PopCo (44 page)

‘One,’ they chorus.

‘I’m afraid this is a top set club only,’ Moron says to me.

He starts to say something else but I am already out of the door, my face red, tears starting to form. I flee from the main buildings and up to the field. I intend to eat my lunch with the goats as usual, but I am not really hungry. I am too angry to be hungry. How dare he?

This is now war. I am an agent of the French Resistance, lurking in forests. I am an SOE saboteur, armed with a knife and some plastic explosives. I will blow up their bridges and murder them in their sleep. Well, once I have stopped crying, that is. Miss Hind is still giving me trouble. Well, she’ll get it. Moron will get it in trip
licate. Any kids who give me any more trouble will get it, too. Who am I? I am Edmond Dantés.

For the next two weeks I plot and plan and then I go to work. I can’t believe I am actually doing this! I spend a lot of time on the third floor of the school, lurking in the dark toilet, so I already know the rhythms of this strange floor, full of cobwebs, echoes of
écouter
et
répéter
, and the chalky smell of Moron’s classroom. I know that Moron only teaches up here, in his horrible poky little maths room, and nowhere else. This classroom is never used for anything other than his vile, élitist maths lessons. I fully expect that when Moron dies and turns into a ghost, this is where he will hang around. Oh God. I am terrified of being found out. I am terrified of being sent to Miss Peterson again, but I know logic will get me through this. So I superglue his windows shut on a Monday (while he is on lunch duty) and let off a stink bomb on the Tuesday (lunch duty again). Girls never touch stink bombs and I have no link with this classroom. Teachers’ logic will suggest that a boy from Moron’s class has done this in order to get off the lesson. No one will suspect me. And I am right. Apparently, when the crime is discovered, Moron storms out in a rage and his precious chess club are kept on detention for a week while he waits for one of them to own up. Knowing that I was the actual perpetrator of this gives me such a surge of adrenaline that I can hardly breathe for a week. I never, ever would have thought that I would actually do something like this. Up yours, Moron!

Rachel and her family are away over Christmas so I spend my time reading and concocting new schemes in my imagination. I could never carry out any of these ideas – they are too complex and the stakes too high if I was caught – but I find that I get almost as much pleasure from simply dreaming them up in my head and then watching myself carry them out in the dark space behind my eyes. I break into Miss Peterson’s office and change all the popular kids’ reports; I write
Miss Hind Sucks Dick
on the sports hall wall (it’s those adult books again). I steal Lucy’s school skirt from the changing rooms on a day when PE is before lunch so she has to go around for the rest of the day in her PE skirt. In my mind, I am unstoppable.

Sometimes I think about kissing Alex, and doing things with him that adults do in the books I read. I imagine looking up his number
in the phone book, ringing him and arranging to go walking in the park on a Sunday evening. We will both wear scarves and he will kiss me in the snow. Then he will say, ‘You know, I’ve never told anyone this before but I am a millionaire/spy/time traveller with my own lavish apartment. Would you like to come and see it?’ And it will just so happen that I am in possession of a magic button that stops time for everyone in the world apart from me, and whoever I am with. (I wear this button around my neck.) So we go back to his place and I press the magic button and then we go to bed like adults for as long as we want, and …

I’m not sure if my new fantasy world is good or bad. Sometimes I write up very sanitised versions of my stories for English assignments and I always get an A or an A+. I think I might like to become a writer one day. I don’t plan any more actual sabotage missions for the time being; it turns out that thinking about them is enough. But I do plan one major
coup
. Just one.

In the summer term, there are tests and exams and all kinds of scary things, so this is when teachers plan other things like Sports Day (hell) and Non-Uniform Day (double hell). There is also something called the Groveswood Chess Tournament. And anyone can enter. I read the notice on the board every day, just because it thrills me so much.
The Groveswood Chess Tournament
, it says.
Open to
all pupils. Winner will play Mr Morgan. Sign up or come and watch.
Will someone take Mr
Morgan’s
cup away from him this year
? Oh, joyous day. It is not lost on me that most schools would not have a tournament in which any pupil can take part but a teacher always wins. Wouldn’t it be brilliant if it could be different this year?

I make my grandfather play chess with me every night. Practice, practice, practice. Will I be good enough to win any games, or will I get beaten by one of the obviously-much-cleverer-than-me chess-club boys? It doesn’t matter. Every moment I manage to stay in the competition will be a moment Moron will hate and that’s good enough for me. As long as I don’t have to play Alex. That would be too much, I think. I think if I had to play Alex I would throw the game almost immediately. I couldn’t sit looking at him for all that time, not after the thoughts I have been having. But I don’t play Alex. On the day of the tournament, a bright June Saturday, I sit in the ghostly sunbeams in the main hall and play Robin and Neal and Gavin and Stephen and I beat them all. My grandparents
sit in the audience among chess-club parents and clap every time I win a game. I can’t believe how well this is going! I suppose my grandparents are not surprised that I am beating all these boys; and it probably doesn’t seem that odd to them when I make it to the final. But I know what an anomaly I am. I know I won’t be able to breathe properly for a month after this.

All through the ‘final’ (the real final is against Moron, of course, but this is the final between two pupils) I am so nervous that I almost lose. My opponent, a kid called Wayne, is actually very good. He is playing a kind of Queen’s Gambit game with which I am not familiar. It could go either way for a while. Then almost too late, I understand what he is doing. Luckily, I still have time to trap his king and, with my hands shaking so much I think I might drop the pieces, I win. I am going to play Moron!

I expect him to be impressed, and possibly humbled, by the fact that I am facing him at all. I imagine that he might say something like, ‘Well, Miss Butler, I was wrong about you.’ But he doesn’t. Instead, as we shake hands before playing, he says quietly, ‘Women always get to the top by nefarious means. Well, let’s get this over with then. I reckon you’ll be a five-minute job, maybe less.’

I am actually quite scared of playing Moron. I expect he is really rather good at chess and, after all, he has never let a pupil beat him before. However, once he has played his first few moves, I recognise his attack completely. It’s a Rubinstein attack, exactly the one used by Kasparov in a game I studied in one of my grandfather’s chess books. My grandfather even wrote a Mind Mangle column about it. So when Moron moves his queen to c2 and gives me a smug look, I am totally prepared. His big error is to completely ignore what I am doing and press on with a carbon copy of Kasparov’s attack. Ten minutes later, I have won.

I had planned to say something nice and polite like, ‘Well played, sir’, and none of the horrible things from my fantasy world. But Moron doesn’t give me the chance to say anything at all. With a hurt, confused and humiliated look on his face, he simply leaves the hall without saying anything. The boys, who have all been watching, look at me as though I am some kind of toxic end-of-level monster from one of their videogames. In my fantasy they all clap the overthrow of the vile despot Moron but in reality it’s only the parents and my grandparents clapping. But that’s enough for me.

When Ben finally turns up, he’s with Esther.

‘We’re on the run,’ Esther says as she comes in. ‘We’re not here.’

What am I missing? It looks fun, whatever it is. The two of them are flushed and slightly breathless, like kids playing in snow.

‘She means
she’s
not here,’ Ben says, coming over and sitting next to me. Esther perches on the end of the bed.

‘Where have you been?’ I ask.

‘Totnes,’ Ben says. ‘It’s this little hippy town not too far from here. Well, it didn’t look far on the map. It took, what, forty minutes to drive there? Something like that.’ He looks at his watch. ‘Bloody hell, it is late. I’d better sort dinner out soon.’

‘Who drove?’ I say, confused. ‘I thought we were all trapped here.’

‘Esther’s got a car,’ Ben says. ‘She was planning to escape so I hitched a ride with her as far as Totnes. Then she decided not to escape and gave me a ride back.’

‘Totnes is so cool,’ Esther says to me. ‘It has a castle, and about seven different health-food shops. I think we went to all of them.’

‘Why did you want to go to Totnes?’ I ask Ben.

‘To get you some stuff,’ he says, slightly shyly. ‘Here.’

He gives me a carrier bag. I look inside and immediately find a paper chemist’s bag with a pack of nicotine gum. I expect Ben took all those drugs from Doctor Death to the chemists to dispose of as well. I hope so.

‘Thank God,’ I say, grinning and unwrapping the gum. I put some in my mouth and instantly feel a lot better. ‘Wow, what’s all this other stuff?’ The rest of the bag is full of sweets, exotic-looking packs of miso soup, fruit, organic chocolates, lavender shampoo and conditioner, and aloe vera gel.

‘Just a few things I thought you’d like,’ Ben says.

‘I chose the shampoo and stuff,’ Esther says. ‘And the aloe vera gel is for when the itching starts.’

‘Itching?’

‘Have you ever given up smoking before?’

I shake my head. ‘No … Why?’

‘Give it a couple more days and you’ll start itching like fuck. Trust me. When you do, you just need to get Ben to rub this stuff into your skin before bed and it’ll be a lot better.’

‘Thanks, Esther,’ I say. I have some half-memory of something on the radio about Dylan Thomas getting some sort of itching if he didn’t drink. What did he call it? Rats in your vest, or something like that. Is it the same thing? I don’t think I am going to stop smoking for that long anyway, but still.

I fish around in the bag looking for some sweets to open now. It’s an odd experience having a bag full of sweets and chocolates and not recognising any of the packaging or brand names. It’s not unpleasant, though. It feels a bit like being on holiday. There are three little hard tubes of CJ’s Dynamic Peppermints; two round wooden boxes of Booja Booja chocolates (one box of banana flambé and one box of ‘around midnight’ espresso); a slab of Cayenne chocolate, which, according to the label, is dark chocolate with pepper in it; another slab of chocolate with nuts and peel pressed into it; three macadamia and fruit bars, a thin paper bag of liquorice; a box of organic cola bottles; a box of organic pineapple sweets and a box of something called Vege Bears that look like Jelly Babies.

‘Why are they “Vege” bears?’ I ask Ben, opening the box and offering them around.

‘They’re vegetarian,’ he says, taking one.

‘Oh,’ I say, remembering something from my student days. ‘No gelatine, right?’

‘Yeah.’ Ben smiles. ‘No ground-up pig trotters and cow brain.’

‘Mmm, pig trotters,’ says Esther, reaching into the box for some sweets.

‘Shut up, Esther,’ Ben says. He looks at me. ‘She’s been doing this all the way back from Totnes.’

‘I can’t help it if I crave meat,’ she says.

‘I thought you were a vegan too,’ I say to her.

‘I am,’ she says. ‘I just crave meat all the time. The more evil the better. I horrify myself, I really do. I think it comes from spending my entire childhood at McFuck’s. I think they make that stuff addictive, I’m convinced of it. I just can’t wait to die sometimes, because I have this theory that when you die you get to heaven and then you can have anything you want because it’s not real any more …I’ll be there and I’ll be like, “Hi, Supreme Being.
Yeah, I’m ready to order now. I’ll have a quarter-pounder with cheese and chips, please, with extra gherkins, and a portion of fries, a portion of onion rings, and a strawberry shake … ”’

‘Don’t they do meal deals in heaven?’ I ask, laughing.

‘I dunno,’ Esther says. ‘But you never get a shake with a meal deal anyway, just watered-down cola or whatever …’

Ben is making a face. ‘Shakes at those places are essentially the secretions of imprisoned animals mixed with pus, blood, chicken fat, artificial flavouring and sugar,’ he says. ‘But I suppose if it’s what you really want …’

‘It’s not real in heaven,’ Esther says. ‘Anyway, as well as all that I would also have an iced latte …’

‘More pus, more blood,’ says Ben.

‘Shut up, Ben!’ she says. ‘Where was I? Yeah, an iced latte, a full Devon cream tea – shut up, Ben – a family pack of B&H, a huge pile of cocaine, an E, or maybe two, and I dunno, chuck in some heroin as well, maybe.’

‘I told you,’ Ben says to me. ‘She’s nuts.’

‘I am not nuts. It makes sense!’

I’m laughing. ‘What does? I’m lost.’

‘That all the stuff you don’t have in life you are allowed to have in heaven. Obviously up there it’s the cruelty-free, no-pain version of everything. So if you spend your life eating McFuck’s and ready meals, you have to spend an eternity eating lentils. But if you spend your life eating lentils, you get to spend an eternity eating fast food. The same with smoking. The same with drugs. An eternity’s better than a lifetime, isn’t it? So you may as well do the right thing now, so you get all the good stuff after you die.’

Ben’s shaking his head. ‘Only you would imagine heaven as an eternal fast-food restaurant full of drug dealers.’ But he’s smiling, and I know he likes Esther.

‘Hang on,’ I say to Esther. ‘You smoke, so you wouldn’t get your B&H in heaven.’

‘No,’ she corrects me. ‘I only smoke dope now. I used to smoke, like, thirty cigarettes a day. Then I just gave up. That’s how I know about the itch … Anyway, the whole experience was just too painful and I realised that I
had
to smoke something. I thought of smoking cigars or a pipe but I didn’t want to have to learn how to do it. I always liked a spliff so I thought I’d just smoke a couple
of joints a day. That turned into, well, I guess about ten joints a day but at least I’m not smoking fags any more.’

‘Isn’t there tobacco in your joints, though?’ Ben asks, laughing.

‘Yeah, but I reckon the Supreme Being doesn’t know about that.’

‘Doesn’t the Supreme Being know everything?’ I ask.

‘Not necessarily,’ Esther says. ‘Look at Newcomb’s Paradox.’

Ben is laughing so much I think he might cry soon.

‘Esther, you are so nuts,’ he manages. ‘What the fuck is Newcomb’s Paradox?

‘Newcomb’s Paradox?’ she says. ‘Oh, well, it’s all about these two boxes. You are told the following information: Box A contains
£
1000 and Box B contains either a million pounds or nothing.’ She takes another Vege Bear and bites its head off before looking at Ben, who has stopped laughing. ‘Have you settled down now, Ben? Good. So, the Supreme Being can see into the future and, depending on the decision he/she/it decides you will make, will either fill Box B with a million pounds or leave it empty. If the Supreme Being predicts that you will take the contents of both boxes, he/she/it will leave Box B empty. If, however, the prediction is that you will take the contents of
only
Box B, the Supreme Being will load it with a million pounds.’

‘So there are four possible outcomes,’ I say, trying to catch up. ‘You can leave with
£
1,000,
£
1,001,000,
£
1,000,000 or nothing.’

‘Yes, that’s the mathematical way of looking at it,’ she says.

‘How can you leave with the million pounds and the thousand pounds?’ Ben asks me.

‘Shut up both of you,’ Esther says. ‘Just let me tell it. All right, so the Supreme Being makes the prediction a week before you are offered the choice of boxes. This prediction is almost 100 per cent accurate. The Supreme Being knows what you are going to do and loads the boxes accordingly. Remember, Box A will always have a thousand pounds in it, and Box B has either a million pounds or nothing depending on the prediction. If the supreme being thinks you will pick only Box B, it will contain the million quid. But if the prediction is that you will take both boxes, it will contain nothing. Your goal is to maximise your winnings from this game – you have to leave with as much as possible. The supreme being can’t change the contents of the boxes once they have been loaded. So what do you do?’ She smiles, and eats another sweet.

‘Take Box B,’ Ben and I say together.

‘That’s what I said!’ Esther says. ‘But if you think about it logically, you should actually change your mind at the last minute and take both boxes. The supreme being will have loaded Box B – a week ago, remember – with a million pounds, based on the choice it predicted you will make. Obviously you’re going to pick just Box B, as this is your only way of winning a million pounds. So, considering that your aim is to maximise your prize, having chosen Box B, with the million quid, you may as well take Box A as well. It
always
contains a thousand pounds, so you may as well take it.’

‘Hang on, though,’ Ben says. ‘If that’s the logical thing to do, surely the Supreme Being will have predicted it. If it’s been predicted that this is what you will do, then there won’t be the million pounds in Box B at all …’

‘Which still makes it sensible to choose both boxes, in order to make sure you leave with a thousand pounds rather than nothing,’ I say, uncertainly.

‘Which means that, in actual fact, it is after all much better to just choose Box B, because that’s your only way of winning a million pounds,’ Ben says.

‘Which takes you back full circle,’ Esther says. ‘You choose Box B, which is the only sensible option. But, having done that, don’t you just take box A as well at the last minute?’

‘No,’ Ben says. ‘You only take Box B.’

‘But the Supreme Being can’t change the contents of the boxes after they have been loaded,’ I say. ‘So you can change your mind and it can’t go back in time and take the money away. I see why this is a paradox now. Will the Supreme Being predict that you will change your mind since, according to the rules of the game, that is the most sensible thing to do? If this is the prediction, then you should take both boxes, since it’s your only way of winning anything. Or will the Supreme Being think one more step ahead which is that, actually, you will choose Box B after all, since it’s the only way to get a million pounds?’

‘Exactly!’ Esther says. ‘It’s a cool puzzle. Grace told me it. She said there were good mathematical arguments for both positions but that no one has ever proved which one is actually correct.’

I chew on my gum, wondering if this is a question that simply has no answer.

‘I still say go for Box B,’ Ben says. ‘You decide you are not going to cheat, and the Supreme Being knows that you are a moral person who will not cheat, and you get your million pounds, simple. After all, it’s only when you try to cheat the Supreme Being that the whole thing starts to go wrong. So you take Box B, and you don’t try to take Box A as well, because if you do take it, you can guarantee that the Supreme Being will have predicted it.’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘That is an interesting way of looking at it. Does the Supreme Being have a moral dimension, or is it pure logic?’ And I suddenly wonder if that is what greed actually is, a game played with logic only and no morals.

‘Must be just logic, mustn’t it?’ Esther says. ‘Otherwise Ben’s right and that is the solution. There’d be no paradox.’ She eats another sweet. ‘My Supreme Being isn’t like that, anyway.’

‘Your Supreme Being?’ I say.

‘Yeah. I reckon we all invent our own Supreme Beings. It’s the point of life. You invent your own religion complete with an afterlife, a Supreme Being if you want one and anything else you want, and then you pretty much get whatever you expect after you die. People who don’t believe in anything or who don’t bother to come up with their own belief system really don’t go anywhere after they die. People who believe in some complex system of reincarnation and cycles of life get that. People who belong to organised religions get whatever that offers, although it usually isn’t very good …’

‘But that’s a paradox in itself,’ Ben says. ‘Your own invented religion is essentially that everyone in the whole world gets to choose their own religion, etc. etc. So if you are right, and everyone does get to choose their own “meaning of life”, then you have made this up as part of your own meaning of life theory. So someone else could say, ‘Oh, I believe something else’, and that might negate yours …’

‘It’s a positive feedback loop,’ I say. ‘Although I do like the idea of it.’

‘You and your bloody theology,’ Esther says to Ben. ‘And your bloody maths,’ she says to me. ‘My head hurts.’

‘One thing I don’t understand, though,’ Ben says. ‘You weren’t sure of the gender of your Supreme Being. Surely you’d have all that worked out …?’

‘When?’ she says, confused.

‘Just now in that Box A or Box B thing.’

‘Oh, that. No, that was Newcomb’s Supreme Being, not mine,’ she says. ‘My Supreme Being wouldn’t fuck around with boxes.’

‘She’d be too busy flipping your hamburgers, I suppose,’ Ben says. ‘So didn’t Newcomb know what gender his Supreme Being was?’

‘Probably,’ Esther says. ‘But I forgot. I think in Newcomb’s Paradox, the Supreme Being can be whatever you want. That’s why I left it open. Why has Alice gone all quiet?’

‘Huh?’ I say. ‘Oh, I was thinking about the SF. The Supreme Fascist. It’s what Paul Erdös called God. It’s his version of the Supreme Being, I suppose. He said that life is a game that you can never win, because every time you do something bad the SF gets one point, but every time you do something good, neither of you score. The game of life is to keep the SF’s score as low as possible but however you play, it’s a game you can never win.’