Wolf Iron

Chapter 5 / Mrs. Harcourt's Bra

Barlow sat in 7th Form Biology inspecting the dirty biome of the underside of his own fingernails and squeezing a ball to keep his energy in check. The pill hadn't quite kicked in yet, but since he had taken it before lunch it would serve him well till the end of the school day and he might actually be able to stomach a few brusselsprouts. Though he hated the damned things. 

He took a look over towards the back of the class and spied Rodney, sitting with his arms crossed and surprisingly, not sleeping. He had a look about his face that Barlow just hated, it was a sort of self-pleased, smug look. 

Why is that bloke allowed to come in late and sit in the arse-back and sleep the class away? In London, they would've called him a Shoreditch twat for sure. 

Barlow squeezed the stress ball violently and tried to calm himself mentally. 

Meanwhile, I'm sat here in the front row like a right mug because the teachers know about my ADHD and there's bollocks I can do about it.

And Barlow had seen him in class before, making it seem as if he was reading the course material but he really had some type of comic book behind the thick textbook. Far too brazen, Barlow would think on his way to his desk in the front.

And sometimes, before his medication kicked in, Barlow would fixate on the teacher's snag-tooth or the series of moles on her neck that looked like a bent horseshoe. Other times, he felt his eyes gravitate towards her bosom and he wondered if she knew that her students could make out the lace bra beneath her tucked blouses. But it was one she only wore on the 2nd Friday on every month. Perhaps the appointed date night with the Mister? Barlow smiled and thought himself quite the Sherlock indeed.

You see, Barlow knew that he had no problem paying attention to what he wanted. It was just what he wanted wasn't important in the scheme of things. What his parents wanted on the other hand was monumentally consequential. He even remembered what his parents said just before they shipped him off to the countryside to be with his great Aunt. Just a change of scenery, ol' Bear. He could practically hear his parents' voice in his ears. 'Ealth and safety, innit?

As the clocked ticked on, the world became narrower and Barlow's stress ball fell to the floor dejectedly. His nerves calmed and he stared vacantly at the blackboard and forgot about the slow passage of time all together. He fixated on the spread chart in front of him and focused on one sentence at a time. This was him at his slowest, but his most efficient. 

He crossed all his T's and dotted all his I's with a methodical flourish that stressed an importance on conformity and numbers began to become icons of art as he looped the front ends of the 6's to match the downward loops of the 7's and he did not hear the snickers from the girls next to him and so the class went. 

He felt himself a zombie-like presence in 7th Form Biology but that was all well and good, because if wasn't allowed to feel what he felt was important, then Warrington Secondary might as well have been a cannibalistic feeding ground for the insane. But then again, he thought, meat's better than brusselsprouts, isn't it?