by Alice Oseman
“This isn’t what I worked for,” Lucas snaps. “I thought that messing with this school would help people.”
“Fucking up this school,” says Quiff, “is the best thing that’s ever happened to this town.”
“But this isn’t going to help anyone. It’s not going to change anything. Changing an environment doesn’t change a person.”
“Cut the crap, Lucas.” Evelyn shakes her head. “You’re not Gandhi, babe.”
“You must be able to see what an idiotic idea this is,” says Lucas.
“Just give me the lighter,” says Quiff.
Becky, her palms flattened against the wall like Spider-Man, whips her head around. “Lighter?” she mouths.
I shrug back. I stare harder at Lucas and realize that behind his back he’s holding what at first looks like a gun but is actually just one of those novelty lighters.
There’s only one thing you can do with a lighter.
“Er, no,” says Lucas, but even this far away I can tell that he’s nervous. Quiff lunges for Lucas’s arm, but he steps backward just in time. Quiff begins to laugh like some evil mastermind.
“Well, shit,” says Quiff. “You went through all this trouble, and now you’re just going to steal our stuff and run off with it. Like a little kid. Why did you even come here? Why didn’t you just go and tell on us, like the baby you are?”
Lucas shifts onto his other leg, silent.
“Give me the lighter,” says Quiff. “Last chance.”
“Fuck you,” says Lucas.
Quiff puts his hand to his face and rubs his forehead, sighing. “Christ.” Then, like someone flicked a switch in his brain, he swings his fist at lightning speed and punches Lucas in the face.
Lucas, with surprising dignity, doesn’t fall down; he lifts himself up to his full height and meets Quiff dead in the eye.
“Fuck you,” says Lucas again.
Quiff smashes Lucas in the stomach, this time doubling him over. He grabs Lucas’s arm with ease and wrenches away the lighter gun, then grabs Lucas by the collar, holds the barrel against his neck, and pushes him against the wall. I expect he thinks he looks like some kind of Mafia boss, but it doesn’t help him that he’s got the face of a seven-year-old and the voice of David Cameron.
“You couldn’t just leave it, could you, mate? You couldn’t just leave it alone, could you?”
It’s obvious that Quiff is not going to pull the trigger and burn Lucas’s neck. It is obvious to Quiff that Quiff is not going to burn Lucas. It is obvious to all the people who have ever lived and all the people who will ever live that Quiff does not have the strength, will, or malice to seriously wound a fairly innocent guy like Lucas Ryan. But I guess if someone is holding a lighter gun up to your throat, then things like that aren’t quite as obvious as they should be.
Becky is no longer at my side.
She karate kicks the door open.
“Okay, chaps. Just stop. Right now. Stop the madness.”
With one hand in the air, she strides out from our hiding place. Evelyn makes some kind of squealing sound, Lucas lets out a triumphant laugh, and Quiff drops Lucas’s collar and steps backward as if afraid that Becky might arrest him right there on the spot.
I follow her in and immediately regret it. Lucas sees me and stops laughing.
Becky stomps up and places herself directly between Lucas and the lighter gun. Her makeup-less face transforms her into a thin-eyed, pale-faced warrior.
“Oh, darling.” She sighs at Quiff and tilts her head, faux sympathetically. “You actually think you’re intimidating, don’t you? I mean, where in God’s name did you get that piece of crap? Costcutter?”
Quiff tries to laugh it off, but fails. Becky’s eyes turn to fire. She holds out her hands.
“Go for it, dude.” Her eyebrows are all the way up her forehead. “Go on. Set fire to my hair or whatever. I am relatively intrigued to see if you can pull that trigger.”
I can see Quiff desperately trying to think of something witty to say. After a few awkward moments, he stumbles backward, grabs the Morrisons bag, puts the lighter into it, and pulls the trigger. The lighter flame glows orange for approximately two seconds before Quiff pulls it away and casts the bag dramatically toward the classroom’s bookshelf. Whatever is inside the bag begins to smoke and rustle.
Everyone in the room looks at the bag.
The smoke gradually thins. The plastic bag withers a little before flopping off the shelf and onto the floor, upside down.
There is a long silence.
Eventually, Becky throws her head back and roars with laughter.
“Oh my God! Oh my God!”
Quiff has nothing to say anymore. There’s no way he can take back what just happened. I think this is just about the stupidest thing I have ever seen.
“This is Solitaire’s grand finale!” Becky continues to laugh. “Oh my God, you really are the most deluded of all the hipsters I’ve met. You bring a whole new meaning to the word ‘deluded.’”
Quiff lifts the lighter and sways a little toward the bag, as if he’s going to try again, but Becky grabs him violently by the wrist and with her other hand wrenches the gun away. She waves it in the air and withdraws her phone from her coat pocket.
“Take one step toward that plastic bag, bitch, and I’m calling the popo.” She raises her eyebrows like a disappointed teacher. “Don’t think I don’t know your name, Aaron Riley.”
Quiff, or Aaron Riley or whoever, squares up to her. “You think they’d believe some slag?”
Becky throws her head back for the second time. “Oh man. I’ve met so many bell ends like you.” She pats Quiff on the arm. “You do the whole tough-guy thing really well, mate. Well done.”
I steal a quick glance at Lucas, but he’s just staring at Becky, absently shaking his head.
“You’re all the same,” says Becky. “All you idiots who think that by playing the self-righteous intellect, you rule the entire world. Why don’t you go home and complain about it on your blog like normal people?” She takes a step toward him. “I mean, what are you trying to do here, dude? What’s Solitaire trying to do? Do you all think that you’re better than everyone else? Are you trying to say that school isn’t important? Are you trying to teach us about morals and how to be a better person? Are you trying to say that if we just laugh about it all, if we just stir up some shit and put smiles on our faces, then life’s going to be hunky-dory? Is that what Solitaire’s trying to do?”
She lets out a monstrous cry of exasperation, actually making me jump. “Sadness is a natural human emotion, you giant dick.”
Evelyn, who has been watching with her lips pursed the entire time, finally speaks up. “Why are you judging us? You don’t even understand what we’re doing.”
“Oh, Evelyn. Really. Solitaire? You’re with Solitaire?” Becky begins to flick the lighter on and off. Perhaps she’s as deranged as I am. Evelyn cowers backward. “And this prick has been your special secret boyfriend all along? He’s wearing more hair product that I’ve used in the past year, Evelyn!” She shakes her head like a weary old person. “Solitaire. Bloody hell. I feel like I’m in Year 8 all over again.”
“Why are you acting like such a special snowflake?” says Evelyn. “You think you’re a better person than us?”
Becky screeches with laughter and tucks the lighter gun into her pajama trousers. “A better person? Ha. I’ve done some shitty things to people. And now I’m admitting it. You know what, Evelyn? Maybe I want to be a special snowflake. Maybe, sometimes, I just want to express the emotions that I’m actually feeling instead of having to put on this happy smiley facade that I put on every day just to come across to bitches like you as not boring.”
She points at me again as if she’s punching the air. “Apparently, Tori understands what you guys are trying to do. I have no idea why you’re trying to destroy our crappy little school. But Tori thinks that, you know, on the whole, you’re doing something bad, and I fucking
believe her.” Her arm drops. “Dear God, Evelyn. You severely piss me off. Jesus Christ. Creepers are the ugliest shoes I have ever seen. Go back to your blog or Glastonbury or wherever you came from and stay there.”
Quiff and Evelyn take one last horrified glare at Becky before giving up.
It’s kind of remarkable, in a way.
Because people are very stubborn and they don’t like to be proven wrong. I think that they both knew that what they were about to do was wrong, though, or they didn’t have the guts to go through with it, deep down. Maybe, when it came down to it, they’d never been the real antagonists. But if they’re not, then who is?
We follow the pair slowly out of the room and down the corridor. We watch as they wander away out through the double doors. If I were them, I would probably change schools immediately. They will be gone in a minute. Gone forever. They will be gone.
We stay there for a while, not saying anything. After a few minutes, I begin to sweat. Maybe I feel angry. No. I don’t feel anything.
Lucas is standing next to me, and he turns. His eyes are big and blue and dog-like. “Why did you come here, Victoria?”
“Those two would have hurt you,” I point out, but we both know this isn’t true.
“Why did you come?”
Everything’s so blurry.
Lucas sighs. “Well, it’s finally over. Becky kind of saved us all.”
Becky seems to be having a kind of stunned breakdown, slumped on the floor against the wall with her Superman-logoed legs sprawled out in front of her. She holds the lighter gun up to her face, flicking it on and off in front of her eyes, and I can just about hear her muttering, “This is the most pretentious novelty lighter I’ve ever seen. . . . This is so pretentious. . . .”
“Am I forgiven?” asks Lucas.
Maybe I’m going to pass out.
I shrug. “You’re not actually in love with me, are you?”
He blinks and he’s not looking at me. “Er, no. It wasn’t love, really. It was . . . I just thought I needed you . . . for some reason. . . .” He shakes his head. “I actually think that Becky’s rather lovely.”
I try not to throw up or stab myself with my house keys. I stretch my face into a grin like a toy clown. “Ha, ha, ha! You and the rest of the solar system!”
Lucas’s expression changes, like he finally gets who I am.
“Could you not call me Victoria anymore?” I ask.
He steps away from me. “Yeah, sure. Tori.”
I start to feel hot. “Were they going to do what I think they were going to do?”
Lucas’s eyes keep moving around. Not looking at me.
“They were going to burn the school down,” he says.
It seems almost funny. Another childhood dream. If we were ten, perhaps we’d rejoice in the idea of the school on fire, because that would mean no more school, wouldn’t it? But it just seems violent and pointless now. As violent and pointless as all the other things that Solitaire has done.
And then I realize something.
I turn around.
“Where are you going?” asks Lucas.
I walk down the corridor, back to Kent’s classroom, getting hotter and hotter the closer I get.
“What are you doing?”
I gaze into the classroom. And I wonder if I’ve lost it entirely.
“Tori?”
I turn to Lucas and look at him standing at the other end of the corridor. Really, properly look at him.
“Get out,” I say, maybe too quietly.
“What?”
“Take Becky and get out.”
“Wait, what are you—”
And then he sees the orange glow lighting up one side of my body.
The orange glow coming from the fire that is raging through Kent’s classroom.
“Holy shit,” says Lucas, and then I’m racing down the corridor toward the nearest fire extinguisher, tugging at it, but it won’t come off the wall.
There’s a horrific crack. The door to the classroom has split, and is burning happily.
Lucas has joined me at the extinguisher, but however hard we tug, we can’t get it off the wall. The fire creeps out of the room and spreads to the wall displays, the ceiling filling steadily with smoke.
“We need to get out!” Lucas shouts over the roaring flames. “We can’t do anything!”
“Yes we can.” We have to. We have to do something. I have to do something. I abandon the extinguisher and head farther into the school. There’ll be another one in the next corridor. In the science corridor.
Becky has leapt up from the floor. She goes to run after me, as does Lucas, but a giant wall display suddenly flops off the wall in a fiery wreck of paper and pins, blocking the corridor. I can’t see them. The carpet catches light and the flames begin to advance toward me—
“TORI!” someone screams. I don’t know who. I don’t care. I locate the fire extinguisher, and this one easily detaches from the wall. It says WATER on it, but also DO NOT USE ON BURNING LIQUID FIRES OR LIVE ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT. The fire edges down the corridor, on the walls, the ceiling, the floor, pushing me backward. There are lights, plug sockets everywhere—
“TORI!” This time the voice comes from behind me. Two hands place themselves on my shoulders, and I leap around as if it’s Death itself.
But it’s not.
It’s him, in his T-shirt and jeans, glasses, hair, arms, legs, eyes, everything—
It’s Michael Holden.
He wrenches the extinguisher from my arms—
And he hurls it out of the nearest window.
FIFTEEN
I AM FORCED down the corridor and thrown out of the nearest fire exit. How Michael knew we were here, I don’t know. What he’s doing, I don’t know. But I need to stop that fire. I need to be in there. If I can’t do anything, then it will have been for nothing. My whole life. Everything. Nothing.
He tries to grab me, but I’m practically a torpedo. I race back through the fire exit and down the next corridor, away from the oncoming flames, searching for another fire extinguisher. I’m sort of hyperventilating and I can’t see anything and I’m running so fast that I have no idea where this corridor is in the school and I start tearing up again.
But Michael can run like he skates. He grabs me around the waist, just as I tug the fire extinguisher off the wall, just as the fire bypasses the fire exit and closes us in—
“TORI! WE NEED TO GET OUT, NOW.”
The fire draws Michael’s face out of the dark. I flail around in his grip and burst forward, but he closes his fist around my forearm and squeezes it and starts to drag me, and before I know what I’m doing I’m yanking my arm so hard that my skin starts to burn. I’m screaming at him and pushing and I swing my leg around and actually kick him in the stomach. I must kick him hard, because he tumbles backward and clutches his body. I instantly realize what I’ve done and freeze, looking at him in the orange light. We meet each other’s eyes and he seems to realize something, and I want to laugh, because yeah, he’s finally realized, just like Lucas did eventually, and I hold my arms out to him—
And then I see the fire.
The inferno in the science lab to our right. The science lab that’s connected to that English classroom by one single doorway, which the flames must have stormed straight through.
I leap forward into Michael and push him away—
And the classroom explodes outward: crumpled tables, chairs, flying fireballs of books. I’m on the ground, several meters away, miraculously alive, and I open my eyes but can see nothing. Michael is lost somewhere around me in the smoke. I scramble backward as a chair leg soars past my cheek, and scream his name, no way of knowing if he’s alive or—
I get up and run.
Crying? Shouting things. A name? His name?
Solitaire’s eternal idea. That childhood dream.
Is he dead? No. I see a shape rise vaguely from the smoke, flailing around before disappearing farther into the school. At
one point I think I hear him calling me, but I might just be imagining it.
I scream his name and I’m running again, out of the smoke cloud, away from the science corridor. Around the corner, flames have reached an art classroom and the artwork, hours and hours of it, is melting into globules of fried acrylic and dripping onto the floor. It’s so sad that I want to cry, but the smoke has already started that. I start to panic, too. Not because of the fire.
Not even because I’m losing and Solitaire is winning.
Because Michael is in here.
Another corridor. Another. Where am I? Nothing is the same in the dark and the burning. Epileptic lights flash around me like sirens, like I’m passing out. Diamonds sparkling. I’m screaming again. Michael Holden. The fire growls and a hurricane of hot air careers through the school’s tunnels.
I call out for him. I’m calling him over and over again; I’m shaking so hard, the artwork and the handwritten essays on the walls are disintegrating around me and I cannot breathe.
“I failed.” I say these words right as I’m thinking them. It’s funny—this never happens. “I failed. I failed.” It’s not the school I’ve failed. It’s not even myself. It’s Michael. I’ve failed him. I failed to stop being sad. He tried so hard, he tried so hard to be nice, to be my friend, and I’ve failed him. I stop screaming. There is nothing now. Michael, dead, the school, dying, and me. There is nothing now.
And then, a voice.
My name in the smoke.
I spin on the spot, but there are only flames that way. What building am I in? There must be a window, a fire exit, something, but everything is burning, the smoke slowly starting to suffocate the air and eventually me, so before I know what I’m doing I’m tearing up a flight of stairs onto the second floor, smoke and flames at my heels.
I turn left, left again, right, into a classroom. The door slams behind me. I grab a chair, not thinking about anything except fire and smoke and dying, and smash the thin window. I close my eyes as a sprinkling of glass dust showers over my hair.