Alec thought so deeply in class he often found himself drowning in ideas, ploughing channels his conscious mind didn’t know it made. He broke surface to a harsh reality only when a teacher called his name. The shock would make him start and shudder, and produce a stuttering response so he wore ear defenders against incursions like that— as well as to shield himself against the sounds of shuffling feet, the scrape of chairs, the click of the hands of the wall clock, and the teacher’s monotonous tone.
The ticking of the clock had set his mind pursuing a different channel. What if there were a way to make a car run on clockwork? What if every tiny movement of the steering wheel could be harnessed to produce energy? The idea rotated in his mind like a cog, when he became distracted by a leafless cherry tree that tapped on the window with its gnarled fingers, like it was beckoning for his attention. He noticed for the first time that there were tiny scratches on the glass that made him unaccountably uneasy, like a breach of perfection. He wondered about those scratches: whether they might polish out or whether they would have to replace the pane of glass? Would they cut back the tree to stop it happening again?
Beyond Alec’s thought bubble, Mr Parsons had written a list of prepositions on the whiteboard with a red marker pen and performed a cursive flourish that might power clockwork. Alec knew that if he lifted his headphones the squeak of the pen would set his teeth on edge. The teacher leaned his willowy form into the whiteboard and seemed to press hard as he wrote the word ‘Beside.’
Beside Alec sat David, who was leaning on his elbows with his head in his hands. He had unruly hair like an untamed garden and his face betrayed his struggles with prepositions. Just the other side of David, Alec’s eye strayed to Penny who caught him looking and stuck out her tongue, shaking her head so that her tightly cut bob fluttered. Sometimes she whined to the teacher that he was staring at her, but he never was. He didn’t like her small nose and spiteful eyes and the curled up rose petal tongue that taunted him. He didn’t like that she had an untidy array of felt pens on her desk with mismatched caps. He widened his eyes in an uncertain response, seeking meaning, but the meaning and the connection were already lost and it set him squirming inside. Why did she do that? He was just looking and not staring.
