Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 4

Be invisible. Be invisible. I repeat it in my head like a mantra. Shrinking into my own body as I move. Stepping silently like a cat.

I'm walking through the double doors into what the receptionist calls the 'Soul Space'. And I'm hit by a wall of noise. This space is huge. Cavernous. And yet it's so crowded it feels intense. The ceilings, like St Patrick's cathedral back home, equally as high yet brighter than any old church. The ceiling is vaunted plastic. An enormous bubble, acting like a magnifying glass on a colony of ants. Even though it's September, it's hot. Really hot.

And the space goes back a couple hundred yards, hovering above the back end is a huge mezzanine space, where one way glass peers down upon the writhing masses. CCTV cameras hang from every available corner like Christmas decorations. More arrays of plasma screens broadcasting messages, unreadable for the glitching. Along the centre hundreds of tables and picnic benches, each one packed with huddled groups. Trash everywhere.

I'm so overwhelmed. I can't pick out the details from the massive dump of junk data. Up above on either side of the soul space some fifteen maybe twenty foot high, there are elevated walkways on the first floor, with balconies all along. Jeez if you fell from there...

I thought the English were supposed to be classy. Junk food wrappers drift across the space. Whooping and hollering. Full on screams punctuate the general hubbub. Weird chants emerge from the thronging bodies, like a sports crowd. A fight breaks out and hundreds of people hang over the upper walkways banging their hands on the barriers, cheering and shrieking with laughter. It's dizzying, intoxicating, I'm drowning in it.

There must be well over a thousand students here. I flash back to my school in New York. No more than a dozen of us in any year group. I knew it wasn't normal. But I didn't really know it. not till just now.

Teacher's patrol in hi-vis neon yellow jackets, gazing across the space like basilisk's, avoiding conflict more than actually doing anything. Look more like bored cops than the whimsical polymaths who worked at my old school.

Around the room, every variant of adolescent behaviour collected in a painting, bullying, flirting, horsing around, whispering, giggling, shrieking, arguments, shoving kids into lockers, trying to wind up the adults, surreptitiously dropping food and trash onto the floor, flipping bottles, and some kids repeatedly stabbing the lid of their bottles with a biro. Like, what is that?

And there are some behaviours I can't even read. Girls walk around doing cryptic series of movements with their hands and upper bodies.

And there is chrome too. Implants are not uncommon in this crowd. Mostly cheap and nasty tech. Kind of thing you'd never buy a minor back home. Still a fashion for thug tech here.

And I must be just shuffling along with my mouth hanging open because I realize a few people are staring at me. Not good. Most boring new girl in history, remember? Got to move like I've always been here, so many kids surely, they can't all know that I'm a new face?

So, I look around for someone roughly my size I can latch onto, a group I can join. I see a goy, wearing shiny black boots in their trousers and jumper, and I notice suddenly how many of the girls here are in skirts. Lot's of hyperFems. I don't think I ever saw a girl at my school wear a skirt. The binary is alive and well in London in the 70s.

So, this goy is holding open a portfolio and a couple of other kids are stood around the table and I'm thinking, artsy folks with shiny boots - that's my brand. So, I move towards them, trying to remember how to be friendly.

Then another group fly in like a squad of bomber drones, there's malice in their stride. Some harsh words, I can't make them out. God this Brit accent is going to be harder to penetrate than I thought.

And then the portfolio gets flipped, the tallest of the three girls, wearing a lot of makeup. Sporting a gleaming designer leg. She flips the portfolio right over and strides away, her gaggle of sidekicks following, arm in arm, cackling and snorting.

My mark looks, if anything, entirely unsurprised. Nobody helps them. The other kids wander off without pretending that they're not wandering off. I can't let it go. I'm thinking, Great go and hang out with public enemy number one, Ursula. Great idea. But I can't let them just pick all their drawings up alone.

Hey.

They look at me, head cocked, squinting, expecting some kind of an attack.

"Oh, look I'm just, I just want to help you pick these up, OK?"

Face lights up, transformed into a mask of ecstasy.

"OHMIGOD! you're new!!"

"Yeah. How can you tell?"

Fully gasps, both hands over mouth in shock and excitement.

"What is that accent? You're AMERICAN!?"

"Yeah. Guilty. I'm from a little town in America."

"Oh wow. Oh. Just wow. I'm Ty."

"Pleased to meet you I'm sure, I'm Ursula. You can call me whatever you want. Some people think it's too long."

"Ok Ursula. So, what do you think?"

They shows me their drawings and we sit for a while and I say nice things. All manga stuff. Not awful, I guess. They've got a way to go. And they talk and talk. Gradually filling me in on the complex social organisation of the school.

And while I'm feeling like I've found a life raft - I can't help but notice the looks we're getting. I can tell, Ty is not well liked.

"So, Ty what's with the mean girls?"

"Oh, she thinks I got her into trouble. Well, I did. She was bullying me so I told all the teachers. She hates me because I'm trans. She had to do a course. The head wants to win an inclusion award."

"Oh right. So, you're a boy?"

Yeah, my mum calls me Lilly but I'm Ty. Short for Tyrone. My parents come from the burbs. Into that whole retro values vector. I know I'm not trez masc. Everyone hates me because they think I'm faking it for the attention. That's my secret.

"Well Ty, I'm going to tell you, my secret."

"Ohmigod this is amazing. Yeah, I'm listening."

"I've never been to a real school before."

"No. Way."

I try to think of how to describe my school back home.

"Yeah, I went to this special school for, well for rich kids with artsy parents in New York. So, I'm like..."

"A fish out of water?"

I look around at the swirling chaos, feeling sick to my stomach.

"Yeah."

"Oh, this is going to be amazing. I'm going to be your guide. We've got to talk to your head of house. We can buddy up officially. I'll get out of loads of lessons. Come on."

So, I follow him, where he leads.

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