I stared down at the almost empty quiz before me, my mind startlingly blank. I’d revised all of the words in the vocab test yesterday, I knew I had, but now… I couldn’t remember anything.

The classroom was filled with the endless scratching of pens on paper as everyone except for me scribbled furiously. Even Duncan, who sat across from me and consistently failed every single quiz, was writing even if his face was scrunched up in confusion.

I had to at least try. I couldn’t do worse than him for a second week in a row. He was a sweet guy and all, but he seemed to take genuine pleasure in making Madame Noel angry.

He looked up, feeling my gaze on him, and rolled his eyes in an exaggerated gesture before smiling and looking down at his work again.

“Five more minutes,” Madame Noel called from the front of the classroom in a heavily accented voice.

Panic flared within me and I looked down at my quiz.

I had to do something. I had to try and work out some of the words.

I guessed the first two words, felt slightly better about the next few before coming to the fifth word and being completely stumped. I didn’t even know what letter the word started with, and why would I ever even need to know the French word for swimming pool? It couldn’t just be ‘le swimming’, could it?

No, that didn’t feel right. It definitely wasn’t that.

My gaze wandered over to the paper in front of Ella, who sat next to me. I didn’t want to cheat, not really, but I really did not want to spend another break time sitting in the cramped classroom, repeating the quiz.

Piscine! I realised, just as my eyes found Ella’s answer.

A hint of shame speared my chest but I forced myself to keep writing. Even if I had to guess the next few, I would not leave any words blank.

And I didn’t.

The rest of my answers were guesses and I couldn’t help but feel that, if he were real, Mitch would be disappointed in me. He’d stressed how important school was, I needed to do better. It was probably some deep-seated desire to actually do well in life, make something of myself so that I didn’t have to spend my adulthood relying on my parents for everything and that I could actually maybe be happy.

It felt like a long shot and even I didn’t quite believe that. God, my mom would love it if I were reliant on her though. I could imagine how happy she would be if I dropped out of university or failed to get in. But then, she wouldn’t be able to brag about me to her friends so maybe that would be worse. That was her style, after all. Brag about me behind my back, scream at me to my face.

“Alright, pens down now!” our teacher shouted.

My eyes widened and I quickly finished the last word I’d been halfway through before she shouted again.

“When I say now, I mean now! Not in a minute, not once you’ve finished writing the word. Now!”

I dropped my pen and lifted my hands above my head, as everyone else was doing, watching Madame Noel as her eyes narrowed.

“Phoebe Wright! Are you suddenly exempt from the rules? Did I miss the meeting when that was agreed?” she shouted.

I lowered my hands slower, watching as the teacher slowly stalked towards her prey.

I winced, feeling terrible for Phoebe. Madame Noel just loved picking on her. Phoebe was timid. She wanted to do well but it was never enough for the teacher.

“Sorry, Madame Noel. I was just trying to finish the last word. I knew it but I couldn’t remember if there was an extra ‘e’ at the end or not!” she said quickly, her words breathy with fear.

The teacher didn’t care though, a small smile grew on her face as she neared her.

“I’m sorry, did I say ‘finish the word you’re writing’ or did I tell everyone to stop?” she asked, a predatory look on her face.

“To stop,” Phoebe almost whispered.

“That’s right and why do you think the rules don’t apply to you? Do you suddenly believe you’re special for some misguided reason?”

I couldn’t stop staring. I wanted to stand up and shout at Madame Noel to leave her alone but I couldn’t do anything.

“I don’t think I’m exempt from the rules,” she whispered.

“So, you actively chose not to follow them?” her voice sharp and ringing through the classroom.

I knew that the people in the classrooms around us would have been able to hear what Madame Noel was saying but they’d never do anything about it. I’d had her for three years, they hadn’t done anything about it before.

Phoebe couldn’t meet her gaze, she stared pointedly at the table as tears gathered in her eyes. She nodded, unable to speak.

“Your planner. Now,” Madame Noel demanded, holding her hand out.

With trembling hands, Phoebe reached into her bag and retrieved her planner, holding it out to the teacher who took it and marched to the front of the classroom.

She sat down, turned to the correct page and began writing furiously.

The room was silent and tense as we watched Madame Noel write what I knew would be a scathing note to Phoebe’s parents, probably informing them that she would be in detention until the end of the term.

Finally, she pushed away from her chair again and returned to Phoebe’s desk, a smug smile on her face.

“Go sit outside. You will retake your test after school today and you better use this time to revise your vocabulary because if you fail one more test this term, you will be in detention every lunch and after school every day next year too.”

I swallowed.

It was not an empty threat and I knew it.

Tears slowly trickled down Phoebe’s face as she packed her bag and trudged out of the classroom, refusing to meet anyone’s gaze. Fury built in me and I stared at Madame Noel’s triumphant expression.

She’d enjoyed it, I realised. She enjoyed tearing Phoebe down for trying to finish her test. It was so unnecessary and cruel but she loved it.

Hatred rushed through me as she stalked back to the front of the classroom and tapped a few keys on her keyboard, bringing up the answers on the board.

“Swap papers with the person sitting next to you and begin marking now!” she commanded.

Ella thrust her paper into my hands and snatched mine off the table, reaching for her pencil case to select her red pen.

It was unnecessary. Madame Noel didn’t request that we use a red pen to mark but Ella seemed to delight in it. It was probably because she always got full marks but, whatever the reason, it annoyed me.

I barely needed to glance up at the board to mark her paper. Once again, she had not made a single error but, I realised with sinking suspicious, I had made many.

“One more minute,” the teacher called.

I suppressed a sigh as I wrote the number twenty on Ella’s paper and glanced over at mine. Ella moved quickly, her hand shooting out to cover the number that she’d written.

Barely able to stop myself from rolling my eyes at her, I met her smug gaze.

She wanted to wait until the teacher told us to hand our papers back but there was no need. We had both finished marking, she was just delaying the inevitable.

I couldn’t even work out what I’d gotten because Ella’s arm was covering half of them but, based on the number of wrong answers on the left side alone, I would be spending another break time in the classroom.

“Hand them back!”

Ella placed the paper back in front of me with a flourish, snatching hers back and gasping in mock surprise.

“Full marks?” she cried loudly enough for most of the class to shoot her flat, unimpressive looks but she didn’t care. “You did good too, Gracie! So close to passing!”

Her tone was condescending and, again, loud enough for everyone to hear.

I didn’t bother responding. Instead, I stared down at the bright red thirteen that she’d both circled and underlined.

One below the pass.

“Alright. I’m going to call out the grades from highest to lowest and I want you to raise your hands when I reach yours, understood?” Madame Noel asked without waiting for an answer. “Twenty?”

I sat silently, watching as a couple of people, Ella included, raised their hands smugly.

“Nineteen?”

A few more people lifted their hands.

I waited anxiously for her to reach my grade and eventually she called, “Fourteen?”

She glanced around at the other kids who had just scrapped passing grades.

“Close, you should aim to do better next time,” she demanded. “Thirteen.”

Briefly, I debated not raising my hand and lying about my grade but Ella’s expectant smile made me do it anyway.

Madame Noel sighed loudly.

“Four people joining me for break today. Who else? Twelve!”

I looked down, watching out of the corner of my eyes to see when Duncan’s hand would go up.

Madame Noel kept calling numbers, getting lower and lower and I found my anxiety increasing as she did.

He was sitting silently, a smile on his face, not breaking eye contact with the teacher as she continued speaking, until finally…

“Zero,” she called, her eyes narrowed.

Slowly, almost proudly, he lifted his hand.

Whispers erupted throughout the classroom and I found my lips lifting into a smile.

“Zero, Mr Habshaw?” she asked, her voice taking on a dangerous edge.

“Seems that way,” he said with a shrug. “Damn, I really thought I would do better this time. I studied and everything.”

A few people giggled and Madame Noel sent them a glare.

I bit my lip, not sure how she was going to react to the fact that he clearly didn’t care.

“Did you really?” she asked, her tone slipping dangerously low.

“I did,” he lied, not even trying to sound regretful. “Maybe I should go back to not studying at all, I did better then.”

Madame Noel’s shoulders rose and fell slowly as she moved closer to his desk.

“And why are you studying French, Mr Habshaw, if you clearly do not care about the language?” she demanded.

My eyes bounced back to Duncan’s face, which was the picture of innocence.

“Well, you see,” he started in a condescending yet informative tone, “at this school, it’s required that we study a language to be able to do our GCSEs here and because it doesn’t have an option for Klingon or Dothraki, I had to settle for French.”

More laughter circled the room as the colour drained from Madame Noel’s face.

“Gather your things,” she ordered. “You can go explain to Mr Pritch why you felt the need to disrupt my class.”

I felt a smile rise on my face at that. Mr Pritch was our head of year but he was also in charge of the rugby team, which Duncan was the Captain of, so he wouldn’t be in much trouble.

“Sure,” Duncan said lightly, taking his time to pack his bags as the teacher turned her back on him and stalked back to the front of the classroom.

“Open your textbooks to the chapter you were working on last week and continue!” Madame Noel shouted, her hands clenched into fists.

Duncan slowly strode out of the room, pausing to grin back at us before letting the door slam shut behind him. His voice could be heard through the door, chatting easily with Phoebe. A small smile came over my face as I heard her laugh, before I pulled my textbook towards me and started flipping through it.

My eyes glossed over quickly as I stared at it, debating just giving up on it for today and reading back over the words that would be in my vocab resit in forty minutes. There was no point in reading the new chapter, we probably didn’t have enough time left in the term for a test and I wouldn’t have any other opportunity to revise.

I turned back a couple of pages, ignoring Ella’s self-righteous sigh at my actions, and started reading.

But, my mind didn’t want to stay on my French work, it wanted to explore. The fantasy of Mitch hovered just at the edge of my consciousness, tempting me. I wanted to slip back into the daydream but at the same time, I was reluctant. I didn’t want to go back to where I’d left it. I knew it was ridiculous but I was scared of crying in the fantasy and accidentally crying in real life and having Madame Noel pounce on me.

But… surely some time had passed in the fantasy since I was there last. Even if it hadn’t been that long in real life, it could have been longer in there. Time might not work the same way there… right?

Breathing in slowly, I let myself slip into the other world.

The chair was no longer solid and cold beneath me, but now it was the squishy leather passenger seat of Mitch’s car where I was slumped, glaring at the empty coffee cup in between us.

“Wanna talk about it?” Mitch asked, not taking his eyes off the road.

I blinked away the fleeting dizziness and glanced up at the road before me. It wasn’t as busy as I had been expecting, we were clearly on the outskirts of the city.

I shook my head before realising that he probably couldn’t see me because he was focusing on driving.

“No,” I said quietly.

“You sure? I might get it,” Mitch said, his tone unexpectedly soft. “I know what it’s like to feel a little forgotten.”

“It’s fine,” I said, really not wanting to get into the conversation as tears threatened to build in my eyes again. “So, where are we going now?”

A smile built on Mitch’s face.

“Well, first we’re going to stop for petrol and snacks, then Edinburgh. Via Sheffield,” he added quickly.

“Why Edinburgh?” I asked. “Are we looking for something specific there?”

“Indeed we are. If my guess is correct, there should be something pretty special waiting for us there. Oh, yeah, that’s a fair point,” he said as he pulled into a petrol station and stopped the car at a pump.

I watched him cautiously as he turned off the engine before glancing at me.

Panic fluttered within me briefly at the serious look on his face.

“Tell me, kid… How do you feel about desecrating a graveyard?”

I paused, making sure that I’d heard him correctly but I was pretty sure that I had.

“Umm… fine, I guess?”

“Ah, good. You’d be surprised how often we have to do that in this line of work. It’s never a case of getting to go somewhere nice and just find what you need carefully buried in the sand. Nope, it’s always in a grave or at the bottom of the damn ocean. Man, you would be surprised how often I’ve had to dig up a corpse.” He sighed and shook his head before looking back at me. “Have you still got that phone I gave you before?”

“Umm…” I tapped my pockets, feeling the familiar lump of the phone in my left pocket. “Got it!”

“Great, go in and get us some snacks then pay for petrol, will you? It’s better if I stay out here, the cameras in the forecourt are always shit. It’s,” he checked out the window, “pump number seven. And can you get us some candy? I got a real sweet tooth so anything gummy. Oh, ideally some stuff that’s suitable for veggies so you can eat it all without having to worry about what’s in it.”

A smile started to appear on my face but I started to scramble out of the door before he spotted it.

“Oh, wait, kid! You gotta get changed too! Grab some clothes out of the boot. There should be a bathroom in there.” He pushed the door open before I could respond.

I had no real memory of it but somehow I knew that we had gone shopping for some clothes before leaving London. I pushed the door open and started towards the boot, scanning the mostly empty forecourt as I did. People were going about their day, doing nothing particularly suspicious.

I watched the man at the pump next to us out of the corner of my eye as I pulled the boot open.

The bags in there were strangely familiar. They tugged at the back of my memory, like I’d seen them before, but I pushed that aside and started rooting around in them. I was still wearing the clothes I’d worn to the pub what felt like a lifetime ago.

“Once we’re a little further out of the city, I’ll find us a gym or leisure centre where we can use the showers,” Mitch said as he started filling the car.

“Cool,” I replied absentmindedly as I dug through the bags, looking for something to wear but I was overwhelmed with options.

There was everything in the bags. Underwear, a coat, jumpers, a pair of trainers, walking boots and even more. I ripped the tags off a waterproof-looking backpack and started shoving clothes inside. They were all my size and, based on the style, I knew that I’d picked them out, even if I couldn’t really remember it.

“Oh, kid, can you grab some drinks? You need to have at least two big bottles of water, I ain’t having Betty call me up to yell at me for getting you dehydrated. It’s happened before and I never want it to happen again.”

He shook his head gravely as I laughed.

“Really? She’d call you up over that?” I asked, still giggling.

“When Zaq was younger, not long after I started taking care of him, he got hospitalised, briefly, for dehydration. Man, I don’t even know how she found out but boy did I get a very loud and very angry phone call about it. Bright and early the next morning, we were enrolled in a nutrition and dietary needs course.” He rolled his eyes at me dramatically. “But I’m not going to make the same mistake twice so make sure you get enough water, okay? And some other fun drinks. Don’t get me wrong, water is necessary and all but damn is it boring.”

I laughed and zipped the bag shut.

“I’ll try to grab enough to make sure I don’t get hospitalised,” I replied with a smirk.

“Good. If you ain't sure what to get, hold it up to the window and I’ll let you know,” he said, craning his head to check how much petrol he’d added.

“Okay,” I said, shouldering the bag and starting towards the station just as a bell chimed and woke me from my fantasy.