Lowewood Academy

I can’t say I noticed that she wasn’t at breakfast.  But then, when you’re table-monitoring for the Dashwood second years, you can’t afford to take your eye off the ball for a moment!  Boy are they unruly!  Was I really ever that unruly when I was a second year?

On second thoughts, don’t answer that!

What was I saying?  Oh yeah: Juliet.  So it didn’t really hit us that something was up until she didn’t appear for first period.  I mean, prefects often have other tasks to perform, teachers to see, pupils to discipline, and that must be even more the case for the Head Girl.  But even though going to classes after the exams were finished has to be one of the most pointless exercises ever, Juliet equally had to be the least likely girl in the school to bunk off one!  Yet when Mr Croft asked us where she was, none of us could actually be sure.  He made a note, and the lesson carried on without her.

When she didn’t appear for history either, Lydia’s nose for a story started twitching.

“Do you think she could’ve been sleepwalking again?” she hissed to me when old Necrophia was writing on the board.  “Maybe there’s been an accident?  Maybe she went in the lake again?  Maybe…”

“Seymour, you may be 18 and you may have sat your history papers already, but nonetheless, if you talk in my class, I will tawse you.  I would have thought you were clear about this by now.”  Dr Necrophia glared at her in customary ill-humour.

“Er, yes sir, sorry sir,” she replied.

“Final warning,” he snapped dismissively, and effectively ended the conversation.  It had got me thinking though.  *Had* something happened?

(more…)

There’s only so many things you can do in an exam room.

They take all the posters and whatnot off the walls, just in case anything contains any hints, so there’s nothing to read or admire.

If, like me, your surname comes towards the beginning of the alphabet, you end up with a desk near the wall, not near the windows. So no peering longingly out, counting the gravel in the courtyard or looking for shapes in the clouds.

And there’s only so long you can spend gazing at the back of your best beloved’s bonce, feeling sad that your aim with a paper aeroplane is only bettered in its awfulness by your talent at making a paper aeroplane in the first place.

So… you twiddle your thumbs. And you re-read your answers. And you wonder whether you should edit them, or go with your first choice. And you try your hardest to remember whether ‘limen’ is the Latin word for harbour… or the Greek one. Or whether it means something entirely different indeed.

And you marvel that time can go so utterly slowly.

(more…)

Reverend Jenkins flourished his wristwatch impressively at the serried ranks of students before him in the gym.

“The time is 14.03,” he announced.  “You have precisely two hours to complete this exam.  Turn over your papers and begin.”

An outbreak of rustling announced the start of the lower sixth Latin exam.  Along with everyone else, I flipped my test paper over and began to read.

We were deeply immersed in exam week.  At least two per day, followed by evenings of cramming for those still to come.  Relentless study.  Relentless worry.  Suffocating…

If I didn’t do well then I would let everyone down.  I was expected to do well.  I was capable of doing well.  I’d always done well in previous years.  The pattern was set, all I had to do was adhere to it.  Right?

(more…)