Chapters 3-4

It's two Issy chapters today where we start to find out a little about Issy's past. She also makes a new friend online who becomes important as the story continues. Tomorrow we go back to Peter for two chapters and find out more about living in isolation. I've also posted a couple of links/images at the bottom of yesterday's chapters - the films, books and art referenced in the novel are, for the most part, references to real works.

If you prefer to listen, the audio is here too.

Chapter Three Autumn 2014 Isabella

I post pictures like girls used to gossip on the phone, ringing up their best friend to laugh or cry. I used to post pictures of myself that I’d take by myself – the ones where you can see someone’s arm in front of them, holding the camera. People started calling them selfies. I stopped doing that after a while and started taking pictures of myself taking pictures of myself – pointing the camera at the mirror. I thought it was more IBHighLife than the normal selfies, which were more Isabella. But now I’ve come up with something new entirely - something much better. This is completely IBHighLife. What I do now is write words in a text box and describe the picture. I write some things bigger and some things smaller, or some things at right angles and some vertically, some things in red and some in blue. The way I right them lets the viewer know what they mean, how they link up, how they piece together to complete the puzzle. This means I can really be IBHighLife. I describe how IBHighLife looks, what IBHighLife is doing, how IBHighLife is feeling. Me.

Mum and Dad haven’t had time to cook this week since my birthday breakfast and I’ve been writing a lot when I’m in. Actually, I’ve been trying stuff out in the composition book Mr Harrison gave us in class. He’s not asked us to write anything else yet, because it’s only been five days, but I’ve had a lot to say so I thought he wouldn’t mind if I used it to say things. I like trying things out before I say them. Even when I’m in, I like that I’ve had a chance to get it right before I send it out there. So, I’ve been using the book a lot.

I hear someone come in.

‘Hi Darlings. Is everything OK?’ It’s Mum. It’s ten O’clock. But it’s fine. She left enough for some nice take out and I made Art do his homework. “Your father will be home soon,” she calls. “He got held up a bit. Art, have you brushed your teeth yet? I’ll come up and you can read a chapter to me before you go to sleep.” That’s what I mean. She’s a really good mum. And Dad will come up and see me when he gets in. And we had pizza for takeout and had enough to get large with stuffed crust.

Mum comes up the stairs. She knocks on the door and I tell her to come in. She beams at me and comes over to give me a hug. I feel myself loosen up a bit, but I didn’t know I’d been tight.

‘How was school, Darling?’

‘Oh fine. We’ve been studying Othello this week.’

‘Oo, I love Othello, and I always quite liked the one from the Matrix who played him in the film they made a few years back – so strong and brave at the end. Have you got an essay on it to do this weekend?’

‘Yeah, but I’ve already started. Actually, I’ve nearly finished, but it’s taking me awhile to get it right.’

‘Well, if you leave it out, I’ll have a look tonight.’ That’s mum. She’s really lovely. And she never sleeps. Her eyes are worse than mine, but she’s still beautiful. She’s tall and slim, but not in a too skinny sort of way. She looks the part, my mum. She’d have been a suffragette if she’d been born a generation or two earlier.

‘It’s alright, Mum. It’s not quite done, so don’t worry tonight.’ I don’t really want her to read it. Not because I don’t trust her opinion, but essays are quite personal, and I feel there’s quite a bit of me in this one. I don’t think I’d like the constructive criticism, or even the praise. Things don’t feel the same out loud.

‘Ok, Darling, but just put it on my desk if you want me to take a look.’ Oh yeah, I didn’t say but Mum’s an English Lecturer at a top university; it’s one of the Russell Group.

‘I’m pretty tired, so I might just finish up with the Othello and go to bed.’

‘OK. Night then, Darling. Sleep tight.’

‘Night Mum.’

Three hours later and I fight to stay awake, typing on like girls used to write ‘I heart Billy Jacobs’ all over their notepads.

I write differently online. I love to listen at school, so I get good grades and always know what the teacher is talking about. But I write differently when I know my teachers are going to read it. Here’s some of what I wrote in my essay on that film we watched in sociology:

The life of the immortal protagonist is destined for neither magnitude nor insignificance. His life is, by nature or necessity, neither desirable nor undesirable. The protagonist has the benefit of looking back on history and knowing that he was a part of it, or, at least, knowing what it was really like. But he leads a lonely existence. In the early days, men were jealous of his immortality, then he was feared for being a witch, and now we’d sooner put him in a test laboratory than let him live freely. The life of the immortal therefore becomes a secret life; a life without lasting relationships. But it is not the profile of the immortal individual that determines this fate: it is the profile of the ‘mob’ or ‘society’. We see in this film that xenophobia persists in all cultures throughout history. In the face of the unknown, society bandies together to ostracise the odd part, rather than to seek to understand it. When the comfortable world of understanding is challenged or questioned, man seeks to destroy, rather than to understand.

On a micro level this behavioural pattern is displayed by every member of the human race more often than we may at first recognise…

Mr Harrison gave me an A for that essay and when he said well done, I felt like he meant it. I have been thinking a lot about that essay. There is something about the way that history repeats itself I find uncomfortable, like every society in history has had its own way of shutting people out, of ostracising, excommunicating, rejecting, alienating and hating. I suppose the fear of the unknown makes men do crazy things to control what they don’t understand. I’ve been trying to link this to my Othello essay and the way characters are all competing with one another and I’m finally happy with what I’ve written so I’m ready to write up my blog for the day.

We’ve been studying Othello in English. I know it sounds sinister, but I think I like the character of Iago the most. We watched the version where he’s played by Kenneth Branagh. He played the part pretty well, but I like to get the meaning just from the words. The thing is, Othello doesn’t know who he is. He compartmentalises his competing personalities. He starts off very noble and righteous, a moor in a world of white Venetians standing up for his love with Desdemona. But then he’s accusing her, not trusting her, getting more and more jealous and paranoid. But then he’s back to being noble and kills himself like a Roman at the end. It seems very fake to me, like he’s just trying to be who he thinks he should be, but never really doing it with conviction.

Now, Iago on the other hand, he knows exactly who he is. And what I love is that no one else really knows. I mean, they would know if he wanted them to, but he doesn’t. He’s this one Iago with Othello and the other characters, but then he’s the real Iago when he’s on his own. I know he’s a villain, but I respect that he stays a villain until the end. He doesn’t need to change just to fit in with everyone else; he survives on his own in a world that the other characters don’t know about. That world’s far more real. It’s a world beyond the physical where he’s just Iago, which is better than the world where Othello is Noble Othello and Vengeful Othello and Hero Othello and Villain Othello all at the same time. I guess we’re all more Iago than Othello inside – d’you know what I mean?

And why does someone always have to pipe up when Mrs Marlow is talking and say ‘Some critics read the play as a social commentary on the effects of closet homosexuality. Iago is in love with Othello but because of society’s prejudice these concealed feelings of love become confused and turn to hate.’? Well, actually, that’s how I’d put it in an essay, if I was writing it for a teacher. What Fran Charman actually said was ‘I think Iago’s gay.’ It’s not like what he said was crass or rude or anything, but I still don’t know why he said it. I mean, I haven’t got a problem with anyone being gay. Who knows, maybe I’m gay and don’t realise it. But I don’t see why the only explanation for Iago not fitting into society must be because he’s gay. D’you know what I mean?

I hit ‘publish’ and wait. I’ve gone beyond tired now, so my eyes are pretty much wired open. If I fell asleep now my eyes wouldn’t shut first; my head would just flop down on the desk. It is only a short blog, so it shouldn’t take long for someone to read it. I wait. Five minutes later and I release back into my chair. I didn’t realise I’d been sitting on the edge. It’s not a comment, but someone’s ‘liked’ it. Five minutes for a like; that’s not bad really but it was a short post and I thought I might get something back in three. And no comment. I wonder why. Maybe people do think my questions are rhetorical.

I realise that I’ve been in since dinner, apart from seeing mum when she came up, and my curtains are still open. I look out at the cold autumn night. We’ve got a pretty good view from where we live. We’re the last houses on the edge of town and our garden backs onto countryside, so I get a good view of the dark sky and the stars and tonight’s full chalky moon, obscured only by a few wisps of opaque clouds. There’s still something beautiful about landscapes, even though I’m not a kid anymore and don’t go out running in them like I used to. They can still inspire me when I write sometimes. I mean, you can’t have a proper dialogue with nature, but it does sort of speak to you when it wants to. Looking out of the window tonight, the landscape starts to speak, and I remember something I thought I’d started to forget.

I used to have a best friend called Sarah Coleman. She lived on the farm that owned some of the fields that our house backs on to. She was brilliant, and we were brilliant together. We used to spend all of our spare time running through those fields. We used to set ourselves challenges. One of my favourites was the insect challenge. It wasn’t anything complicated, but it was the most fun. Sarah was a real artist, even at nine, so she used to draw out these tables with two columns. Down the left-hand side she would draw all these different types of insects: ladybirds, spiders, beetles, earwigs, butterflies. Sometimes she would be really artsy and just shade them in gradients of black and grey and white, and sometimes she would use her paints to colour them in bright reds and deep purples. The butterflies and ladybirds were always the most beautiful, even when she only shaded them – but I liked the ones in colour the best. The right-hand column had space for us to keep a tally when we spotted one of the insects. We had to make a tally mark and write down where we saw it. It was such a fun game. Sometimes we spent the whole day out searching. We never found all of them, but we loved the adventure of just looking.

Whenever we decided to stop, we would meet under the huge oak tree that sat at the bottom of a small hill that rose up out of the fields. It was an odd sight, like a mythological giant had one day walked through the fields and decided to just drop a hill and a great oak tree in the middle of this flat field. The hills went rolling off into the background, but this one was on its own, half a mile before the rest of them started rolling up toward the sky and the sun. We loved to sit under that great oak. It was so big and dense with leaves that we could even sit under there in the pouring rain and stay dry. Those were the best times: when we’d been out all day looking for bugs and suddenly the heavens opened. We’d know exactly what to do: even if it was closer to run home, we’d run straight to the tree and huddle up, protected under its half-recumbent limbs. The oak tree was great for sitting under. It had giant roots that protruded from the ground that you could lean or lie against. Once we even fell asleep together during a storm and woke up to hear our parents calling us back home, worried that we’d got lost, or would catch cold or would get hit by lightning. I always thought they were mad to be worried, because when we were together under that tree, with its protective arms shielding us from the raging weather outside, with each other to keep us warm and with our insect challenge to discuss, we were safer and happier than anywhere in the world. We even used to stash resources under the roots for when we were out there. We’d hide books, colouring pencils and notepads, ready for us when we were stranded or were just spending the day out there together.

When we were nine we saw a film about fairies at the bottom of a young girl’s garden and we became certain that there were fairies living in our oak tree at the foot of the hill. We spent hours climbing its broad branches, trying to spy a glimpse of them. The lowest branch was too high for us to jump and pull ourselves up on so one day we got some rope from Sarah’s farm. They always had things like that lying about. Sarah gave me a boost up and I tied the rope around the lowest branch. We tied knots in it so we could climb it like a ladder. We tried all times of day when we were searching for the fairies. I’d read about the ‘time between times’ that was supposed to be the ancient Celts’ magical time of day, when it is not quite day and not quite night, just as the sun is shimmering its last shimmer beyond the hills on the horizon, when you cannot be sure whether the sun is still peaking above the horizon or if it has just gone and it is only our delayed perception of it that remains. This was the time when our reality and the parallel worlds, which all existed in the same space, were unmasked and the overlap became, for the briefest of moments, perceivable. This became my favourite time of day. In the hazy crimson twilight, I imagined that I saw great painted warriors from an ancient age galloping down the hill and out across the fields. As the sun dimmed and dropped below the highest hill, the images would slowly turn to mist and disappear. I always imagined that the warrior went on galloping into some wondrous adventure, filled with honour and duty and romance and beauty; it was just my perception that had shifted and not the reality of that magical and mythical world of beauty and adventure and delight. Sitting on the broad branches of that oak tree, peering through the leafy canopy out onto the blazing evening gold, Sarah and I lived and breathed in a way that meant something. We felt the sublime and believed in it. I remember the fairies and the ancient painted warriors now like they really existed. Back in my room, as I look out at the cold autumn moon, I see the silhouette of a giant eagle, mounted by a Celtic warrior, fly across the pearly white orb. I blink, and the image is gone.

I feel myself tense. My brow furrows and I am overcome with a sudden anger. I reach for the curtains and pull them firmly shut. The beauty of the memory is too hard to bear. Sarah died when we were thirteen and my childhood died with her. I cannot blog these memories. I wonder whether I should write them in the composition book Mr Harrison gave me, but I have shut the curtains and I push the memories to the back of my mind. I decide that I should go to sleep now and get a few hours before school tomorrow. When my head hits the pillow, I am asleep in an instant, but the scene beyond my closed curtains slips through the stitching of the fabric and my dreams are filled with oak trees, insects, fairies, storms, Sarah and a beauty that becomes an unbearable sadness. When I am woken by my alarm, my cheeks are damp.

Chapter Four Autumn 2014 Isabella

It is the next morning. I roll over and hit my alarm. Without thinking, I get up and walk to the bathroom to splash my face. I cup the icy water flowing from the taps in my hands and splash myself thoroughly. I wet my hair. I keep splashing my face. Water falls to the floor. I stop and look at myself in the mirror. The image before me is depressing as the water drips down my face like more tears. I take my bathrobe and wrap myself in its warmth. I find my phone and shut out the cold of the night.

- Awake. Good morning. Who’s up?

I relax into the warmth of my bathrobe when someone replies.

- I liked your post last night!

I wait while I think of what to say, but before I say anything they’ve posted again.

- I know what you mean!

I reply:

- Which bit?

- You know, Iago’s not gay or anything. He’s more compelling because he’s got more interesting layers. He sort of makes his own world, doesn’t he? He tries to take control of reality and make it what it should be.

- Do you think he’s a villain?

- Only from the perspective of the fascist society he lives in.

- Completely. He’s like a metaphor for being original.

- Yeah, it doesn’t matter if he’s a villain. That’s not the point. I don’t like him. I mean, I’m nothing like him. But I can sort of respect the metaphor.

- Yeah, I know what you mean - Oh God, I’m not like him either.

- I know. That’s not the point.

- Yeah.

We keep talking for a while. It takes me a bit longer to get ready for school because we keep messaging. It turns out he – it’s a he – #me – quite a clever name – I make a mental note to think about it later- he’s read all of my blogs. He’s liked them all but was waiting for the right moment to comment.

- I thought what you wrote about the immortal man was interesting too.

- Thanks

- Things always get lost in translation if you try too hard to say them out loud.

- Yeah, completely

- Do you think it’s better like this sometimes?

- Like what

- Typed out, I mean.

- Yeah, maybe

- I think you lose less when you type it. It’s like with books and film: corny and mushy stuff is alright in books, but in real life, if you talk like characters in books or in films, it sounds stupid. It’s embarrassing.

- Like, I could tell someone they’re really interesting and that they totally get me online, but I couldn’t say it out loud.

- Like, I think your blogs are completely interesting and I’m loving talking to you and wish I’d commented sooner.

Wow. I pause for a minute after reading that. It feels like we’ve been talking for weeks and I’ve not even left for school yet. I decide to tell him.

- I know what you mean

- Ha. That’s the point

- Ha! Yeah

- Amazing

- Awesome

“Issy, darling, not at the breakfast table.” I don’t completely stop though. Mum and Dad are rushing around and Art’s finishing some homework, so it’s not like they’re trying to talk to me anyway, so Mum doesn’t really pursue it after that.

- Do you subscribe to #unrealandtruecheckthisout on YouTube?

- Of course; it’s awesome

I notice that he doesn’t use a lot of in talk, like numbers for letters or abbreviations like lol and tbh or msbk or anything else. I don’t either. It’s not that I think it’s wrong, but I quite like using the normal words for things. I ask him why, because most people use abbreviations now.

- I don’t know really. I’m not against it, and I don’t really judge people who do, but it’s like #me, whatever I say is me, so I don’t think about that too much.

- I guess it seems a bit more real.

- But if we started doing it, it’d still be #me, so it would still be fine.

- Yeah, I guess

- TBH I don’t think it matters!

- Is it still you?

- Yeah, still me

- I’m glad

- Me too

We talk about some videos we like from #unrealandtruecheckthisout. He uploads loads of video clips from TV shows and films and adverts, but he adds in speech bubbles over the top, mutes the original audio and layers on a soundtrack that goes with the new subtitles. They’re pretty satirical most of the time and pretty funny. The one we’re talking about is an advert about pets and this woman is so in love with her cat that it’s always waiting at the door when she gets home and sitting on the sofa when she’s watching TV and sleeping at the foot of the bed at night. The soundtrack he adds is this really romantic music and he adds speech, like the cat saying, ‘Evening love, I fancy steak for dinner’ and ‘Let’s open a bottle of wine and get comfortable.’

- People are so lame with their pets

- It’s so sad when people act like they’re real people

- I mean, who really wants to kiss a cat?

- I love the ending, where he edits in a picture of that stupid celebrity from TOWIE kissing their cat and subtitles ‘Marry me forever’!

- And ‘Marry me forever’ doesn’t even make sense

- I know

- I love the soundtrack; it’s like those adverts for department stores when you think it’s something really emotional like promoting charity or something and then it ends up being about clothes and kitchen utensils

- Yeah, or emotional adverts that seem really moving and then turn out to be for tampons or indigestion tablets

- Like they’re the things that make us happy and content with life

- Totally

- I like talking to you

- Me too

It’s hard to pull myself out, even for Mr Harrison’s class, but I do. I don’t remember the journey at all. I know I walked to form from the car, but I don’t remember it. I must have been on autopilot. I just can’t believe how amazing talking to #me is. He read my blogs – all of them. And he liked them! When we talk, it’s like he could have been the one who wrote them.

We have Mr Harrison for registration and then I have him for Sociology lesson one, so I don’t have to go anywhere. Well, except across the room – it’s a bit weird that I sit in a different place for registration and for Sociology, when they’re in the same room, one after the other. I overhear Billy Thompson saying, ‘You know that film about the man who was Jesus? If you could live forever, imagine the number of girls you could fuck. You’d be like the most experienced fucker the world has ever seen, and you’d just keep getting better.’

I’m glad when Mr Harrison comes back in and they have to stand up and shut up. Mr Harrison has an office at the back of the classroom. He must have a kettle in there, because he always comes out with a hot cup of coffee. I quite like the smell. There’s something comforting about it. It reminds me of when Dad used to read me bedtime stories. Mum was great – she’s an English professor after all – but it was special when Dad did it. He has this amazingly deep, but soft voice. We’d snuggle up warm and I’d always smell his warm coffee breath as he read. So, the smell of coffee always makes me feel peaceful. My favourite story was a version of the Arthurian legend that we had. It was illustrated with these beautiful pictures of post-Roman Britain and the Knights of the Round Table, but it was also written in a grown-up way. I loved The Lady of the Lake – the way she lives in the lake and is so spiritual and gives Arthur the sword, Excalibur, to save Britain. You only ever see her extended arm, rising through the surface of the lake, handing the sword to Arthur, but you still know she’s mystically powerful. Dad loves these stories. That’s why my brother’s called Arthur – Art. I don’t think he’ll ever turn out to be the once and future king, here to save the world from an evil sorceress, but he’s alright really – for a little brother.

‘Good morning class.’

‘Good morning, Sir.’ We speak in unison, which is quite old fashioned these days, but I still like it. There’s something about the routine of it that’s comforting, and it makes me forget what Billy Thompson’s said. I sit down and pull the sleeves of my school jumper over my knuckles and fingers and hold them in my palms. It’s a cold day and this makes me feel better. And the smell of coffee. And it’s Mr Harrison’s class. I usually get something good to blog about from Sociology lessons.

‘Today we’re going to talk about the mob mentality. How we actively choose to give up our individual identity and shift responsibility onto the shoulders of the faceless mob. Where does the temptation to follow come from? Does it affect us all? Is it avoidable? Is it desirable? Can it be used for good? How is it used for bad? Now, we’re going to watch a short video to introduce these ideas. As we’re watching, I want you to think about the definition of the term, why it comes into existence and why it permeates and grows.’ He’s written the questions on the board and points to them as he says them with a meter-rule. ‘We will discuss your responses to these questions when the film finishes, so keep them in mind, watch thoughtfully and critically, and make some notes.’ He looks at Billy Thompson and Bobby Peters in a half funny but obviously serious way too. I don’t know why they bothered coming to Sixth Form. If you hate school, are lazy and get average to below average grades, why choose to come back? Maybe they’re involved in some weird real-life role play, in which they play the roles of education villains, whose purpose in life is to bring down the education system from within, ready to be taken over by their evil master of darkness from the planet Slorb to brainwash a generation of slaves. Or maybe they managed to get jobs as opposition party puppets, doing the same thing, so their party leader can do the same thing when he’s in power – brainwashing a generation of political slaves. Or maybe they’re just that stupid that they think they have a chance of doing well, even if they prat about as much as they did in Year 11. Or maybe. Oh anyway, they’re just idiots who seem to do what they can to ruin class.

The film we watch is utterly brilliant. Mr Harrison’s lessons always have a point and it’s never corny, and this one is as good as ever. I decide to definitely blog about it later. I hope #me reads it and likes it and wants to talk about it too.

The film is about this teacher in California in the seventies who teaches History. One lesson, when they’re starting a new topic on the Second World War, a student puts up her hand and asks why the German people let Hitler and the Nazi party take over; she asks why they voted them in and then why they didn’t resist. The teacher clearly thinks this is an important question; he gives an answer, but you can tell that that’s not it. So, over the next few weeks he starts this experiment, unbeknownst to the students, where he effectively starts up a new club – he brands the class. They call themselves The Wave; they write rules and create a membership system. What happens is that the group starts to get really passionate about their identity. The weakest member of the class becomes like a body guard and they all start to look out for each other. They start to feel really positive and uplifted in their new group identity and then start to spread the word, trying to recruit new members. But this is where things start to get carried away. Once they start to recruit and feel so good about their group, they start to reject people who don’t want to join or who don’t fit the mould. I think they become so scared of losing what they have in their group, that they don’t want anyone else around who could challenge it. This is when it turns nasty and the teacher - you never really know if he got carried away with it himself or not – realises how serious it’s got and at the big Nuremberg style rally in the school hall, he explains what’s happened. The students all understand and with their eyes suddenly opened they start to feel disgusted with themselves. The weakest member, who became the bodyguard, is most crushed. He feels like everything he did that means something is now gone. I suppose that so long as something feels good to us – even if we know it’s bad - we can cover it up from ourselves. That’s what Mr Harrison suggests anyway, when we’re discussing the implications of the experiment later on in class. What really gets me about the film is the way I was sort of taken along by it. I forgot all about the questions that Mr Harrison had asked us to consider and started rooting for The Wave. I liked it when the victim became the protector and the bully looked out for him. I felt like I would have joined The Wave and when the film ended, I was sad like the rest of them. I was also a little bit scared of how it sucked me in – it was a metaphor for Nazism after-all. I think the film even has an impact on Billy Thompson and Bobby Peters, because no one says much once Mr Harrison asks us to discuss it. He ends up having to finish the lesson with a bit of a lecture. I am happy though, because I don’t know how I would feel if I had to say what I’m thinking out loud. I think it would be embarrassing; it wouldn’t be easy to make anyone understand, even though I think we’re all thinking the same thing. We just can’t say it out loud. Maybe we are too ashamed to.

‘So,’ Mr Harrison takes over. ‘The Nazi regime succeeded because it appealed to some of human nature’s most powerful flaws.’ He writes them on the board as the topics of discussion for this week’s essay assignment:

1. Fear of rejection.

2. Deep seated insecurity.

3. The need for constant external validation.

\ The desire to control.

He asks us to argue, with illustrations from the film, how the first three lead to the inevitability of the fourth. I think I see what he means, but it’s a fairly difficult essay to manage; I don’t know how Bobby Peters and Billy Thompson are going to manage it. I suppose they probably won’t. When the bell rings at the end of the lesson I feel myself relax. I notice the smell of coffee as I walk past Mr Harrison’s office door on the way out. I grip my sleeves and feel a bit better again. Just as I’m about to leave he calls me back.

‘Isabella. Could you hold back for just a minute?’ I turn around and walk slowly back in and he continues. ‘Mrs Bridges asked me to remind you about your appointment this afternoon. After school. 3.45. In her office upstairs.’

‘Oh yes. Thanks, Sir. I won’t forget.’ I feel a bit embarrassed that Mr Harrison is reminding me about this.

‘Ok. Have a good day. I look forward to reading your essay next week.’ He gives me a kind smile, and I definitely feel more embarrassed. I know I don’t have to. And, like I said, it’s not like I think he’s a pervert, so I don’t fancy him or anything. But it feels a bit like something’s been said out loud that doesn’t really make sense that way. Mrs Bridges is the school counsellor. I’ve been seeing her for a while now – since Sarah died.

I feel a bit tense now, so I decide to spend break in the music department. I rarely go there to play; I play the piano quite well but haven’t really played much for a while. I like to go there at break because Susan Merriweather spends most of her time there, practising the harp and piano. She plays both. She’s in Year 13 and is practising in all of her free time for auditions for places at the top music schools and universities. She’s a shoe in for a scholarship. I like her because she comes from a very poor family and I don’t think her mum’s very nice, but when you see her playing she looks like sophistication personified. She plays so gracefully. She sits up straight and her fingers look like they have a life of their own. They dance across the strings. So, I like to see her play. She really impresses me. She’s practising the harp today. I sit on a cushioned chair outside the main music room. I close my eyes and sit back to listen. The piece she’s playing sounds very simple, but the complexity is subtle – it’s all in the expression. I close my eyes and imagine that I am her fingers dancing across the strings, plucking them firmly and softly and quickly and slowly, letting some notes linger on, whilst softly muting others. I picture myself as those fingers, striking the golden strings against a world of black. Each time I play a string it reverberates and sends sparkles of gold into the dark, like sparklers spitting light on fireworks night. The sparks hum and glisten and rise and fade and slowly they start to form a picture. They begin to arrange themselves into the shape of a tree – a great oak tree. I see two girls sitting under it, intent upon some task in their laps. It looks like they’re drawing something or writing something down on pads of paper. The sparks shift and morph and then there’s only one girl intent upon her task. And then they shift again and there’s just one girl and she’s just sitting. Her pad is on the floor beside her. I start to wonder where the other girl has gone. I notice that the girl who’s left looks sad. She’s not moving anymore. I reach out to her, but I cannot touch her. I become aware of the music. It has turned to melancholy. It is slow and full of sorrow. I reach for the girl again, but my movement only sends out more sparks of gold and I cannot touch her. The image shifts again and now there are no girls, but something has replaced them. In front of the tree is a gravestone. I feel something well up and overwhelm me. The image shimmers. I scratch at it and wave my hands at it, but it does not change. My grappling fingers turn the music to chaos. I grope at it and flap at it, but nothing moves.

A bell rings. I open my eyes and wrench myself awake. I have been half asleep. The music has stopped. Susan isn’t there and I don’t know if it was her I was hearing play when the music changed. I try to unfurrow my brow as I stand up to leave for third period. I grab my bag and rush out of the room. I realise my face is wet and rub my sleeves at it as I go.

The rest of the day, I find it hard to concentrate. I try to talk to #me at lunch but there’s no response. I feel quite tense after that but try not to think about it. I look forward to writing my essay later and then blogging about it. I hope that #me will like it. I wonder how soon after posting he’ll read it. I hope it’s quickly. I liked talking to him this morning. We had a lot to say. It felt really good.

Something happens during fifth period and I don’t like it. I spend most of lunchtime in. At the end of lunch, when I go to put my phone away, the screen goes black. I press the ‘on’ button, but nothing happens. I can’t believe it. This never happens. This can’t happen. I know I’ve got my meeting with Mrs Bridges but what about afterwards? I’m getting the bus today and it’s a forty-five-minute ride with all the stops. I know I can read my text books and catch up on the classes where Mr Bennington talked about politics instead of maths, but I don’t like to not be in at all. Even when you’re reading, you can still be in when you need to be. I check my bag for my charger, momentarily relaxing: I can charge it in Mrs Bridges’ office during our meeting. At least then I’m only completely out for a couple of hours and I’ll be back in by the time people are getting home and going in properly. I frantically hunt through my bag but cannot find it. I always pack it. Always. Just in case. But I was talking to #me this morning, so wrapped up inside that I forgot. And there were my dreams. I can’t believe I’ve got to go to this meeting of all things and then won’t be able to get in for at least another hour. I know I’m tensing up now. It’s quick and I can feel it.

I can’t believe my luck. Fifth period is English, which is a room I like to stay in most of the time, but Mrs Barnett isn’t here. She’s left cover work. She’s booked the library computers and we’ve just got to finish our Othello essays. I’ve finished mine, so I don’t have to feel too bad about going in a bit during the lesson. The school computers are a high security prison and I’m not any good with computers anyway – it’s not the programming and stuff that attracts me – so I can’t get in properly, but I can get on to YouTube and catch up on some #unrealandtruecheckthisout. At least this way I know what’s going on. This way I know I’ll have lots to talk to #me about later, what with Mr Harrison’s lesson on the Nazi-mob experiment too.

I don’t go completely in, even with YouTube. I still do some reading up on Shakespeare. I figure I’ll try to find some links to his other plays. We read Macbeth in Year 10 and I saw Julius Caesar and Hamlet with Mum and Dad last summer. We went over to Cambridge to watch them in the University Gardens. It was a nice trip. Art stayed at home with family friends, so it was just the three of us. Mum had been invited to lecture on her latest book – she really is quite well known. Even though he’s not got the titular part like Othello and Caesar, I think Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are much more similar to Iago. Heroic villains. Macbeth changes his mind a lot, like Othello, but Lady Macbeth is pretty much like Iago, and they pretty much stick to their guns to the end. It’s not that I like that they’re villains. I wish they weren’t villains in some ways; it’s just that the heroes aren’t really very heroic; I don’t respect anything about them; at least the others are fighting for something and have some consistency.

When the bell rings, I leave the library and walk upstairs to Mrs Bridges’ office. There’s still someone in there with her, so I take a seat on a comfy chair in the corridor outside her office. I lean back and try to forget about my dead phone in my blazer pocket. I notice that the wall opposite me is covered in framed paintings. I’ve never noticed them before. I’m particularly gripped by the one directly opposite me. It’s got a plaque beneath it. The Wanderer above the Mists. I think I’ve seen it before. I know I recognise it. The picture is of a man standing on the top of a cliff above a sea of mist. He seems to be looking across the mist to the peaks ahead. I think it looks like quite a nice place to stand. He can see everything around him. I’m not sure I like the mist. It’d be nice if it was a clear day, but he is sort of in his own world up there, which is nice.

The door to Mrs Bridges’ office opens and someone walks out and goes off down the corridor.

‘Hello, Issy. Would you like to come on in?’ I get up and close the door behind me. Mrs Bridges’ room is very cosy and warm. The wall opposite the door is almost entirely made of windows, and the walls to the left and right are covered in dark oak book shelves, filled with books. She has a desk in front of the window, with her chair facing out, so we don’t sit at her desk. She has two comfy armchairs for us to sit in, each one in front of a bookshelf wall. It reminds me a bit of the office of the counsellor in that film about a janitor who turns out to be a genius – Good Will Hunting. I liked the play on words and I liked how the main character, Will Hunting, goes off at the end and doesn’t take any of the boring job offers he gets. The office is nice and smells like Mr Harrison’s room, so I feel quite relaxed.

‘How are you today, Issy?’

‘I’m fine, thanks,’ I reply. I never know how you’re supposed to answer that question.

‘How are your classes going at the moment?’ I know how to answer that one, so I tell her quite a bit about Mr Harrison’s classes and English and about the composition book that I’ve been writing in a lot. It’s quite easy to talk to Mrs Bridges’ because it feels like she means it when she listens. She asks a lot of questions and definitely listens to the answers because her next question always links to what you’ve just said.

‘And have you thought about Sarah recently?’ This one doesn’t follow, but I knew it was coming. That’s why I’m here after all – because of Sarah. I decide to tell her. I don’t always feel I can, but I decide to tell her today.

‘I dreamed about her a lot last night.’

‘What did you dream about?’

‘We were playing in the fields together, looking for fairies. I dreamed about the time we got trapped out in a storm and spent hours together and weren’t scared one bit because we were together.’

‘And how did that make you feel?’ I hate this question, but I know she’s got to ask it.

‘I felt good for a while. It was nostalgic, which is always good to start with. I felt like Sarah was with me again and that things meant something again. Things always meant something with Sarah.’ I trail off here.

‘You mentioned that you felt good to start with. Did that change?’ It takes me a few seconds to answer.

‘I daydreamed that I saw a Celtic warrior flying in front of the moon and got angry. I shut my curtains and went to sleep. When I woke up after dreaming, my face was damp with tears and my brow was soaked in sweat. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I thought I was Sylvia Plath or something.’

‘And why do you think you felt that way?’

‘Because Sarah’s gone. Sarah’s gone, and things don’t mean as much as they used to. How can they when it was Sarah that made things mean something?’ I feel myself getting pretty tense now. I’m not angry at Mrs Bridges but I can’t help but feel tense. I thought I’d started to forget.

We sit in silence for a while and I calm down. I remember what happened at break time and start to cry. Mrs Bridges comforts me and stops asking questions. We don’t do much for the rest of the session. Mrs Bridges just gives me a hug. I feel a bit better because I can tell that she means it. When it’s time to go, I say thank you. She gives me a kind smile and says, “Same time next week?” I nod and walk out and go off down the corridor. I notice the painting again as I leave and think it’d be nice to be up there for a while. But it’s 3am when my head flops onto the keyboard and I dream about Sarah again.