Page 7 of Kiss Me at Christmas
A high-pitched cackle, which Harriet instantly recognized as belonging to Isabel, pierced the melancholic fug, and she gingerly ascended the creaking stairs and pushed through a set of moth-eaten velvet-covered doors at the top. She found herself on a large balcony looking down over the auditorium.
Cigarette smoke plumed up out of the stalls. Billy was reading aloud from a copy ofA Christmas Carol, this term’s English lit text, a cigarette hanging casually out the side of his mouth, while on the stage Ricco and Carly—holding their own copies of the script which they’d been studying for drama—were acting out the parts. This was all done with a heavy sense of mocking, which—in Harriet’s opinion—Charles Dickens didn’t deserve. Billy had made his voice plummy while theactors onstage significantly overegged the pudding. Isabel and the newly arrived Leo lounged in the faded seats, legs outstretched and feet resting on the tops of the chairs in the row in front, laughing at their friends. Leo already had his sketchbook out, his pencil furiously scratching at the paper; that kid was never without his sketchbook.
I mean, it’s not ideal but at least they’re engaging with the subject matter?Harriet was an optimist. Now all she had to do was convince them to come back to school.
Four
Slowly she made her waydown the stairs through the middle of the dress circle. A few of the spotlights still worked and with these illuminating the stage, Harriet was obscured by darkness until she reached the top of the slope where the stalls began.
“You know, we have a theater at the school I’m sure we could arrange for you to use,” she said.
Five heads snapped round in her direction. Billy hastily dropped his cigarette into an empty bottle. Ricco and Carly—blinded by the spotlights—squinted in her direction while Isabel—her long black ponytail swinging wildly—had jumped up to standing in readiness to sprint, and Leo, shouting “Shit, it’s the feds!” had drop-rolled onto the floor and was peeping up over the folded seat.
Harriet couldn’t stop herself from laughing. “Relax, guys, it’s only me. And for the record, Leo, we don’t have feds in the UK.”
“Miss Smith?” Carly asked uncertainly, her hands shielding her eyes from the spotlights.
“The one and only,” Harriet replied dryly.
“Shit, miss, you nearly gave me a heart attack!” said Billy. “What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here? You’ve got some cheek. Whatareyoudoing here? Mr. Cornell is not impressed at your absence,again.”
“He’s never impressed,” said Carly, jumping off the stage and landing in a crouch like a cat. She was in the process of growing out a buzz cut, which she and Ricco had both done as a dare, and habitually ran her palms over her white-blond spikes.
The others murmured their agreement. Ricco—whose mum had cried when he’d first shaved his head and said he looked like a gangster—more wisely took the stairs off to the side and came to stand beside Leo, who had relinquished his bad hiding space. “Why does he even teach if he hates kids so much?”
This was a question Harriet had asked herself numerous times, but in the interest of maintaining her professionalism she replied, “Mr. Cornell has an appreciation for literature, which he wants to pass on to his students, and he becomes frustrated when he is unable to do his job properly. He can’t do his job at all if you’re not in school for him to teach you.”
“It’s all irrelevant to us, though, miss, isn’t it? All this oldy-worldy stuff. I’m not saying it isn’t a good story.” Carly waved her copy of the play. “A lot of them are, if you can get through the crusty way they’re written, but what actual use is all this stuff to us?”
“I think we can learn a lot from literature: social history, opinions of the time…” Harriet began.
“How is that going to help me get a job?” asked Isabel. Isabel’s family lived in a high-rise on the same infamous estate as Ricco. Her mum worked fiendishly long hours to make ends meet, and Isabel, the oldest, took on a lot of responsibility for her younger siblings.
“I’ll grant you that being able to recite passages from a Dickens novel won’t help you in an interview, but thequalification that you’ll gain from the course will. If you attend classes, that is.”
“It’s dumb that Foss makes English lit a compulsory A-level,” said Isabel. “No other school makes you do it. I don’t care about literature.”
“You must care about literature if you care about drama; they’re intrinsically linked.” Bored expressions all round. “Look at it this way—having an A-level in English literature certainly can’t do you any harm.”
This was met with a unified groan.
Harriet wasn’t fazed by this type of sulking; she’d heard it all before. Being on the pastoral team rather than the teaching staff meant that her relationship with the students was more relaxed. She had no agenda, and that meant students tended to be less guarded with her. Her role was often as mediator and always as guardian of their physical, emotional, and mental welfare. And when the need arose, she made sure they got their butts to class.
“Are you going to dob us in?” asked Billy.
“I won’t have to because you’re all going to come back to school.”
Carly had relaxed her stance and stood with one hand on her hip; she was looking at Harriet with a smirk. Of all of them she was the most indomitable—on the outside, at least—a tumultuous home life had ensured that her first response was always attack.
“Does Mr. Cornell know you’re here, miss?” she asked.
“No, he does not. I wanted to give you a chance to do the right thing.”
“Whoa!” shouted Ricco, grinning. “Nice one, miss. You’ve gone rogue.”
“Good on you!” added Leo, whose bravado had fully returned.
