2.

J'ai mal

François shut his closest and tightened the lock. Outside the door the shrill cries of children playing as they ran to school rang out down the empty streets. Slowly, each apartment building and each tiny home began to awake. François sighed. The next week he would begin school. Today was one of his few days off before the break ended.

New responsibilities came with this time of year. He had to make sure Alfred got along fine. He had to make sure the advanced students didn't get too caught up in their circumstances, also, and he had to check that no student got a glass shard in their eye after some feisty roughing-up. The male students liked to do that at the beginning of the year.

François recalled with some amusement his first day. Just as he was walking to class, his head held high and warm coffee in his stomach, he heard a cry. A vulgarity followed, then a squeak of shoes against the floor, and finally the dull thuds of fists meeting flesh. He rushed to the scene, ready to chastise them.

As he approached several students stepped in front of him. François grew urgent, his gentle eyes hiding under his furrowed brows.

'What is this?' he hissed.

'Rite of passage.' One of the students said. The others laughed, cheering the fight on.

In the middle of the hall, just outside of class, one of the largest, toughest boys with a half-shaved head and glistening diamond earrings was knocking a smaller kid senseless. The kid tumbled to the ground, protecting himself with tiny fists curled. A dark flurry of fists met him.

'Stay back, we have to do this.' Another student said.

François stepped back, walking towards another teacher. She turned away from them, pushing her brass key into her classroom door. François demanded she tell him what was happening.

'Let it pass. They'll get their energy out this way. Better than having them roughing it up during class.' She said simply. She didn't like being at this school.

My skin's like milk. She said offhandedly. Her hair was crimson-coloured, tied back into a braid wrapped around her face.

Sick bitch.

Some liked to call her that.

Now, let's be peaceful.

Like that would ever happen.

François woke from his recollections when the phone rang. He approached it calmly, putting it against his ear as he prepared tea.

'Good morning!'

'Good morning, Nicole.' François said to his cousin.

'So… Did it work out?'

'The business deal?'

'Yes. He's a stubborn guy, I know.' Nicole laughed weakly.

François dipped the tea bag into the boiling water in a chipped mug. He would meet again with Arthur after school ended on the first day back. François explained the meeting and the stories he received.

'Your lessons planned are already prepared?'

'In a way.'

Her soft voice, like a wounded bird, spoke to him for nearly half an hour that morning. Although she didn't speak of the past, he could hear it swarming in her thoughts like angry bees. He could feel the hatred. Hatred even he couldn't mend.

If it wasn't for her, he never would have met Arthur. She was good at reminding him of that fact.

'Do you want to meet him before Monday?' She asked.

'I'm in no rush. Besides, he needs to work on his new book. I hear he finally escaped that pesky writer's block.'

'Misery and being a writer are one in the same.' Nicole said solemnly. 'And that he did. Granted, I think he was being stubborn. I saw a big book of ideas on his desk. He had written them all down. Then he angrily splashed them with red ink. You'd have thought someone was gutted on that poor book. He doesn't like himself too much. I'll try and change that.'

François bit back his response. Instead, he mustered up a positive grunt.

'Then why don't we meet up later this week?'

'Sounds fine.'

He said a good bye and hung up. Her voice rung in his ears. His cup of tea, long finished, sat in the sink. His life was just as he wanted it to be. The cup inspired that thought, much to his surprise. The way it sat their in a brand new sink with the glinting enamel surrounding it, and the soap suds bubbling at its side.

The home he wanted was peaceful, and this was as tranquil as it could get in a city like Paris. He didn't eat meat and he didn't drink anything fancy. His meals didn't take much digging into his bank account to pay for. He had a job teaching his favourite subject. He wasn't in debt. He had friends. He had a falling out with a past lover, making him realise he didn't want to get married. And, so, what was he missing?

'It's almost like I want to change the world.' He scoffed, moving away from the kitchen and picking up a book to spend the morning with.

The morning sky was painted turquoise, with a sallow moon still hanging towards the horizon. It was sleepy, still begging all the students who had risen so early to rest their heads on their pillows just for a few more minutes.

A rumble started up between the classmates, all muttering or making jokes. It wasn't as loud as it could be, François thought thankfully. He approached the front of class. He knew better than to spring a topic of discussion among them. They'd never shut up.

'Good morning class. We'll start with something easy, just a review and a new vocabulary word. Get your notebooks out. Go on,' He said. A collective groan escaped the class. He rolled his eyes and turned to the board.

Picking up a piece of chalk. It squeezed as it crossed the board. His penmanship was rolling and smooth, easy to read. He enjoyed writing, his wrist flowing with his prose. He slammed the chalk across when he wrote a dash.

Papers rustled behind him. Seats croaked with movement. Someone hummed quietly in the back of the class. All eyes moved towards him. They liked him. Maybe because he was one of them. Not that anyone would ever admit their endearment, they were beyond that. They showed it enough with their begrudging politeness.

'All right,' François stepped away from the three words he wrote. He lifted his hand, his brown skin dusted with chalk, and tapped beneath the first word. 'The word is "overpopulated". Can someone tell me what it means?'

A hand shot up.

François smiled.

'Someone besides you, Aïsha?'

The hand went back down. The girl looked at him with a small grin and a blush crossing her cheeks. She picked at her light pink veil.

No one raised their hand. François stared back at empty faces.

'Anyone?' He asked, tapping again. 'Well, how about you, Kobe? Can you read it to me from page thirty-two in your book?'

The student, Kobe, gave him a tight-lipped grin. 'Yes sir.' He said flippantly, flipping the book open. His hair was cropped short, showing a green and blue tattoo creeping up from the neck of his hoodie like vines.

'An excessive growth in the population of an area.' Kobe read.

'Thank you.' François said. He ignored Kobe's snickering roll of eyes around the class.

The class continued like this. After the due time, they gathered their belongings and left. François made a note to see if he could get Aïsha into an upper-level class. He felt bad for the small girl hidden behind soft fabrics, everything but her face and hands hidden. She didn't deserve to be held back because her parents couldn't afford the commute from their home to a good school.

The next two classes were conducted in a similar way. The last of which Alfred was in. François half-expected Alfred to stir up some sort of scene. He was the lightest-coloured and blondest of the group of students. Most students who looked like that were thought of as children of drug-addicts who had winded up with a kid.

Nothing really happened. No one payed Alfred much mind. He sat quietly in the back of class, scribbling in his notebook. François then slipped under the false impression that Alfred would be a good student.

After two sessions of counselling, Alfred walked up to him as promised. François looked up from his desk.

'Thank you for coming.'

Alfred sat down silently. His vacant eyes stared somewhere just above François' dark curls. Alfred picked at the backpack between his legs.

'You have a new chain?' François asked.

Alfred reached for his neck.

'Can I see?'

Alfred pulled the glinting chain out of his shirt. At the end was a simple silver cross.

'Interesting.' François said, nodding. 'Did you mother get it for you.'

'Mrs Fontaine got it for me.'

Mrs Fontaine was his adoptive mother. François had spoken with the kind woman. She lived alone.

'That was kind of her.'

'Kind of.'

'How so?'

'I don't understand what it means.'

'It's a symbol of faith.'

'Not my faith.'

François arched his eyebrows.

'What is your faith?'

'I don't know yet.'

François hummed in approval. He wondered if he should speak with Alfred's mother again. He laced his fingers and set them on the desk. Alfred still had the ring on. Now a big chip of paint had come off, exposing the black plastic beneath.

Alfred stared at François. 'What is your faith?'

'Not something I would share with students, I'm afraid.'

Alfred opened his mouth, but the teacher cut him off.

'Now, how was school? Are you doing well?'

Alfred gave a signature, uncaring reply. The boy was distant, but slowly being pulled back. He was curious and, from what François had heard from other teachers, he had a talent in maths.

'I want you to talk to an adult if you feel unwell about anything. And, once a month, whenever you have time, I want you to come talk to me.' François said, writing it down on a half-sheet of paper. The clock above his head ticked on. Alfred watched the second hand glide around the diameter.

François handed him the paper. Alfred pocketed it.

'Ok?'

'Yeah, OK.'

'Good.'

Alfred left again.

Our ink flees paper through water, never meant to be seen by mortal eyes. Bleeding through the water like lost spirits.

Arthur set his pen down. He tore the paper out of his notebook and crushed it into a ball, which he tossed into the trash bin. A growing pile of unused ideas began to pile high. Nicole was going to have a hernia when she saw that he had thrown away thirty pages of his manuscript and deleted over fifty thousand words off the other.

But what could he do? The ideas came but the words were smothered. His fingers refused to work. He spelled words consistently wrong and his heart ached to tell the ideas that plagued him. If only they had a route to escape by. A secret passage to leave while he slept (which was rare nowadays) or a method of destroying them as well.

Arthur stood up and shut his desk lamp off. He went to his kitchen and opened the cabinet. One wouldn't hurt, would it? He dug around in the back, pushing away cereal boxes and half-empty jars. He found what he needed and pulled it forwards.

With a swig of water he took the pill that in less than fifteen minutes would send him happily off into his dreams. He could quit any time, of course, just like he could quit smoking. It was a temporary trade off. He hurt his body to milk out ideas.

He lit a match and walked to the window, sticking half his body out and placing the fuming roll of paper between his lips. The smoke rose from the burning ember into the late evening. All around him orange lights began to illuminate the city.

Tourists and couples walked in and out of the restaurant at the corner of his apartment complex. It was the cheapest of all. None of that fancy escargot and garlic-stuffed breads. It was simply soups and grains. Peasants' food.

In his haze, Arthur picked up a phone and dialled the first number he thought of.

'Hey.' He said.

'You sound horrible.'

'I feel worse, Quinn.'

His brother on the other end sighed.

'What do you need? Don't spend too much on this call. Or I can get our other brothers to go get you. One's in Barcelona for a meeting. Sly arse earning all sorts of money.'

Arthur grinned. The cigarette dangled from one of his hands, its ashes falling into the potted plant that had died three months ago.

'No, I'm in my apartment. I just wanted to talk. You should come, we could go out for a drink.'

'Take your girl out, or that teacher coz of hers that you were going on about.'

'Nicole's working and that teacher coz of hers doesn't drink.'

'He doesn't? If I lived in those slums I would.' His voice was annoyed and irate as always. But he hadn't spoken to his brother in some time and the topic of drinking always aroused his interest.

'No, doesn't touch a drop.'

'Why not?' Quinn sounded as though a personal offence had been made.

Arthur sighed. 'He works near the HLM. And he's pious.'

'He's what?'

'Oh, sorry, my architect brother can't understand simple words.'

'I understood you!' Quinn snapped back.

Arthur imagined his freckled face flushing in anger.

'I was simply surprised. I thought you were opposed to mingling.'

'Mingling? I'm not a rac—'

'No, you idiot, I meant befriending anyone in general. I was surprised about Nicole for one, that you could speak to editors. And then I was even more surprised you could say a bloody sentence to someone else.'

Arthur leaned back, snuffing his cigarette. He walked back into his room. He was too uncaring to feel annoyed.

'I'm no sociopath.'

'That you aren't, but I you didn't deny being utterly hooked on those pills and having some sort of social anxiety.'

'Quinn.'

'I tell the truth, brother.' Arthur heard Quinn yell something to someone behind him. He returned to the phone. 'There you go, getting me late again. We'll talk later. Good night.' He hung up without waiting for a reply.

Arthur set the phone down and went to the couch. He lay down and shut his eyes. The bed was being stagnant from disuse. Arthur knew he should probably drink some water or maybe eat something, but his head felt too nice up in the clouds for him to bother with it.

A moment of sleep, just a moment…

Arthur fell into a deep doze.