Head Over Heels ✓

15 / red-handed

april, age fifteen 

Exam season was looming fast and although Lucas dreaded the Easter holidays when he would have to spend hour upon hour revising, he was ready to have a month at home. Audrie had already been back for a week, occupying herself with Charlotte, who still had a few months before she started school, and Lucas couldn't wait to spend more time with his big sister. He hated that she was at university, that she was away for such long stretches of time. By the time she had come home last week, it had been eleven weeks since she had last set foot in the house, and Lucas didn't like being without her. She was a natural oldest sibling: the role didn't suit him.

He was counting down the minutes until four o'clock, feeling like he was wasting his life away as he sat in a geography lesson. The subject hadn't proved to be as interesting as he had thought and though Asher loved it, one of very few subjects he enjoyed, Lucas just couldn't find a way to make it interesting for himself. He didn't care about methods data collection in rural areas or chloropeth maps, just like Asher didn't care for books. Their interests were virtually opposite, though they shared one. Each other.

Or so Lucas hoped.

The four o'clock bell rang when the clock in the classroom still read three fifty-eight. The teacher raised his eyebrows as though challenging the students and he asked, "What do you believe? My clock or the school bell?"

The question was answered by the rustle and rumble of the students packing their things away. Chairs scuffed back on the carpet; zips were unteethed; abandoned pens rolled off desks onto the floor. The teacher began to shuffle his own papers, sifting them into his bag. Lucas did the same, albeit neatly. He lined up in his hole punch the practice papers they had been working on, pressing a neat pair of holes through the booklet before he snapped it into his ring binder.

Asher shoved his into his bag, curling the corner of the paper. Lucas struggled not to wrinkle his nose, focusing his attention on his own desk. He sorted his pens and pencils into his own pencil case, making sure each one faced the right way, and he slotted his ruler and rubber into their own spaces. There was a place for everything in the case, just how he liked it.

He turned to Asher, who always looked a bit scruffy by the end of the day. His shirt had come untucked somehow, his tie askew, and he didn't bother to put his blazer back on after he had taken it off at the start of the lesson. The school was pretty strict at enforcing its uniform policy, issuing uniform cards that afforded each pupil three strikes before apparel violations earned them a detention.

Asher had made it through three cards since the start of the year, with one strike left on the crumpled one in his pocket. It was a wonder he hadn't had more than three detentions in the past six months, but many of the teachers seemed to have given up with him. Holding him in a detention had never done anything to improve the way he tied a tie and sending a letter home had done no good. All it had led to was Ishaana pointing an angry finger at the head of Year Eleven and accusing her of prioritising looks over education.

Asher's family had a bit of a reputation at the school. The reputation extended beyond the school gates, and it was tricky for him to get away anonymously when everyone knew his face: his parents were virtual celebrities, after all.

Back in the day, Bishop had been one half of a band that had been on track for international success before the duo had come to an explosive end, any chance of a reunion scuppered by the death of his partner. Now a highly-respected consultant medical physicist, he routinely published papers in medical and sociological journals and even featured in occasional televised documentaries.

Meanwhile Ishaana had achieved local fame as the founder of Chess House Publishing Company, its headquarters in Farnleigh with sister offices in New York, Toronto, Berlin, Paris and Sydney with plans to expand into Tokyo and Delhi. Lucas's mother had worked for the company for almost a decade now, rising the ranks from copy editor to a senior editor. She had the skills for even more advanced work, though she put her family above all else and she had passed over promotions that would have required more time in the office.