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“Okay, okay.” Rory folds his arms, glaring at Danny’s drawing. The illustrated crown in particular seems to tick him off. “I just don’t like the man. He’s always had it in for me.”
“You say that, but I remember his first day here, when you and Fin were laughing at him because you thought he looked too young to teach.”
“God, little saint, shall I addhisinitials to the heart, too?”
I roll my eyes. “Funny.”
Danny stands back and we gaze at his impeccable handiwork. The crown is the perfect finishing touch. It looks a hell of a lot more regal on Dr. Moncrieff than his wild, arrogant brother, that’s for sure.
“Put some words at the bottom,” Rory instructs. “Like, ‘Congratulations, you aren’t a headbanger anymore.’” He turns to me and says, “Or…?”
“Something a bit more meaningful — about bravery, courage, to keep fighting…” I’m quiet for a moment, trying to think.
But then Danny answers for me, writing in an elegant curlicue beneath Dr. Moncrieff’s portrait, ‘Fight the good fight.’ When he looks across at us, he adds with a small smile, “Timothy 6:12.”
30
We file into politics class early the following morning and are rewarded by Dr. Moncrieff casually rolling up the chalkboard. I’m tense in my seat, crossed fingers tucked beneath my chin. I hope he likes it. I hope he takes it in the spirit it was intended.
At first, he doesn’t notice the drawing of himself and only glances back at the chalkboard when his gaze lands on Arabella. Her expression is one of bug-eyed confusion, her face scrunched as she stares hard at the board. When Dr. Moncrieff finally notices the portrait he’s displayed to class, the set of his shoulders seems to soften and he tucks a strand of his long sandy hair distractedly behind his ear.
“Um,” he murmurs, before winching up the board again, searching for a new space. Up comes Rory’s loveheart, and Arabella’s eyes narrow upon it. She casts me a suspicious glare, glancing between myself and Rory, but both of us remain noncommittal, cracking open our textbooks and arranging our stationery like nothing has changed. From our complete lack of reaction, she may as well be hallucinating the lines on the board.
I hold back my laughter.
When Dr. Moncrieff calls for Rory and me to remain after class, Arabella lingers behind, slowly packing away her books. I note the cocked angle of her head, as though waiting to hear what punishment Dr. Moncrieff will dish out. But Dr. Moncrieff waits in silence until everyone, including Arabella, eventually departs. He tries to soften the blow for Arabella with an affectionate smile. It does nothing to placate her. She scowls as she leaves, and I wonder how badly Arabella’s going to wring him out in private later for every detail.
“Does he not know she won’t take ‘no’ for an answer?” Rory drawls to me.
Dr. Moncrieff opens the door to check that Arabella isn’t still loitering, as if he doesn’t quite trust her not to be eavesdropping from the other side. From Dr. Moncrieff’s murmurs, it seems like she had been. Unease creeps over me, and I glance nervously at Rory. Perhaps we’d been too obvious. Our praise of Dr. Moncrieff, our olive branch and golden bridge, may as well have had all the subtlety of an exploding bomb.
After making sure Arabella has left the immediate vicinity, Dr. Moncrieff eventually closes the door behind him again and stands before us in silence at the front of his desk.
Slowly, he tugs down the board until the portrait of himself is revealed.
“You risk all our necks by pulling stunts like this.” Dr. Moncrieff’s voice is low, reproving, as he nods at the chalkboard. His eyes don’t once leave Danny’s drawing. “It was the same with the flag situation. You don’t know when, or how, to stop.”
“Do you think our necks being risked over a minor act of vandalism contributes to a healthy learning environment?” Rory asks, adding belatedly, as if to show his general dislike, “Sir?”
“This isn’t about Lochkelvin,” Dr. Moncrieff states, finally turning to us. “It’s about the people inside, who have connections with people outside, who may be rather over-invested in my political predilections.”
“Why can’t you just own it?” I ask wearily. “Justsayyou disagree with him. What’s going to happen up here?”
Dr. Moncrieff bites his lip, gazing back at his likeness on the chalkboard.Fight the good fight. He runs a hand across his mouth and drops his voice even lower. “You have to understand how things are for me. I currently exist inside a glass box. I am constrained by boundaries outwith my control. My every move is checked, my every word scrutinized. It’s filtered through the lens of Antiro and what they deem acceptable. With my brother on the throne, an act — I promise you — that I couldneverhave foreseen, I have sacrificed all notion of freedom and anonymity.”
“Sounds like helping out with that dossier wasn’t a sterling choice,” Rory drawls, unsympathetic.
“I could never have known things would get this far.Never.”
“Then you’re an idiot because I could see it a mile off.”
“Don’t,” I chide. Also, as much as Rory talks the big talk, I don’t think his words are the whole truth. He followed his father’s orders to keep Benji in the castle, after all. He also enabled this chaos to happen. But then we all did, in some way. “But even in Lochkelvin… what do you think’s going to happen in here? People get mad? So what? Let them.”
“You don’t quite get it, do you?” Although his words are on the sniffy side of patronizing, Dr. Moncrieff’s tone is spiked with private awe. “The thing you have to realize about — not just Antiro, butanypolitical movement — is that each member is secretly terrified of being torn into. When the group’s collective eye is trained on you, it means you’ve messed up, or you did something that can be interpreted as messing up, going against an ever-changing set of regulations.”
“Okay. And?”
“People — adults — arescared.” Dr. Moncrieff’s words give me chills. There is no doubting his sincerity. “No one wants that eye to turn on them. And you aren’t scared — because you’re young, you have no concept of what it means to lose your livelihood, your community, your reputation.” Beside me, Rory’s fingers drum idly over his crossed forearms. “If —when— that eye turns on you, you’re damned by the most merciless god ever worshiped by others. A lifetime in hell is prayed away through unwavering, righteous allegiance to Antiro, or whatever other absurd notion that stirs religious fervor in the modern day. And they all know this god exists because they’re the ones who created it. They’ve seen it up close, when the eye singled out and cast aside one of their own. They know it’s human and therefore irrational. They know it’s self-made, because they’re a part of it. Because the god is the eye. It’s the mob.”
