I fiddled with the golden Gordian Knot that fastened my blue and cranberry robes and tried to focus on my History of Magic exam, doing my best to tune out the horrible scritch-scratching of quills, rustling parchment, and squeaking of Rodger Picquery's restless foot against leg of his desk.
But it wasn't working out so well.
Scritch-scratch.
I tried to read question number 7.
Rustle, rustle.
'The Giant Wars began in the year—'
Squeak, squeak, squeak.
—'after the fall of which empire'—
Scritch-scratch.
No, wait. The falling empires was part of question 8.
Rustle, rustle.
I wondered why they always referred to empires falling, as if they were just too clumsy to stay together when in all likelihood it was related to a complex series of social and political factors that—
Squeak, squeak.
Shoot. Back to number 7. 'The Giant Wars began in the year—'
Squeak, squeak.
I lost my place. No worries. I'd just read it again. 'The Giant Wars began in the year—'
Squeak! Squeak!
'The Giant Wars—
Rustle, rustle.
Squeak!
'—began—'
Squeak, squeak!
'—in the year—'
Scratch-scratch!
Squeak!
'—after the fall of—'
Squeak!
Rodger started tapping his quill against his desk.
Tap, tap, tap, tap
Squeak! Squeak! Squeak!
'The Giant—'
Rustle, rustle
'Wars—'
Tap, tap, tap
'Began—'
Scritch-scratch
'In—'
Squeak! Squeak! Squeak! Squeak! Squeak—!
"UGH!"
I'd had enough.
I whipped around to face the boy behind me and said, in a not so quiet voice, "Rodger! For the love of Merlin, would you knock it off?!"
He, of course, looked up at me with a familiar surprised expression that said he had no idea what he had done to incite such anger... which, of course, only made me more upset.
He mouthed an incredulous, "What?" and I drew breath, intending to relate, in detail, how very irritating his restless foot was when—
"Miss Higgs! Turn around and keep your eyes on your own paper!" Professor Tibbs squawked.
I looked up at the plump woman in her lime green sweater and could feel my cheeks heating up. I wanted to tell her that I wasn't trying to cheat—that I knew all the answers—that I just needed stupid Rodger Picquery to stop making so much noise so I could hear myself think... so I wouldn't lose my train of thought... but instead I turned around as ordered and stared at my exam.
She loomed over my shoulder for an annoying amount of time, but eventually waddled off. When she did, I tucked my copper hair behind my ears, closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and tried, really tried, to focus on the exam before me. But when I reopened my eyes and read at the words printed upon my own parchment, their meaning floated away like smoke in the air before I could make sense of them.
Scritch-scratch.
I read them again.
Squeak, squeak.
And again.
Rustle, Rustle.
But it was no use.
They were just words. A string of random words shoved together into a sentence without any meaning or significance because my brain had decided it was infinitely more important to focus on the scritch-scratching, rustling, foot tapping cacophony that sounded me.
I wish I could say this was a special circumstance, but this was pretty typical.
"Thirty minutes left," round Professor Tibbs announced as she continued to waddle around the hall importantly with her hands behind her back, further distracting my already rebellious brain with the obnoxiously glittering ring on her finger.... was it new? Was she engaged? How was it that a toad like her could get a man and I couldn't?
All around me, other students were checking over their already finished exams...
I shoved away a particularly nausea-inducing train of thought that asked, 'what would I do if I didn't finish the exam?' and 'how was everyone else able to power through when I couldn't?' then I put my fingers in my ears.
The fingers in my ears tactic helped, but sadly it was too little too late.
The damage was done.
Just as I was gaining some momentum answering a question over the Troll Wars, my exam flew from my desk mid-sentence, leaving a long sad ink stripe down the empty half of the page, and joined its fellow parchments in a neat little stack at the front of the hall.
Only half finished.
Which meant that even if I got every question right, I'd still fail.
Great.
This was the one final exam I was sure I'd pass, (after all, who doesn't love History?) but now it seemed that, like the rest of my classes, it would only further solidify the fact that I was, in fact, an idiot.
Soon after, we were all released from the drafty room and I followed the flock of students out the double doors and into the big hallway, colorful from the stain glass windows that lined the walls.
I walked with the hoard of students (carefully avoiding one apprehensive Rodger Picquery) back toward the Pukwudgie dormitory, moping over another failed exam, thinking about how stupid it was that they made us take tests all squished together like that, when my brooding was interrupted, as it usually was, by a lanky arm being thrown over my shoulders.
"Paisley! Can you smell that?!" he asked with far too much enthusiasm, sniffing the air with his crooked nose. I didn't have to look up to know that Matt was grinning, you could just hear it in his voice. Also, he was always grinning.
"The stench of failure?" I replied flatly.
"It's pronounced Freeedommm!" he said importantly, squeezing my shoulders so I nearly tripped mid-step.
I grumbled the usual amount and pushed him away, sparing a small scowl up at him—which is far more difficult than it sounds because he's so much taller than me. I really had to crane my neck to do it properly.
But he just ran a hand through his floppy dirty-blonde hair, flashing his signature snaggletoothed crooked grin.
I'm pretty sure I could kick that boy in the shins and he'd still be grinning.
One time, during our second year, Matt got bitten by a baby mandrake during Herbology, and you know what he did? He laughed so hard it made the baby mandrake giggle.
"So what was up with you and Picquery?" he asked, more subdued.
I explained what happened as well as I could as we took a short cut we'd found our third year (one of my favorites because there was nothing but paintings of dolphins hanging on the walls and there were hardly ever people around).
When I was finished, he smiled sadly, because even when Matt's worried he smiles. "Pais, I wish you'd talk to a doctor—"
"You mean healer."
He waved his hand dismissively. "Yeah, yeah—Same thing—point is, I think it'd help."
I sighed. This was the same old conversation.
"There's no point, Matty. They'll just say I'm lazy or undisciplined or— or crazy or whatever..." I muttered. Part of me was afraid they were right.
It had always been like this. Lazy Paisley never finishing her tests. Crazy Paisley getting mad at people like poor Rodger for weird things. Spacey Paisley, incapable of following the simplest of lectures and conversations...
Needless to say, everyone at school thought I was weird and honestly I couldn't blame them. Thankfully, Matty found my weirdness endearing.
As we turned the corner and walked up to a tiny staircase that led to an opening hidden by a musty old tapestry, I could tell he was gearing up a rebuttal. But before he had a chance to speak I pulled the tapestry back and gestured gallantly for him to walk through to the bustling hall of other students.
Matt, distracted for the time being, grinned wide and stepped through like a king walking out to greet his fair subjects which made me laugh. No one noticed us. No one ever did. But it was fun all the same.
"So... what do you say to some ice cream and comic books tonight?" he asked, nudging my arm with his boney elbow. It sort of hurt, but I still smiled, grateful that he had dropped our previous subject.
"Only if it's Superman," I qualified.
He acted all offended, but he was, again, grinning so it wasn't very convincing. "But the flash—"
"Superman"
"But—"
"Superman."
He sighed, running a hand through his floppy hair again. "You drive a hard bargain, Higgs..."
"That's because I don't bargain... "
He rolled his eyes and laughed in defeat. "Fine. Fine, you win. Superman it is."
I smiled up at him, elbowing his side. "We can read the Flash tomorrow."
This made him considerably happier.
That evening, and every subsequent evening until our last day of school, was spent in much the same way: Matt and I would sneak into the kitchens, steal some ice cream (which was passable, but not nearly as good as the stuff back home), sneak back up to the Pukwudgie dormitories, then take turns theatrically reading stories from Matt's library worthy collection of Comic books until we were fat, slap happy, and annoying all of his roommates.
That's when I'd finally leave.
That's when I'd go moping up to the girls' dorm, to my tiny little twin bed, crammed up too closely to about a dozen other girls' tiny twin beds, close the cranberry bed hangings, and cry myself to sleep because I knew it would never be like this ever again.
Because, what Matt didn't know, what I didn't have the heart to tell him, my best and only friend, was that a week after I got home, before our final exam scores would even come in the mail, my family would be moving 4,000ish miles from America to England.