Titus Walker has always felt that he didn't fit in. There always seemed to be an invisible gulf between him and his peers. In his final year, he just wants to fly under the radar, graduate and get the hell out of his private, all-boys high school.
...
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Room 202 was shoehorned into one of the far corners of the labyrinth of corridors that surrounded the quadrangle on three sides, right next to the landing of the creaky old spiral staircase that led up to the clock tower, a tiny nook that smelled of an odd combination of musty old carpet and fresh paint. Its two distinguishing features were its sweeping view of the soccer field, and that many years ago, someone had somehow managed to get a book up on the ledge of one of the clerestory windows. Many people had since attempted to get it back down, out of enterprise or sheer boredom. None had succeeded.
Titus stooped as he passed under the archway leading into the room, walking headlong into the chaos of a classroom two minutes before the bell rang. He neatly dodged Arthur Yang reliving his weekend travails to a crowd of enraptured onlookers, and headed for his usual seat, directly under the aforementioned book, second from the back row, only to see a bag slung across it in front of him just as he approached.
"Sorry. Frase's running a bit late." Fraser Sinclair's best friend, Julian Thompson. He and Titus didn't cross paths that often, but those few occasions were usually amicable.
He was not surprised. Fraser was not exactly renowned for punctuality. "No worries." He scanned the room. The last empty table was the next one up. So he took it. Hopefully, this would be the only change from the norm today. Changes in routine tended to cause entanglements, and he liked to keep entanglements to a minimum.
Mr Darvall strode in soon afterwards, like he owned the place. He practically did, considering this was where most of the classes in his thirty-odd years of teaching had taken place. He closed the door behind him. He was holding his usual glass of water.
Everything proceeded like clockwork. The class fell silent. They opened their copies of Prairie Park to where they had left off and started reading.
That was, until the beginning of the third paragraph of page 181, when there was a faint knock on the door. A smiling, long-haired face appeared in the door's window. Mr. Darvall, who had his back to the door and had not heard the knock, continued to power through his mini-lecture on the symbolism of the hearth in Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture, and its significance to the scene they were reading about now, where Frank was a guest in the Levinsons' living room. A few people in the back row were already starting to giggle.
Mr Darvall paused and peered at the back of the classroom. "What's so funny, Spike? It would be very considerate of you to share it with the rest of the class."
Spike was Darvall's nickname for Julian, for reasons that nobody had ever been able to fully comprehend, and nobody was ever likely to. He had coined it several years ago out of seemingly nowhere, and simply continued to use it, seemingly unaware that nobody else did.
"Nothing, sir."
"That didn't seem like nothing. You seemed to be awfully amused just then."
The face in the window stayed there. "Spike" relapsed into mirth.
