so significant, he was unable to grasp it. something adult. his father was a rational man after all. cecil must have had a reason – a good reason. all the talk of jealousy and stress was way off. was there ever a good reason to kill someone? there were two options: in self defence or for their own good. from what he knew, clara hadnt attacked cecil. and why would being dead be good for clara?
S rubbed his eyes and shifted around the camp bed, unable to find an upright position that didnt leave pins and needles in some limb. he moved to the chair by the desk and asked W to show him his dad. his vision was swamped by the stubbly face of cecil, cecils eyes focusing on something below Ss field of view. S drew back and found cecil in his familiar navy shirt and grey trousers, reading a urine yellow paperback with a faded green, yellow and black front cover.
was this the face of a murderer? there were no unusual twitches. cecils eyes werent darker than S remembered. maybe they were lighter. twinkling seas in the orange bioluminescence. perhaps the focus on the book was abnormal? but cecil looked comfortable. as relaxed as a man sitting upright could look. the book was cradled in his hands. and while the stubble was uncharacteristic, it made cecil look more like a cuddly bear. if he was not quite cecil, he wasnt a murderer either.
S zoomed in closer to scan for clues, but the whole landscape became foreign. a pore dotted desert, scratched and scrubby, shocked with the palliative beauty of two jade oases and a red sea. cecil could have been anyone, anything from close up.
and so what if cecil looked normal? S knew cecil was a killer. but had he always been one and deceived S or had something changed? S wanted to know more about the Event but also never wanted to hear about it again. he feared it would define cecil irrespective of the many other things cecil had done. but could cecil avoid having his life seen through the window of that one moment?
cecil didnt appear to be concerned. he had already been judged. he was free. he had been handed a utopia of solitude in his cell. he had avoided the reality of claras death. no condolences, no mourning. the first punishment for murder should have been arranging the funeral of the victim.
and prison had a certain grey charm. monastic. cecil would have plenty of time for reflection. there were limits on what cecil could do but S wasnt so convinced of the merits of liberty. choices were the seeds of headaches.
S did worry that cecil would get lonely though. S recalled a meditation summer camp he had been sent on a few years previously. earaids and eyescreens had been forbidden. each day began and ended with an hour of silent reflection. at first, he had enjoyed the freedom to be socially antisocial. but then, with nothing else to think about, his mind began to eat away at him and he found he desparately wanted a conversation.
S swiped cecil and began to watch an episode of true life stories. walter feng was the individual unlucky enough to have his life cut up into a bitesize chunk to entertain the masses. as S watched walters riches to rags story, he received a message from ariadne: “dont do a feng.”
“if only i had the money,” he replied.
“you will soon.”
“my dads not dead.”
“what? no inheritance?”
“nope.”
“ah. well. youll be on the next ep.”
S didnt laugh. was it even a joke? maybe one day a team of researchers would go back through his familys life and turn it into a seamless thirty minute episode. people would watch it and ponder all the ways his life was different or similar to their own.
“poor walter,” S said to ariadne before closing his eyes.
entry 7
S swung onto the final road to pentonville college and picked up speed. the familiar tarmac blurred beneath his feet, changing hue as he breezed through the school gate and the abandoned quad.
he was desperate to be back in school. the Event hadnt just been painful – an internal black hole that sucked up all thoughts and left a deep hunger – it had also been devastatingly dull. swathes of time were spent sitting around and nattering about nothing.
the boredom seeped into the porous bedrock of life. it was impossible to eat properly. you couldnt go somewhere good for dinner. it had to be somewhere local, discreet and comfortable. if something was cooked at home, it was quick and easy. sometimes people brought food over. but it was never salad. it was cakes, cookies or fried food. everyone dressed drably too. afraid that bright colours might indicate inopportune happiness. at least S could be grateful he didnt have to organise the funeral.
S arrived at school early but the bike store was already occupied by one of the younger boys. the boy was struggling to lift his bike up onto the rack and S was about to offer to help. but then the boy left his frame resting precariously against the wall and edged past S, fiddling with the straps on his helmet.
S watched the boy dawdle away. waiting for sufficient distance to be established before he followed. the boy turned around.
“im really sorry about your mum,” he said to the floor.
“thank you … rashid. no need to be sorry.”
“i mean im sorry that you have to go through this. i couldnt bear to lose my mum.”
“yeh, its not your fault.”
“you have to say sorry though, dont you?”
“i guess. thanks again.”
S didnt check. he knew rashid had been told to say something. as if S cared whether or not he received condolences from random schoolkids. who were the condolences for anyway?
S plotted a path to the classroom to ensure minimal human contact. approaching the doors of the main building, he slowed down to allow lyra to walk by first.
he had hardly spoken to lyra since the previous summer. she used to be the fourth member of Ss crew along with ariadne and eugene but an argument over ariadnes veil had sent them in different directions. S hadnt been there for the argument but he had watched it since. ariadne had come into school wearing a white veil that covered her face.
“is that a joke?” lyra had asked, when ariadne sat next to her in the classroom.
“good morning to you too.”
lyra picked up the veil to look at ariadnes face.
“hello. how are you? is this a joke?”
“no its not.”
“why are you wearing it then?” ariadne pushed lyras hand away.
“you cant tell me im the first person you have see
n wearing one of these.”
“no but the first quasi intelligent person. why are you doing it?”
“i like it. it gives me the feeling of privacy so i can be myself.”
“oh who have you been all this time?”
“you know what i mean.”
“just be yourself. ”
“its not that easy.”
“i do whatever i want to do.”
“yeh, youre such a rebel.”
“im not saying im a rebel, but i do what i want to do. you are doing what youre told to do.”
“ok, miss independent. i want to talk to someone else.”
ariadne got up and took the seat next to eugene.
despite eugenes attempts to make peace (S didnt get involved), ariadne and lyra didnt speak to each other for the remaining two weeks of term. during the summer, lyra started to engage in demeaning sexual practices, including allowing men to ejaculate on her body. the following uproar on W didnt dissuade her. for a month, she tried to continue to hang out with S and eugene but the relationship felt uncomfortable. they couldnt condone her behaviour. she couldnt expect protection from mainstream opinion while being ejaculated on. so she had to buy into the whole deviant image. she hung out with other deviants. she tightened her clothing so that the abstract shapes of her breasts and buttocks were hard to ignore. she began to wear makeup in addition to carefully manipulating the public appearance of her face on W (just in case people disapplied the public settings to see her real face). and most difficult of all for S, she only listened to soul music.
S had felt bad for gravitating away from lyra but, like her, he needed the protection of an identity, of being a norm. but the Event had made S feel like a proper outsider for the first time, which made him feel more guilty for pushing lyra away. he hoped she would continue down the corridor without speaking to him. but she turned towards him and there was no escape.
“spec.”
“hi, lye.”
“im so, so sorry about your mum.”
“kind of you to say so, i just need to—”
“let me know if you want to talk about it.”
“of course, thanks.”
she opened her arms and pulled S in tight. her face felt good against his cheek and the waft of roses filled his nostrils.
S carefully removed himself from the embrace. “thanks, lye – see you in class.”
S entered the empty classroom and wondered whether he had been too tactical about his return. he had feared arriving in a full room that fell silent upon his entry. instead he had opened himself up to a barrage of condolences. was there a better way? he took a wooden seat at the back of the room and opened a screen showing the material his class had covered the previous week.
seconds later, he saw eugene and ariadne enter the room behind the translucent writing. “ah, look who it is,” eugene said. “welcome back.”
“thanks.”
“does it feel weird?”
“its only been a week.”
“how have you been doing?”
“k.” S tried to read the first of the lines hovering in front of him again.
“time is the greatest healer,” ariadne said.
eugene shook his head. “why did you have to say that?”
“what is wrong with it?” she pulled out one of her long black hairs from beneath her veil and cast it onto the floor.
“spec doesnt want to be told that his only hope is time.”
“i just meant things are going to get better.”
“maybe he doesnt want to be healed.”
“things do tend to get better with time,” ariadne said. “i know it is not the same but i felt that way after my grandfathers death.”
“its not really healing though. more like filler.”
“ok, time is the greatest filler.”
“no, times the only filler. nothing else you can do about death.”
ariadne rolled her neck. “i am sorry, spec. we shouldnt argue.”
S turned away from the unread text to look at ariadne. “please argue,” he said.
“have you been watching the news?”
“not really.”
“really? we will have to get you a new nickname if youre not on top of things.”
“it just doesnt feel right.”
the rest of the class was filtering in. they were sitting down and looking over. each of them waiting for a moment to come and say their piece.
eugene sat on the desk and scanned the classroom regally until his black arrowhead nose settled on S. “i saw you bumped into lye, ” he said.
“yeh.”
“awkward?”
“no.”
“thinking about becoming a deviant?”
“no. but maybe there is something in not being a norm.”
eugenes face shifted into a frown. “shes been having a tough time applying to unis but” – he looked at ariadne – “maybe we should hang out with lye more.”
ariadne didnt bite. she put her hand on Ss shoulder. “do you know theres a special assembly today?” she asked.
“for what?”
“for you. well, your mum.”
“great.”
the headmistress messaged S at that moment. “would you mind coming to my office?”
the headmistress met S at the entrance to her office.
“we better go straight to assembly.”
“k.”
they began to walk down the corridor. the presence of the headmistress drove everyone else away.
“first, i would like to repeat what i said in my message to you the other day. we are all here to help. you mustnt see this as a lone struggle.”
“thanks.”
“second, as youve been told, we plan to say something at assembly about your mother. i hope thats fine.”
“sure.”
“i know it probably isnt easy for you to hear but we wanted to acknowledge her contribution.”
“understood.”
“i also thought you might want to sit up on stage with me during the speech.”
“k.”
“we really want to show that we are thinking about you and your family during this difficult time.”
they arrived at the hall, climbed up onto the podium and took the two seats waiting for them. S hadnt previously been on stage during assembly. his first achievement in life was having his mother murdered. maybe it would be his only achievement.
they sat for a while, watching the rows fill with chatting students. S avoided eye contact. he browsed the details appearing above the heads of the new entrants to the room:
… Lloyd Fisher, 14, reads sci fi …
… Orphelia Przutka, 13, second fastest crawl in her age group (London) …
the headmistress stood up and the noise drained away. “good morning, everyone. i hope you all had a wonderful weekend. there were many achievements over the last week that will be recognised later in our highlights reel. as i have said before, i am very proud to be in charge of such a hardworking, talented and moral group of young people. but before we get onto that i would like to talk about clara stanhope, who you will know was the mother of sebastian and who passed away last week. i had the pleasure of knowing clara well, and she was a wonderful woman without—”
S held his hands together and changed tact. he tried to count the eyes looking up at him from the assembly floor. if he counted them, they couldnt hurt him.
“her work on mind games entertained millions of people across the globe, including myself – yes, headteachers play games too.”
but what if all the eyes focusing on him could hurt him? what if they concentrated the light in some imperceptible way that messed with his mind?
conscious that they were all watching him, he raised hi
s hand and pretended to scratch his forehead, while shading his eyes.
“she helped drive the mindfulness society, here in this school. many of you have enjoyed and benefitted from the fruit of her work.”
“and sebastian” – S pulled his hand down from his face – “i hope you dont mind me saying, she was a strikingly beautiful woman – which is saying something for a woman born before selection.”
the audience laughed and S tried to look content.
“please can you all give sebastian his space. he is putting on a brave face now but this is not an easy time for him. let him be a normal schoolboy. the eyes of the world are watching us.
“i now invite miss rawls onto the stage to give you this weeks announcements.”
they watched miss rawls skip up to the stage, two stairs at a time. she turned to the audience.
“thank you, miss tuppenham. as you will all no doubt know, we have a concert here this evening as a part of a nationwide celebration of english composers …”
S thought about what ariadne had said: “time is the greatest healer.” time. the word seemed inconsequential. certainly not enough to carry the weight of its meaning. ime time. ti me. tim. in time or in time. in time, in time. wouldnt things be better outside time where there was no past, present or future? where clara was alive and dead and didnt yet exist?
cecil had done his best to fill a timeless space. there but not there. dead but undead.
S looked up and saw that the rows were rushing to get out into the central concourse. why were they in such a rush? what did they want to finish? if they finished it, there would be something else to finish.
dr monkton was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. “im so sorry about your mum.”
“thanks.” for a moment, dr monktons tone left S wondering whether clara had in fact died of natural causes rather than from a fatal wound. the death and the Event had become detached. but did he expect someone to initiate the “your dads a murderer” chat? did he want them to?
the absence was conspicuous. S didnt want cecil to disappear. what if S brought cecil up in the next conversation he had? would it clear the air or just push people away? (was that a bad thing?) S toyed with the idea. he knew he would never be the one to launch that particular grenade. he couldnt face the squirming, the extraneous talk or having to really think about—
