‘Sorry,’ she said sheepishly. ‘I’m gushing, aren’t I? It’s just I wish I had any sort of role model in my own family. The best we’ve managed is Uncle David who owns a dry cleaners.’
Then the bell rang and everyone began to move. April and her new friend began to walk out of the refectory, joining the crush.
actually, I think I might have a story for your dad, if you want to meet me after school?’
‘Okay,’ said April warily. ‘What’s it about?’
‘This place,’ said Caro, just a hint of a smile on her face. ‘I think it’s a giant conspiracy to take over the world.’
Chapter Three
Mr Sheldon was a tall man, probably somewhere in his forties, although his white hair made him look much older. In fact, along with his grey three-piece suit and heavy silver-framed glasses, he looked exactly as April had always imagined a distinguished college professor would look. The fact that he was also the head teacher at Ravenwood only added to his air of importance. Headmasters didn’t normally take classes, of course, but April was quickly learning that Ravenwood was some way from the usual definition of ‘normal’. Mr Sheldon strode up and down in front of the philosophy class, telling stories of long-dead Greeks and Germans that should have been deadly dull, but he somehow made them fascinating; it was like watching a particularly good documentary on TV. But still … something wasn’t quite right, April thought, as she sat at the back maintaining her ‘head down, stay off the radar’ policy. There was something about Mr Sheldon, something in the picture that didn’t quite fit. He put her on edge, for some reason. Maybe it was just that she wasn’t used to actually listening to a teacher. Not just hearing their words and picking a few relevant sound bites out of the drone, but really listening to what they were saying, then really thinking about it. It was certainly a new experience for April, especially as there were plenty of distractions. The gorgeous blond boy, Benjamin, was sitting three rows in front of her and kept turning to whisper to his friend. Every time he did, she could see his slightly wicked smile and his cheekbones and his … Hmm, now what had she been saying about concentrating?
‘So how many of you have seen Star Trek?’ said Mr Sheldon in his deep, honeyed voice. A few arms tentatively raised - not as many as you’d think, given the geek factor in this school, thought April. Mr Sheldon was obviously thinking the same thing as he smiled. ‘I suspect a few of are hiding your light under a bushel,’ he said, eliciting some guilty laughs.
‘All right, so how many of you have seen Back to the Future?’
A lot more hands were raised, mostly by eager pupils in the front two rows.
‘So what’s the main idea behind it?’
A boy in the very front row put up a hand. April realised it was Jonathon, Davina’s boyfriend.
‘Time travel,’ said Jonathon confidently. ‘Marty McFly travels through time - past, present and future - in the mad professor’s car, which is a sort of time machine, fixing various problems in order to save his family.’
There was another round of giggles, and Mr Sheldon nodded.
‘Very good, Jonathon. That sort of story is generally described as science fiction, but in reality, there’s very little science involved. We don’t have the technology create a “flux capacitor”. Consequently, it’s more accurate to say that Back to the Future is actually philosophical fiction. When Marty changes the past, it changes events in the future.’
April was glad to see other people around her frowning too.
‘Which leads us to the central problem, when you’re writing about time travel,’ continued Mr Sheldon. ‘Can anyone tell me what it’s called? Benjamin?’
Benjamin didn’t even look up. ‘The Grandfather Paradox,’ he said in an offhand tone, as if it was obvious.
‘Excellent. The Grandfather Paradox: what if you built your own time machine, zipped back seventy or eighty years and killed your grandfather when he was a boy? If Granddad was dead and never met Grandma, that means one of your parents would never have existed and therefore you wouldn’t be around to build that time machine.’
Mr Sheldon looked at the furrowed brows of the class and laughed. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not testing you on your movie knowledge, I’m simply using it as an example of philosophy in action for the benefit of our newer class members.’
Oh God, thought April, don’t point me out, please.
‘Those of us who have been studying this for some time know that the beauty of philosophy is that for any given phenomenon - time travel, the existence of God, free will - you can come up with several hypotheses that will seem to explain it just as well as the accepted explanation. As we’ve discussed before, there are no right answers in philosophy. Although please note that doesn’t mean you will automatically get an A for turning up to your exam.’
Everyone laughed.
‘Okay, let’s consider another age-old conundrum: the chicken and the egg.’
He lifted one hand and pointed to the back of the class. April’s heart jumped as she thought she was going to be asked to speak, but the teacher was pointing to the plump girl with rosy cheeks sitting next to her.
‘Emily. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?’
‘The egg,’ answered the girl confidently.
Mr Sheldon nodded. ‘Very well. Why?’
‘Well, in nature DNA can only be modified in the womb, or in this case the egg. So as evolution is a series of genetic mutations, it must have happened before the chicken was born, which means, in the egg.’
Mr Sheldon clapped his hands. ‘Splendid. A perfect scientific answer. But this is a philosophy class, so what’s the problem with this theorem?’
He paused and let his eyes sweep around the room. ‘How about you, Miss Dunne?’
With a lurch, April realised he was looking straight at her. How did he know she wasn’t paying attention?
April, can you tell us what’s wrong with Emily’s rather straightforward, by-the-book answer?’
She glanced to her side and saw that all of the rosiness had drained from Emily’s cheeks and she was now glaring at April.
‘Wrong?’ stuttered April.
‘It does seem to address all the possibilities, doesn’t it?’ said Mr Sheldon, stroking his chin. ‘Evolution, mutations - it all sounds very straightforward, I suppose.’ Mr Sheldon shook his head slightly and turned back to his eager students at the front. ‘Perhaps someone else can—’
‘Evolution,’ blurted April.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Well, uh, Emily’s explanation assumes that evolution is correct.’
Mr Sheldon chuckled. ‘It seems we have a true Christian in our midst, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, raising more laughter. ‘No, no,’ said Mr Sheldon, raising his hand to silence the jeers. ‘Enough. She is quite correct. Emily’s scientific explanation assumes far too much. And April is at least thinking for herself.’
April felt herself blush.
‘Of course, before we give her a round of applause, we should consider how narrow an answer hers is,’ continued Mr Sheldon. April felt the blush increase as she realised that Benjamin Osbourne had turned to look at her. He turned back to his friend and whispered something and they both laughed.
‘Miss Dunne may be thinking for herself,’ said Mr Sheldon, ‘but she’s still thinking along conventional lines. Just because you have seen one chicken emerge from an egg, can you assume that the same will be true for the millions of eggs produced every year? Is that logical? Does that make sense? If you see a chair with four legs, does that mean all chairs have four legs? No. The reality is that in absolute terms, we know almost nothing about eggs, where they come from, what they are or whether they are related to chickens. This is what philosophy is all about: turning lazy thinking on its head and questioning everything you see, everything you think you know.’
April was now glaring at Mr Sheldon, but the teacher had moved on.
‘Consider this: what do you really know about the peopl
e around you? What do you know about your mother, father, brothers and sisters? Does your brother take heroin? Is your sister a virgin?’
There were a few nervous titters, but Mr Sheldon wasn’t smiling.
‘What about the person beside you?’
April wasn’t inclined to look at the girl next to her; even without turning her head she could tell Emily was glowering at her. Instead she looked the other way - and her breath caught in her throat. Gabriel Swift was staring directly at her from the end of the row, his eyes narrowed. April looked away quickly, her blush now approaching pillar-box red.
‘What do you really know about your classmates?’ Mr Sheldon was saying. ‘Just because they come to your school, sit next to you every day, you assume they are benign. Perhaps they are. Perhaps they’re not. Perhaps they’re planning on blowing up this class. Perhaps they’re planning something worse.
There was more strained laughter. April glanced up at Gabriel again, but he had sat back in his chair and another pupil was blocking her view.
‘But that’s what I want you to consider in this class, in this school,’ continued Mr Sheldon. ‘This is Ravenwood, people. Here we expect you to look at things from a different angle. Probe, think, question, investigate. The world is much more interesting that way, I promise you.’
The bell rang and the students began to scrabble their books into bags. Mr Sheldon clapped his hands and opened up a cardboard box on his desk.
‘Okay, class, before you disappear, your homework is to read this book,’ he said, waving a thick volume in the air. He began to hand them out as the students shuffled past. There was some groaning as they looked at the heavy tome.
‘Don’t worry, this is the author’s complete works, not a single novel. Read as many as you wish, but I only require you to read the short story “Random Quest”. It’s easy to read and has everything you could want: war, romance and time travel. Imagine Brad and Angelina in the lead roles if it helps. We’ll discuss it next lesson.’
As April filed past the teacher, he handed her the thick book. ‘Good thinking there, April,’ he said in a low voice, ‘I’m pleased.’
Before April could react, Mr Sheldon had turned away to shout at two girls poring over a magazine.
‘Now this is what I’m talking about,’ said Mr Sheldon, snatching the offending mag and dropping it into the waste-paper basket next to his desk. ‘Celebrity culture has played a confidence trick on you, people. God frowns on the worship of graven images, ladies, haven’t you heard? Think for yourselves! ’
‘But it’s got the last interview with Alix Graves in it,’ complained the taller of the girls.
‘Alix Graves is dead, Lucy,’ said Mr Sheldon. ‘I’m sure you’ll have found someone else to obsess over by next week.’
April looked up, surprised both by the insensitivity and the fact that a teacher would even have heard of Alix Graves. As she did, Gabriel barged past her, sending her spinning, and she dropped her books with a clatter. As she bent to scoop them up, she heard giggles and felt all eyes on her. Great, just what I need, she thought. So much for staying under the radar.
‘Are you all right?’
She looked up into Benjamin Osbourne’s blue eyes. He bent to help her up, his face concerned. God, he’s good-looking, thought April.
‘Yes, yes, fine,’ she muttered as she quickly gathered her belongings and moved into the corridor. She glanced back and saw that Benjamin was still watching her, a smile playing around his perfect mouth.
‘You’re sure you’re okay?’
April nodded and almost ran down the corridor. But she wasn’t fine, far from it. She had been humiliated and laughed at, she’d felt out of her depth and … well, Benjamin must think she was a clumsy, stupid new girl with a bright red face. But that wasn’t the worst of it. No, the thing that had upset her most was that strange boy, Gabriel, barging into her. She couldn’t swear to it, but she was fairly sure he had whispered something to her as he pushed past. And it had sounded very much like, ‘Get out.’
Chapter Four
April was lost. After Mr Sheldon’s philosophy class, she had fled. She needed to get out, find somewhere away from the prying eyes of her classmates. All she had wanted was to get through the day without making a spectacle of herself, but no - she couldn’t even manage that. What the hell’s wrong with me? Why can’t I ever avoid making an ass of myself—especially when boys are watching? She sat down on a bench and took a deep breath. Now her embarrassment was fading a little, April began to get annoyed. Why did everyone here have to be so nasty? Mr Sheldon had known it was her first day, so why did he feel the need to single her out and then ridicule her answer in front of the class? That Emily could take a running jump, too. Benjamin had at least tried to help her, but what was that boy Gabriel doing barging into her? She’d only laid eyes on him a couple of times; what had she ever done to provoke him?
‘I hate this school,’ she whispered. She looked down at the book Mr Sheldon had handed out. A John Wyndham omnibus. Never heard of him. She turned to the contents page and her heart sank. The first story was Day of the Triffids: she had definitely heard of that one, something to do with giant man-eating plants, if memory served. April loathed science fiction with a passion, all those stupid aliens and lasers and stuff. And those nerdy boys who were into it tended to be weird and a bit, well, hygienically challenged. She ran her finger down the other titles: The Midwich Cuckoos, Chocky, The Kraken Wakes … Opening the book at random, she read the first two lines of The Midwich Cuckoos. Wow. Dull, she thought. No, make that dull and old-fashioned, full of dusty language and polite ideas: everything seemed to be ‘agreeable’, ‘curious’ and ‘queer’, although April did manage to smile when she discovered that the hero was called Richard Gayford. She shook her head. Even more than sci-fi, April hated it when teachers tried to be trendy but missed the mark by about three decades. Sighing and deciding she would worry about it later, she shoved the book in her bag and headed back the way she’d come, certain that her class must all have gone by now. She took the staircase down to the main hall and asked a younger girl for directions to the front entrance, the only way out of the building she knew of. The girl was polite and helpful, giving her detailed directions which April immediately forgot. In hindsight she should have known she was having her leg pulled, especially when the first instruction had led her into a service corridor, but April had a stubborn streak she assumed she’d inherited from her father and ploughed on despite her misgivings. Now she had lost all sense of direction. She knew she was on a lower floor, but beyond that she was hopelessly confused. Annoyed with herself, she pushed her way through a door marked ‘exit’—and walked straight into somebody.
‘Hey! Watch out!’ said an angry voice, as April became aware of eyes on her. There were two stunning girls lounging against railings. A third, with whom she had collided, had almost dropped a bottle she’d been drinking from and was wiping her mouth.
‘Don’t you look where you’re going?’ she demanded.
‘Sorry,’ muttered April, trying to skirt around her and get up the steps. Drinking alcohol in school? She knew she was in trouble; they wouldn’t take kindly to being caught, even if she wasn’t a teacher. April had almost made it past them when one of the girls stepped out in front of her. With a sinking feeling, April realised it was the beautiful girl with the rabbit-fur coat she had noticed before school. Davina, sister to the gorgeous Benjamin.
‘So you’re the new girl,’ she said, her blue eyes running over April like a scanner. April couldn’t help but feel a little uncomfortable being observed so closely.
‘I suppose so,’ said April lamely. She glanced at the other girls and could see they were waiting for Davina’s lead. After a pause that felt like an eternity to April, the girl smiled and held out a slender hand.
‘I’m Davina,’ she said simply. ‘This is Layla and Chessy,’ she said, pointing to her two friends.
‘I’m April,’ she said.
‘I know,’ said Davina. She stared at April for a moment, then beckoned her up the steps. ‘Come on, I bet no one’s shown you around here, have they?’
‘Uh, no, no they haven’t,’ stammered April as she followed. The other girls fell into step behind them.
‘Don’t worry, we’ll look after you - won’t we, ladies?’ She smiled. ‘So I hear you’re from Edinburgh. I just love Edinburgh, it’s so romantic. My mother is involved with the Festival, so I fly up most years. Don’t you just adore the Scotsman?’
‘My dad used to work for them. He’s a writer.’
Davina shot her a confused look, then laughed. ‘No, silly, I mean the Scotsman Hotel. They have the best spa in the city.’ She stretched out her thin fingers. She had a huge diamond ring on her index finger and April didn’t doubt it was real. ‘I could so do with a manicure right now.’ She sighed and linked her arm through April’s in an unsettling gesture of intimacy. ‘Mmm … what’s that heavenly perfume?’ she asked.