Solitaire
: Part 1 – Chapter 19

THE FIRE ALARM goes off in Period 5 the next day. I had just settled into a seat in the common room, iPod playing “Fix You” by Coldplay over and over on repeat (pathetic, I know), when the siren began to wail. Now we’re all here in the freezing wasteland of the school field, lined up in our Form groups.

I hear at least three people say something about a fire in Kent’s office, but having been at an all-girls school for over five years, I’ve learnt not to trust anything by word of mouth.

No one I really know is in my Form, so I shiver and look around. I see Michael in a Form a few lines away, sort of out of place among the Year 13s. He looks sort of out of place everywhere.

I start to wonder whether my outburst on Sunday is the reason why he hasn’t called me or looked for me at school. I wonder whether he’ll still want to be friends. Maybe I should listen to Charlie. If he thinks that Michael is okay, then he probably is, and I should give him a chance. Not that that matters, because I declined his offer anyway. It’s not like he’s going to give me another chance. That’s okay. That’s fine. I don’t want to go to that Solitaire meet-up this Saturday, so I’ve at least gotten out of that.

I keep looking at him because there’s something not quite right.

With half-shut eyes, he’s staring blankly into a book, and his face is so frozen that it makes me tense up. In fact, I almost think he’s about to cry. I can’t quite see what the book is called, but it’s very thick and he’s nearly at the end. Also, his tie isn’t tied—he’s wrapped it around his neck like a scarf—and his side part is much too far over. I wish I knew what he was reading. I know I don’t like books, but you can always tell what someone is thinking by what they’re reading.

A little way off Lucas wanders onto the field with Evelyn and an anonymous boy with large hair, part of the last group to arrive. Lucas looks equally sad. I begin to feel that everyone is sad. Everything is sad. All sad.

I wonder whether Lucas is Evelyn’s secret boyfriend. It’s possible.

I don’t want to think about Lucas or Michael anymore. I withdraw my phone and load up the Solitaire blog. I can at least have another look at Jake Gyllenhaal. He is a beautiful human being.

But there’s a new post that’s overtaken Jake. It’s a photo of a hand, maybe a girl’s but potentially a boy’s, forefinger outstretched, just about to break the glass of a school fire alarm button. Underneath, the text reads:

DO I DARE
DISTURB THE UNIVERSE?

I stare at the photo for a long time and I start to feel a bit claustrophobic. That question, those two lines of poetry, keeps spinning around my head like it’s asking it of me. I get to wondering how I even know that those two lines came from a poem, because I don’t think I’ve even glanced at a poem that hasn’t been part of schoolwork. I then wonder whether I could ask Michael, because he would probably know what poem it was from, but then I remember that he thinks I’m a manically depressed psychopath. So that is the end of that.