There was no gentle maternal encouragement now. There hadn’t been for a long time.
“We are reading Romeo and Juliet, Mae, have you studied it before?” Mrs Barlow said loudly, her voice almost lifting into song. She turned to me from the blackboard and I shrunk further into my seat. This time everyone looked at me, even the people who hadn’t bothered before.
“Uh, yeah, a couple of times.”
“And?” She clasped her hands together, tilted her head to the side and waited expectantly.
Did she want me to summarise my findings on the four-hundred-year-old play? I shifted uncomfortably, the neckline of my white, crisp, shirt sticking to my skin. Taking a deep breath, I told myself I could do this. I knew Romeo and Juliet, I’d studied it enough to be able to make a concise and authoritative assessment. “I think it’s a tragic tale of stupidity.”
The blonde from lunch snorted.
“Stupidity?” Mrs Barlow clasped her hands to her chest like I’d mortally wounded her with a flying arrow of burning words. She waddled down the aisle of desks to get closer to me.
My cheeks heated, and I coughed to clear my throat. What I really wanted to do was to grab a sheet of paper off the nearest desk and fan myself down. Hold on! My opinion was equally valid. Romeo and Juliet would be far more enjoyable as a play if they hadn’t died at the end. “Well, yeah, I mean if the characters had just talked, expressed themselves, then half of the tragedies wouldn’t have happened.”
Barlow’s mouth flapped open. “But without the tragedies how would the two families have united, which as the prologue tells us is the point of the play?” She perched a generous hip on my desk and it wobbled. I placed my feet on the bar underneath trying to anchor my desk in place.
I was thinking of a suitable counterargument when the door banged, and all eyes spun from Barlow and I to the front of the room.
There he was. Largely forgotten from my memories of yesterday. I stiffened. He filled the doorway, his shirt untucked, his tie askew. Bronzed and golden like a Roman statue, he seemed to bring the light of the sunshine with him. His hair was close-cropped, his lips wide and soft, his glare as black as the depth of night.
“Ah, Mr Prince, you are late, as usual.” She beckoned him with the crook of her finger. “But you are missing a lively interpretation of our class text by Mae Adams here.”
His dark and midnight eyes fell to where I hid behind my desk. My fingers gripped the wood, holding myself from flying at him and gouging his eyes out. I could visualise it in goofy detail. I’d pierce his flesh with my fingers, lifting those coal eyes straight from their sockets. What the hell? A wave of nausea rocked me and sweat sprang along my forehead. That’s disgusting. What am I even thinking?
His hands bunched into tight fists, the knuckles straining against his skin. His eyes burned with the fury of hell, while tendons strained in his neck. Under the golden tone of his skin he paled until he looked about as nauseous as I was feeling. He coiled, like a tiger about to pounce, but at the last moment he turned on his heel and slammed back out of the classroom.
An awkward silence filled the space. The air chilled, the unexpected warmth disappearing in the rush of wind from the slammed door. Mrs Barlow chuckled with force. “Tristan obviously isn’t in the mood for Shakespeare this morning.” She slipped from my desk, our conversation regarding my opinion thankfully forgotten. Fiddling on her desk she scrawled a note and then gestured a boy called Ben to the front of the classroom. “Take this to Mrs Cox please.” She handed him the paper and waved him away.
She started to talk while sweeping loopy handwriting over the chalkboard. My skin crawled at the noise of the chalk scraping across the surface but that wasn’t what was making me sick to my stomach.
As soon as Tristan Prince had left the room, I’d lost all desire to wear his eyeballs as a necklace. I went back to thinking about Romeo and Juliet and how stupid they were, but in the back of my mind the vision of Tristan’s black burning eyes branded themselves into my memory. I gave a shiver and pulled my blazer tight across my middle.
The great hall was busier than lunch the day before. I’d survived the rest of the day without wanting to maim anyone. I’d had science with Phil which had turned dangerous when we’d miscalculated an experiment, and History with Charlie. By far, History was the best lesson. Mr Bonner, a muddled old man, hunched at the top of the spine, had kept me gripped. He’d made me want to go out and dig stuff up, and it had been a while since I’d felt that. A year to be precise. A year since I’d found out I would never be able to afford
