39. Faraday Cage
Faraday Cage
Elias
The police searched my room on Sunday morning. My first exam is Monday afternoon. They’ll have found Birnam’s phone easily—it’s the only one of my things I didn’t remove from my room before they came. They had an entire day to make their arrest, if they wanted.
But of course, they don’t.
They wait for my first exam instead.
It’s the most important one, too: my first physics exam. If I miss this one, I automatically lose fifty percent of my overall physics grade, ensuring I fail my condition for the Harvard scholarship programme.
That’s alright. I always knew it was too good to be true, anyway.
Before I came to Spearcrest, it never occurred to me that somebody like Desdemona could even exist.
It’s sort of the same with the cosmos, right?
An infinity of stars, galaxies splattered over incomprehensibly vast expanses, ancient planets and black holes still in their infancy—things that have existed long before we ever did, things that will carry on existing long after us.
We know they exist, but they never quite feel as though they’re in the same universe as the rest of us mucky mortals.
So picture this: peeling wallpaper, mouldy ceiling corners, toddlers crying, a damp school uniform, slightly too large (and, later, slightly too small), grabbed off a tepid, creaky radiator and shrugged hastily on.
Stale toast on plastic plates and slimy chewing gum stuck under desks and the squeaky linoleum floor of an underfunded state school and quasars and Desdemona.
See?
Those things just don’t belong in the same world.
A Harvard scholarship. A warm, sprawling home full of people that love you because they want to, people that would do anything to keep you safe and happy. A family. An education. A future.
Desdemona.
In the end, they remain as floating concepts, something only glimpsed from afar.
The cold distant light of something you were never meant to hold.
And yet.
I walk into my exam with my fists clenched and my heart set.
If I manage to at least pass this exam, I’ll at least leave with a qualification, even with a shit grade.
So I’ll never go to Harvard, so the Pearsons will destroy my life like they promised they would.
So my future is a pile of ashes before I ever get to it.
But I refuse to leave Spearcrest empty-handed.
The exam starts, and my mind is crystal clear. Desdemona is at my shoulder, a ghost of what I could have, a reminder of how fleeting everything is in my life. Every defeat has only ever made me stronger.
This one will kill me if I let it.
So I can’t let it.
I fly through the paper, scrawling answers.
The irony of it all is that, in a room full of smart, secure rich kids, I’m the only one writing without hesitation.
Even Benjamin Montgomery, the cleverest person in our school, apparently, is sitting with his head in his hands, his lips ashen.
They’re all flipping back and forth between pages, hesitating, double-guessing themselves.
But this is the only thing I’ve never doubted myself about. The answers come easily, a vault of knowledge in my brain—which is really the only thing that was ever mine to own and control and deploy.
Question 13: A positively charged particle is placed near a thin conducting shell. Explain how the charges on the shell rearrange themselves, then explain the effect this has on the electric field inside the shell.
I pause, my pen hovering above the black lines of the answer section.
When an external charge approaches a conductor, the conductor rearranges its own charges so that the side nearest the field becomes negatively charged and the far side positive. This redistribution cancels the external field within the conductor and the hollow space enclosed within.
The conductor, in essence, takes the impact so that whatever lies within it feels nothing. The efficiency of the shielding, though, depends on how easily the conductor can move its charges: the better it conducts, the less the field leaks through.
A perfect conductor can take everything, hold it at the surface while the metal underneath hums with stored damage. A perfect conductor will look unmoved and unscathed, while being full of displaced charge.
Desdemona is such a conductor. Her siblings never feel the impact because she absorbs it all. Every blow meant for them stops at her skin, which looks perfect from the outside but is crawling with impact.
But even the best Faraday cage corrodes, eventually.
If I could, I’d enclose her inside another layer of metal—I’d be the shell around her shell. Let the current hit me instead, let her stay field-free, neutral, untouched and unburned, truly unscathed.
The doors to the exam hall slam open. Men pour in like a catastrophic flood, blocking out the daylight. There are five police officers, one of them listening to something on his radio. Their faces are closed and dark. You’d think they’re here to arrest a serial killer.
Mr Mazzati starts and rushes towards them, already frowning, already angry. I sit back in my chair, dropping the pen from my hand. It clatters to the table with a dull sound, the impact absorbed by my exam paper.
“Can’t this wait?” Mr Mazzati is snapping. “This is entirely inappropriate, what—”
But the police officers ignore him. They barge past him, pouring into the ranks of desks, all converging towards the same point.
More people are rushing in through the door: two men in suits, then Mrs Pointon, the head of science, and Mr Farzan, the exams officer, and finally, Mr North, the headmaster, looking pale and grim and seething with repressed fury.
“Elias Lennox?” says the police officer who reaches me first.
“Yep.”
“You’re under arrest.”
I shrug. “Sure.”
Then the police officers are grabbing me, shoving me roughly up to my feet by my uniform.
One of them is reading me my rights, which, on paper, are the same as anyone else’s.
I grimace as they wrench my arms behind my back, hard like I’m resisting, because in their eyes, my shrug and my indifference are acts of resistance.
Because to them, a kid like me not showing deference or shame is the ultimate show of defiance. A crime in and of itself.
“He’s an adolescent, not a hardened criminal! He’s done absolutely nothing to warrant this kind of treatment!” Mr Mazzati is bellowing. “This is outrageous—Mr North!”
Mr North, flanked by the two men in suits—lawyers, I’m guessing—who entered with him, is silent.
His back is to the wall, just like it was when his own son was beaten up a few years back.
He can do nothing but watch as the police officers drag me through an aisle of desks, my hips and thighs banging painfully into them as I’m pushed unceremoniously forward.
All around me, rich kids are looking up, wide-eyed and shocked at witnessing something that must feel entirely alien in their world.
Benjamin Montgomery is flushed with indignance; Gabriel North, the headmaster’s son, is the only one who seems unsurprised.
He nods at me when I walk past him, and I grin back.
He was a great partner in physics, and I reckon he’s nowhere near as angelic as he looks.
Guess I’ll never find out.
When the police officers shove me towards the door, Mr North’s eyes meet mine in a silent apology. I nod to him exactly the same way his son just nodded to me.
And then I’m being dragged out of the exam hall. My backpack is left behind among all the rest, full of past papers I needn’t have bothered filling out, revision notes that, ultimately, won’t be of any use to me anymore.
Mr North, trying to keep pace with me, speaks quietly.
“Elias, we’ve tried to contact the Pearsons. They might be able to get you a lawyer, but—”
The Pearsons won’t save me. They’ll just help the Hastings bury me.
“Don’t worry about it, sir.”
“I know you didn’t do it, alright? It’s just a matter of clearing things up, and—”
“Sir.” I stop in my tracks, shoving back against the cops that have been propelling me forward. I meet Mr North’s gaze head-on. “I did it, alright? So don’t worry about a lawyer or anything like that. There’s nothing to defend.”
And this time, when the officers shove me forward, so hard I trip and almost keel forward, Mr North falls behind and disappears from my line of sight.
Outside, in the courtyard, the show continues: the production has pulled out all the stops.
There are police cars with flashing lights, more Hastings lawyers, more police officers.
Teachers try to herd students back into the buildings, but they’re surrounding the courtyard, hanging from every window.
I spot familiar faces: Blaise’s appalled frown, Dimitri leaning against a wall with his arms crossed, head tilted in a wolfish expression, calculating and predatory.
The shame that makes my face burn is an old feeling, all too familiar. I look away from them all.
What’s the Brotherhood going to do for me now? Montgomery isn’t yet prime minister, Blackwood isn’t a duke yet, Kavinski’s kingdom waits for him far from here, in Russia.
Besides, I’m not naive. I know how rich kids work. They collect friends like accessories: if they drop a glove in the mud, they don’t need to bother picking it up. They can just leave it there and buy a new one.
Fuck. All this work, all year. Planning, scheming, pretending.
The favours, the parties. The articles, the gala, being thrown in a fucking lake.
Making Desdemona fall for me, and falling for her in return.
In the end, I’m walking away from Spearcrest exactly as I entered it: completely alone, with empty hands and empty pockets.
“Elias!”
A voice rings out a crystal note, high and clear through the cacophony. Her voice. It hits me right in the chest.
For the first time, I falter. I don’t want her to see me like this, being manhandled by police officers like the lowly thug she’s always suspected me of being. But I can’t help myself.
I turn.
Desdemona is running towards me; the crowd of students parts to make way for her.
Her hair streams over her shoulder like a golden cloak; the silver sunlight, wreathed in clouds, seems to fall on her and her alone.
Like a streaking comet, she crosses the space between us until she reaches me.
The police officers crowd in closer, trying to block her out, but I hear her voice through them even as they bundle me closer to the car.
“He didn’t do anything!” she yells ferociously, and I see the officers step back in surprise.
She shoves past them, hurtling towards me.
“Don’t do this—don’t do this!” she says. “You don’t have to! I should never have asked, and I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Elias. I’m so sorry.”
The officers have no choice but to make way for her, now. Manhandling some scummy foster kid criminal is one thing—touching someone like her, on the other hand, would have real consequences. They move aside, part just enough for her to slip through, to get to me.
“Please, Elias,” she says when she reaches me. “Don’t.”
“You met your end of the bargain, love,” I tell her. I want so badly to touch her, to cup her cheeks, to hold her close, one last time. But my hands are trapped behind me, in the handcuffs I was always destined for. “It’s my turn to meet mine.”
“No, no, no—” Her voice comes out a broken sob. “I never wanted this, I never wanted to use you.”
“You don’t have to feel bad,” I say, low and soft. “I’ve got this. I’m used to it, aren’t I?”
“I’m going to fix this.” She’s sobbing so hard her chest is shaking. Her lips are swollen, her cheeks and eyes flushed red. She looks a total mess. A beautiful, perfect mess. “I’m going to fix this. I swear it.”
“Filthy habit, love,” I tell her. “Always fixing people’s problems for them. Look where it’s got you.”
“Look where it’s got you!” she says with a gasp of what could be laughter and what could be a sob.
“Let’s call it quits, then, both of us,” I tell her. “I’ll change my ways if you change yours.”
“I don’t want you to change,” she says. She’s speaking so softly, and yet she’s all I can hear, the police cars and flashing lights and officers and teachers and students, the whole machinery of Spearcrest and society and the world, all vanished, all absorbed by a Faraday cage that’s formed when we’re together, her and I. “You’re perfect the way you are.”
I smile down at her. “Sounds like you broke rule number five.”
She smiles back through her tears. “The deal’s over. There is no rule number five.” Around us, Mazzati and Mr North are arguing with lawyers, someone is barking orders, and police officers are pulling me away, but Desdemona follows me.
“You’re too smart to love someone like me.” I grin at her over an officer’s shoulder.
I hear a car door open behind me.
“Too bad,” Desdemona says. “I love you, Elias Lennox, and I’m going to save you.”
“I love you, Desdemona Sutton-Knight,” I answer her. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Watch me,” she says.
And then she reaches right back through the police officers: she grabs me by the lapels of my blazer, and she yanks me down to her, crushing her mouth against mine. She tastes of tears and metal and damage and salvation.
I kiss her back just as hard, deep and wet, a greedy, hopeless kiss—a final kiss.
And then I’m being dragged back, head shoved roughly down, bundled into a car, shut away.
The car rumbles, starts, moves, speeds, turns—and just like that, Spearcrest disappears behind me.