The police are also out in force. They’re there to keep the news crews from pestering any of the school kids, their parents, or the staff.
Survivors like me have been offered a police escort into school. Not wishing to face any questioning from the waiting paparazzi, I’ve accepted the offer.
But if I so much as catch a glimpse of that bloody policewoman waiting outside, I won’t be going anywhere.
Thankfully, when the cops arrive she’s nowhere in sight. It’s two policemen I’ve never seen before.
Even so, I use a pair of binoculars I’ve borrowed off dad to peer through the upstairs window. I zoom into the car they’ve parked at the kerb, making sure that she’s not waiting for me in there.
The cops stand either side of me as we make our way to the car. They aggressively fend off any journalist moving too close to us.
They open the car’s rear door, helping me slip into the back seat. Just to gain the space we need, they have to threaten some of the journalists with arrest.
The cops quickly clamber into their own seats up front.
The driver starts up the car. He begins to pull away from the kerb.
Suddenly, before the car has picked up any real speed, the rear door on the other side to me is wrenched open.
Someone wearing an old jacket and jeans slips in beside me.
It’s her.
It’s the policewoman.
*
Chapter 8
The car’s now going too fast for me to open the door and jump out.
I might as well face up to whatever it is she wants to say to me.
What can she really do after all?
Tricking me like this breaks God-knows how many laws and legal rights. Anyone employed to defend me would easily have any charges against me thrown out of court.
‘I just want a quick, friendly word,’ the cop says, smiling like she’s here to bring joy to the world.
‘Seems like you’re already having one. Whether I want to or not.’
‘Why did you refuse counselling, Jaz? It could help you, you know?’
‘It’s just indoctrination; the authorities catching you at a weak point in your life. Using it to instil their own ideas of what’s right and wrong.’
‘That’s one heck of a hard-headed attitude for a girl like you to take, isn’t it? It might have actually helped you channel all that anger and aggression you’re feeling into something more positive and worthwhile. I can see that you flatter yourself you’re tough enough to handle all that shock; but I reckon you’re in more danger than anyone else that it’s going to affect you badly. And you probably won’t even recognise the effect it’s having on you.’
‘See what I mean about authority? You’re already using it as an excuse to change me. To make me come round to your way of seeing things.’
‘You might not realise it Jaz, but I really am trying to help you here. See, I’ve seen what’s happening to you happen so many times to other kids. Bright kids, full of potential, going astray because school’s no longer giving them the stimulation they need. Everything’s too easy, right? Meanwhile, you have to hang around waiting for the dumber kids to catch up.’
Not a word I expected; dumber. Not PC at all, that word.
I give her a closer look. One a little more scrutinising than the one I could manage last time, when she was standing at the back of Miss Pollitt’s office.
She’s nowhere near as young as I’d first thought. It’s clever use of makeup. Like she’s been reading the very same magazine articles I’ve been tapping into.
I’m beginning to believe she might know what she’s talking about.
*
See, I reckon – I know – this cop’s on the right track here.
When it comes to the source of my anger, I mean.
Sure, as Pat pointed out, when it comes to life, I’ve been dealt a good hand.
Good, caring parents. Strict at times, but that’s supposed to be a good thing, isn’t it?
Intelligence.
Reasonable if not great looks.
Lots of other things a lot of kids aren’t getting.
If I hadn’t managed to figure out for myself how fortunate I am, I’d sure as heck know it by now. I couldn’t count how many times I’ve been told that I’ve been blessed with opportunities denied most other kids.
It’s just about the first thing a teacher brings up whenever I make the mistake of complaining that I’m being given tasks I’ve already learnt in lower school.
I was being selfish, wasn’t I, thinking I had a right to lessons matched to my ability?
What about all those other, more unfortunate, more vulnerable kids who were already struggling to keep up?
How much harder would it be for them, eh, if I insisted on everyone being taught the same as me?
Didn’t they deserve the chance in life I’d been lucky enough to have been given?
Didn’t they deserve more attention than me?
I was the bright kid, after all. I didn’t need the attention they needed.
Did I really want all the attention to be focused on me? To soar while they all fell further behind?
Equal opportunities for all, see?
And how can we prove we’ve provided that unless it results in equal outcomes?
Strange thing is, there’s a part of me saying these teachers might have a point; that yeah, these poor kids do need more of a helping hand than I do.
So I end up hating the other part of myself that says it can’t be right that I’m being held back at school, simply because I’m lucky enough to have good parents.
I mean, what next? Will the good parents have to swap their kids for more unfortunate ones to make things fair?
Then again, do you reckon the kids of the politicians who’ve forced all this on us are held back like this?
No chance,
See, it’s all to the rich kids’ advantage, isn’t it? No matter how dumb they are, there’s no bright kids coming up from below to threaten their positions, are there?
*
‘How come you know all this?’ I say to the cop.
‘Like I said, I’ve been there myself; seen other intelligent kids going through the same thing you’re going through. You’re bored by school, even though you used to enjoy it. You see kids getting praise even though they’re getting it all wrong. See them getting lenient treatment when they’re messing round. You, though, you get told off for even minor infringements. All that intelligence in that head of yours is just churning away with nothing to focus on. So you start looking for other forms of stimulation.’
She says other like it could mean anything from drug running to masterminding a multibillion heist on a city bank.
She smiles. She knows she’s got me down to a T.
‘So you no longer think I had anything to do with Liz and her mum’s death, right?’ I give my question hints of both doubt and hope.
She chuckles, shakes her head.
‘I’ve got to admit, at first I was a bit suspicious. I thought, maybe, that it might have been a prank that had gone horribly wrong. Something that was supposed to do nothing more than scratch the car. Or shake everyone up a bit. I’ve seen the kids I’ve mentioned do worse, believe me. But when it came to the…well.’
I can tell she’s wanting to avoid mentioning the accident. Just in case it reawakens bad memories I’ve managed to keep in check so far.
‘The bus,’ I say to help her out.
‘Yeah, the bus; well, it was pretty obvious you had nothing to do with that. So it made me start to think, well, maybe I had got you wrong.’
‘Are you any closer to catching the woman who caused it?’
I’d seen on the news how the driver who’d held up the bus hadn’t been a man, like we’d all first assumed. She’d escaped by reversing back through the people trying to block her way. She’d abandoned the car only a few miles away.
‘We traced her through her car–’
‘But she??
?d vanished, right? Along with her husband, her kids. Her parents and his parents too, according to some of the sites I’ve read. How can they all just disappear like that?’
‘Truth is, they can’t. They might be hiding out somewhere, but her youngest is terminally ill. She needs a regular supply of drugs just to keep going. They’re going to have to give themselves up soon.’
‘You’re going the wrong way Brian.’
The cop in the passenger seat is pointing back the way we’ve come.
The driver’s turned off the main road into a quiet side street. He’s slowing down, squirming in his seat, unclipping his seat belt like he’s uncomfortable.
‘I just need to–’
Before the diver’s finished speaking, there’s a loud yet muffled bang.
The cop in the passenger seat violently jerks to one side. He strikes the door with a dull thump.
Blood spurts everywhere, spreading in a sudden thick splurge across the door window.
‘Gerry!’ the policewoman shrieks, leaping forward in her seat to try and help her injured friend. ‘Brian, what’s happened to Gerry?’
The driver whirls around, bringing up a gun and resting it on the seatback.
‘Sorry Jane.’
The gun goes off again, this time with a deafening bang.
Jane’s thrown back, the side of her body erupting. A fountain of flesh and blood splatters against the seat and rear window.
Brian swings the gun, aiming it at me.
‘Out! Out now, or I’ll shoot!’
Neither Jane nor Gerry are moving.
They’re both dead.
My fumbling fingers slip on the handle, but I manage to wrench open the door.
I half clamber, half throw myself out. Something dull and heavy strikes me across my back. For a moment, I wonder if I’ve been shot.
Then I’m tumbling painfully across the ground.
The driver roars off, the open door swinging shut with a sharp clang.
*
Chapter 9
I pick myself up.
I’m shaking. Wringing my hands.
What…what just happened there?
How do I explain this to anyone?
What do I say?
I look about me, seeing people standing at the windows of their homes. They’re staring out blankly, like they’re trying to figure out what all the noise was about.
Where do I go?
To school?
Should I start walking to school?
Should I cry out for help?
How can they help me?
I’m not in any danger any more.
Wait? Wasn’t I hit?
I feel my back, where I’d felt something hit me as I’d fallen from the car.
I’m half-expecting it to be wet with my blood. But it’s dry. And there’s no pain, even when I press hard against it.
But I could have sworn I’d been hit there by something. Like the driver had thrown something at me.
Looking back to where I’d fallen from the car before tumbling across the grass, I see something by the kerb edge.
A book. A large, black book.
Drawing closer, I realise it’s a Bible. The pages are creased and squashed where it’s fallen open on the ground.
What would the driver want to throw a Bible at me for?
Picking it up, I discover that one page has been deliberately folded back on itself a number of times. Unfolding it reveals a passage circled in red marker pen; John 21:11.
‘Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three; and although there were so many, the net was not torn.’
The number ‘a hundred and fifty-three’ has also been circled.
One-hundred and fifty-three. I’d heard of Jesus and the fish, of course. But I’d never realised the Bible had referred to such a specific number.
Why has it been circled?
And why has it been circled in a Bible that has just been thrown at me? And right after I’ve witnessed such a horrific murder too?
*
No one’s stepped outside of their house to see what’s going on.
Even if they had heard the shots, they’ve probably put it down to nothing more than a car backfiring.
All they can see when they look out of the windows is me holding a Bible. Like I’ve been dropped off here to introduce them to the Good News of The Watch Tower.
I take out my mobile.
‘Pat, where are you? Are you still on your way to school?’
He is; he’s almost there.
‘Look, can you get the cops with you to come and pick me up at–’ I look for the road sign at the end of the street – ‘Mayhew Drive?’
He wants to know what I’m doing there. Asks why I’m not already on my way to school.
‘I’ll explain when you get here; well, I’ll explain as best as I can.’
*
No one can explain why the cop shot his friends.
He’d worked with them both for ages.
He’d been a close friend of Gerry, a friend of Jane.
I handed the Bible that had been thrown at me to the cops. But they couldn’t see how it could be connected to the murders.
‘One-hundred and fifty-three? What’s that got to do with it?’ a detective had wondered out loud.
It wasn’t long before they found the abandoned police car. The bodies of Jane and Gerry still strewn across the blood-splattered interior.
The gun had been left behind too. The fingerprints, the gunpowder residue, the calibre of the bullets and barrel; all these things beloved of murder mysteries weren’t going to make much difference in pinpointing the murderer, were they?
Besides, Brian had vanished.
Vanished along with his wife, two kids, parents and in-laws.
I actually felt sorry for him when I heard that his boy was so ill he’d only been given a few more weeks to live.
*
Chapter 10
Yahweh, the Hebrew name for God, occurs one-hundred and fifty-three times in the book of Genesis.
Archimedes referred to the number one-hundred and fifty-three as being ‘The Measure of the Fish’.
It’s amazing how quickly you can finds things out just by googling it.
Each month, the average American watches one-hundred and fifty-three hours of television.
Oh, and the chances of a DNA molecule forming by chance? Ten to the power of one-hundred and fifty-three.
Despite the mention of fish, the piece on Archimedes doesn’t really seem to have anything to do with the Biblical passage.
It’s one of his mathematical principles, in this case regarding the almond shape you get when two circles intersect. According to Archimedes, it’s shaped like ‘the bladder of a fish’, or ‘vesica piscis’.
The ratio of the height to the width is one-hundred and fifty-three to two-hundred and sixty-five, or the square root of three.
Yeah, I was getting a bit lost at this point too.
Where’s it all leading me?
Nowhere, far as I can see.
*
Pat’s had no more success than I have.
‘It’s all a bit mystical, this ‘vesica piscis’. It’s that oval shape you sometimes see around statues of Jesus on church fronts, like he’s coming out of the overlapping of both the spiritual and material worlds. I can’t see what it has to with those poor cops being killed.’
‘Me neither, unless it’s a wild goose chase we’ve been sent on.’
‘Could be this Brian was religious and that particular passage interested him.’
‘Could be. But then why throw the Bible at me if it was important to him?’
‘Why throw it at you, full stop. Why kill his friends? We’re never going to figure this out, Jaz.’
‘Yeah, suppose you’re right.’
He looks at me, narrowing his eyes in what could be either a quizzical or a concerned expression.
&
nbsp; ‘You sure you’re okay Jaz? I mean, after all that you’ve been through…’
He means why haven’t I taken the opportunity to take a few more days off school.
Everyone expected me to. Most people wanted me to.
As it is, they all stare at me like I’m about to bring the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse charging down on them at any moment.
To say I’m avoided like the plague is being unfair on plagues.
‘What would I do if I wasn’t coming into school? Hang around with my friends?’
Pat chuckles.
‘Well you could do what most girls would do, I suppose; get your hair done, wander around – ouch!’
I give him a playful nudge to his gut.
‘Sexist! Are you saying my hair needs doing?’
‘Course not! I like it.’
His eyes wander over my hair, like he really does appreciate the way it looks.
‘Come on Pat! I try my best, sure. But I know I’m seen by all the boys as being just a little bit geeky!’
‘Geeky? No, no, not at all. When you were younger, maybe. When you were just a bit goofy and – ouch!’
I scowl. He laughs, letting me know he was winding me up.
‘You’ve changed, changed a lot since then Jaz!’
‘What, me a swan? Oh, go on!’
Yeah, like ‘go on’ with all this flattery please!
Sure, I’m acting all nonchalant, all coy. But hell yes I’m pleased.
Any guy says that to you, it’s the same effect as a couple of Prozacs. But coming from Pat, for me that’s like three in a line.
(Not that I’m actually advocating taking them, understand? It’s just an expression, a figure of speech. Which, I suppose, is where we came in, right?)
As we’ve talked, we’ve been getting closer.
I’m looking up at him.
He’s looking down at me.
His face close to mine.
Closer.
Our lips almost touching.
My lips opening slightly, moistening.
And then the bell for class goes off.
*
School isn’t exactly back to normal, but it’s making headway in that direction.
The classes have been changed around, intermingled. Just so we don’t have empty desks, reminding us that some of our friends are no longer with us.