AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“‘Comply or die’ and ‘kill yourself’ aren’t the messages you were spreading this morning,” Rory drawls, looking unaffected as he tips the last of his bag into the fire. “No. You had that sweet persecution face on again — ‘Leave Antiro Alone.’”
Her eyes narrow into slits, but she’s saved from speaking by the snap and billow of a black cloak as Baxter storms from the wooden entrance doors and across the grounds. We glance up at the castle. Dozens of faces are pressed to the glass, peering through the criss-cross windows, full of glee and looking thoroughly entertained.
“What is the meaning of this?” Baxter cries, staring in disbelief at the bonfire. A smug, crooked half-smile slinks across Arabella’s mouth as she takes up position beside her aunt. “Remove this at once!” When none of us react, she yells, “At once!” and Danny flinches.
Expressionless, we do as Baxter says, mainly so she stops screaming. We stalk into the castle, collecting buckets from the cleaning cupboard and filling them with water. The eager faces of the gremlins are dotted around the staircase at every level, leaning over the wooden railings to get a closer look at us.
“Is she mad?” one of them hisses down at us.
“Ragin’,” Finlay answers, looking quite pleased with himself as he picks up his bucket. “Fuckin’ dino-mode’s been activated. T-Rex sighted.”
The gremlins grin down at us like we’re so cool. “Awesome.”
And for one of those rare times in my life — I can’t help but think:yeah. Yeah, Idofeel a little bit fucking cool. And in a world where our thoughts are trying to be controlled as much as our actions, Baxter isn’t going to stop us from feeling like we’re on top of this stupid, evil world.
4
“It’s always you lot.”
Baxter removes her rimless glasses to pinch the bridge of her nose for one, two, three seconds, before sliding them back on with a weary sigh. She gazes tiredly at us from behind her desk, all of us crammed into her office for yet another exciting edition of Tell Off The Chiefs. We stand motionless, gazing ahead at the busy chalkboard on the wall behind her, Baxter’s voice drifting in and out of focus like a half-remembered daydream. “Why is it always you?”
“Funny, that,” Rory drawls. “We were never insomuch trouble before this year. I wonder what’s changed? Maybe it isn’t us, after all, maybe it’s yo—”
“Did I ask you to talk, Mr. Munro?”
“Ah. Censorship.”
“Your selfishness has caused permanent damage to the Lochkelvin grounds. The groundskeeper will need to work extensive overtime to clean up your mess. Expensive grass will be required to re-fit the burnt patches along the boundary, not to mention how badly it’ll look in photographs for our upcoming prospectus.”
I almost hear the collective roll of eyes.
“We’ve attempted lines, detentions, manual labor… The amount of time that’s been wasted trying to reform your conduct could have been put to better use by holding extra-curricular activities for the rest of the school, in improving educational standards across the board. What will it take for you to stop being a rude, disruptive,selfishinfluence on the rest of the students?”
None of us speak. Baxter peers at each of us in turn, waiting for someone to crack. Beside me, I note Finlay trying to hold in a drunken snort of laughter, his lips twitching furiously.
“Do you even have the faintest concept of how selfish you’ve been this year?” No answer comes, even though Baxter doesn’t continue talking for a long time, allowing us to explain ourselves. It’s pointless. She hasn’t lived our lives over the past year — she’d never understand. Eventually, she sighs and adds, “I’m used to entitlement. To some degree, I expect it. But through time, I also expect you to be humbled. It is not my way to give in to spoiled children and their mind games — but everything I’ve tried on you suggests you’re far more over-indulged than even I knew.”
No. She doesn’t understand us at all. She sees five kids acting wildly out of control. She doesn’t see two boys without a mother, another abused by his dad, another who may as well have been abandoned, and a girl who’s still depressed and grieving for a family. All of whom are living in a political dystopia that individually, personally affects the people they love.
“Your littlespat,” Baxter probes, in search of answers, but I figure if she wants answers, she can open a fucking newspaper, “with the various pupils who deign to hold views different from your own…?”
“Ye would say that, though, wouldn’t ye? Ye’re one o’them.”
Her attention swings onto Finlay. I almost hear Rory’s withering sigh that Finlay can’t keep his mouth shut.
“Mr. Fraser, I don’t much care for petty politics. I have aschoolto run. All I see is you calling on your gang to bully others into submission. Admission to the medical bay alone has tripled since the start of the academic year, and somehow it always ends up about you.”
I’m shaking my head. She has this back-to-front.
She catches the gesture.
“Is ityourfault, Miss Weir? Is this all your doing?”
“Leave her out of this,” Rory says sharply.
Baxter ignores him. “Because I expected better from you. I’ve been expecting better from you for over a year now, and still you manage to bitterly disappoint me with new lows. Do you see any of the other girls acting like you?”
I think of Li punching and kicking me until I bled on the floor.
