Without Wings: Chapter 1

1.

Michael rocked back on his chair and leant against the cool, painted stone wall of his classroom. He spun his pen between his fingers and watched the clock tick.

It was hot and humid; the worst kind of heat, where it’s too hot not to sweat and the air is too wet for it to evaporate. He could feel the edge of his hairline dampen more and more with every minute that spun past.

The balding and bespectacled teacher mumbled something in a low voice and began to squeak out lines on a whiteboard. Basic algebra. He’d studied it at his last school. Or the one before that. They all seemed to run together.

“Hey, you’re the new kid right?” the voice belonged to the boy next to him.

Michael nodded. He was the new kid; he was always the new kid.

“My name’s Eli – well it’s actually Elijah but my last name’s not Wood. I’m not a hobbit or anything.”  Eli smiled awkwardly. He was obviously uncomfortable.

“I’m Michael.”

Eli’s awkward grin relaxed into a more natural impish smirk.

“So what do you think of Mr Lyle?” He asked, flicking his eyes to the front of the room.

Michael’s eyebrows arched, he wasn’t about to badmouth his first teacher of the day right in front of him. Eli had made no attempt to lower his voice and Michael was sure Mr Lyle, who happened to be the low murmur with a receding hairline circling numbers at the front of the room, would have heard him.

But Michael was not about to compliment a teacher. You only get to make one first impression at a new school; he’d learnt that the hard way. This moment could mean the difference between a comfortable, relatively anonymous couple of months or an instant reputation as a brown-nosing suck up.

Noticing Michael’s hesitation Eli, once again at regular conversational volume, interrupted the train of thought: “He can’t hear you mate, not all the way back here.”

Although the boys were at the far end of the room, it was still no more than five or six metres from the white board, and Michael was certain Mr Lyle was watching them out the corner of his glasses.

“Look I’ll prove it,” Eli continued, his voice was still far too loud for Michael’s liking. “Mr Lyle loves the colour pink, and is a well-established collector of doll’s clothing.”

Michael’s jaw hung slack. While he was sure caning students was illegal in modern Australia, he had the feeling Mr Lyle might be one for tradition. Anyone who uses brown elastic suspenders in lieu of a belt is certain to have uttered the phrase “In my day,” and is doubly certain to recall proper application of corporal punishment.

Eli pressed on, determined to prove his point, “I also have it on good authority,” Eli’s smirk covered half his face and Michael could feel it contaminating his own, “that Mr Bernard Lyle sleeps in his mother’s bed.”

Michael waited for the fury of an embarrassed middle-aged man to crash down around their ears but all he could hear were the sniggers and chuckles of eavesdroppers.

The girl in front of Eli turned in her seat. “That’s not very fair, Eli, he does sleep in his own bed most nights,” she said, trying very hard to keep the smile from her face, “it’s just when he has a scary dream –” the girl could hold it no longer, and she burst into raucous laughter.

“Is something funny, Miss Paulson?”

The girl snapped back around so quickly the whites of her eyes left trails in the air.

“No sir,” said the girl, her voice uncertain and wavering.

For the first time in the student’s memories, Mr Lyle had spoken without mumbling.

There was an odd coolness in the teacher’s words, unpleasant but not threatening, and the upturned corner of his mouth, a most unsettling smirk, did little to detract from the uncomfortable feeling.

The clock on the wall ticked audibly. The background noise of the classroom, the scratch of pens on paper, the hum of whispered conversation, the creak of leant chairs, became deafeningly noticeable in their silence.

Mr Lyle’s eyes passed slowly over the rows of students. He met each of their eyes and moved on to the next in one fluid movement. It was like he was looking for something, like he was waiting for someone to speak. He passed over Eli and fixed his gaze on Michael.

A cold ripple ran down Michael’s spine, one that had little to do with the cool stone wall on his back. He felt his jaw clench instinctively and his fingers began to curl into fists. Lines of white goosebumps began to rise on his arms, snaking their way to his shoulders. The room felt too close, too tight; like the walls had crept in to trap him. His head felt light, his mouth felt dry and, curiously, Michael could feel a soft pull on his back; it was as though someone had tied string to the centre of each shoulder blade and was holding it taut.

Michael leant forward; worried he might lose his balance, he put chair on all four legs. His skin tingled all over and the room, stiflingly hot a moment before, now felt like the inside of the freezer. He felt his legs tighten and slide under him as though he was going to stand up. He willed them to move back in to place but they were no longer his to command.
Mr Lyle’s eyes were wide but not white. The lines around his pupils were gone and the black had started to spill out into the white like ink on snow.

“Sir?” said a soft female voice from the front of the room.

“Yes Miss Gladstone,” Mr Lyle kept his eyes locked on Michael’s. The black dripped and snaked in lines from the centre, crawling for the edge of his eyes. The tug on Michael’s back grew unbearable, like something was trying to rip itself free of his skin.

“Could you run through the second problem on the board again? I didn’t quite get it.”

The room fell back into silence; resting on strings of tension so tight the walls might have caved in.

“…Certainly.”

Mr Lyle turned back to the whiteboard. The squeak of lines and numbers resumed and his voice drooped from unsettling clarity to its former mush of low frequencies.

The ambient noise of the classroom crept back and the uneasiness began to ebb.

Michael tingled all over.

“Well that was different,” whispered Eli.

Michael took notes as best he could with his head down, he didn’t want to catch Mr Lyle’s eye again: those sensations were not ones he wanted repeated in a hurry. As soon as the bell rang he was on his feet and out the door. He had absolutely no idea where his next class was, he just needed to put distance between himself and that room.

“Hey, wait up!” Eli was trailing behind him in a half jog. He caught Michael’s eye, smiled and began to wave; then barrelled headfirst into a senior boy exiting a classroom. The two crashed to the floor, a tangle of arms and legs and curses.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Frodo?” yelled the older boy. He pushed Eli off and climbed to his feet.

“Sorry Tim; didn’t see you.”

The older boy, Tim, grabbed Eli by his collar and lifted him to his feet. Seniors continued to spill out into the corridor around them, most of them shuffled their feet down the hall and disappeared, but a couple seemed rather interested in the incident. Two in particular seemed to light up at the sight of Tim and Eli squaring off. The two large boys struck large grins and leant against the wall, settling in for the show.

Eli was not tall for his age, he was an inch or two shorter than Michael, and he was at least a head shorter than Tim and the two grinning gargoyles. Standing face to face it didn’t seem like two years difference; with their thick, broad shoulders and Eli’s slight build, it was more a difference of boys and men than juniors and seniors.

“Did you see that guys? Frodo ran straight into me.”

One of the resting giants chuckled. “He should be more careful,” he said.

“He really should,” said Tim. “He could have hurt someone.”

Eli laughed nervously and turned to walk away.

“Hey, slow down there Frodo.” Tim clapped a hand on Eli’s shoulder and spun him back around. “What’s the rush?”

“No rush,” said Eli, stealing an anxious glance down the hall. “Just don’t want to be late for class.”

“I think he’s late to meet Samwise over there.” One of the grinning seniors uncrossed his arms and nodded towards Michael.

“Nah he’s new, dunno him.” This time Eli gave Michael a very pointed look; one that said: ‘Leave. Leave. Leave. Leave.’

“Shouldn’t you boys be getting to class?” The voice was heavenly and sweet, ringing in Michael’s ears like church bells. Everything Mr. Lyle had been, the teacher standing in the doorway was not. She was young, in her early twenties, and had long brown hair that fell in tight curls around her neck. She wore a tight, black dress with a deep neckline, one that would be more at home on the runway than a high school science lab. Out of her dress flowed incredibly long legs wrapped in black stockings like the best kind of Christmas present. 

“We were just on our way Miss.” Michael saw the menacing grimace Tim had been holding on Eli give way to a blushing smirk at the sight of the unbelievably beautiful woman. The other two boys had lost their bravado completely and now seemed almost embarrassed. Quietly they turned and disappeared down the hall.

“Shouldn’t you be going as well Elijah?” Eli turned bright pink when she said his name. “It looks like your friend is waiting for you.”

“Right, Miss.” Eli paused, his cheeks turning a darker shade of scarlet. “Thanks Miss,” he said.

Eli caught up to Michael, although at a decidedly cautious pace.

“Hey again,” he said rather sheepishly.

Michael smiled. “What was all that about?” he asked.

“You were going the wrong way mate, English is this way.”