Ms Heller looks up. I follow her eyes to the smoke alarm that sits snug between the lighting rigs.
‘Oh. Dear,’ Ms Heller says.
She drops the rose remnant and crushes it under her foot, just as the piercing shriek of the fire alarm howls through the building.
Amid the resulting panic – the fleeing music club members, Damien Pagono’s maniacal whoop! and Ms Heller’s desperate attempts to instil calm while enacting the emergency evacuation procedure – I find myself immobile. My eyes are glued on the crimson envelope, still balanced innocently at the edge of the stage, the tiny lavish script pinging something in an alcove of my memory that does the oddest thing to my stomach, like being airborne the instant before turbulence. I disregard the sensation impatiently as my brain clicks through the various scenarios that are likely to ensue.
The fire alarm is deafening. Yet I hear it as though I’m underwater, as if from a great distance away. An inexplicable flare of adrenaline is pumping through my bloodstream. I feel kind of intoxicated with it.
I take the three steps to the stage and grab the calligraphic envelope, folding it in half and securing it hastily inside my Feynman book. Using a handful of tissues, I gather what is left of the paper rose and squash it inside my blazer pocket. And then I follow Ms Heller and the rest of the class out into the freedom of the damp morning sunshine.
CHAPTER SIX
The magnetic moments of elementary particles
Suffice to say, word of the incident spreads like magical wildfire. By recess, half of St Augustine’s is gathered on the East Lawn, drawn like hounds to the scent of a spectacle. Elsie makes a beeline for me; apparently, by the time word reached her side of campus, the story was that the Visual and Performing Arts Centre had been overrun by zombie terrorists wielding flamethrowers and exploding vials of smallpox or something.
I hover at the back of the crowd, the faltering gears of my brain spinning. I have no idea what I should be thinking, but I can now confirm one previously untested hypothesis – that triggering a smoke alarm on campus automatically alerts the fire department. There’s a fair bit of ogling at the three trucks’ worth of firemen milling aimlessly on the lawns; I think most people are just disappointed that the building hasn’t been burnt to the ground. The hysteria is not helped by the fact that the story is in the hands of the year-twelve Drama class, the vast majority of whom are, well, dramatic.
Questions are asked, hands are wrung and an assembly is hastily convened. We are instructed to ‘grow up’, and urged to ‘encourage the responsible party to take ownership of their actions’. We are harangued to ‘not take this critical year lightly’, and solemnly reminded to ‘start acting like the adults we are soon to become’. No-one, apart from the three girls in the Socialist Club, seems to question why the sprinklers in the building weren’t working. But later that afternoon the East Lawn is out of bounds, and a Jim’s Plumbing van is parked behind the pine trees.
The whole episode is fodder for too many conversations, until someone posts a video on YouTube of Mr Grayson, drunk in a 7-Eleven on Saturday night, and the burning rose is all but forgotten.
I am disturbed by two things. One – what momentary insanity possessed me to cover up evidence of what our principal described as an ‘irresponsible, foolish act’. I disposed of the red envelope in the bins behind the science labs as the first of the fire trucks roared onto campus, feeling like a bad guy from one of Dad’s James Bond movies, yet unable to alter my course of action. And two – why I haven’t said anything to Elsie about my new, somewhat tenuous suspicions.
I had every intention of talking to her. I’d resolved to spill everything I’d hypothesised, these odd and mysterious developments, and let my best friend, as always, make sense of the nonsensical.
But then the second strange event of the day occurred and all my resolutions flew out the window.
It’s lunchtime, and I’m heading towards our spot on the steps of the old library when out of the corner of my eye I spot Elsie. She has her phone in hand, so I assume she’s killing time with her head in a science article, or the WTF pages on BuzzFeed. But then I realise that Elsie actually appears to be engaged in a conversation, including eye contact and everything, with some other human beings, none of whom are me. Nina Pierce is leaning against a locker, Marcus Hunn hovering inanely. This tableau makes no sense. Nina and her group were kind of friends with us way back in year seven, these weird extra wheels who emerged briefly on our periphery and then disappeared as quickly as they had come. They never had much to do with me, though they seemed to like Elsie well enough. I don’t know why, but one day they just stopped hanging around. As far as I was aware, Elsie hadn’t spoken to them in years.
Nina sees me first. Her brows scrunch. Elsie turns around, lips twitching, before her face quickly settles.
‘Hey, Rey!’ she chirps. Something is going on with her voice. It’s higher than normal, and just a little too fast.
‘Elsie. I didn’t know you guys were friends again,’ I say, nodding towards Nina and Marcus.
I’ve never understood why simple, factual observations can make people turn all twitchy. But Nina rolls her eyes, and Marcus mutters something I can’t decipher in a sardonic tone that I remember well. He hasn’t changed much since I last paid attention; hands still buried in the sleeves of an oversized jumper, darting eyes. As bland and unremarkable as a skinny floor lamp with the bulb half dimmed.
Elsie gives me a sharp look, all tight jaw and laser eyes, and I know I’ll be getting a talking-to as soon as we’re alone. She turns her back on me and mumbles something to the others. Nina tugs at Marcus’s sleeve, and after a moment of hesitation he follows her, melting into the crowds down the corridor.
Elsie rounds on me with her hands on her hips. ‘Sophia, there’s nothing to talk about. Just leave it, okay?’
‘Okay,’ I answer. I reshuffle the questions in my head. I also downgrade my alert level, since a lecture doesn’t seem to be forthcoming. I dig through my backpack for the extra apple I threw in this morning and hold it out to Elsie. ‘Did you finish your Bio homework? I’m worried Mr Grayson is going to keep padding out his phenotype variations unit with more stuff on animal husbandry. I mean, how many YouTube videos on horse semen can there be?’
Elsie shakes her head and makes this sound that could be a huff, or a laugh, or a sigh. Then she takes the apple and motions down the corridor.
‘So any clues on this pyro?’ she asks as we walk. ‘Everyone’s buzzing, trying to work out who he could be.’
I glance over her shoulder, but the goings-on in the corridor are typical and uninteresting. ‘Why do you assume it’s a he?’