Tuesday & Max

2

RISE ABOVE THE GROUND

WHERE YOU LAY

YOU'VE BEEN LAYING THERE SO LONG

It takes less than ten minutes to walk from the train station through the city to the college campus, and Tuesday arrives at 9:50.

It's modern, lots of grey brick buildings and pathways interspersed with great metal fountains and the odd perfect green Lego brick of lawn, and it doesn't look quite real; like the 3D render of a building still waiting to be made. Intimidating. Pristine. Straight off the prospectus cover.

In the entrance, Tuesday follows the pointed finger of a pink-t-shirt-wearing ambassador with a smile that looks too paid-for. At the front desk, she states her subjects and, five minutes later, finds herself in a cramped classroom filled with other bustling students, studying a timetable.

AS Levels: English Language, Media Studies, Art.

Someone gives a boring speech about the college and its place in the city, and Tuesday lets her mind drift, watching a square light amid a sea of square ceiling tiles flicker slightly.

Finally, the talk ends. The teacher asks if there are any questions before everyone gets sent on their way to individual class inductions. Tuesday prays people stay silent.

Four or five hands are flung into the air.

Shit.

Scrolling through her phone, absently flicking by the statuses of other students in her year as they celebrate their inductions to various colleges and sixth form institutions, Tuesday is alerted by a familiar voice.

"So are there bus passes we can get? How do we apply for them?"

She has to crane slightly to see around a girl with an absurdly messy topknot before she spots him: Max Hughes. That's a shocker. He was so absent at school that Tuesday is shocked he even bothered to apply for college at all, let alone get in. He looks a lot older than when she last saw him; short, messy brown hair longer, face thinner, ever-so-slightly down-turned brown eyes sadder.

He has problems at home. She doesn't know this, not for sure, but suspects it. Nobody takes that much absence unless something bad is going on. That, she does know.

As the teacher explains the process to him, Tuesday watches how he listens to her; carefully, intently. His voice, when he replies, is smooth and calm. She realises she's staring too hard when he glances across at her, meets her eye, loses track of his sentence and clears his throat before carrying on.

Awkward.

Have they ever spoken? She isn't sure. Perhaps she handed him a dropped pen back once in lesson; received a quiet, brisk thanks in return. He was absent during the before and the aftermath of the accident, so he wasn't among her well-wishers either. Perhaps he doesn't even know about it. Any of it. He'll be the only one here from her school that doesn't.

The teacher starts to organise course briefs, asking students from each assigned subject to stand. Tuesday glances at her timetables, bringing the one for today in front of the official one for the rest of the year. Media at 11:00, English at 11:30, Art at 12:30. After that there's a few tours and social events she knows she'll skip.

"AS Media Studies!"

She stands up, hyper-aware of the grunting of her chair's metal legs across the ribbed grey carpet, and slides the few things she put onto the desk into her backpack before putting it on.