"As you all know, the school have given permission for the trip to Normandy this Easter. Therefore, can I ask for your permission slips in as soon as possible, please?"
Natasha Timbershire blinked and sat squarely on her chair. Being quite organised, she had already handed her form in. Indeed, she saw with a slight waft of satisfaction that her French teacher was waving her form as an example; she recognised the large, loopy signature at the bottom.
The teacher continued: "Of course, we will have to book the plane tickets soon, so if you want to come on this trip, you'll need to hand it in to me personally. If anybody has any trouble with getting the deposit in, there's a contact number on the letter for the school office."
At this point, John Trent sat up slightly and smirked arrogantly across the room at Hope Castle, Hope, a short black girl with her hair in tight braids was often a victim of certain snide remarks from her classmates about her parents' unemployment. Yet, John reflected, their situation is far from uncommon. So many people these days were out of work. Just last night, in fact, he had seen on the news that almost one in six adults were unemployed, living impoverishly on whatever small amounts of money they could receive from the government. There were several reasons for this. Some were simply made redundant when various organisations had to reduce their work forces to stay afloat. Other, smaller businesses (such as Hope's father's shop) simply folded through lack of demand, crippling their owners with massive debts. Frighteningly, though, the largest proportion of people out of work were like that because they simply couldn't be bothered. The apathy was infectious, like a plague drifting from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, consuming its inhabitants in a hopeless ennui. Hope, however, did not seem to notice her spiteful classmate staring at her, and John, his starved, wolf-like features dulled slightly with the emotion of a wasted joke, consoled himself by reverting his attention to ogling Melissa Williams' backside.
Mr Davey's voice swam suddenly seemed to become crisper. "Now, I'm not going to be in next week, and we need to book the tickets by next Sunday at the latest. I'm will be here to invigilate your exam on Monday afternoon, but after that I'm away. So you will all have to get yourselves sorted in three days' time," he held up three long, skeletal fingers, and waved them slightly. "So you might want to let the rest of your classmates know, if you're going to hear from them, please!"
With this, the man's palm slammed visciously on the oak desk with a loud bang. The eight students of 11D present jolted to attention. William Hutchinson jerked upright. He had been doodling absent-mindedly on a scrap piece of paper with a felt-tip pen, not really caring about staying within the dimensions of the paper. At least he had bothered to turn up, Will thought to himself. He hated when people had a go at him for no real reason; even general comments like that hit him personally. He could not even remember seeing everyone in his class at school at the same time. Again, he reflected, this was commonplace. Truancy, like unemployment was at an all-time high. It seemed like that the young people had lost faith in society's structure, and didn't care about their own futures. So many of them didn't see the point. One boy in this class (though, indeed, they were in fact two classes rolled into one; 11M had merged with the former 11D when Mrs Murphy went into long-term absence), Robert Fraser, had not been to school since October, and was rumoured to have gotten a job as a mechanic somewhere. Again, this was a common tactic.
Next to Will Hutchinson, Kavinder Khanum licked her lips and looked determinedly at her teacher. She was unlike most of her classmates. She was one of the few people who turned up on a regular basis. Some just came to try and fill the erstwhile gap in their lives, while others sought refuge from their families here. Kavinder was unlike most of her classmates. She came because she wanted to come. The way she saw it, things were never going to get better unless she took a stance and worked for a better tomorrow. She was determined, and held the man at the front of the room with reverence. How brave, she thought, how brave he was to come in every day in spite of everything that had happened to him! She looked at this man, her form tutor, her French teacher, with awe.
Mr Davey foraged through his papers, keeping his eyes focused firmly at the floor. He reflected that it had perhaps been stupid for him to have said that remark. But he couldn't help it. He had graduated from Cambridge with a masters in French literature, and worked in Rouen for nearly eight years. When circumstances forced him to return to Britain, society's structure was still in tact. He enrolled on a teacher training course, where he met a woman, Tina. A year or two later, they married and moved in together in a duplex in London. Tina got a job teaching history in St. Matthew's school in Chiswick, while Neil found a post at White Hill Comprehensive, in Wanstead. This was the way their lives continued for around seven years, until Tina, weary of travelling across the city to her workplace, and now fearing the commute, agreed to take up a vacant position at her husband's school.
One cold, rainy day in a December three years later, Tina Davey walked into the mauve-painted history classroom to the year eight class she had been teaching for the past fifty minutes. She had just been to the staff room to photocopy some sheets for their homework: an essay for the Christmas break, somethig to make the holidays more stressful. Walking back in, she noticed how quiet class 8R were. Slightly unnerved, she caught the smirk on the face of an otherwise-quiet boy called Luke. Furrowing her brow, Mrs Davey placed her papers on the desk, and saw her bag had been tipped over. On closer inspection, she saw it only contained paperwork. Her pills had been stolen, her keys were gone, and, most importantly, so was her money and her bank cards. Numb with astonishment, she leaned forward, making eye-contact with the boy Luke, but before she had a chance to say anything, she felt a sharp sting in her leg. Looking down, she noticed with horror that somebody had taped a hypodermic needle to the inside of her desk. She shrieked with mingled pain and fear, and on wrenching the hazardous thing out of her thigh, she heard the door slam, and saw that at least three students had run from the room. She could not go and find out who they were. There was too much pain. There was too much shame. Moments afterward, another two boys took it upon themselves to leave the session, then another, then a couple of girls. The other assorted twelve- and thirteen-year-olds filled the room with an electric silence while their teacher whimpered at the front of the room, trying to stem the steady bleeding with the cloth of her handkerchief. By the time the bell went, the remaining students had made one thing clear: they were in control of the lessons now.
Tina never returned to work after this episode. Although a doctor's inspection revealed she had not been infected by the needle, any thought of that school made her feel anxious and distressed. Which included her husband. Their marriage was never the same after that; their sex life stopped, and arguments escalated fiercely. The following April, one week after their eleventh anniversary, Neil and Tina divorced, desperate, with little money, no children, and spent emotions.
Yet after the incident with their former history teacher, instead of growing remorseful, 8R became increasingly aggressive and disruptive. The evil power emanating from the pack of children was so great it infected other classes around them. Another Year Eight class, 8K, were the first to join in; one group of girls scalding a girl in the year below with a pot of hot water. Between them, these two classes forced two teachers and almost a dozen students to flee the school within twelve months. Whether it was just conformity or inspiration, other people and cliques, gangs and factions, followed the ways of their Year Eight peers. It was a war of dares, a way to see who was prepared to go the furthest. Stories became playground rumours, playground rumours became classroom gossip, until it became difficult to distinguish the true incidents from the fabrications, exaggerations and lies, though nobody cared; the fear and notoriety of the school in itself was sufficient.
Time passes. The older students have left the school, Class 8R have become 11M, who in turn melded with class 11D, who three years beforehand had been 8K. It is January. An examination is in a few days' time, but just a handful of the students supposed to take it are in attendance. Mr Davey scanned the students in front of him with a masked dislike. They had quietened down a lot this year, he thought, those that bothered to attend were not making life difficult for others.
This was soon to change. That June, this entire year group would be attaining a smattering of mediocre GCSEs among them, and leaving White Hill School. It was almost possible to hear the walls groaning with anticipation, waiting keenly to shed the burden of its most troublesome class. At times, when nobody from the class was around, hushed whispers from the students and staff buzzed excitement and relief. In balance, it was only ever a handful of pupils from the class who ever caused trouble, but it was an unspoken rule that if one person in 11D got wind of somebody's derogatory viewpoints, then soon word would spread and that person would spend the rest of the year looking over their shoulder, fearful of the inevitable consequences. Class 11D were proud. Some enmity existed between certain individuals, but on the whole they worked as a team, as a pack, to achieve common goals.
But at times it seemed that the five or so months remaining were too long. Mr Davey, for one, wished with all his heart that this class would just disappear sometimes. Shortly after the incident with the needle, Mr Davey launched a complaint to the governors on behalf of his wife. Their reply, as is typical of replies from superordinates, is that "they would look into the matter", which meant they weren't going to look into the matter at all. He remembered dimly that once, about four years or so before then, there was huge political and media outrage about some form of extreme control measures for the most unruly classes. Back then, a Bill was being passed through the Houses of Parliament regarding a measure that had proved somewhat successful in a handful of other countries: first Japan, then Italy, and then the United States, Brazil, some provinces of China and certain areas of eastern Europe followed suit. From what he could remember, the Bill involved students being set against one another, sometimes to the death. Understandably, there was uproar, the loudest protest from the tabloids, who between encouraging vigilante mobs outside the homes of suspected child molesters and showing softcore pornography featuring vacant-looking blondes with their ample bosoms bare, accused the government of returning to barbaric and draconian rule, and of exploiting the young and vunerable. Bullshit. Media hypocrisy aside, the argument raged on for several weeks, until a compromise seemed to be reached: the Bill would be altered to ensure that nobody died, that only a good scare was given. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the tabloids then complained about how the government were soft on juvenile delinquents. At any rate, a major national incident happened shortly after this, and the media shifted its attention away from this debate, and within a few months it was all but forgotten. At the time, Neil Davey had been disgusted by the thought of harming children, but after his wife was attacked, though the Bill was forgotten, its implications lived on in the teacher's darkest mental fantasies.
It was a few minutes into this French lesson in January when another two students came into the room. Martina Fennell came bumbling in, carrying a large paper bag in her hand. She held the door open and classmate David Vales entered the room.
"Sorry we're late, sir, but" said David half-heartedly, and not even bothering to finish the excuse, he sat down on the back row, with Martina at the other end of the desk. Both of the new additions were smirking slightly, and everyone in the class spotted that, with the exception of boys Matthew Sherman and Thomas Clarke, who were talking animatedly to one another about their girlfriends in low voices, and Will Hutchinson, who had seemingly gotten bored of drawing circles on his paper and had turned round to listen to them. Everyone else, though was slightly suspicious about why their two classmates were grinning like they were. Usually people smiled like that for one of two reasons: sex or a private joke. Yet the facts were that David was gay and Martina was not really on excellent terms with him, so it must have been something else. Suddenly, detecting the fact that people were staring, David drew a poker face and looked at his teacher defiantly. Mr Davey mumbled a comment about David's poor excuse, then went back to teaching about irregular verbs. He wasn't too bothered about that pair, he reflected silently as he ran a cassette player for a textbook exercise. In respect to some of the other students, those two were quite tame. Granted, neither were great students, David was verbal and bitchy and Martina was temperamental and brooding, but neither of them had a reputation for being dangerous.
Unlike others.
For it was only a select few students who were truly dangerous to cross. Of all of them, Sean Sampson was the most terrifying. A tall, muscular boy with otherwise handome features, he had one of the most evil temperaments around. Not exactly a bully, so to speak, but it was usually a good rule of thumb to keep out of his way if he appeared pissed off for some reason. It was Sampson who was behind some of the most violent attacks in the school. Last year he had been accused of kicking a boy's knee against the joint for being cheeky, hospitalising the child. When one brave teacher tried to confront the older student, Sampson pulled a penknife out of his pocket and thrust the man against the wall. That teacher also left the school a few months later. Though he had recently gotten older and matured more, his nature of inspiring terror remained strong and unrivalled. He had recently found a girlfriend, Lena, who although not as much of an apparent psychopath, was just as unpleasant, and had a team of weaker girls, her 'bitches' so to speak, at her beck and command. Both of these two were originally in 11M, and it was thought by some that the two of them were behind Mrs Murphy's extended absence.
Another girl to note was Samantha Carter, although this was for different reasons. If Sean Sampson was the brawn of the class' aggression, Sam could be likened to the brain. A quiet, pretty girl with short, sleek blonde hair, Sam was good at making plans and following through on them. Though not really friends with Sampson and his clique, it was not uncommon to find them muttering to one another in hushed voices on some topic. She was literate, she was knowledgeable, and she had a flair for internal politics. She was very organised, and often structured people's beliefs, being a talented orator and on the school debating team. She was one of those girls whom people either loved or hated.
Mr Davey personally loved her. He didn't love many of his charges, but she and a handful of others were people he thought as special; people whom he did not resent seeing, and did not make his flesh creep each time he saw their name on the register. Matt Sherman did, however, so it was partly this reason why Mr Davey confronted his student about why he was talking so loudly.
"Why not?" Matt replied irritably. "It's not as if we're ever going to use this stuff, and being here is a waste of time as it is"
"You don't have to be here if you don't want to," responded his teacher with equal irritation.
Matt and his friend Tom Clarke did not want to be there, so they got up and left. Mr Davey worried about Tom. The shortest boy in the class, he had become increasingly angry all winter. His sharp profile and square-framed spectacles flashed maliciously back at his form tutor from under a roof of chaotic dark hair, then followed his friend out of the room. Matt Sherman didn't even bother looking back. He needs to listen more, thought the teacher; he never listens.
Though the class tried to continue as it had done before the interruption, it was a losing battle; they had gone from eight students to ten, then shortly afterward, back to eight once more. Soon, as was often the way with classes like this, there would be zero remaining. Depending on the teacher, the people showing up to lessons, and the subject material the school fought so valiantly to maintain, this happened sometimes. Other times there would be an almost eager will to work, with teachers making a show of the syllabus, while the students feigned genuine interest and piped up with questions and thoughts: the closest thing to real work that could ever be managed. This was not such a day. Being frank, Mr Davey admitted that there was no point in continuing the lesson. The hand-outs had been handed out (with the two belonging to Tom Clarke and Matt Sherman being abandoned on the desks), David and Kavinder had handed in their books for marking (a task that would take under an hour), and while a man was talking to Mr Davey (he had entered the room shortly after the two boys had left; though it was hard to be sure due to intermittent attendance, Hope Castle believed he was a part-time member of staff of some sort, though this was just an educated guess), the rest of 11D looked round at one another and in an unspoken agreement, filed out of the room.
"See you all in three days' time," Mr Davey muttered to himself.
Fifteen minutes later, Melissa, Martina and Hope were pacing across the open area near the canteen was. It was chilly and had been raining earlier that day, so the air was damp and oppressive. The three girls did not speak to each other. They were working together not out of choice so to speak, but because it was common sense to walk round the school in packs of no fewer than three. The fact that they were of class 11D made no difference; their reputation had fallen to memory and though it was not faint, there were younger generations of pupils who saw what had transpired, and were determined not to disappoint. As Hope slipped over in some mud slightly, Martina giggled. Confused, Melissa asked her classmate what was so funny.
"Yeah, Martina," added Hope, dragging her shoe in the grass to clean it. "It wasn't that funny"
"I know, I know," replied Martina with a wicked smile. "You just reminded me of something David did earlier"
"What was that"
"Yeah, I wondered why you two came in late," Melissa added with extra confusion.
Martina chuckled again. Again, Melissa was surprised. Martina was not the sort of person to laugh at the misfortune at others. A member of the gymnastics team, and involved in the school drama society, she was a hard-working student and honest person, even though here grades were not excellent. This is why Melissa was surprised by the cackle that came out of her friend's mouth when she confessed that she and David had put trip wire at the top of a flight of stairs. It was Hope who was the first to regain her composure: "Why"
"Well you know that whenever we need to go up to Room 12 for geography, that mob of Year Sevens always run down the stairs in a massive ruck"
"Well yeah, Mart, I know the ones you mean," said Melissa slowly. "The class that have got the tall kid with the curly hair"
"Yeah, those ones. Well David managed to get access to a copy of their timetable last Thursday, and we've found out that they're in Room 12 today, for this lesson, in fact." The girls had stopped outside one of the buildings, a grubby white one that contained Rooms 1 to 26 in the near wing. Martina adjusted her shoulder-length black hair and continued carelessly. "David and I managed to find some wire, so we put it at the top of the staircase that's next to that classroom"
On cue, the bell rang out from behind them. Like prisoners in a riot, the sound of stampeding feet and excited voices roared through the building. The three girls waited patiently. On cue, there was suddenly a loud amount of screaming and panic echoing from upstairs. Martina bounded forward, leading the way, and Hope and Melissa followed uncertainly.
David Vales was already waiting. He and Natasha Timbershire were standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking in awe at the pile of bodies before them. It had worked like a dream, David reflected. He remembered the look on the face of one boy as his excited face turned to surprise when his foot was taken beneath him, and how it didn't have time to change to fear before it hit a lower step. The fat boy with the curly hair had also been at the front of the body of bodies; he instinctively grabbed out for the banister to break his fall, only to realise he was on the wrong side. His fingertips had scraped against the wall, and he tumbled down along with another boy and a girl running along with him. They were lemmings. David counted four, five people at the bottom of the pile, and probably as many again on top of them, whining and swearing in pain and surprise. The remaining students looked at one another uneasily, wondering if their teacher Mrs Wattkins was going to resolve the situation. It was a vain hope, of course. As the five hurt students came to their senses, the five fifteen-year-old students at the bottom of the staircase looked up with mingled triumph and awe.
"Serves you right for not obeying the one-way system," David said with a chuckle.