Mr Harris had a five step plan which, if applied correctly, could make Neal the most popular young man in the entire school.
"Right, here's how it works." Mr Harris bit into his chocolate digestive before taking a noisy gulp of tea. Neal winced as crumbs got caught in the teacher's tie. "Step One of my amazing five step plan, nicknamed 'Operation: Everyone Loves Neal'-"
"Do we have to call it that?" Neal groaned. Next to him, Sara giggled delicately. Her foot swung to and fro, occasionally brushing against his. The three of them were sitting in a small meeting room across from the staffroom, furnished with blue plastic chairs and a chewing gum infested table. The walls were cracked and the entire room smelt like stale coffee. On the whole, it wasn't a place where Neal wanted to spend his break time, but Mr Harris had insisted on meeting up every day at half ten until Neal's "little problem" was sorted out.
It had been three days since the fight with Gordon, three days since Neal had returned to school, and the "little problem" of bullying was growing bigger and bigger by the hour. Despite the party he had thrown earlier in the week, everyone hated him. Students in younger years would call him names, people his own age and older would shove him in the corridors and once someone had snapped a biro in half and thrown the leaking pen into his school bag. Every single one of his books was now covered in artistic looking ink splotches; the art homework he had spent nearly two hours on was ruined beyond redemption. Mr Harris sighed through his nose.
"Well, what would you prefer we called it?"
"I don't know," sniffed Neal, "how about, Operation: Stop the blatant bullying that's happening in plain sight? You're a teacher, Mr Harris! The kids here don't just hate me, they loathe my soul and they're never going to accept my presence in this school. You said you could put a stop to this, so will you please just get on with it?" Sara placed a calming hand on his shoulder.
"Neal, Mr Harris is doing the best he can…"
"No, Sara, Neal's right." Harris gave him an apologetic smile. "This is a unique situation and I'm trying my hardest not to procrastinate, but the truth is… the number of solutions to this problem are somewhat limited. The kids here don't even know your real name – no wonder they don't trust you!"
"I could tell them." Neal ran a hand through his hair, feeling a bit embarrassed after the outburst. He knew that Mr Harris was devoting a lot of time to helping him with the bullying, but the sheer lack of success was starting to get at him. Harris sounded good in theory, what with all his promises and his five step plans, but the reality was rather disheartening. Three days they'd been coming to this squalid meeting room, and in those three days the situation had only gotten worse. "Mr Harris, I could tell them the truth. Do you think that that would make them stop attacking me?"
"Hmmm…" Harris scratched his scraggly beard, "That's risky at best. It could easily go horribly wrong. No, I think we should do the fourth step of my five step plan. We've already made some headway with the other steps…"
No, they hadn't. Neal was reluctant to say the words aloud. So far, Mr Harris had had him selling cakes in a cake sale, distributing sweets to the kids in detention and becoming a part of the school council so that when they announced a day of no uniform, Neal would be able to seize the credit. But the attempts at bribery had fallen flat. Now the students didn't just yell murderer and thief; they shouted teacher's pet at him as well.
"What's step four?" Neal asked grudgingly. "I hope it's better than the other three."
"I think you might be pleased with this one." Harris drew out a small, ring bound notebook from his pocket. The cover was emblazoned with the words Year Planner. He thumbed through the tiny book for a few moments, before finding the page he had been searching for and showing it to Neal and Sara. "Maths Challenge. Open to all years. You're good at maths, right, Neal?"
"Um, not really…" Sara elbowed him playfully.
"For a conman, you're a really bad liar," she said, sharing a knowing look with Mr Harris. "You're great at maths!" Neal brushed off the praise, embarrassed by the mention of the word conman. It seemed so incongruous with his surroundings. That word had no right to be mentioned in these halls.
"I guess I'm ok." He admitted. "What exactly is this maths challenge?"
"You go in after school one day and sit an online paper," said Mr Harris eagerly. As a maths teacher, it wasn't surprising that he was keen about all things maths related. "Your score gets sent off to compete with all the other children in the state – and then the winner gets $10,000 donated to their school! If the kids don't love you after that, I don't know what will persuade them." Neal didn't have the heart to tell Mr Harris that the chances of him winning were exceedingly slim.
"Alright," he said, "I'll do it."
Ten minutes later, Neal and Sara left the meeting room and headed off to their next lesson. For Neal, that lesson was history. He parted with Sara on the stairs – giving her a quick goodbye peck on the cheek before she went – then edged along the empty, top floor corridor towards his classroom. The talk with Mr Harris had overrun slightly and he was now late for history. Not a good move. His history teacher, the wizened and frightfully ill-tempered Mrs Cromwell, was grumpier than a gargoyle and if there was one thing she simply didn't tolerate, it was being late for class. It didn't help that for some unknown reason, she despised Neal almost as much as the kids did.
Neal approached T12 and knocked hesitantly on the door.
"Come in!" He stepped inside the room, hands raised apologetically.
"Mrs Cromwell, I'm so sorry I'm-" He trailed off, the words dying in his mouth. There, sitting in the front row with her arms folded and her hair in a long, sweeping ponytail, was a girl he recognised. A girl he had sworn never to set eyes upon again. A girl he had thought was dead. "Um…" Neal stammered. He had forgotten what he'd been about to say. "Um…"
"Nick Halden, you're fifteen minutes late to my lesson! Where have you been?" Mrs Cromwell rounded on him. She was standing at the front of the room next to the whiteboard, a marker pen held threateningly in her hand.
"Errrr…." It was as if his brain had forgotten how to form words. He stared at the girl. She had this slow, infuriating smile on her face that grew the more he stuttered. Neal forced himself to concentrate.
"Sorry. I was talking to Mr Harris and our conversation overran a bit." His eyes strayed back to her face.
"If I ask Mr Harris if that was true, will he say yes?" Mrs Cromwell glared at him suspiciously. She was a small woman with frizzy brown hair streaked white and grey. She wore spectacles and a purple cardigan every Tuesday and Thursday.
"Yeah, of course he would confirm it." Neal bit back the rising anger. "It's true."
"Sit down, Nick." He glanced around the room, looking for an empty space. Every seat was taken – apart from one. He swore under his breath, considering his options. He was still standing next to the door; he could make a run for it…
"Nick. Sit down there, at the front." Mrs Cromwell spat. The entire class was staring at him. With a sigh, Neal walked over and sat down in the only empty chair in the entire room. Of course it was right next to the girl. He cursed his rotten luck, cursed the history teacher, cursed the girl again and again. Once he was seated, Mrs Cromwell snatched his planner off the desk and scribbled in a detention.
"What?" Neal exclaimed before he could stop himself, "Miss, that's so unfair – I told you I was talking to Mr Harris!"
"YOU ARE LATE TO MY LESSON!" The history teacher half-shouted, and that ended the matter. Fuming, Neal sunk down low in his chair and did his best to listen as Mrs Cromwell tittered on about civil war and people long ago dead and buried. History had always been a passion of his, but now that Mrs Cromwell was his teacher Neal found himself dreading every single lesson. And the presence of the girl…
"What the hell are you doing here?" he hissed, as Mrs Cromwell started handing out textbooks. The girl next to him shrugged.
"Learning about the civil war. What do you think?"
"Alex." Neal couldn't reign in his mounting anger any more. The day just kept on getting worse and worse. First the disappointingly fruitless meeting with Mr Harris, then the dispute with Mrs Cromwell and now this, having to face the girl he had left for dead in the Swiss mountains. God, he hated school. Alex Hunter shook her head slightly, her dangly ear-rings tinkling. They were shaped like tiny elephants – he could think of nothing more contradictory or stupid.
"Do you enjoy wearing oxymorons in your ears?" he snapped, not bothering to keep his tone polite. Alex didn't answer the question.
"I'm sorry Neal," she whispered, "but this was the only way I could find you. We need to talk."
"What's wrong with going round to my house or ringing me up like a normal person?" he growled, covering his mouth with a hand to hide the fact that he was talking. The last thing he needed was another detention from Mrs Cromwell.
"Neal, need I remind you that you live with a freaking fed?" Alex rolled her eyes. "Phones tapped, letters opened, house bugged – you know this! The only way I could see you was by enrolling in your stupid school."
"You actually enrolled here?" Neal asked. For some reason, the thought struck him as hilarious. She scowled at him.
"God you're such an idiot. No, of course I didn't enrol here! I used some of our old contacts to invent an exchange programme. They think I'm here visiting from England for two weeks." Neal didn't doubt that she was telling the truth. Alex was clever – and she had enough connections to make a fictitious exchange a reality.
"So does that mean some poor soul is on their way to England right now?" he asked, genuinely curious.
"Nope. I really remembered you as being more intelligent than this, Neal. But then again, you did totally mess up that job in Switzerland…" he ignored the jab, waiting patiently for her to continue, "I arranged the exchange so that it went only one way. Next year, they'll send a kid across the pond, but I'll destroy the programme before they do that."
"Good." They faded into a strained silence. Alex's presence here made Neal feel guilty all over again – it was true that the job in Switzerland had gone wrong because of him. They had both been young, ridiculously so; young and scared and inexperienced. He had panicked. She had ended up in hospital. He'd fled the country. Just your typical first date gone wrong. "So why are you here?" He asked, finally. Alex sighed.
"I'm in a spot of trouble."
"Oh God."
"Yup." Among thieves, 'a spot of trouble' was code for 'more trouble than you could possibly imagine'.
"Death threat?" Neal asked, fearing the worst.
"About a dozen."
"Oh God." He said again and ran a hand, somewhat shakily, through his hair. "What can I do to help?"
"Give me Datum 815. Give me the microchip."
"Don't have it."
"Don't lie." They stared at each other, silent and unmoving.
"Alex," Neal said, slowly and distinctly, "I don't have the microchip."
Alex Hunter cursed loudly and right there, in the middle of a history lesson surrounded by onlookers, slapped him hard around the face.
Hey guys, hope you enjoyed this chapter! Sorry it was shorter than usual...
I'd just like to say thank you to everyone who's left a review; I really enjoy reading your comments. However, looking at some of the reviews, it would seem that I've inadvertently started a bit of a debate with my use of language. As I'm sure most of you know, I'm English, which raises a few problems in terms of accuracy considering that this story is based off an American programme and is set in New York. I'm aware that I could probably make more of an effort to Americanise my work, but I'm reluctant to change the way I write simply to appease an audience. Though that said, this story is indeed set in America, so I should probably make it more authentic by fact checking etc. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this matter - does my writing distract from the story?
Thanks again for all the positive reviews - I find them really helpful! :D