Monday, 19 March 2035 #2
Christensen was on the ropes. He sighed hotly and closed the folder on his desk.
‘I appreciate you’ve been through a tough time lately, Ivy, but this behaviour is entirely unacceptable.
Not only are you drunk on school premises but stripping naked, knowing full well everyone was watching you, is far past the line. ’
‘They didn’t seem in any hurry to get in and stop me,’ I snorted.
‘BECAUSE YOU HAD LOCKED THE DOOR!’ he howled, slamming his hand on the desk.
‘In my thirty years of teaching, I have never known such revolt. You’re rude to your teachers, you’re sleeping in class, reading unauthorised books, habitually late.
It all smacks of a student who doesn’t care.
And I hear you haven’t attended any of your Student Support sessions. ’
‘I thought they were optional,’ I said, leaning forwards to be sick into the ice cream tub that had been provided by the secretary.
All remaining food and liquids from the day had now been purged, I was sure of it.
He carried on talking about me like I wasn’t there – like I was the whispering wind through the crack in the window or the flutter of the tweed curtains.
‘Goose-stepping. Goose-stepping,’ he spat. ‘Your own great-grandfather would have fought in that war and there you were, mimicking the march of the National Socialists while waiting for a piano lesson.’
‘I didn’t know it was goose-stepping – I’d have called it leaping for joy. First time I’ve felt any joy in this tired old hellhole.’
‘DON’T CHEEK YOUR ELDERS! WAIT OUT THERE.’
He sent me out while he phoned Heather and told me explicitly to stand by the staircase with my sick bucket.
I did as I was told for the first time that day.
The hallway had started spinning like I was on some kind of ride by that point.
And I still had no idea where my knickers were. Thank God I wasn’t on.
There’s a reason we have to stand by the staircase when we are sent out of the head’s office – Christensen had tested this and it appears you cannot hear what’s going on in his study if you stand by the staircase.
If you stand beside the Chinese vase or the Magritte or the portrait of the old fart with the fat neck who built the place, you can hear stuff.
If you stand beside the bench where the wallpaper’s been picked, you can hear everything.
‘Pssst!’ came a noise at the top of the stairs. A face peeked round the banister. It was Chloe, sneaking down from the back entrance to the dorms. ‘You okay?’ And for some reason, the sight of her sliced through my drunken malaise and hatred poured through.
‘What do you want?’
‘I just wanted to see if you were okay. What happened? Alice said you were dancing naked in the music room to “Mein Herr”. Is that true?’
‘Das ist korrekt,’ I laughed.
Chloe bum-shuffled down each stair until she reached the one third up and sat next to me. ‘Are you drunk?’
‘Bit.’
‘Oh my God, Ivy. Is this cos of me?’
‘Don’t flatter yourself. I wouldn’t drink myself into a stupor for your sorry ass.’
‘Why are you drinking? You don’t drink.’
‘I do now. Fuck off.’
She put her hand on my knee and I snapped my head round and held her by the neck, pushing her up against the staircase wall.
‘You touch me again and I’ll fucking kill you!’
Chloe choked and gasped and a tear emerged from her eye, trickling down onto my fingers. I finally let her go, wiping the tear off on her sleeve.
She continued to cry, probably in some vain hope I’d take pity on her. But my pity tank was dry – all puked out.
‘God, you stink,’ she sniffed, as her tears continued to fall.
‘I’ve just thrown up everything I’ve ever eaten, that’s why,’ I snipped, nodding towards my sick bucket.
‘Oh, Ivy.’
‘Why won’t you leave me alone, eh? Do me a favour and piss off out of my life like everyone else has, yeah?’
She couldn’t stop crying long enough to answer. ‘I love you, Ivy.’
‘No, you don’t. You used me for your “gay phase” and now you’re done. Maybe I was going through a gay phase too. Maybe I was pissed the whole time. I faked it. All of it. And it meant NOTHING. YOU meant NOTHING!’
I spat the last bit and I think a sick fleck flew at her. She dissolved in a fit of sobs and scrambled to her feet. ‘You … bitch!’ she yelled, scurrying up the staircase from whence she’d come. I paid it no more mind, continuing to find scraps of comfort in my fuzzy-edged spinny-roomed drunkenness.
I removed my shoes, parked them on the bottom stair and crept as silently as I could back towards the office door to earwig.
‘I don’t know what to say, Mrs Wherryman … yes, I appreciate that. I’m loathe to do that but a line has been crossed … you know how these things spread like wildfire … I do not want this infection to spread. And it will.’
I didn’t hear the rest – his voice became so low only the mouse in his skirting board could hear him, so I stepped away.
When the door finally clicked open, he found me on the bottom stair, shoes on, all neat and a good girl, and definitely not pissed anymore.
I stood up, using the wall to balance myself – Christensen glowered down.
‘Ivy, retrieve your belongings from the lockers.’
I said nothing.
‘Mrs Wherryman will collect you within the hour. I will not have girls like you at St Emily’s. One bad apple rots the rest. I’ve been expecting this. Your pedigree has evidently outed at last …’
I glared at him, lasering him with my eyes. ‘Oh, fuck off, you old prick.’
The bear of a man frowned down at me. ‘WHAT did you call me?’
‘I said – FUCK OFF, YOU OLD PRICK. Do us all a favour and strangle yourself to death with one of your manky ties!’
I spat the words right at him, but regrettably, no actual spit came out with them.
The words were enough to stir him into full-boiled rage and he grabbed the scruff of my uniform and fumbled me along the corridor towards the bank of lockers.
He didn’t say one more word as he yanked open my locker and stuffed books and jumpers and PE stuff into my bag, and shoved it all at me, slamming the locker behind him.
He heaved the bag back along the corridor where I was expected to follow, through the main hall and down the front steps, stamping back up and slamming the front door without one more word.
And as I sat there on the front steps, awaiting Heather’s Merc to roar into the driveway to herald my next bollocking, I played AJ’s song on repeat through my phone at full volume – ‘Never Tear Us Apart’. The world stopped spinning. And my heartbeat slowed.
I had burned one of my last bridges. All that awaited me now was Australia. Australia and strangers and heat and spiders and chlamydia-ridden koalas and the rest of my dad’s ashes and my certain fucking doom.