Chapter 4

After a long day spent struggling through lessons, the last thing Redhill wanted to do was arrange 150 chairs in the sports hall for an assembly the next morning. Frowning, he looked over at Reigate, who was placing her bag next to his on the floor near the entrance. The door was still open a little, and he could hear a cold wind whispering around the trees outside. Reigate's brown hair fell down around her face as she leant over, and she tucked it behind her ear. Despite the chill in the air, Redhill knew they would warm up quickly and strode over to where Reigate was still crouching so he could set his coat down. She glanced up at him as he approached.

"I still can't believe you wanted to scrape chewing gum off tables"

Redhill's eyebrows furrowed as he looked at her, and he stood a little taller.

"I didn't want to, it's just easier and takes less time"

Reigate pulled a face and zoomed over to the first stack of blue, plastic chairs that needed to be laid out. They were stacked fairly high and clearly she was struggling to lift the top chair off of it. The boy made his way over, standing back and watching her manoeuvre the chair up and off the others. Once she had managed it and set the chair down at the beginning of the row, he took a step forward, taking the next two chairs effortlessly. Reigate huffed, glaring at him, and snatched them from him. They settled into the roles smoothly, Redhill putting chairs on the floor and Reigate organising them into neat rows.

"Move faster" she bit out, sliding chairs into position as fast as Redhill could hand them to her. He rolled his eyes and said nothing. The repetitive movements allowed his mind to wander to his predicament. Would he really be expelled? He may not have been a model student, but he hadn't realised it had become so severe. His grades had begun to slip years ago, but he'd thought that keeping his head down and staying silent would let him get away with it. Maybe the past few months of acting out and disrespecting other students and even staff had put him on their radar. In general, he supposed, it didn't really matter. He could find a good enough job and get on with his life. Having bad GCSEs probably wasn't any better than having no GCSEs.

Their steady rhythm continued as it was. The scraping of chairs grated on Reigate's ears. Did he really need to be moving that slowly? It was like trying to swim through Nutella. His vacant stare into the distance annoyed her - did he not just hear her ask to speed up? He was probably ignoring her so he didn't have to put any more effort in than was strictly necessary. Taking the next chair from him, she slammed it into the ground between them.

"What is your problem?" she demanded, hands on hips. Redhill looked confused for a second.

"I don't think I'm the one with a problem here…"

"Do you want to be here all evening? Is this another one of your stupid ideas to get out of homework?"

"Oh please" he turned away from her back to the chairs. "It's not like you care" he grumbled.

Reigate's eyes blazed and she stepped around the chair to jab a finger at him. "You don't know a single thing about me, you selfish, good for nothing-"

"Stop" he ground out, looking at the floor.

"Excuse me?"

"Just…don't"

"Fine"

She spun around to pick up the chair that had been abandoned behind her. The chairs kept coming and before long, they had almost finished. The tense atmosphere had settled a little and they worked silently together.

Redhill turned to Reigate, another chair in hand.

"We're done."

"Oh, okay". He put the chair back onto the unfinished stack. The two of them walked back to their belongings at the entrance to the hall. Redhill shrugged his coat back on as Reigate rummaged through her bag for a second. As she stood, she held out a piece of paper across the space between them.

"Here. It's my timetable of clubs and activities after school"

Redhill took it cautiously. They stood as he read all the information.

"You do art club?" he raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, I do actually"

"Cool. Do I have to do art there?"

"No, it's pretty informal so you can do what you want"

"Cool"

"Do you do…anything?"

"…no"

They exited the sports hall, Redhill extending his steps to keep up with Reigate as they made their way down one of the many corridors of the school. They wound up back on the corridor with the Geography office, but Redhill came to a halt a few metres before it. When Reigate realised he'd stopped, she did a rapid 180.

"Everything alright?" She offered.

"Well…not really."

"Listen" she said firmly. "If this is what I said earlier, I'm…sorry. It was uncalled for"

Redhill shifted on his feet. "No, it's not that. It's just that…" He took a deep breath, staring pointedly at his shoes. "They're kicking me out".

Reigate's eyes widened as she looked up at him. "They're what?" she breathed. "They can't do that."

"They can, if I don't do better in exams and stuff. I probably won't be here for longer than a few months, so at least that's something for you to look forward to". Redhill's mouth turned down at the edges.

She spluttered before regaining her composure. "Redhill, we're not exactly friends but it's not like I want you to be expelled."

He raised his eyes to study her. "You don't?"

"Of course not! You may get on my nerves a lot but you still deserve an education."

"Oh…thanks, I guess".

She moved a little closer to him, and their eyes met. "There's still time for you to fix this, if you start putting some real effort in"

"Okay"

Reigate spun around again, striding into the Geography office with Redhill directly behind her.

As expected, Mr Bletchingly was surrounded by students' workbooks, which were piled high around the perimeter of his desk and obscured his head, which was lowered to mark the work of a student who must have had particularly small handwriting. His fountain pen scratched audibly on the paper as he drew it across the page. The slump of his shoulders spoke of how long he'd been buried amongst the green books already, and Reigate cleared her throat to get his attention. Like a sunflower turning to face the sun, the old teacher's face lit up when he saw them.

"Aha! Wonderful to see you two again. Hopefully the chairs weren't too heavy?" He beamed at them, shoving the books on his desk around until it was almost presentable.

Redhill slung his bag onto the floor, where it landed with a gentle thud, and dragged a chair over from another vacant desk. "Nah it was alright."

"Glad to hear it! Reigate, please take a seat"

The brown haired girl picked up a chair and moved it a little closer, slipping into it and crossing her legs. "Thank you sir."

"Righty tighty then", the teacher said, leaning back in his chair. "There's something we dearly need to talk about. Reigate, I'm not sure if Redhill has already told you or not but-"

"She already knows" Redhill's eyes lowered until he was burning holes in the floor. His arms were folded and although he had slumped into his seat, it was clear that he was anything but relaxed.

"Ah that makes my job much easier then. What I wanted to add was that I've been emailing around and asking for some…favours off of other staff members".

Reigate tilted her head and leaned forward a little. "Are you implying that you have a plan?"

Mr Bletchingly slapped his leg with one hand. "That is exactly what I mean! The day is not lost and we can still work something out. That is, of course, with your agreement". He turned to face Redhill more directly, and waited until the boy met his eyes before continuing. "The only person who can really make a difference here is you." There was another pause. "In the wise words of William Ernest Henley, 'I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul'".

His eyes burned with such an unexpected intensity that Redhill was tempted to look away again. Instead he found his arms uncrossing as he sat up straighter again. After a deep breath he found his voice again.

"I'll do it".

"There's a good lad!" The stare was broken and the older man smiled jovially. He swiped a piece of scrap paper off of a colleagues desk and took his fountain pen in the other hand. As he did so, Redhill turned to Reigate to catch her reaction. To his surprise, she was already looking at him intently. They shared a small smile that only broke off when Bletchingly started muttering quietly and scrawling something on the scrap paper.

"So gang, this is my grand and ultimate master plan". He pointed to different parts of the paper as he spoke. "This is a list of people who've said they can help you. It's a good few people who are rooting for you, which is definitely promising. And this is a list of all the subjects you're doing and the grades you apparently need to get to stay here. This is just a basic timetable layout that you need to copy out so you can organise your work times. So, what do you think?"

Redhill peered at it for a few more seconds as Reigate sat back and gazed into the middle distance, lost in thought. Was the boy sat next to her actually going to make an effort and turn his life around? Although it seemed a little unlikely, she felt a little spark of hope on his behalf. He was smart enough to stand a chance, if he tried. As Redhill exhaled loudly, her eyes came back to focus on the piece of paper. "You could write up that timetable tomorrow at art club" she offered.

"Yeah sure"

"And we share lots of subjects as well. Perhaps we could do homework…together?"

Redhill's head snapped round to look at her, gaze quizzical. "You'd do that?"

"Well, some of us like to see others doing well at school, actually." Despite the harshness of her words, her tone had no bite to it. "So yes, I wouldn't mind helping".

"Well then you two, I'll see you tomorrow!" Mr Bletchingly stood and picked up a pile of books from his desk, sliding them haphazardly into a battered rucksack and pulling his jacket on. "Good luck in art".

With a "goodbye" tossed over her shoulder, Reigate left the room. Redhill was still rising from his seat, as he gently took a book out of his bag.

"Thanks for the book, sir"

"Ah, you're most welcome my boy"

As Redhill left, he could hear the aged teacher whistling a tune to himself.