Chapter 13

The final lesson of the day was Religious Education. A waste of time by all accounts. Occasionally it was interesting, but having the class taught by a devout Christian meant the discussions were often one-sided.

Today the teacher was reviewing the scientific evidence for creation. Mr. Porter finally turned their attention to the football sitting in the center of his table. The class had been wondering about its purpose since they piled in and took their seats.

"Can anyone hazard a guess at how this ball came to be here?" he asked the class.

"Erm... you put it there?" Cat said.

"Any other guesses?" Mr. Porter pressed.

"That somebody else put it there," someone spoke up.

"So, we can agree that somebody put the ball on the table. Where would you place the mathematical probability that someone sat the ball on the table?"

"One," Damien said. "Or very close to one."

The teacher smiled at this response, looking proud and a little smug.

"And where would you place the mathematical probability that the ball spontaneously appeared on the table?"

Damien tutted. "I get your premise, but you’re thinking in very simplistic terms. Stephen Hawking said that under extreme conditions, general relativity and quantum theory allow time to behave like another dimension of space, which removes the distinction between time and space and means the law of evolution can also determine the initial state."

"Erm, I'm not a physicist," the teacher stuttered. "I don't understand what—"

"To dumb it down, it means the Universe can spontaneous create itself out of nothing," Ricky interrupted.

Jess felt her face twitch into a smile. She hadn't understood a word of what Damien said. She was impressed, not only that Ricky had in-depth knowledge of physics, but that his understanding exceeded the teachers.

She also felt a little sorry for the teacher, who just a moment ago had swelled up with pride over his logical argument for creation. Trust Damien to bring him down a peg. As captain of the school's debate team, he was adept as using his intelligence to topple arguments. It was his greatest weapon... after witchcraft.

"Okay, class." the defeated teacher moved on. "I want you to draw a representation of your ideas on how the universe was created. Be it God, the big bang theory, aliens. Whatever you like."

Jess took the stack of drawing paper from the guy in front, took a sheet and passed the pile back.

Staring down at the blank sheet, she wasn't sure what to draw.

As she glanced around at her classmates scribbling away, Jess dreamt up ideas, considered them and ultimately rejected them.

'Maybe I should draw something magical,' Jess thought. Drawing a pentacle on her paper would only antagonize the teacher. She'd leave that up to Ricky.

She groaned as she looked over at his paper and saw a massive, albeit quite well drawn, picture of the devil.

'The devil's God and God's a liar,' he wrote along the top.

It was an Amity Affliction lyric, but Mr. Porter was unlikely to know that. He looked genuinely upset by Ricky's work as he passed up and down the aisles.

As the other students posted their images on the corkboard at the back of the classroom, Jess was yet to draw a thing.

Most papers boasted drawings of imagined Gods or explosions, but a few stood out. Eddy had drawn a detailed and skillful illustration of a bluebottle, finished with the words, "We do not exist. We are the imagination of a fly."

"Why blue and not red?" Someone asked Ricky as a crowd formed to look at his impressive drawing.

"The devil is blue," Ricky replied, as though he knew this for a fact.

"How do you know?" a girl asked, humoring him as she leaned over the table to give Ricky a view of her chest.

'What a slut,' Jess thought, seething quietly to herself.

"I dream about the Devil a lot lately," Ricky told them. Jess was sure she saw the teacher facepalm in the background of her field of vision.

"Is it scary?" Caine asked with a snide smile. Jess figured the nightmares were something to do with the spell when Cat shrank at the mention of the word.

Ricky turned back to his work.

"I don't get scared."

It seemed an unlikely claim. Everyone was scared of something, or so Jess had thought. But the way he said it, so devoid of emotion, Jess believed him.

Mr. Porter looked doubly dismayed when Damien hung his work.

"We are all side characters in a book bought to life by an author/higher entity living out his fantasy of becoming a God made flesh," the teacher read. His expression suggested he was quickly losing the will to live and most definitely regretting the lesson plan.

"You don't have to look so sad." Damien shrugged, seeing the teacher’s dire expression. "It's just a lame theory I came up with off the top of my head."

Mr. Porter's lips twitched into a smile.

"John 1:14: The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us," Mr. Porter uttered. "Have you read the bible?"

Damien grinned. "Only the good bits."

This statement made Mr. Porter laugh. "It's all good."

"All the time," Damien added quietly.

Mr. Porter's eyes misted over as he stared at the student's works. He turned to Jess, spotting her blank paper.

"You don't have any theories about how we came to be here?" he asked. When took a seat on the edge of her table, his ugly beige slacks rode up, showing off his multicolored socks. He was an odd man, mild-mannered and old fashioned despite his youth. He took a lot of slack from the male students, especially since admitting he didn't believe in sex before marriage. It was almost as if he was asking to be tormented.

"I have a theory we aren't supposed to know. Or at least, aren't capable of understanding," Jess said. It was a total cop-out, but she didn't have the brainpower to dream up anything original like Eddy or Damien.

"I like that theory best," Mr. Porter said. He smiled warmly at her before dismissing the class a few minutes before the bell.

"Meeting later," Caine said as he passed Jess leaving the classroom.

"Okay, but my target wants to meet me first," Jess whispered.

"That's four out of five," Caine smiled, exuding confidence. Jess doubted his ability to get an apology from Ricky but daren't say as much. She didn't want the others to realize she was falling for one of the victims and risk being kicked from the group.

Jess left her new friends, taking the opposite route across the school field. It was against the rules to leave this way, but plenty did, especially those who lived in the housing estate built about the back of the field. In between the houses and the school was a copse that had been partially cleared to create room for allotments.

At this time of year, the allotments were unattended-dead patches of dirt spotted with the odd resilient weed.

Brambles snagged at Jess's tights as she slid into the den she had created with Cat in their youth. It had taken them forever to clear out a hollow in the center of the bushes. Numerous of afternoons had been spent perfecting it while drinking sodas and binging on candy.

'Good memories,' Jess thought sadly.

She heard twigs snapping, and gentle cursing as her former friend joined her in the now slightly overgrown den.

"Wow, it's lasted well," Cat gasped.

"We did a good job, right?" Jess agreed.

"We sure did," Cat said. She took a cigarette from her bag and offered the pack to jess.

"I don't smoke," Jess said.

'You'd know that if we were actually still friends.'

"I wanted to say I'm sorry." Cat took a drag on her cigarette. "I shouldn't have turned on you like I did. I was immature and... mean."

"Okay," Jess said, drawing out the word slowly. She wasn't entirely sure what to say to that.

When Cat looked up at her, eyes pleading, she realized what the girl wanted.

"I can't forgive you until you apologize to my brother too," Jess told her.

Cat fell quiet. The red tip of her cigarette glowed as she took a few drags in succession.

"I can't," Cat whispered. "Jess, I'm so sorry but... I wasn't lying about him."

'Unbelievable!'

"I can't believe I bothered to meet with you," Jess cried. The branches grasped at her as she tore her way out, scratching her face. She turned back to see if Cat was following, but the girl hadn't moved.

'Why can't she just admit she lied? How hard is it?' Jess wondered. Maybe it was the lengths she carried her lie that made it hard to own up. She'd taken it to the police and even to court before Johnny was finally cleared of the charges. There was no way he'd touch her friend, let alone rape her. The whole thing was ridiculous, looking back. At the time it had been horrendous.

'I'll never forgive her.'