SquidgeWorld Archive

Chapter 4 – Classes
Classes at Willows School for Boys weren't exactly difficult, to say the least. Obviously it was not a school where they expected much from the delinquents they housed. And although my classmates complained and moaned about their classes, I found them quite enjoyable.
First period was mathematics, which I had never been all that accomplished in, but nevertheless it wasn't difficult. Our teacher for math, Professor Yorke, was the only female in the entire building (besides the menopausal lunch ladies). She was a crotchety old woman with her hair dyed vivid red, who seemed to greatly enjoy throwing random questions at students who appeared to be staring out the window. On one occasion, I did find myself staring out at the yard, simply because it was a lovely day outside, and the rain had cleared up, leaving a beautiful blue sky in its wake. The next moment, my head was pelted with the useless end of a piece of chalk.
"Mason!" The professor's shrill voice snapped me from my daydreaming torpor, and I looked up in a daze. "Answer number five on the board!"
I stared at the board rather dream-stricken, still lost in my own thoughts. The numbers stared back at me as if saying "What do you want?" I turned back to Professor Yorke stupidly. "Honestly, Professor, I think it's answered itself."
Henry was stifling snorts of laugher in the seat next to me, while Professor Yorke was glaring at me lividly. Needless to say my marks in math retained their less-than-satisfactory value.
Second period was a class I shared with Henry and Jerome. While Parker was down in Professor Yorke's math class, the three of us were suffering under the tutelage of Professor Humphrey in English class. I never did understand why exactly it was called English, for we certainly didn't study how to speak it, like in French, and I needed no lessons on how to speak English in the first place. Instead we read aloud from books, in English. I liked books very much, but reading them on command was boring and stupid to me, and the books weren't difficult at all. Still, I didn't entirely mind reading aloud, but Henry seemed to dislike it very much, because he immediately said "pass" in a bored drawl when it came his turn to read. I took to watching him spinning his pen on the top of his desk out of boredom, wondering why he disliked reading.
It would be incredibly tedious of me to walk with you through third period, in which I watched Jerome pelting our Science professor's board with paper balls when his head was turned, or fourth period, where Parker's sarcastic answers in History were met with the swatting of his backside with a ruler. Lunch came about and we all flooded the dining hall for a meal of sandwiches and crisps.
"Classes aren't as bad as you made it sound, Henry," I said as I sat down with my roast beef sandwich. "I quite like them, myself."
"What a bookworm," Henry sneered with a laugh, though I knew he was only joking to be friendly. That was the way boys were.
Jerome sat down after me and jumped into the conversation. "The classes you've had aren't bad," he said, shaking his head. "I just got out of Art."
Parker groaned at Jerome's comment. "I hate Gallagher's class."
I saw Henry nodding in agreement and turned to him. "Who?" I asked.
Henry looked to me, shaking his head. "Professor Gallagher," he said. "He teaches the art classes here… he's a damned good artist but there's a bloody good reason they hired him for Willows…"
I tilted my head a bit, looking to my sandwich as I peeled the wrapping off. "What's that?"
"'E's a bloody dictator, ‘e is!" said Parker. "Makes you scrub the floors with a toothbrush if you spill paint."
"If you miss an assignment he makes you do ten more!" Jerome added.
"If you drop your pencil he makes you eat it!" Henry chimed in, and he roared with laughter.
I stared at him wide-eyed, unable to imagine eating my pencil. Instead I took a bite of my sandwich. "'E's tha' sh-cary, then?" I said with a mouth full of roast beef and bread.
"Bloody out of his mind," Henry said solemnly. "Trust my advice, Mason… Sage Gallagher is one teacher you do NOT want to cross."
I was now dreading my art class, which was very sad for me, because I had wanted to go to school so that I could be in art classes and be a painter – or a lawyer, whichever fit me better. But at the very least, I could prepare myself for my art classes, for Art was my last class of the day, and I could share my supposed pain with Henry, who also had Art in his last period. Now, I don't know if you have ever dreaded something happening, but when you dread something it often comes to you very quickly, without you realizing that the time has gone by. And that is what happened to me; I barely noticed sitting through sixth period French, or running through seventh period Phys-Ed, or sleeping through eighth period Study Hall. And then the bell rang and woke me up, and Henry hauled me to my feet telling me "Come on, we have to get to Gallagher's class." And my stomach twisted as I realized that what I dreaded had come upon me.
Professor Gallagher's art class was held in room 205 of the main building, on the second floor. Henry had hurried me inside saying "You do NOT want to be late for his class," and I barely noticed anything as I was seated at a long table that intersected two others. The room was set up so that there were three long tables arranged in a "U", with the open end facing a large, dark varnished desk made of rosewood – or cherry, I should stop bothering with wood altogether by now. The dark wood desk seemed to be a symbol of what was to come… but the rest of the room was pleasant for an aspiring artist – me – to behold: The floors looked as if they had once been neatly polished but now had a layer of paint, ink, graphite and charcoal coating the linoleum, despite what I'd been told about the scrubbing of floors as punishment; the tables were scribbled upon with marker and pen; there were a number of folded easels stacked in a corner of the room, and piles of paper and hordes of pens and paints in an open cabinet… And the walls… It was the decorations I was most fascinated with. The walls were hung with paintings, sketches, portraits, and landscapes, a lot of them rendered beautifully in black ink. The paintings were done mainly in watercolours, with gorgeous washes in every colour, and yet all of them seemed so sad… Emotions blossomed in each piece, and I was transfixed until Henry elbowed me hard in the ribs.
"Pay attention," he hissed. "Don't look distracted when Gallagher comes in…"
That was when I turned my gaze to the dark desk at the front and wondered for the first time where the teacher was. Every other professor had been sitting at the front of the class when they arrived… the art teacher was not there. I wondered where he was, and why he wasn't at his desk… My eyes began to wander again as the bell rang… and just as it stopped, I heard a sound that made my stomach lurch.
Ka-tump…
Ka-tump…
Ka-tump…
It was coming, I realized, from the hallway, and I wondered what was making it. All I knew was that it seemed to be getting louder…
Ka-tump…
Ka-tump…
Ka-tump…
The students around me seemed to be frozen, with either fear or anticipation, I couldn't tell. It was a very ominous noise that echoed, but the echoes died as it drew closer…
Ka-tump…
Ka-tump…
Ka-tump-ka-tump.
I looked to the doorway and my stomach leapt. The noise, it seemed, had come from a pair of boots… Not boots one would see on a soldier or one walking in snow, but heavy-soled boots with buckles across the top and stitching along the toe. Steel-toed, I guessed, and my eyes traveled upwards, to the man who wore them, and I felt… oddly… my heart start to pound.
He was tall, strong-looking, and yet strangely graceful at the same time; I guessed he was somewhere in his mid-twenties. His black hair was cropped in the back with a lot of bangs in the front that fell over one hazel eye, just above his high cheekbones. His head was tilted upwards so that he looked down at the class from beneath lowered lids, very much like one of extremely high status, and his arms were folded behind his back. He appeared, to me, like a military officer surveying his troops. And just as my thoughts faded, he stepped into the class and seated himself, not behind, but on top of his desk, crossing one leg over the other and folding his arms over his puffed-out chest.
"Sketchbooks out," he said firmly, his voice soft but commanding, deep and heavy with the air of one who comes from a high class.
The class shuffled in their things to find their sketchbooks, while I sat there watching them with my heart hammering in my chest. I had no sketchbook.
The Professor waited until the shuffling of books had stopped before gliding off his desk, his heavy footfalls instilling silence in the rest of the class. His steps seemed to make my heart beat louder until I was sure he could have heard it; I watched him travel around the U-shape of tables, looking over everyone's sketchbooks in turn until he stopped… directly in front of me. The silence left after his footsteps seemed to make my heartbeat ten times louder, and yet I knew I was the only one who could hear it. I looked up slowly, my gaze moving up over the black vest and dress shirt that adorned his frame, and, reluctantly, to the hazel eyes that stared down at me coldly.
"Where's your sketchbook, boy?" he said quietly.
I opened and closed my mouth several times, feeling Henry's eyes on me with fear equal to my own. I finally swallowed and answered, my voice quavering. "I haven't got one, Professor Gallagher, sir," I said. "No one told me I needed one."
My answer was met with more silence, and I bit my lip as I watched the professor's reaction. His head tilted a bit to one side, his bangs falling over the other eye. The quiet seemed to last for hours before he unfolded his arms and reached towards me. I bit back a gasp as his firm hand clasped my jaw, holding my face up to stare directly into his. He turned my face from side to side slowly, examining me before speaking.
"I don't recognize you, boy," he said calmly, letting go of my face. I sighed with relief, shaken.
"He's new, Professor," Henry cut in. "That's why he's got no sketchbook, Professor Gallagher…"
The Professor glanced at Henry before turning his gaze back to me. "That so," he said coolly. "Do you have a name?"
I regained my composure enough to answer, my voice noticeably trembling. "A… Anri Mason, sir," I told him.
Another silence filled the air before he sighed and pulled a small ledger from his vest pocket, flipping through it, examining a page, and then looking to me again. "There is no-one named Anri Mason in my class," he said, then paused, glancing at the book again. He let out a heavy sigh and closed the book, turning back to his desk, muttering. "Those bastards in the main office never tell me anything… God forbid they let me know if I have a student unaccounted for in my classes…"
My heart slowed and I let out my breath in a quiet sigh, glad to be out of the situation. I watched him drop himself into the swiveling chair behind the great dark desk and put his heavy boots up on it one by one, ankles crossed – KA-TUMP… TUMP – before he looked to me again.
"Well, Mason," he said, voice as silky as his black vest, "since you have no sketchbook, you may earn one. I will assign the collection of sketchbooks to you for the semester. Get to it."
My stomach turned again as I immediately leapt to his order, getting up hastily from my seat with a scraping of my chair and hurrying around the tables, gathering sketchbooks in my arms, sixteen in all, and carrying them to the desk where I placed them carefully in a stack next to his boots. He stared up at me expectantly, and his voice rang out as I turned back to my seat.
"Are they going to just sit open?" he said harshly.
I turned back to the desk, glancing at the pile of sketchbooks. Each spiral-bound book had been opened to the newest assignment, the covers touching in the middle. I had collected them as they were, neglecting to close them… my heart hammered as I returned to the desk.
"Sorry, Professor Gallagher," I muttered, picking up each sketchbook and turning them closed, placing them in a neat stack. I felt his eyes boring into me and my heart rate quickened as I hurried to right all the sketchbooks, sighing when the last one was closed and rushing back to my seat. I was shaking visibly in my chair, face drawn and colourless, arms folded tightly on the table.
"Now then," the professor said calmly, and I exhaled, relieved that my torture seemed to be over for now, "we will be continuing with our projects from Friday. All of you fetch your projects from the rack in the corner and get your paints… Beale, since you seem to be on good terms with Mason, help him get his paper and paints ready. Mason, so you know, the project is to paint a sunset in watercolours, and we will be drawing a landscape over it in black ink later. Understand?"
"Yes, Professor Gallagher," I said, following Henry to the cabinet where he handed me a piece of watercolour paper and a case of paints, and I went with him as he gathered his project and led me to the sink in the back of the room where boys were getting their brushes and cups of water to use for the paints. Henry pulled me aside as he got his water and mine.
"All right there, Mason?" he said concernedly, voice hushed. I nodded, and he continued. "You've got it rough today… when Gallagher finds a student to pick on he goes after them like a hawk… just watch it," he warned, and pulled me back to our table.
As I sat down with my paper, paints, water and brush, I finally felt at ease. I hadn't been able to do art in a while, as the old lady didn't think it constructive and it is very distressing to draw or paint in an environment where a nasty drunk is yelling at you. I immediately fell to the task of painting my sunset, using copious amounts of water as I spread blue, then purple, then red across the page. I looked up once or twice to see the professor flicking through sketchbooks and marking them in a rather bored manner, but jumped as he got to his feet somewhere near the end of the class and began to walk around the class examining our work. He said mainly nothing, occasionally throwing in a "Don't use too much water there," or a remark of "Mind your blending, there's no green in a sunset," and then came my turn. His footsteps halted in front of me for the second time that day, and he peered down at my work with amusement. I felt myself start to shake again but continued my painting.
"Not a bad job, Mason," he said mildly.
My heart skipped a beat as I realized he was praising my work, and I uttered a trembling "Thanks" before dipping my brush into my dirtied water again… And my breath caught in my chest as my quaking hand betrayed me, tipping the glass over…
CRASH!
My heart stopped as I realized what I'd just done. The glass was absent from the top of the table and my brush was dripping water onto the surface. I let the brush clatter onto the table and looked over the side, where shards of glass littered the floor, and purple-stained water soaked the length of a tall black boot. Shaking madly, I looked up hesitantly to the piercing gaze of the professor, whose expression had not changed… which was somehow more terrifying than if he had been staring daggers at me. Silence once again filled the room, and all eyes were upon me again. There was no way out of this… if the punishment for spilling paint on the floor was scrubbing with a toothbrush, what could possibly be the punishment for dirtying his boot? But he only shook shards of glass from the toe, his eyes transfixed with mine.
"See me after class, Anri Mason."
My blood ran cold as the end bell rang and students gathered their projects, setting them to dry on the rack again and putting away their paints in the cabinet, replacing brushes and cups at the sink. Professor Gallagher walked back to his desk with his arms folded behind his back, facing the front board, and I hurried to clean up my space, leaving the glass on the floor. I noticed that Henry lingered at the door, watching me worriedly.
"Leave, Beale!" the professor barked at Henry, and reluctantly he fled, leaving me alone. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears as the footsteps of the other students faded down the hall… The professor remained at the front of the room, back to me.
"Shut the door, Mason," he said coldly, not turning. I felt the color drain from my face, but I hastened to obey, closing the door to the classroom with a snap. Tears burned into my eyes as I stood terrified, but I swallowed them, not wanting to know what would happen if he caught me crying. All at once his voice sounded again.
"What are you waiting for? Clean up the glass."
I nodded, mainly to myself, and ran to the spot where crystalline shards lay on the dirty linoleum, picking them up between my thumb and forefinger and collecting them in my other hand, taking care not to cut myself. They were rather large shards, luckily, and I managed to get all of them and dump them in the bin by the sink. Still, I knew that I had no time for relief… that couldn't be the end of it…
"Come here, boy."
I swallowed hard and walked to the front of the room where the professor stood, looking at me over his shoulder. He turned his gaze from me and opened a drawer behind his desk, pulling out a bit of cloth and tossing it at me, then turning and crossing his arms over his chest.
"Clean it off," he commanded.
I fumbled with the cloth and looked up at him, confused.
"Clean…?" I said hesitantly.
"Yes, boy," he said firmly, gaze furious. "Get on your hands and knees and clean my boot off before the water stains."
I stared at him for a moment before obeying, falling to my knees and holding the cloth with a shaking hand. I held the cloth up to his ankle before looking up again, biting my lip.
"NOW!"
I jumped at his command and immediately pushed the cloth to his boot, rubbing it at the straps and buckles across the top. Up close, his boots were much more magnificent than I'd first perceived… His trousers were tucked into them neatly, and they were laced all the way up to his knee, adorned with numerous straps over the laces, and polished gunmetal buckles on each strap. The laces were so perfectly done it was almost as if they were permanently sculpted that way, each strap tightened just so, each buckle perfectly parallel to the next. They were, in themselves, a work of art… which I had spilled tainted water on.
"Are you going to just stare at them or are you going to clean like a good little mongrel?" he said harshly, teeth gritted.
"Yes, sir… sorry, sir…" I felt myself blush as I realized I'd been transfixed with the sight of his boots, and set to work cleaning them carefully, pushing the cloth under each strap and around the laces, rubbing hard at the buckles to polish them neatly, all the way up till I got to his knee, where hardly any water at all had been spilled…
"Get the heel, too, boy…"
It was not until just then, when he lifted his boot slightly to allow me to wipe the sole clean and work on the back that I realized it would be far more efficient for me to clean his boot when he was not wearing it, instead of me scrabbling at his feet to clean… I wondered why he had not removed it, unless he simply believed it would be odd for him to take it off… No, I decided, it was far stranger to allow a student to crawl at his feet… I glanced up at his face, wondering why he had me clean in such a way… And yet again I felt a strange, jerking sensation in my stomach. The expression he wore was one of amusement, a smile plucking at his mouth, a glimmer in his eyes… His smile widened when he saw me look up.
"That'll be all, Mason," he said, striding back to his desk. "Leave the rag; I'll take care of it… and I'll get your sketchbook by tomorrow." He smiled at me again, seating himself. I stood up uneasily and placed the rag on his desk, my hand shaking as I drew away. He seemed even more amused by this. "You can leave now... your detention is over. Back to your dorm."
I nodded and turned, hurrying out of the classroom… but not quickly enough to miss what he said as I stepped out:
"Don't worry, you'll see me again."
My blood froze as I fled down the hall, unable to get back to my room fast enough for my liking… I knew at that moment I was in for it. What "it" was… I had no idea.