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The bell rang.

People didn't flee Mr. Gordon's class like they did some: if you had math with Mr. Burford seventy percent of people tended to flee as though the English were coming and the town was on fire, where the other thirty percent would stay behind to gaze with moist eyes and shiny pocket protectors to stutteringly discuss the finer points of never interacting with the opposite sex and operator theory.

When Charys Murphy had been in Mr. Burford's class, she had once leapt out a window the moment bell rang. (And gotten detention. Room 14 was on the first floor. She probably wouldn't have gotten detention had she not screamed, sic semper tyrannis! and rolled around on the ground outside. For someone who moved only as much as a human could possibly move to avoid bedsores, she could have moments of feverish theater student euphoria.)

People filtered out of English. People talked, packed up their stuff -- Charlie went off to some track meet, Genevieve Prideux hung around hopefully until Mr. Gordon noticed her passing and gave her a hey, have a good rest of the afternoon without me committing too much half-smile. She went off thrilled. That was Mr. Gordon for you. He was a true artiste. If she could bottle up the right percentage of non-litigious, charmingly crinkled warmth to lack of but leave anyway honey she would have, ... something in a bottle. He would probably argue against the 'crinkled'.

He was tapping at his laptop. Charys came and deposited herself in the chair in front of his desk, swinging her legs up over the arm of the seat, examining her sneakers as she pointed her toes at the ceiling. Eventually, without taking his librarian-glass'd eyes off the screen, he said: "Ave."

With a rasp of paper, she pulled a battered envelope out of her satchel. A thin slip of paper with the Meadowview High School emblem on the top waved at him like an enemy flag, scissored between two fingers. "I figure the problem is you think about me too much, Mr. Gordon," she said, "because when you wrote this up for Charlemagne Boyle, you accidentally put my name on top instead."

I would like to recommend Charys Murphy to the Sovereign Heights English program. Charys has consistently attained...

Consistently attained was a parody. Consistent -- consistency was what she aimed for. Charys Murphy was nothing if not consistent. She was absolutely consistent, just like clockwork. 'Attained' was something else.

-- Once upon a time it had been:

(Item one: fourteen year old girl, knobbly, wearing Chucks with the shoelaces untied. Item two: a young high school teacher fresh from the box, looking at her slumped in the plastic chair feigning malarial fever. Item three: an email from the social studies teacher, an ageing ally to item two -- If she gets pippy send her over to Michelle. Johanssen wants no tol with swearing this year.

The transcript:

Mr. Gordon: Pause, clicking pen. I want you to tell me about your essay.

Girl: I wrote it on... paper.

Mr. Gordon: Yes.

Girl: Microsoft Word.

Mr. Gordon: You don't have to meander down Sidetrack Lane.

Girl: That paperclip thing... Mr. Paperclip. I used fonts. And vowels. Beat. Consonants. Some verbs.

Mr. Gordon: What's interesting to me is... what's interesting to me is that there are two essays here. This is the essay you handed in to me on Friday that is -- three hundred words? Three hundred words courtesy our friends at SparkNotes. Note this evidence. Your conclusion is one sentence. Paper rustling. 'In conclusion Catcher In The Rye had a lot of themes.' More paper rustling. This isn't the essay you handed in, but I found it on the floor. Forensically. Do you recognise it, Murphy Brown?

Girl: No.

Mr. Gordon: It's a flow chart. It's a charming flow chart. I was charmed. More rustling. You sequenced it out. Beginning to end. You know, usually kids like Holden -- you're probably the only student I've had who invited him to suck your d**k.

Silence.

Mr. Gordon: Unfortunately you proved you read the whole book with this, unlike Essay One and the fact that you 'forget' the book each lesson. Objection. I theorise that you actually read the book start to finish.

Girl: That ain't me, boss. I saw the movie.

Mr. Gordon: There is no movie, Murphy Brown. Holden probably would have invited you to do the same right back, you know.

Girl: Holden Caulfield wanted to bone his brother.

Mr. Gordon: That's a more interesting answer. Pause. Come on. I'm trying to trawl your hidden depths. Unfortunately you've revealed you may have some, and the blame there I lay solely at your door.

Girl: I don't do... books.

Mr. Gordon: Why?

Girl: It's boring. I get bored.

Mr. Gordon: That's not an answer, Murphs.

Girl: It's like... here's a box, imagine the box, the end, and the box represents America. Pause. I just don't do it, okay? I don't mean to harsh your English teacher buzz, Mr. Gordon. Books are like a movie with no money or budget or whatever. I stopped on page three of Harry Potter. Pause. I read the first page and the last page of To Kill A Mockingbird. And that's like... the only two pages you need ever. And Lord Of The Flies. Nothing ever happens and then you have the America box, woo. Pause. Holden Caulfield was the world's biggest douche. America box. Can I go. Please.

Mr. Gordon: So you're saying you're sick of metaphors.

Girl: I can't turn pages, I have hand... sickness. Can I go.

Mr. Gordon: Insincerity.

Girl: There. You got me. Totally. I hate the man and insincerity and metaphors, Mr. G. Pause. Can I go.

Mr. Gordon: Oh, cynicism. I'm a little harder to lie to than other teachers, Murphy Brown. You'll give them an inch and they'll pass you because they think they've wrung all of the blood out your stone. Unfortunately, my bullshit meter is much more finely turned than anyone else here in Sing-Sing. You got sloppy. And so your punishment is me, and my punishment is you, and I'll give you a choice: either you write about Holden Caulfield again with Mr. Paperclip, or you can read a book. There is no option three.

Pause.

Mr. Gordon: A book I choose. No book report... just finishing it. How does that sound? Are we going to negotiate? No strings attached. No America box. This is the only time I will let you get away with not handing in something in. The only time. But it's your choice.

Girl: Pause. Okay. Your funeral, Mr. Gordon.

Mr. Gordon: Not just yet, Charys.)

-- The laptop still held his attention.

Presently she said, "Yo. I will quote A Separate Peace at you if this continues, Mr. Gordon. I can go for hours."

The piece of paper was waggled again. "Why did you send me a signed rec to get into Slobberin' Heights," she said, and then dropped the paper on the desk in front of her. Bits of it flashed up traumatically: -- specialist interest in American literature -- "This little piece of scrip would see my a** trussed up in a blue blazer quicker than you could say diversion of taxpayer funds. No. That ain't me, boss."

You could tell Charys was nervous, if you knew Charys, if the drawl was a little forced. She pushed back the soft cloth headband holding her mop of unlikely blue hair and started to extract non-regulation gum from her pocket, offering her teacher a piece of Juicy Fruit before starting in on her own.

He wasn't offering anything. She continued: "This piece of paper would send me all the way to pokey when you know personally that I'm going to be spending my summer years floating pizza boxes on the lake?"

She spread the chewing gum out over her tongue and then over her teeth, as a barrier. He kept clicking: three-card Solitaire, probably, or Vegas sudden death style, Ray Gordon was the only guy in existence who willingly played or knew how to play the card games that came with Windows. He revelled in Hearts. He didn't even play Windows 95 Pinball. It was an act and it was a really good act, it was an act you could go home with.

"I want to know why," she said. Once upon a time Charys Murphy had confidently thought that two could play at the irritation game, but she could snap her gum all she liked and Ray would just stare at her through his lenses like he was the teacher FBI. Her snapping gum was an orchestral work. It was Beethoven. "Why, God, why. You do lots of things for kicks, but not letters of rec. Why would you feel the need to send me to Shlip. Why would you even put this on the table."

He was not looking 1. contrite or 2. remotely dented. The most irritating thing about Ray was that he'd give you silences and you filled them up. She let the paper drop, irritatingly, down to wend its sad fluttering way to the crappy classroom carpet, irritatingly. "This is your message in a bottle."

"Nah, but they won't give me a mobility chair," said Charys. She had remained in the same boneless position all that time: blinked her eye capsules a little, perched her hands behind her head, swivelled an ankle. Chewed the gum. Swallowed the gum. Nobody had ever been able to convince her to not swallow gum. It was a silent battle: the brief look that Ray Gordon gave her over his laptop case was, you know exactly how irritating you're being,, and she didn't answer. But then she swung her legs over the seat -- "Hup, hup," grabbed her bag and stood.

The piece of paper lay as a white square on the floor. She knew that Ray was watching her as she looked at the whiteboard, looked at the wall socket, looked at the windows and the corners of the room: all he did was wait, because all he needed to do was wait. There were very few people able to shame Charys Murphy into doing anything. Sidra had possessed a growing investment stake in shame, but those had been early green-shoot days. Charlie could shame her in specific quadrants, and had.

Mr. Gordon was actually pretty talented in shame, confrontation and being -- her mind had always struggled around a word, and when she was thirteen she had called it uncreatively "Mr. Gordoning," rechristened at some point "raydiation."

She was not going to pick it up --

Charys said, "Wow, who littered here," picked up the piece of paper and refolded it into her bag. Ray said nothing.

The door got wedged open with her sneaker as she and the English teacher exeunted, as she slipped her thumbs into the waistband of her Meadowview skirt and whistled momentarily through her teeth. Ray still said nothing. She fought a momentary and vicious battle: if she didn't want to talk about something she was sure as s**t not going to talk about something, no biggie. She wanted to say a lot of things. No biggie.

He remained silent, brief hi's exchanged between him and one of the janitors. The caretakers all liked Ray. You had to cultivate the friendship of the caretaker and the IT guy, and the IT man was like, Ray's best bud forever. Ray's natural enemies were the principal, visiting lecturers and the health van.

"Not having a birthday party this year; oldness, poorness," she said. ("The rheumatism comes already, I see," said Mr. Gordon.) "I told my dad I turned eighteen last November and he gave me two hundo. Chaz took me out for a Nannerpuss at Denny's yesterday morning. Literally got a banana peel, put eyes on it, wiggled the arms."

"Carolus Magnus is thorough, though also possibly driven demented," said Mr. Gordon.

"All my work. So rap with me about what you did when you turned eighteen, Mr. Freeman," she said. "Smokes? Army service? Got tried as an adult by the court? Rode your first dinosaur around a paddock. I don't know, I'm just getting ideas out here."

'Kiddo' slid underneath her skin smoothly as a cheese grater: he knew it, she knew it. She knew the story of his graduation day: she knew how he'd picked out and applied to one up north, how he'd gotten his scholarships, how his parents had wanted him to go FMA -- Faith Missionary Academy, he'd drawled. She knew this story. She could tell it off by heart. Graduation day he hadn't gone and bought cigarettes or porn, he'd gotten a suitcase from the Salvation Army.

"I'mma let you finish, Mr. Gordon," she said, "but Aesop had the best morality stories of all time. So, hear me out. College sounds a lot like working for three years with a bunch of people telling me stuff you already told me about Twelfth Night, six professors all telling me about the role of marriage in Shakespeare when you did it using Tic-Tacs." Orange tic-tacs. "Some tutor with a receding hairline telling me about Jane Austen being relevant, ever. Doing The Great Gatsby all over again. Cat's Eye and the theory of relativity."

"It's touching that you think I have already taught you all there is to know, and all that will ever be known," said Ray Gordon, opening the door out of the building and not holding it open for her. "I don't know at what point you started believing I was Metatron. Could you isolate the moment for me?"

"Hold up, hold up. I am not saying you are the God-Emperor of Dune, Atreides," said Charys, forcing the door open with her sneaker and hopping after him in annoyance -- pulling her lipgloss out of her pocket, slathering herself with it. "Godspeed you, but hey, hell, all I'm saying is this: I'll be bored. Three hundred kids in the classroom all excited to be wearing wolf moon t-shirts. Essays with one-inch margins about Lady Macbeth. Written exams on where are the metaphors in R&G Are Dead."

"Your main objection consists of you not getting to do exactly what you want."

"That is exactly my objection, the only objection that matters," she said, "what else is there in life. Let's be realistic, G. I've seen life from both sides now: I'm choosing to conscientiously object, Gordon-sensei. Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?"

They stopped by his banged-up blue Miata, the Teachermobile, as he opened the back seat. The briefcase was swung cavalierly inside as though he'd just retrieved the plans from Blue Base, not in all actuality hoofing around his school grade Dell. Charys rested her chin on the roof. There was very little heat to sublimate from the thin winter sunshine. She closed her eyes and said, "Do I have to say it."

He was jangling his untidy set of car keys, replete with keychain fobs, not even looking at her. "Until my mindreading comes in, yes. Hit me."

"I know it innately, in my bones," said Charys. A wifty piece of blue hair fell over her forehead. "It'll be all Death Of A Salesman. O Pioneers!. You didn't get me to do what you wanted, you just made what you wanted look attractive." ("Same thing, punk," said Ray.) "Mr. G., I have no illusions about me. I bust only the freshest rhymes. I eat only the freshest foods. And you have put a pretty good carrot on a stick in front of me for the past couple years -- "

"There will be other English teachers, Cherry."

She rested back and leant her head on the roof now, staring up into the slate-grey sky. "Have they invented a pill that cures existential crushing boredom yet."

"No legal ones."

"I'll cultivate. Can't we accept that you were the only one to squeeze blood from my rock."

"It really wasn't blood," said Mr. Gordon. "I don't know why you're labouring under the impression that being bored in a minimum-wage job will be somehow more authentic than being bored in a tertiary institution, kid -- " ("Trying is passé," said Charys.) " -- but I also don't think that ironically wearing a fedora doesn't make you not a douchebag. You're labouring under a lot of impressions, Charys." Again with the friendly, miles-away detachment. "But like I said: it's a print-out, not a Scarlet Letter."

She hedged. "I'm convince-able."

He wasn't paying attention. The back door swung shut on the Miata. "Are you now."

"Malleable. Impressionable. -- Can I have one of your gold star stickers."

"I'm at my leisure." The silence spread out thinly, followed by an unnecessary: "Chaz is out, he's back to work at the cathouse." 'The cathouse' was Things Recollected, but Charys referred to it exclusively as 'the cathouse', 'the whorehouse', and 'the cheap bordello.'

She leant against the bicycle rack, swinging on her heels, sneakered feet pointed up to the clouds. Charlie Boyle would probably reject being accused of working at a cheap bordello. All this was immaterial. Eventually she bust out with: "Conscience is but a word that cowards use, devised at first to keep the strong in awe -- "

"Oh, God," said Ray. "Get in. Your house is two streets away."

"O no, your carbon footprint," said Charys. "O no, your ecologies. All right, but only because I noticed muscle definition in my leg and I gotta get on that."

She had sucked off all her lip gloss, and kept smearing on more on the drive until she smelled like a McDonald's apple pie and looked as though she had mainlined some vaseline. It was irritating not to be adequate, stunningly adequate: even more irritating when it was right there, look at how discombobulated I am, I am going to spend the rest of the day listening to Alkaline Trio and reading the backs of Pop-Tart wrappers and he knew. He whistled briefly while turning out into the main road: his car was clean, remarkably clean. She'd gone through his side pockets a couple of times. Road map. Chronically unused glasses case from the Triassic era --

"Mind if I ask you a hypothetical."

Ray indicated that he did not mind being asked a hypothetical.

"Have you ever hypothetically considered or dwelled on being a homo?"

"Choo choo," she said. "Come on, Ray, just talk to me like a normal human being. We're in the confines of the Miata."

The radio continued to announce that in heaven, love came first, apparently, and she watched her English teacher drum his fingers on the wheel. She rested her head back in the dent of his passenger seat and listened to the sound of him not saying a word. Presently she said: "I wanted an op ed piece on myself. Closure."

"On homosexuality."

"Ray," she said. "Usually I know exactly who I am down to the latitude and longitude. I would not ask you this, but some enlightenment would be friggin' sweet."

He didn't say anything to that either, but his face remained impassive. The radio continued to quietly espouse the secret joy of hearing children laugh on the streets outside, and eventually he said, "Out with it," so she told him --

It usually would have taken around four minutes to get to her house. He took the long way, the way that was so long that it was actually the wrong direction. This gave her time to talk. There was not, she discovered, a lot to say, and once she said it she ransacked his glovebox for peppermints. He always kept some old-lady peppermints in there: hot date prep, she had no idea. And they were quiet again. She could stand Ray Gordon's silences some of the time, when they weren't being actively perpetuated against her. Charys crunched a peppermint.

"As for why I told you this," she said. The radio emitted dying Belinda Carlisle chords. "You know me. You don't mind waiting. You just can't sho-ow me, but God I'm praying, etcetera."

"Cherry," he said, still looking ahead at the traffic, "I don't really know what you want from me here."

"An opinion. Do you know how much easier it would be -- "

"Ah," he said. "'Easier.' There's the rub."

They were silent.

"You can go back to the academic guilt train, Mr. Freeman," said Charys.