Chapter 3

Monday 1st

Marissa

First break was awful. I'd gotten the hang of just sort of sweeping past the smaller kids — sure they'd reach out and grab or tweak, if they were quick enough, but I avoided most of it. Stepping round the corner of the main hall towards the toilets, though, was a shock. There was... well, a barricade, I suppose. Most of the football team was there, and a few of the rugby team, too, spread out across the big square open space between me and the toilets.

"Marissa, how perfectly wonderful to see you again." Andrew smirked and leered, stood a few feet in front of the group.

"What do you want, Andrew?" I asked, hugging my folder to my chest a little. It's weird — it's a defensive gesture that's become so automatic I didn't even think about the fact that it didn't cover my lower-half at all.

"I, and several of my companions, would like to make some reasonable requests of you."

"Reasonable? By whose definition?" Alban sauntered down the stairs casually, seemingly without a care in the world.

"I don't recall anyone talking to you, Darch." Andrew managed, but he shuffled back towards his friends as he said it.

"That's OK. It's a free country, you're allowed to be ignorant if you want. I'm allowed to join in conversations in a public place..." He turned to me — in the middle of all that pressure he just turned away from it all and smiled at me, like everything was going to be alright. "Are these guys giving you any problems, Marissa?"

"I... I don't really know."

"Reasonable requests." Andrew interrupted, striding forward now he realised Alban was alone.

"You're Andrew McBride, aren't you?" Alban jested. "I wasn't aware anything you did was reasonable." A titter spread through the growing crowd stopping to watch, and Alban turned away, placing himself firmly between the pair of us.

"Get out the way, Darch."

"It's Alban. And it's polite to say 'please', even if the answer is going to be no."

"You don't know what the answer's going to be."

"She's already turned you down once today, you haven't noticeably improved. But, let's ask, shall we? Marissa, do you want anything at all to do with this?"

"No." I managed, smiling broadly — this was incredible. It was... If I'd tried it, I'd have just been flattened by the lot of them. Connor, Kevin, Pete any of them... Evan might have managed it, but not like that. It was just the incredible calm he had in the middle of it all, his sheer presence kept them at bay.

"There you go, then. Now, if you'll excuse us." And he didn't walk away, didn't wait for them, he simply offered me his arm, and walked straight at them. And they parted... it was like Moses and the Red Sea. They shouldn't have moved, there shouldn't have been a path, but suddenly there was. It was incredible.

"You're not supposed to be here..." I finally managed, as we stepped into the men's room. It wasn't the best thankyou ever, I know, but... I wasn't thinking straight after that.

"I don't think the ladies would appreciate me walking into their rest-room nude, they're certainly not going to take it well if I went in there dressed." He pointed out, leaning against the sinks. "Why don't you go ahead and do what you came here for, then I'll walk you to your next class."

"Don't you have anything else you wanted to do at break?"

"I usually help Mrs Downing set up the gym for the first formers at break, but I told her I had programme business this week."

"Mrs Downing... you... why?"

"She's into her sixties, she has to take thirty odd boisterous screaming twelve year olds for PE... she could use the help."

"Oh... "

"Go on, we've only got about ten minutes left, and your next class is all the way over in the McConnell building."

"How do you know?"

"I asked people. I thought you might need some help."

"It still doesn't take ten minutes to get to the McConnell building."

"No, but we've got to swing by the library to check on Connor and Kelly on the way."

"They have a study break?"

"Apparently."

"Why are you doing this?"

"Why aren't you doing anything?"

"I am, I'm..."

"I meant, why are we in the loos, and you're still stood by the sink talking."

"Oh, right... yeah." So I went. I don't know what I expected from a guy's loo, but it wasn't this. It... it was different, but it wasn't as different as you'd think. There were the urinals, which just looked... unsanitary, even though they were spotless. The toilets themselves were... the graffiti was surprisingly in a similar vein, though there was more evidence of it having been scored into the surface with a knife than just penmanship. The handwriting was worse, at least. And, thankfully, none of it was about me.

"You're going to get in trouble if you keep this up." Kevin's voice sounded from outside the stall.

"They can't touch me, I made my case for staying clothed, and t..." Alban replied.

"I'm not talking about that. I mean Andrew McBride and his little horde."

"It's been coming."

"He thinks you want to be the big man around here."

"It's like he thinks this is some mafia film."

"He sees himself as the centre of the universe, and you're interfering with that."

"Well I'm not stopping what I'm doing, I'm just being me."

"I know that, I know you well enough to know that. If a burning fucking building isn't going to stop you, Andrew McBride won't... just... be careful."

"What's he going to do, Kevin? Ultimately, what's he going to do?"

"Beat seven shades of shiny shit out of you until you don't know whether it's Tuesday or Christmas, perhaps?" Kevin suggested.

"And I'll heal. I've healed before, but I'm not going to knuckle under to that sort of intimidation."

"Look, you know I'm on your side... don't get me beaten up with you, I've got matches to play this term, OK."

"Thanks, Kevin. I mean it..."

"Yeah, well... so do I."

"What's all this about?" I asked, emerging from the stall — finally finding a difference. There was nowhere to put my bag while I washed my hands.

"All what?"

"You two playing at war-buddies, or whatever that was." Kevin, for all his bulk, managed to look abashed.

"Kevin's one of my oldest friends," Alban pointed out, quietly, without a trace of embarrassment. "He's as close to family as I've got, and he's looking out for me like a brother would. Probably better than some brothers would."

"Do you really think it'll come to a fight?" Kevin nodded.

"Possibly." Alban conceded, reluctantly. "I'm hoping it doesn't, but he's not backing down."

"What does he want?"

"Power. He wants people to do what he says because he says it." Kevin nodded his agreement.

"So how do you stop that sort of thing? Is it enough to just be an example? I mean, if he does beat you up what's that going to show anyone?"

"It won't come to that."

"You don't know that." Kevin interrupted, and Alban shrugged.

"If it does, we'll have to see what happens."

"For fuck's sake, Alban, how can you be so cavalier about this?"

"What can I do about it? Nothing, so I don't worry, it wouldn't achieve anything." Kevin's frustration was obvious, but Alban's unflappable calm was it's equal. "Anyway, you have to get to the workshop, and Marissa and I have to go check on Connor and Kelly."

"Kelly? Kelly Moore?"

"Yeah, she got put in the Programme today too."

"Damn, they aren't making this easy on anyone, are they?"

"She actually volunteered."

"Really? I figured that'd be... sorry, Marissa, but I figured it would have been you that volunteered, if anyone."

"Me? Why?"

"You're kind of shy. At least you've always seemed that way... I figured you were sort of... breaking out."

"My mother put me in."

"Ouch." Which pretty much summed that up, really. So we strolled over to the library, Alban's gentle dissuasions keeping everyone at a safe distance, and just chatted about nothing significant — almost like we were normal teenagers, really.

Alban

Andrew McBride notwithstanding, it hadn't been as traumatic as I'd feared, so far. Marissa turned out to be a pleasant conversationalist, and Connor and Kelly weren't having any trouble at all, it seemed.

We caught up with them not in the library, as we'd expected, but lingering outside enjoying themselves. Or rather, enjoying each other.

"Kelly!" Marissa's shocked outburst caught their attention. Connor flushed bright red, but Kelly grabbed his hand before he could pull it away.

"What?" she replied, stretching languorously against the wooden wall behind her.

"How can you do that in public... all these people watching?" In truth, it was the library at break — there weren't many people at all.

"I can't see anyone..." Kelly murmured, as Connor did something else with his hands — I was, to be honest, trying not to watch. It was almost compulsive, but I felt like a lookout for something illicit.

"Way to go Kelly Moore!!!" Issy whooped as she bounded across the lawn towards us, which pretty much got everyone's attention.

"You having fun there, Connor?" Evan asked, a broad smile on his face.

"Don't encourage him."

"It's harmless fun, Alban... two willing, consenting people having fun."

"Having sex."

"Fucking!" Issy yelled, throwing her head back. "Well, finger-fucking anyway. Are you allowed to just get down and do the dirty?"

"No." I didn't want her giving Connor any more ideas.

I did want him to enjoy himself, it's just... Look, Connor was telling the truth. He was effectively brought up living in a box room in the back of a house somewhere in Kent, I don't know exactly where. He has no real people instincts at all, he can't lie very well. He's honest, and open and... it's easy to fall into mistake of treating him like a child, but it's just as easy to assume that he's seventeen. He's not either, or he's both... it's difficult. I just don't want to see him get hurt, and it would be so easy for him to mistake this sort of thing for something deeper.