1 · On the Edge
Ethan
On the recording, Ethan sounded as though he were standing at the far end of the room. He turned up the volume, heard the scrape of his shoe beneath the desk, then Noah’s voice, far too close to the microphone.
‘Testing. One, two. When we’re rich, I’m buying you a better shirt.’
Ben reached for the recorder. Ethan held on to the narrow end and pressed stop before the teacher came back from the board. The display showed twenty-four seconds, the time it had taken him to read out a single sentence he had written himself.
Ethan took off the headphones. The padding on the left was coming away from the headband; he pushed it back with his thumb and set the borrowed recorder beside his exercise book. On the board was Monday, 14 February 2011. Underneath, the teacher had written three words, Observe, Ask and Check, with the last overlapping what was left of the old homework.
Next week, the final-year class would be investigating how people used public spaces in the city centre. Ethan was interested in the paths that looked neatly laid out on the plan and that nobody actually followed.
Now the teacher stopped beside his desk.
‘You’ve started the interviews already?’
‘We were just trying out the recorder.’
The teacher picked up the sheet Ethan had slipped beneath it. ‘Read this out, please. The last paragraph.’
Ethan ran a finger along the line. Beside him, Noah stopped bending the headband. People were still talking further back, but they fell quiet when the teacher looked up.
He read the paragraph as far as the sentence about the reasons. There he cut it short, because the explanation seemed longer when he heard it aloud. On the page, an example followed about a bench that was in full sun at lunchtime. He left it out and slid the sheet back under the recorder.
Two rows ahead, Charlotte raised her hand.
‘Maybe it isn’t the path at all. If the only bench in the shade is taken, people will just go somewhere else.’
The teacher wrote Shade on the board. Ben nudged Ethan’s knee and pointed at the sheet he had put away, but Ethan gave the slightest shake of his head.
Charlotte asked another question about the times of day. Ethan listened; on the display, his failed test recording was waiting to be deleted.
At break, Ben, Noah and Ethan divided up the research. Noah wanted to take photographs, Ben to count people, and Ethan to prepare the interviews and recordings. The teacher gave them the equipment loan form and reminded them to ask permission before making any recording.
Ben left the room first. Outside, students crowded towards the courtyard, past a noticeboard where a room-change notice half covered the poster for the music evening. Ethan stopped in front of it and tucked the loan form into his exercise book. The teacher running the music evening had asked him last week whether he could help set up. He had said yes without looking to see who else was on the list.
Noah put a hand on his shoulder. ‘We’ll meet you outside. Ben thinks someone’s going to steal his shade.’
Through the glass door, Ethan saw Charlotte sitting on the low wall. Her pale blonde ponytail lay over one shoulder, and she was holding Isla’s sheet of paper at an angle to keep the sun off it. Another girl was talking at her. Charlotte briefly raised a hand so she could finish reading; the girl fell silent, though Charlotte had not even looked at her.
He had been in two of her classes since last year. She was rarely unprepared and asked teachers about things he preferred to look up in a book at home. Once, she had insisted that a graph was labelled incorrectly until the teacher had to fetch the answer sheet. By then, Ethan had already rubbed out his own correct answer.
A group was blocking the doorway. He waited with his back to the wall until a gap opened. It was warmer outside. The smell of freshly cut grass drifted over from the playing field, and someone somewhere had peeled an orange.
When Charlotte turned towards the door, Ethan was too late to look away. She held his gaze longer than she needed to simply register a familiar face. A strand of hair clung to her cheek; as she brushed it away, the sheet in her other hand tipped, and Isla caught it before it could slide to the ground.
At the bench, Ben moved his bag without breaking off his conversation with Noah. Ethan sat down and held his lunchbox under his sandwich; the tomato had soaked through both slices of bread. Noah wanted to know if he could edit the recordings afterwards.
‘A bit,’ Ethan said.
‘Which probably means you’re brilliant at it.’
‘It means a bit.’
At home, he had recorded an old fan and tried to separate the rattle from the motor noise. The result sounded as though he had recorded it underwater. He did not tell Noah.
As he shut his lunchbox, he saw Charlotte by the entrance to the building. She was holding the door for a teacher balancing several folders in front of her. One of them said something Ethan could not make out. Charlotte laughed, her head tipped back, without looking round at Isla.
‘What?’ Ben asked.
Ethan took the loan form out again. ‘We need to see the teacher first on Tuesday.’
‘Right,’ Ben said, drawing out the word. Ethan carefully folded the form along its old creases until Ben turned back to Noah.
Charlotte
Isla wanted her application back because Charlotte had got stuck on another phrase.
‘I want to organise the evening, not run the country.’
‘Then don’t say you’ll take responsibility for every aspect of it.’
‘It sounds good.’
‘It sounds as though you’ll have to clean up afterwards too.’
The girl beside them laughed. Isla pulled the sheet towards her, but Charlotte held the corner a moment longer.
‘The opening’s good. And so’s the idea of keeping the performances short. I’d give that more space.’
Isla read the paragraph again. For all her casual talk about the application, she had not treated the paper casually; there was not a crease in it.
‘You don’t have to come in with me,’ Isla said.
‘I’ll come as far as the door.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
Charlotte handed her the sheet. ‘Then say what you meant.’
Isla waited until the other girl had gone to the drinking fountain before answering. ‘If you come in, they’ll talk to you.’
Charlotte had an answer ready. Instead, she took a drink from her sun-warmed bottle and let Isla finish.
‘Okay. I’ll wait outside.’
They passed the noticeboard. The room-change notice told Charlotte nothing she did not already know, but she looked over anyway. Ethan had gone. She remembered his brown eyes, the surprisingly long look he had held, and the brown hair that grew a little too far over his collar. In class, he usually sat leaning slightly forward, as though his exercise book needed more room than he did. Out in the courtyard, she had noticed how tall he was.
Isla asked whether Charlotte had been listening.
‘You want to know whether they’ll decide today.’
‘No. Whether you’re free for the first meeting on Wednesday.’
Charlotte laughed at herself. ‘I’ve got biology till late.’
‘After that?’
‘Maybe. We’re staying to look at the slides.’
‘You’re staying late on purpose?’
‘If all I’ve found by then is air bubbles, yes.’
Isla made the face she reserved for anything involving microscopes. Charlotte thought of her drawing of a plant stem, the margins she had filled with questions over the weekend; she had only shown her mother the finished page.
They had to wait outside the school office. A phone conversation drifted through the open door, and programmes from last year were still stacked on the cupboard beside it. Isla pulled one out and opened it at the page where her name appeared under Other Help. There was nothing about the afternoons she had spent collecting entry forms and ringing people for missing details.
‘This time I’m having the names printed in alphabetical order,’ she said.
‘You still won’t be at the top.’
‘But I won’t be in smaller print.’
Charlotte leaned over beside her and pointed to the name of the teacher who, last time, had tipped an entire jug of water over the spare programmes. Isla mimicked his horrified apologies; by his second failed attempt to pull the wet pages apart, Charlotte was laughing so loudly that the woman in the office looked over. Isla held the programme in front of her mouth. Her shoulders were still shaking when the phone call ended.
Isla put the programme back, smoothed the crease in her application and went into the office alone.
Charlotte stayed by the wall and took out her phone. Her mother had texted to say they would look through the material for next year together that evening. The business and law prospectuses were on her desk. She had slipped the biology one under her drawing.
She wrote back that she was free after dinner. From a room further along came a faltering sequence of low notes; someone was practising the same passage over and over. On the third attempt, Charlotte almost hummed the next note, but the music stopped.
When Isla emerged, her paper was in a clear plastic sleeve and her expression carefully indifferent.
‘They’ll let me know. First I have to work out how many people I need to help set up.’
On the way back, Isla finally began talking about the music evening itself. Charlotte immediately started suggesting times and solutions, until Isla stopped her.
‘I can do it,’ Isla said.
Charlotte broke off halfway through a sentence. Across the courtyard, Ben and Noah were getting up from their bench. Ethan stayed seated, tucking a scrap of foil into the side pocket of his rucksack. Charlotte watched him until Isla nudged her with an elbow.
‘All right. I’ll stop organising your evening.’
At the wall, a girl handed Charlotte the exercise book that had slipped from her open bag. Her biology drawing was between the pages; Charlotte pushed it back before Isla came closer.
She sat on the warm wall and drew a small cross beside the largest air bubble. The bell would ring soon. Instead of putting the sheet away at once, she added a question she wanted to ask the teacher. When she looked up again, Ethan had stood. He took the direct route to the building, passing close enough for her to say hello.
She raised her head. He looked at her, and this time the look ended in a small, almost casual smile. Only when Isla reached for her pen did Charlotte realise she was still holding it between her fingers.