Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 10

Mom is in London. Mom is here. I repeat it blindly, lips moving, subvocalising, like a chant, like a spell. I push out through the thronging bodies into the middle of the soulSpace at breaktime.

I'm drowning myself in the noise and heat, amid the discarded chicken bones, filthy looks and cheap perfume. I'm trying to be invisible but already I'm in the 'point and openly stare' category of the social strata. A shock of noise. Feel myself flinch. Nasal electronic wailing. The school siren sounds. One piercing tone that hangs there and refuses to shift.

Takes a few before the collective brain cell fires. Fire alarm. In the middle of lunch. Mutinous groans. It's only fun when it happens during lessons. Again, I'm struck by how different this battery chicken farm is to the free range offering I experienced back home. Everything is so brutal when there's two thousand adolescent bodies to move.

I'm aware there is a plan in operation, a fire drill, but I have no idea what it is and when I feel a hand grab my upper arm, I turn to see Ty, and I'm so relieved I almost hug him.

"Come on new girl! C'mon!"

Ty begins his monologue, and it soothes me. He guides me with the river of teenaged meat in plastic clothing towards the fire exit, happily chattering.

"Don't worry about anything. I told Ms. Fortune you were really sick and everything and she told the whole school that you were grieving and you needed our collective support. I didn't know you were grieving. Your mum..."

The moment of relief passes and I'm back to that old deep sense of sickness in the guts. Mild but persistent panic. I wish I was just sad. Sadness seems so pretty compared to how I feel when I think of mom. And it brings the glitch. I feel the tics, the little twitches in my nervous system. The whispering voices that seem to travel up and down my spine.

I decide to risk trusting Ty.

"Mom disappeared a year ago Ty. She's a computer scientist, works in AI. She travelled a lot. She was here in London when she ghosted the whole family."

My voice evaporates. I'm dimly aware that I'm staring into the middle distance. Pushing my fingernails into my thumb, one by one. My eyes fill up with hot tears, but they don't fall. I take a long deep breath. Ty is frozen like a rabbit in my headlights.

"I lost my mind. Missed a whole year of school. Cut myself. Yeah, I'm pretty messed up. Well, now you know. I shrug. Thanks for sticking up for me."

It takes a minute for Ty to move, but his face lights up and he grins from ear to ear. The he wraps his arm around my arm, linking us together from hip to shoulder. Then he whispers into my ear.

"OMIGOD you're just as much of a car crash as me. We're going to be best friends forever. My parents hate me."

"WE ARE NOT TALKING."

I'm caught off guard by the teacher shouting next to my other ear. The staff are positioned at key points around the building, they've all produced neon yellow jackets to wear and they call out the same incantation across the human traffic.

"WE ARE NOT TALKING."

And we shuffle through the big doors in the corner of the soulSpace, past the bottom of the stairwell and outside. I come upon the school yard for the first time, it's massive. Droves of students lining up in rows while their tutors coral them and harry the stragglers.

Ty has not stop filling my ear with his own war stories, eagerly traded for mine. I interrupt Ty's epic tale of family drama, which he has expertly delivered without moving his mouth. Mom is in London. Hold on to that Ursula.

"Ty what do you know about Ms. Grigore?"

Ty takes a deep breath, like he's literally getting a run up. I brace for his report but it's a moment too late. Whistles are screeching around us. The time for true silence is come. A boy who continues to talk is snatched out of the line and dragged to the front for ritual humiliation. I can't risk that. The glitch is here, waiting for its opportunity.

Tutors march up and down the lines barking names. They take the registers and then we wait. It's an odd, peaceful moment. I notice a flash of black and white, another magpie. One for sorrow. What?

"I didn't say anything."

I'm thinking, that's not right, it's counting crows, right? Not counting magpies.

I feel my skin crawl before I even register the sound that causes it. That is not human. Is it an animal? Like a fox being turned inside out. All the heads in the yard spin simultaneously to the source. I can't see over the tops of the big boys. Then it comes again, like two animals now. And a few people just sprint, just start running, and a few more, tipping into a stampede.

Yellow jackets shouting, slow and steady, whistles blowing, the stampede being reigned in. Some order restored. And the movement has opened up a gap in the crowd, I can see at the centre of a clearing, two girls fitting, fully fitting on the ground. Epileptics?

Ty grips my arm tightly, both hands. Speechless.

When the girls scream, their whole heads tip back. Their bodies move in ways that bodies should not be able to move. They contain so much tension they look like they're about to snap themselves into a pile of fragile parts.

The management move in around them. Ms. Fortune and her vice-principals jogging across the yard. A group of sports teachers move in, locking their writhing bodies into place. There is blood. They've both bitten their own tongues.

Then a voice comes. The taller girl. Louder than you'd think possible for a girl her build.

"Devils! Witches! Help! They're hurting us! They're hurting us! Witches! They're attacking us! They're choking us! Can't breathe. Can't..."

Then she descends into a choking fit.

And the other one takes up the theme, launching herself to her feet, shrugging off three strong men and shooting her arm towards us, towards me and Ty and screaming like a harpy.

"Witches! They're cursing us! They're hurting us! Help! Please, stop them! Please! I can't breathe!"

For a moment, suddenly the whole world changes, and all the colours are too intense, sickeningly vivid, and I see a web of tiny filaments connecting us all, sending pulses of energy throughout one another, and there are non-human things everywhere, and I know that each of them has a secret song that you can sing if you listen hard enough, and I'm muttering something.

Then it's gone, and I'm quaking. My whole body is shivering, and Ty is holding onto me, keeping me on my feet.

The girls have fallen into a dead feint.

And every other face in the school yard is turned on us.

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