Chapter Text
The new school year began in the manner in which it always did, with an inset day, complimentary coffee, and the weak collective delusion that we were all emotionally ready to be perceived by teenagers again. The dining hall resounded with low conversation and the clink of cups while I strolled between tables, surrounded by the usual familiar faces. Staff clustered together with pastries resting on napkins, warming their hands around coffee like it might contain courage. Budget cuts, broken boilers, departmental turf wars, generations of ungrateful students—we’d survived the whole asteroid field. Yet, here we were, drifting back through the front doors every autumn like confused little moons.
Buzz Grunt and John Burb lingered near the wall, partly concealed by a pillar and looking like the pillar owed them staff. From the tight expressions and animated hand gestures, I guessed they were once again discussing their department’s eternal understaffing crisis, which had been going on so long it probably qualified as a local tradition. Nearby, the Simlish department—mostly women, all mysteriously better organised than the rest of us—had gathered neatly around a table under the calm command of Mary‑Sue Pleasant. Their conversation floated from summer holidays toward lesson plans, giggles rising now and then like little bubbles of denial.
Samantha Ottomas stood out immediately, mostly because her baby bump had gone from “noticeable” to “small moon entering orbit” over the summer. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, one hand braced against her back, radiating the weary power of someone growing humans and still somehow attending continued professional development.
“Honestly, I can’t wait to get these babies out of me!” Samantha said with a tired smile, one hand braced against her lower back. “I’m so done with being pregnant. Five children will be more than enough for me.”
“I still can’t believe you’re having twins!” another Simlish teacher exclaimed, eyes wide. “How are you even still standing?”
Samantha let out a breathy laugh and shook her head. “I have no idea. This last month is going to be brutal. But at least I’ll finally get to meet them.”
“Seriously, if you need help, call me,” Mary‑Sue said, her voice dry yet honest. “Twins are a handful—and that’s coming from someone without any other children.”
“I’m sure Peter and I can handle it,” Samantha replied, her smile softening.
Balancing a pain au chocolat and a lukewarm coffee, I peeled away from the crowd and made my way toward my own department. The shift in atmosphere was immediate. Other tables buzzed. Science sat in sullen silence around one of the larger tables, shoulders stiff, faces drawn, the whole vibe somewhere between a wake and a failed experiment. Loki, our head of department, sat hunched forward with his elbows on the table and his head buried in his hands, muttering sharp phrases under his breath in a language I had no intention of spiritually engaging with before ten in the morning.
I dropped into the empty chair between my brother Vidcund and Cassandra Goth. Both stared straight ahead with their mouths pressed into thin, grim lines, which in science-teacher body language meant either “terrible results” or “someone used the good glue sticks.”
“So,” I said around a mouthful of pastry, crumbs sticking to my lip, “what’d I miss?”
Loki looked up slowly. His blue eyes burned with the sort of contained fury that made you wonder if anyone had checked the fire exits.
“Our attainment is worse than ever,” Circe Beaker cut in sharply before her husband could speak. “Landgraab Academy beat us in a landslide.”
I shrugged, unfazed. “Private schools. What are you gonna do?”
Circe’s jaw tensed. She crushed her paper cup in her hand without warning, sending hot coffee splashing across the table—and over her hand—as the silence around us deepened.
My stomach sank as the coffee spilt, thick and dark, crawling down Circe’s hand. The smell came a second later—burnt, bitter, sharp—and her skin flushed angry red right in front of us. Vidcund stiffened beside me, and for once, I didn’t have a joke ready. The whole thing happened upsettingly fast, like one of those classroom demonstrations where you say, “This is perfectly safe,” and immediately discover the universe has a sense of humour.
Cassandra was already moving. Her chair screeched back as she hurried toward the refreshments, hands outstretched, as if sheer determination might undo what had already happened.
“You should probably get that under some cold water,” Vidcund murmured, his voice cautious.
“It’s fine,” Circe snapped, jerking her hand back. The way she said it suggested it was absolutely not fine, possibly in several dimensions.
“Forget her hand,” Pascal said abruptly, his voice severing through the moment like a blade. “We’re an overqualified science department, and our students aren’t even getting A’s. Landgraab Academy has one science teacher with a PhD, and their grades are miles ahead of ours.”
I watched Loki’s jaw tense. My boss looked suddenly older, worn down around the edges, like someone had taken an eraser to him and then given up halfway.
“Don’t remind me,” Loki muttered, rubbing at his temples. “I never should’ve let Dr Baldwin leave.”
“You didn’t let him leave,” Circe shot back. “You shouted at him in front of the entire department.”
Loki rolled his eyes, and my shoulders tightened before I was able to stop them. I knew that look. That was the look he used when a conversation had been declared dead on arrival, and everyone else was expected to respect the funeral.
Cassandra returned with napkins and placed them carefully over the spill. I watched the coffee spread anyway, seeping outward under the paper, unstoppable, threatening notebooks and handouts like a tiny brown catastrophe. It seemed like a metaphor, which was rude of it.
Loki turned on Cassandra suddenly. “You’re the head of Biology. What are we going to do about these grades?”
Cassandra stopped. The napkins hovered futilely in her hands. She straightened slowly, her voice controlled, but I could hear the strain beneath it. “Historically, our students perform well in biology. Chemistry and Physics are what’s dragging the averages down.”
Loki’s eyebrow twitched. “Are you saying this is my fault?”
“No,” Cassandra replied. “I’m saying Biology isn’t the problem. You need to look at where the more theoretical sciences are going wrong.”
My gaze moved instinctively to Pascal.
“Well?” Loki demanded.
“Don’t blame me,” Pascal snapped back.
“You’re the head of Physics.”
“And you’re the head of Science and Chemistry.”
The hush that followed was thick enough to butter toast with. I adjusted in my chair, suddenly aware of how small the table felt, how close everyone was sitting, how very much I did not want to be present for whatever emotional physics was about to occur. I cleared my throat, and somehow it sounded louder than a fire alarm.
Every pair of eyes turned to me.
It had always been like this, honestly. Loki and Pascal locked in quiet, permanent opposition, two charged particles trapped in the same miserable little field. Loki ruled the department the only way he knew how—force of will, zero softness, and the tragic belief that if everyone else felt as ground down as he did, that counted as leadership.
“We could focus on the students’ maths skills,” I said carefully. “They can’t calculate a mean—never mind rearrange the resistance equation.”
“If they don’t know how to calculate a mean by thirteen, that’s on them,” Loki snapped.
I swallowed a sigh, which took more core strength than I usually liked to demonstrate in public.
“No, he’s right,” Cassandra said. “Teaching surface area–to–volume ratio is like pulling teeth.”
“Don’t even talk about quantitative chemistry,” Vidcund added quietly.
“And radiation,” Pascal said. “We teach atoms and isotopes in both chemistry and physics, and they still don’t get it.”
“How is all this complaining helping?” Circe demanded, folding her arms tightly.
“It’s not,” Cassandra said, meeting her stare without flinching. “But knowing where they struggle is the first step to fixing it.”
I relaxed back in my chair, the pastry in front of me forgotten entirely, and watched Cassandra and Circe stare each other down. It was almost impressive how still they were—two predators sizing each other up, no one willing to give ground. To anyone else, it might have looked like a simple professional clash. To me, it was painfully obvious what it really was: Head of Biology versus the woman who had never quite forgiven the universe for giving that title to someone else.
I didn’t kid myself about how close the margins had been. If Cassandra hadn’t already been settled into the role before Circe swept in—brilliant, driven, and married to the Head of Department—Loki wouldn’t have hesitated. He’d have dressed the decision up in careful language about “logistics” and “unity,” because schools love pretending power moves are seating plans. But the result would’ve been the same. I’d seen enough departmental politics to know competence only mattered when it wasn’t inconvenient. Timing mattered more—loyalty most of all.
The tension intensified, words pressing at the backs of throats, and I prepared myself for the inevitable explosion. You could feel it building pressure, like a Bunsen burner left unsupervised.
It never came.
Instead, a sharp, deliberate clearing of a throat cut through the dining hall.
Every head turned as one.
At the front of the room stood the new headteacher, Gabe O’Mackey, positioned near the serving hatch like he’d chosen it for dramatic effect. The overhead lights cast his face in shadow, hiding his eyes, which I did not love. You couldn’t trust people whose expressions you couldn’t read. His pale suit looked almost too clean against the scuffed floors and institutional greys—new money, or at least new authority, dropped into an old, tired building and pretended it hadn’t noticed the smell of chips.
Ah, cool. New boss cutscene.
I let my eyes wander across the room. A handful of staff smiled automatically, well-mannered and practised, like their faces had been trained during safeguarding updates. But the heads of department were another story. Buzz Grunt sat stiff, jaw locked tight. Mary‑Sue Pleasant’s smile hadn’t slipped, but her shoulders had drawn up as if she’d felt a cold wind. My half-sister, Lola Curious-Smith, looked like she’d already begun calculating worst‑case scenarios. I recognised the look; scientists lived in it. It was basically our national costume.
There it was—that tone. Familiarity wearing humility’s jacket and hoping nobody checked the label. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, mostly because I was sitting near enough to Loki that he might take it as team bonding.
“And once I’ve done what I’ve come to do,” Gabe went on, “I’ll leave you in the competent hands of my successor.”
Comforting, I thought. Super chill thing to announce, my dude.
Gabe kept pacing. “Some of you love this school so much that you’ve chosen to send your own children here—even though there are far better schools in the area. And I’m not talking about Landgraab Academy.”
A smirk tugged at my mouth before I could stop it. A few teachers laughed too—short, sharp little sounds, the kind people make when someone says something dangerous but technically funny. Tiny pressure valves were popping open all over the room. I suspected we’d regret it.
Sure enough.
“But—thank you for indulging my candour—this school is in a shit position.”
The remarks landed with a dull, physical weight. The science table tensed around me, shoulders tightening, spines going stiff. Loki didn’t move; however, I could see the set of his jaw. Vidcund stared straight ahead, unreadable, which was Vidcund for “absolutely processing twelve terrible things at once.”
“Budget cuts—falling attainment. Poor inspection outcomes,” Gabe continued. “All symptoms of poor leadership—not just from my predecessor, but from theirs as well.”
Oh, good, I thought. Blame without names. Always a crowd-pleaser.
“It’s my job to turn this around,” Gabe said, stopping his pacing at last. “Some of the changes I’ll be making may appear drastic. You may not like them.”
I had a bad feeling I would be one of the ones who didn’t, because I had invested years developing an extremely advanced scientific instrument known as “vibes,” and the vibes were rancid.
Gabe lifted his arm and gestured casually toward the dining hall doors.
“And if you don’t like them,” he said, voice calm, almost kind, “there’s the door. No one is keeping you here.”
I leaned backwards farther, folding my arms loosely over my chest. I peered at the strained expressions around me, at the smears of dried coffee still staining the table, at my brother’s rigid posture. The twist in my stomach tightened—not fear exactly, but something colder and more familiar.
Resignation. The deeply school-shaped kind.
Because I knew, even then, that none of us would leave.
And whatever was coming next, it was going to hurt, probably with paperwork.