A Is for Apple (11 page)

“Ah.”

I
hoped
this was another nickname.

For something to do, I got out my phones and pretended to check for messages. There were none. Apparently Karen had finally found something she trusted me with and Luke still wasn’t talking to me. Great.

Then, aware I probably looked like a prat with two phones, I hastily put them away, just as the door to what I assumed was an office opened and a tall man and the History teacher came out. She gave me a tight-lipped glare as she swept past and opened the door to one of the classrooms. The girl who had said she was in Hemlock’s class filed in after her. Good nickname, I thought, watching the iron back disappear into the classroom.

The tall man—Devvo, I presumed—nodded amiably at a few students and opened up S3, switching on lights which flickered and hummed, sitting down at his messy desk and taking out a folder. He looked around the class, ticking off names on the register, and I was impressed at his casual control.

Then his eyes flickered over me, and I looked away instinctively. I learnt to avoid eye contact a long time ago in History lessons when I didn’t want to get asked anything.

“Right,” he said loudly in a Geordie accent, “shut up, you lot, I know it’s your first day back but we’ve got some notices to get through. Sit down…”

The class found seats on swivelly chairs and the edges of tables. I perched nervously by a computer. Computers and swivel chairs! In my day it was hard plastic chairs and there were only half enough computers in the whole school for one class at a time.

My God, now I felt old.

“Okay. Firstly, anyone here does Art…?”

I meekly raised my hand. So did one of the girls and a boy I hadn’t noticed before, a very pretty boy with black hair and long lashes. I ached to see what colour his eyes were, but they were cast down at the floor.

“Okay. You have no class today, ‘cos the new teacher hasn’t arrived yet.”

There was a chorus of “typical” from the class, which Devvo gamely ignored.

“Don’t forget to sign in and out when you go down the village for your lunch and don't forget that’s the only time you’re allowed to go,” he read off a note, and his expression matched that of his class—not bloody likely.

“Auditions will be held in the Music Suite for a new saxophone group… All right, sod this, no one cares. How was everyone’s summer?”

People shrugged and muttered “All right,” and generally turned to each other to chat.

“And before I forget,” Devvo raised his voice again, “we’ve got two new students. Marc Shapiro and Sophie Green. Would you like to come forward.”

It wasn’t a question.

I found myself liking this man—it was better not to think of him as a teacher—and his lazy, dry manner. Why hadn’t I had a form tutor like him? Why was mine the floopiest, most risible flake ever to get a teaching degree?

The pretty boy and I shambled to the front of the class to be presented.

“Would you like to tell us something about yourselves?” Devvo went on, and I revised my opinion of him. He was a sadist.

Marc—not Marc-Paul, I noticed—glanced at me, and I sucked in my breath. He had the most dazzling, sapphire blue eyes I have ever seen. Wow. I could live in those eyes.

Aware I was staring, and the class was sniggering, I wrenched myself away and looked back at the dozen or so bored faces before me. Marc was making no effort to speak, so I cleared my throat.

“Hi. I’m Sophie.” I gave a little wave, which was parodied at the back of the class. “But I guess you know that, since I don’t look like a Marc.” B’dum chh.

Nothing. I tried again.

“I, um, I just moved here. From…Yorkshire.” Well, I did move here from Yorkshire. When I was two. “I’m taking Art and English and Drama.”
In which I already have A levels, so this should be a cinch.
“I, er, hope we all get on…”

Okay, that was the worst introduction speech ever. I looked up at the ceiling as Marc straightened.

“I’m Marc,” he said, and there was a very slight hint of an American accent there. “I used to come here, for, like, a year, then I moved. I got thrown out of my old school for setting someone on fire. My parents are divorced, I live with my mom in Green Roding and I’m doing the same subjects as her.”

He jerked his thumb at me, then, without making eye contact with anyone, sloped back off to the back of the class, leaving me there on my own, feeling completely uncool.

Green Roding, I thought, to try and distract myself as I went back to my seat. I knew whereabouts Leaden Roding and Margaret Roding were. I guessed Green Roding was nearby.

The bell rang, and I had to try and remember what lesson I had first period.

Marc was gathering his bag and moving towards the door. I caught up with him, wincing as my own record bag (thankfully, apparently still cool) bashed into my bruised thigh. I took it off and swung it to my other side, accidentally catching him.

“Oh, sorry.” I tried a smile, which he didn’t return. He was moody behind his black hair and long eyelashes, with a pretty mouth and cheekbones almost as good as Luke’s.

Almost. Not quite.

“Hey, erm, do we have a lesson now? You know, doing the same subjects. How weird is that?!”

He shrugged. “English.”

“We have English now? Great.” No, not great, what was I talking about? “Where is it? I, er, lost my map.”

He looked at me like I’d just announced I liked Elton John (which I do, but would never admit to a seventeen-year-old).

“E Block,” he said, and walked out.

I made a face and started following.

E Block was up a flight of outdoor steps—they sure made you get your exercise at Longford—and was a single story, depressed-looking building of grey cement with aluminium-framed windows. I followed Marc in and made a right. He went into a classroom and slouched at a table on the far side of the room. I decided that to sit beside him would be pushing my luck, so I took a seat at the next table.

The room quickly filled up and I found myself on what was plainly the loser table—all the people no one else wanted to sit with. Girls flocked to Marc’s table, and loads of boys came up to say hi. No one seemed to know anything about his father being found dead yesterday. I wondered if Marc even knew.

The teacher, a bored, frazzled-looking woman who probably had kids my age, came in and asked the class to get out their copies of
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
. Eek. No one had told me what we were supposed to be reading.

I put my hand up.

“Yes?” Ms. Williams asked wearily. “Who are you?”

“Sophie Green. I’m new—”

“And you don’t have a book.” She sighed. “This is what set lists are for. Okay. Go next door and see if they have one. And be quick.”

I got up, aware everyone was watching me, and went and knocked on the door next to my classroom. It was full of first years, looking mildly terrified as they were interrogated by someone who was clearly the head of department. Big, grey-haired, a hard expression on his face.

I was less scared.
I’ve done all this
, I told myself,
I’m a hell of a lot better than them.

“I need a copy of
Tess
,” I said. “Ms. Williams said you might have one.”

I was looked up and down briskly. To him I was just another student.

“You might ask more politely.”

I put on a big fake smile. I wasn’t making any friends here. “Please may I have a copy of
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
by Thomas Hardy?”

“Where’s your own?”

“I don’t have one. It’s my first day.”

“Well, I don’t have any either.”

I gave another fake smile. “Thank you,” I said, and walked out, leaving the door open.

When I went back in it was clear the class had overheard it all. I glanced at Ms. Williams. “He didn’t have any,” I said.

“Well, you’ll have to do without. I presume this means you won’t have read it over the summer?”

I paused. I did this for GCSE. “I’ve read it,” I said. “I did it at my old school.”

“Then you’ll be able to tell me one of the main themes of the book.”

I was back in my seat now, and everyone was looking at me.

“Guilt,” I said easily. “Self pity. Martyrdom.”

She looked surprised. “Martyrdom?”

Well, in for a penny and all that. “Tess is a born martyr. She does everything for other people, but she does it so they know how much she’s suffering. She even gives herself up at the end. She pushes Angel away from her—”

“What makes you think that?”

“Well,” I said, settling back in my seat, “he tells her his secret and she confesses hers is just the same, and then she sits there and feeds him everything he needs to leave her. All this ‘Am I too wicked?’ stuff. She gave him an easy way out and he took it.”

“Typical bloke,” said one of the girls from my form group, and the class sniggered.

“You don’t think Tess got the short straw?” Ms. Williams asked me.

“No. Well—maybe. She got some tough choices. But she made herself what she was—she made herself a victim. Hardy has all this sympathy for her and it drove me mad. She should have stood up for herself.”

I was amazed to see a couple of people nodding. How cool was this?

Ms. Williams was nodding too. “Right,” she said. “Books out, and I want you to make notes on victimisation. See if there is any depth to Sophia’s claim.”

“It’s Soph
ie
,” I said, but I said it under my breath. No need to annoy her. I might have made an ally here.

I shared a book with the girl next to me and made notes on why I thoroughly despise Tess Durbeyfield. I’ve never come across a wetter heroine in my life. I wanted to shake her. Bloody Victorian melodrama.

The lesson—a double, two hour episode—ended and the bell rang for break. You have no freaking idea how weird it was being back in a classroom, making notes on the same book I had when I was sixteen. I was more than a little weirded out, I can tell you.

I went back to Ted, who was harbouring a Mars Bar and some normality for me, and as I got back out saw someone watching me.

Marc.

“Your car?”

I nodded.

“What a hunk of junk.”

The
Grease
quote didn’t go unnoticed. “He—it’s a great car,” I said.

“It belongs on a farm.”

“It belongs on the Cool Wall,” I said without thinking.

A flicker of interest. “You watch
Top Gear
?”

Teenage boys, and a motoring programme. Go figure.

“I subscribe to
Top Gear
,” I told him.

He nodded. “Need to get that fender fixed,” he said, and walked off.

I wasn’t sure if that meeting had gone well or not.

I followed him, subtly, down to the corner where the Drama Studio dwelt. A black box with lino floors and baffles on the walls, it might have been a good space on paper. But the ceilings were too high, the seating rows inadequate, and there was no ventilation. This I knew because it was exactly the same studio as the one I’d done my A levels in. Put more than five people in there and it’d become an oven.

Apparently we had a Drama class next, and apparently it was pretty much the same class as English. I could see why—half of the set texts were the same.

We were put into groups to talk about how we’d stage a scene of
A Doll’s House
(oh good, more cheerful Victorian melodrama). I wasn’t grouped with Marc, but he was within eyesight.

“God, he’s fit,” sighed one of the girls from my form group. She had a stripe of orange eyeshadow and thickly lashed eyelashes, and every time she blinked it was like spiders mating.

“Good job growing up,” her mate agreed.

“He used to come here, right?” I said.

“First year. Then he left ‘cos his dad sent him to some mega expensive boarding school.”

“Like Longford wasn’t good enough for him.”

The first girl—I think her name was Amber, which fitted, with the eyeshadow and all—snorted. “S’not bloody good enough for anyone,” she said. “I can’t wait to get out of here and off to uni.”

“God, me too,” said the other girl. “All those blokes. All that booze.”

“All that work,” I reminded them, and they gave me dirty looks.

“Anyway, what was that about in English?” Amber asked. “You got a degree in Hardy, or something?”

“Oh, I did it at my old school,” I said. “Hated it. I hate Hardy.”

“Can’t tell the sodding difference,” Amber’s mate moaned. What was her damn name?

“At least it’s not that one who fancied his mother,” Amber said.

“Lawrence?” I groaned. “Don’t tell me we’ve got him.”

“You did D.H. Lawrence at your old school?”

“I feel like I did bloody everything,” I said, and at that moment my phone started shrieking in my bag.

Every head turned in my direction so fast there was a whoosh of air. I turned crimson and delved in my bag for my phone, which had suddenly become utterly tiny and slippery and elusive, and finally found it and switched it off.

In the silence, I could feel the eyes of the trendy jeans-wearing teacher on the back of my neck.

“Sorry,” I said in a little voice.

“All phones off,” he said wearily. “Or at least on Silent.”

I nodded meekly. A minute later the phone buzzed in my bag with a voice mail.

“Okay,” I said. “Nora and Torvald. Where are we?”

At the end of that lesson I had a free period, and then it was supposed to be lunch. This I had gleaned from Mr. Jones, or Uncle Todd as the class called him, I think with some kind of post-modern irony. Very impressive for seventeen-year-olds.

After lunch should have been Art, but it was called off because of teacher absence. I thought this was a crappy show. After all, I’d turned up on my first day and it wasn’t as if I was getting paid for this…

Oh no, I was.

There was apparently a common room somewhere hidden in the maze of older buildings, but Marc followed his very new-found cronies down to the props room behind the stage, where someone put a stereo on and someone else opened some crisps and people sat around talking to each other and ignoring me.

For something to do, I picked up my voice mail.

“Hey,” it said, in Luke’s voice, and I was surprised. “Call me back, I have something to tell you.”