Chapter 10
Ruby
Even my pink pen is mocking me. According to my planner, I have to Ask Beaufort about Victorian clothes —pretty much the last thing I want to do.
I’ve had an overdose of James Beaufort this week, and I’m ready for the weekend.
Since we agreed on the Halloween party theme, he’s been acting like a total dick in our meetings.
He either makes one snarky comment after another or ignores us completely.
I wouldn’t care if we hadn’t decided yesterday that the advertising poster for the party ought to feature a couple in authentic Victorian dress.
And the simplest, quickest way to get our hands on that kind of costume—for free!
—is via the Beauforts and their company archive.
After the meeting, Lin and I drew lots for who’d have to ask James for the favor, and, of course, I lost. Since then, I’ve been pondering the best way to go about it.
Maybe I’ll just email him. Then I wouldn’t have to speak to him in front of anyone else, which would most probably just earn me some snide remark.
I slam my journal shut and put it in my backpack.
“We can swap,” Lin suggests, swinging her own bag onto her shoulder. She picks up her plate, stacks it on top of mine, and takes them both back to the tray station.
I briefly weigh up whether the alternative—an hour listening to Lexie drone on about fire regulations—would be better.
“No, wait,” Lin says as we head from the canteen to the study center. “I take that back. I don’t want to swap.”
“Your loss. I’d have gone for it.”
The school is bathed in reddish-gold autumn light, and the first leaves on the oak trees are starting to turn from deep green to delicate yellow or dark red.
“Come on. It’s not that bad.”
“Says she who yelled ‘jackpot!’ when she won the talk on fire regulations,” I reply dryly.
She gives a sheepish grin. “He’s just so arrogant. I mean, he’s a full member of the team for the rest of term. So he can bloody well contribute for a change. Especially seeing that the whole thing was his idea.”
“Yeah. Shame it was such a good one.” I hold my student card to the study center door and wait for the little light in the door handle to turn green. Then I open it and hold it for Lin.
The study center is a small building reserved for the sixth form. You can come here if you want somewhere quiet to write an essay or do some revision. Today, we have the first meeting of a small group for people applying to Oxford.
“Uh-oh,” Lin breathes as we enter the tutor room, and I stiffen.
Speak of the devil.
You could fit twenty people in here, but the only occupants besides two girls and a guy I only know by sight are Keshav, Lydia, Alistair, Wren, Cyril, and…James. There’s also a young woman who is presumably our tutor. She’s the only one to say hello.
I take one of the chairs as far as possible from Beaufort’s clique.
Lin comes to sit next to me. Mechanically, I take out my planner, pens, and the new notebook I bought specially for this group.
I arrange everything on the table in front of me—it has to be parallel to the edge—trying hard to act like the rest of them aren’t here.
I don’t want anything to do with James, and certainly not with his friends.
The mere thought that the application process means measuring up to people like them—from filthy-rich families who’ve studied at Oxbridge colleges for generations—makes me feel sick.
I don’t know how Lin feels about it all.
She was never part of that gang, but she was friends with Elaine Ellington and a couple of other girls in the year above us, so they moved in similar circles.
But then her father left her mother for another woman—who soon turned out to be a con artist. She tricked him into marriage, and within a year, he’d lost his entire fortune to her.
It was a massive scandal, and as a result, nobody wanted anything to do with the Wangs anymore.
Neither in business, nor socially, nor at this school.
Lin’s mum had to sell their big place in the country and move to somewhere much smaller, near Pemwick, so that Lin could stay on at Maxton Hall.
OK, so it’s still about four times the size of our house, but even so, it must have been a major shock for Lin.
In one stroke, she’d lost her family and her old life, and all her friends too.
Most of the time, Lin acts like none of it ever happened.
Like things have always been the way they are now.
But sometimes, I can see a hint of nostalgia in her eyes, a wistfulness that makes me think she does miss her old life.
Especially when I catch her looking longingly at the free chair next to Cyril.
I’ve wondered for ages if the two of them ever had something going on, but the moment I even hint at it, Lin changes the subject.
I can’t blame her; after all, I hardly ever tell her anything about my private life either. But I can’t help being curious.
I find my eyes straying to James. His friends are chatting and fidgeting, but he’s sat rigid in his chair. Wren’s speaking to him, but I’m pretty sure he’s not listening. I wonder what thoughts are darkening his face like that.
“Nice that you’re all here,” the tutor begins, and I tear my eyes away from Beaufort. “My name is Philippa Winfield, but you can call me Pippa. I’m in my second year at Oxford, so I know only too well how you must be feeling at this stage in the application process.”
Wren mumbles something that makes Cyril laugh and then try to hide it by clearing his throat. They’re probably discussing how pretty Pippa is. She has a dark blond wavy bob and porcelain skin that makes her look almost like a doll. A very pretty, very expensive doll.
“In the weeks ahead, I’ll help you prepare for your Thinking Skills Assessments and interviews. The TSA is a two-hour test that you have to take for some courses at Oxford. It helps the colleges to establish whether you have the skills and critical thinking you’ll need to study there.”
The test is marked on my calendar for just after Halloween, and the thought of everything to come is making me jittery already.
Over the next thirty minutes, Pippa tells us how the test is structured, how much time we’ll have for each section, and lots of other stuff that I already know.
I don’t want to know how the test works; I want to learn how to pass it.
As if she’d read my mind, Pippa ends by clapping her hands.
“So, the best thing to do is simply have a look at some questions of the kind that could come up for the writing task. I personally found it very helpful to discuss particular questions with other candidates because we all have very different ways of thinking, and that can be really eye-opening. So I thought it would be a good idea to do that here.” She opens a folder and takes out a pile of papers that she hands out.
“You’ll find the first question on page two.
” She points at Wren, who’s whispering again. “Would you please read it out?”
“My pleasure,” he replies with a cheeky smile, before picking up the sheet and reading. “The first question is: ‘If you can give the reasoning behind your actions, does that mean that your actions are rational?’?”
Lin’s arm shoots up.
“You don’t have to put your hands up; this part will be an open discussion,” says Pippa, giving her a nod.
“Every action is based on emotions,” my friend begins. “Although they say you should think things through and make the intelligent choice rather than listening to your heart, in the end, all decisions are guided by feelings, and so they’re irrational.”
“That would be a very short essay,” says Alistair, and his friends laugh. Everyone but James. He blinks a couple of times like he’s just woken from a dream.
“It’s a thesis that you could expand on, or one of you can argue against it,” says Pippa.
“Before you can answer the question, you have to define what ‘rational’ even means in this context,” Lydia blurts out suddenly. There’s a pen jammed behind her ear, and she’s holding the sheet of questions. I wonder what course she’s applying for.
“Rationality means thinking or acting in a sensible way,” mumbles Kesh.
“In this context, ‘rational’ means ‘sensible,’?” I say. “But common sense is subjective. How can you define ‘sense’ or ‘reason’ when every person has different rules, principles, and values?”
“It seems to me that everyone has more or less the same basic values,” Wren puts in.
I hunch my shoulders uncertainly. “I think that depends on your upbringing and the people around you.”
“But everybody learns from when they’re a little kid that you’re not allowed to kill people and all that. If you act according to those values, then that’s objectively rational,” he replies.
“But you can’t trace every action back to those principles,” Lin points out.
“So, if I do something that will mess me up, but I know that I’m acting out of a particular principle, does that make it a rational decision?” Lydia asks. I look at her in confusion, but her gaze is fixed on the sheet of questions.
“If it’s in keeping with your basic understanding of common sense, then yes,” I answer after a brief pause. “And that’s exactly what shows us how different other people’s principles can be. I’d never choose to do anything that would mess me up.”
“So does that mean my basic understanding of common sense is worth less than yours?” Lydia suddenly looks furious. There are spots of red on her pale cheeks.
“What I mean is, in my opinion, an action can’t be rational if it results in someone getting hurt. Whether that’s myself or somebody else. But those are just my personal standards.”
“And your standards are higher than other peoples’, right?”
I look at James in surprise. He spoke so quietly that I barely heard him. He no longer looks as though his thoughts are elsewhere. Now he’s right here, in this room, his cold eyes fixed on me.
I grip my pen more tightly. “I’m not talking about me, but in general, about the fact that everyone has a different way of thinking and acting.”
“So let’s say I snuck some strippers into a party to liven things up and give everyone present a nice evening,” James says slowly. “Then, if you look at it your way, that’s a thoroughly rational decision.”
My pen’s going to snap in half any second. “That wasn’t a rational decision, it was just immoral, shitty behavior.”
“Words like ‘shitty’ are best avoided, both in your essays and your interviews,” Pippa objects.
“The distinctions you’re making aren’t what we’re dealing with here,” James replies dryly. “For example, if you have two job offers where one pays better but the other would make you happier, then the rational decision is to take the job where you earn more.”
“If your idea of rationality is based entirely on money, which wouldn’t surprise me, then yes.” My body is flooded with energy, and it feels to me as though nobody but James and me exists any longer in this room.
Now he raises an eyebrow. “One: You know nothing about me. Two, the rational action is to take the better-paid job.”
“Why is that, if I may ask?”
He looks me straight in the eyes. “Because in this world, nobody is interested in you unless you have money.”
His words make me vividly aware of the worn soles on my shoes and my holey backpack. Rage flames up inside me, flickering and racing. “That shows who you were brought up by.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” he asks, his voice dangerously calm.
I shrug my shoulders. “If it’s drummed into you from when you’re little that nobody will be interested in you if you don’t have money, then obviously, you’re going to act according to an idea of rationality where nothing else matters. And that’s what actually makes you poor.”
A muscle in his jaw starts to twitch. “You’d better just stop there, Ruby.”
“At Oxford, you won’t just be able to tell anyone what to say. Maybe you should get used to either people hitting back or being kind of lonely. But even then, you shouldn’t have too many problems because hey, you’ll still be rich, and so the world will be interested in you.”
James flinches like I slapped his face. You could hear a pin drop in the room.
The only sound is my own thumping heartbeat and the thunderous roaring in my ears.
The next second, he stands up so abruptly that his chair tips over and crashes to the floor.
I hold my breath as he strides out of the room and slams the door behind him.
Suddenly, I’m aware of my surroundings again.
James’s friends are blinking in confusion, as if asking themselves what the hell just happened.
Lydia’s face is just a picture of incredible shock.
A shiver runs down my spine. I’m slowly coming down from the adrenaline spike and realizing what I just said.
So much for staying invisible. Instead of having a professional debate, I got personal because James made me angry. He’s right. I really don’t know him. And I had no right to accuse him of stuff like that just because he acts like a total jerk. That makes me no better than him.
What on earth got into me?