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46
October slumps onward. Detention after detention is served after what goes around the school as The Fight of the Century. I’m startled to find the gremlins watching me with a new sense of reverence in their eyes, and I’m informed by Danny that during my momentary breakdown trying to force Li to see logic, I did in fact get in some rather impressive karate-like chops that I don’t remember serving.
As expected, Li and Arabella have broken all contact with me. I’ve been properly ostracized from the girls, but as this has been happening since my first days at Lochkelvin, I try to reassure myself that I couldn’t care less.
This time, however, it feels different. Final. Even as I slope up to the girls’ tower alone, Arabella doesn’t bother to cough loudly or eagerly greet me just to tell me off. That in itself feels wrong. She shuns me during politics class, even choosing to sit furthest away from me at a brand-new desk which Dr. Moncrieff informs me, sounding puzzled himself as he takes in the extravagant bruising across my face, is for her own safety — like she thinks I’m about to stab her in front of the whole class with my pen. It’s rich from someone who left the fight immaculately untouched.
Still, it means I get a desk to myself. Finlay and Rory occasionally swap in and out of the seat next to me, and I find myself enjoying politics more now than ever before, no longer having to waste energy processing and ignoring Arabella’s unconcealed disgust. This should have happened months ago. But then bullies have a habit of wearing you down until the moment you snap.
Detentions are ineffective. At one point, all the chiefs are held in the same room, which makes the whole thing feel more like a party than a punishment. They can’t expel us, because ultimately what Rory says goes, but theycanserve us detentions indefinitely, and this seems to be their master plan.
Finlay seems not to care about school anymore. His experience at St. Camford appears to have soured him, and the punishment meted out to him for brawling with one of their students has meant his detention record now rivals Rory’s. Rory calculates that he and Finlay have somehow managed to accrue enough detentions together that to sit them all would mean they’re stuck in Baxter’s office every evening until they’re twenty-two. “Jammy bitch cannae get enough o’ us,” Finlay says within earshot of Baxter, which earns him a further week of detentions on the spot, and in turn makes Finlay laugh.
We write lines, usually different ones each time, and I know they’re attempts to brainwash us.I must follow the curriculum at all times.I must do what I am told.I must not ask questions in class.I must respect the authority of Lochkelvin teachers.And, in one extreme circumstance,I must not spill spotted dick over first year students— which was entirely accidental, not that Hodgson believed it, purely because it involved Luke. I trace the letters diligently, my mind blurring them into abstract shapes, as I refuse to let their words affect me.
It’s as we’re leaving one of these detentions that I muster the courage to raise what happened to me during my fight with Li.
I’ve been flipping it over in my mind every night since. I still haven’t forgotten it, the white-hot strength that had soared through my veins, as angelic and scary as the message I’d spoken. “‘People lose,’” I recite faithfully to Rory, toying nervously with my fingers, “‘but systems don’t.’ Does that mean anything to you?”
His face is neutral. “It sounds like the concept of political equilibrium.”
“Yes. Like, rebalancing. I mentioned that, too.”
We’re on the first floor, gazing thoughtfully across at the golden statue. I’ve told Rory everything about my fight with Li, and again he seems uncharacteristically cagey, the same way he’d been when I’d tested the weight of the enormous stone at the Highland Games and had managed, against all the odds, to lift it. I still assume it had been a prank.
And yet…
“Do you think there’s more to it?” I ask, a verbal prod when Rory gives me an earful of silence.
After a long moment considering the statue, Rory murmurs, “It was made right here in Lochkelvin. The statue. By an artist who attended Lochkelvin.” As interesting as his diversion into art history is, I don’t quite understand its relevance. “The outer casing is metallic but inside… inside, the skeleton of the lion and the unicorn is pure Lochkelvin stone.” He pauses. “People assume it’s the metal that’s the valuable part. They’re wrong.”
I stare at him, expecting more. When nothing is offered, I say, “And?”
His lips purse. He looks uneasy. “And nothing, little saint,” he says in a tired voice, but it’s his eyes that say,And everything.
I mull over his words that night, as the wind howls and the stars glint in the distance like snowflakes. The weather has pivoted sharply over recent days, and what had been a mild chill has plummeted severely to freezing temperatures. Each morning I wake with a red nose and red fingers, and pull the blankets tight over myself, lethargic from the cold and unwilling to move.
The skeleton… is pure Lochkelvin stone.
Two days before Hallowe’en, I join the chiefs for breakfast. I try to ignore the gremlins’ eyes, all of whom seem to think it’s fine to just…watch me. At least it’s supposed to be flattery these days, but it’s somewhat disquieting to eat breakfast with several pairs of eyes drinking you in. Porridge is already a pretty messy dish, after all.
When Rory catches them staring, he snaps his fingers and gestures to them to look away. And only at his command do they obey. He seems to be in a dark mood, and it’s not remedied by Finlay fluffing out his copy ofThe Guardianand saying, “D’ye want tae hear whit’s happenin’ in Lond—?”
“No.”
Finlay glances up at him in surprise. “D’ye no’ care?”
“I’m sick of startingmyweek with news about my father,” Rory snaps, grabbing an apple from the nearest fruit bowl. “I’m sick of him invading my life, my space, when I don’t want him there.” He takes an angry crunch out of the red apple, and by now all of us are looking at him, mystified. “I get it. He makes crap decisions. He’d be an evil Prime Minister if he weren’t so damn fucking stupid and embarrassingly incompetent. But I am sick — absolutelysick— of him coming here uninvited, with helpless readers feasting on all the scraps of awful news they can get, all to reaffirm and validate how bad they think my father is.” At this point, he seems to be ranting to an invisible opponent. “If you carethatmuch about him, why don’t you just fucking oust the prick? Rise up and stand against him, instead of being meager little weasel-watching cunts. I want to go back to the days when no one gave a fuck.” He turns to Finlay, his anger not abating. “If you want to be useful, if you want to give meactualnews about him, then tell me when he does somethinggood.That’llbe newsworthy as fuck.”
Before any of us can stop him, Rory swings himself off of the bench with a storm-cloud scowl on his face, and stomps away from the table and out of the hall.
I turn to the others in askance. Finlay seems equally bewildered, but in a quiet voice, Luke informs us, “He wrote a letter to his father. Today was the deadline he put down for a response.”
“He never teltmeabout any letter,” Finlay says, a touch accusing, though I too had been unaware.
“A letter about what?” I ask Luke.
“Asking him to reconsider his stance on Antiro. He said it’s an increasing threat to Lochkelvin. Says everything here’s falling apart.” I stare at him — these sound like uncharacteristically dramatic words from Rory. “Told him how many detentions he’d received just for speaking out, in case Baxter hadn’t already gleefully informed him.” Luke shrugs. “I don’t know why he bothered. Oscar Munro nailed his colors to the mast long ago.”
