CHAPTER ONE
Lighhouse Academy. Robert Lynch
School is the world’s first BRILLIANT idea. A short and stocky, sadistic man, must have thought ‘let’s place every person who hates every other into the same grounds; let us watch them fight to the death, and we shall call this dreaded land "School".’ The world of education has changed slightly since the reign of this man. Not much, in the case of Lighthouse Academy. I have attended its nursery through to the larger grounds for older children chunked to the right; years seven through eleven. I have sailed through the indigo hallways and white-grey heathen caging classrooms for four years, and now college looms as I enter the final year. Even now as I voice-over my thoughts in the ‘playground,’ the future presses upon my shoulders and demands my attention. It demands an answer I’m entirely unprepared to give: what are you doing, and where are you going?
I look up from my black trousers, ironed so that the crease in the centre is barely visible. Across the concrete grounds that we are funnelled to during break and lunchtimes, I see hundreds of others like me: sixteen year olds with no direction. Many of them are the walking clichés that can be expected in schools. Sarah Basildon and her flock of painted-faced girlfriends occupy a patch of comfortable olive grassland in the corner closest to mine. She lies across a bench with one leg propped up, absorbing tan rays of sunlight. Unlike her entourage, her complexion doesn’t come from a bottle- for she needs to auction her friendship to nobody. I observe them a while longer, witness them giggling loudly, frolicking theatrically. They all lie in symmetry to their flawless leader- alluding kinetically to the boys who stare, ‘paint me like one of your French girls’. I wish that ship would sink.
I hear a gentle thudding sound as a gleeful football hops to my feet. It is red, new, and fully inflated. Pass the ball! The voice is sharp, deep: it is the voice of joint-lead sports jerk, Whip, whose name in its untarnished form is Derry Fellows. His left-hand man is Daniel Croft, dark, handsome and slightly dopey looking. He isn’t so bad. In fact, it was him who founded the school council in the first year, before he became popular for persuading the school not to cut the sports teams. Four years later and it is still going strong, Daniel at the head of the table, I at his shoulder. His is the next voice I hear.
“Robert!” he calls, softer than his ‘bro.’ I see him gesture with his hands to pass the ball.
Collecting it between my feet, still sitting on the bench, I kick it unenthusiastically so that Whip must walk part-way to collect it. He makes a sound like water fizzling on a white hot metal, and skulks away, bouncing the ball with his bear claws. In an attempt to collect his remaining shards of masculinity, I watch him send the ball against another boy’s head. This is school, I sigh.
If you haven’t yet gathered, my name is Robert Lynch. It is scribbled in block letters on every subject note-pad I own. You can find it on the back of toilet stall doors, examination desks, tables, spare sheets of screwed up paper; all in the same black ink. The signature of Robert Lynch is almost everywhere you search- because some day, I plan to be writing my name for other’s enjoyment, not solely my own. I sign my name on the bench before rising to head to class.
The end of day bell brings ten seconds of sheer annoyance. Not necessarily because of the constant screech emanating from the bright red monster, but because ninety percent of the class watch the clock during class anyway. I have a theory that the lecturers do, too, so there’s no need for a bell.
Since the first man molested the cow, society has been actively obsessed with idle gossip. Shimmer, Shoot, Lighthouse Limited and All the Rage are the school’s own perfectly fitting examples of this. As Lighthouse is the literary capital of schools, you could expect nothing short of a few magazines; but it is the incredulous rumours passed through these papers like a flu epidemic that truly denotes their ability to be something. Sarah Basildon, head plastic, rules the hierarchal portrayal of girls and gays in Shimmer: to which I’ve made multiple appearances, though I’m neither. The lipstick pink subheadings have the power to control any girl in the school who wishes to climb the scrapheap of Lighthouse Academy’s popularity scale.
Shoot focuses on the wild nights and sport-life of ‘bros’ like Whip, and his legion of muscle-heads. Edited by Philip Leycroft, Whip and the bros, (and Daniel), front the popularity of the men of the Academy- who’s up at the top- and who is at the bottom of the man-castle. They include football fixtures, basketball, hockey, and the other physically challenging sports deemed worthy of bro-hood.
The final two focus on the tertiary pillars of Lighthouse. All the Rage intimates and pries into the personal lives of students: who’s dating who, rivals, friendships, and hallway myths. Lighthouse Limited invites its readers into some artistic forms such as sketching and short stories, plays and performances. It lists the more talented members of the Academy, singers, painters, sports fanatics. And each week its interviewer asks questions to class members deemed at the top of the educational ziggurat. Last week it was Sarah. Again.
The Yearbook is what I have settled for most years, helping the final year students decide how to lay it out, which pictures to include, and to minimalise the pure idiocy of the popular kids. This is how I first encountered Noah James, my friend; my best friend if you believe in those. He’s gay. And not just a little; from the large sunglasses he wears through every season, his occasional excited skip and clapping, to his sequin ties and the way he ends anything deemed in fashion with the suffix ‘-chic’. If he were here now, I’d be called dark-chic before he even said hello. I’m not always donning a black jacket and dark boots, but today it seemed to match my mood. Bored, lazy: at school.
Lighthouse Academy consists of three large buildings, and one smaller one. At the entrance is the largest: the Linchester building, consisting of five floors with long corridors, electric orange walls, the science and IT labs, and the large dining room which leads to the main ‘playground’. A metal gate filters us through to the left side of the Leftun (smaller building), built symmetrically like a double decker bus. This faces the Woodsbury building, which resembles a long C-shaped tunnel, housing English and language, several sports halls and literature; and the ISB building, painted red, ends the circle of buildings with maths and assembly classrooms. The remainder of the large grounds are filled with a concrete square, and a lush green hill, with a tree, and a seating area built for us that we are forbidden to use. I enjoy school, but I can’t say the same for the ‘school life’. Home time.
You shouldn’t get down on me for not enjoying the first day of school. I do enjoy it for the most part. I iron my clothes, get my hair cut, pack my bag full of pens that are stolen by other students, just like everybody else does; but it’s difficult to be inspired in a school built with sharp edges and straight lines. But, then, it’s incredibly difficult to write if you’re any good at it.
