Once

Eight

As they stepped out of the art building at the end of lunch, blinking in the intense afternoon light, they could see a car pulling into the car park at the edge of the school field. The car drew to a stop and a tall dark-haired man in glasses stepped out. He opened the passenger door and pulled out a messy handful of files and papers. As he shut the door a few of the papers dropped from his hands and he scrabbled about clumsily on the floor, trying to pick them up.

Russell gave a slight groan; Maggie said:

"Oh, god. I forgot. Mr Luzlic."

Elle mirrored Russell by giving a groan of her own. David said:

"Who's Mr Luzlic?"

"He's a -" Jax began, but then stopped, puzzling to herself. "What is he, again? A researcher or something?"

"Something like that." Elle turned her attention to David. "Last year they opened this place in town - it's called the Farway Collection. It's basically a library with a sort of museum attached."

"Hardly a museum," Russell scoffed. "I don't know why they wanted to open a museum for Farway anyway. It's got, like, two broken bits of pottery and a few old newspapers in it."

"Anyway," Elle continued, "there's this thing in it called the Archives. It's meant to be some big multimedia literary collection that anyone in Farway can access. They hired Mr Luzlic just after the Collection opened to sort out the Archives, and eventually run them when they're organised. He's sort of famous."

"He's not famous," scoffed Maggie.

"Well, not really, I guess," Elle admitted. "I mean, he's supposed to be a famous researcher. He's been to Oxford or Cambridge or something. He's got like a million degrees in literary history and linguistics and stuff."

"And how do you all know him?" David asked.

"He's come to give talks at the school a few times before. I think it's probably part of his contract, y'know. 'We'll let you mess about with old books as much as you like, so long as you occasionally come and give a talk to a load of bored school kids.'"

"Always desperately boring," Russell groaned dramatically. "All about ancient poetry or the development of olde English." He made a face as if he'd just described the brutal murder of a day-old puppy.

"I don't think they're all that bad," Elle said, giving Russell an admonishing smile. "It's not his fault you find all that stuff boring. Besides, we have our English Lit exams next week. It might be useful."

"So I take it he's here to give another one of these talks today?" David suggested.

"Unfortunately," Maggie answered in a groan. "I completely forgot. And they said they expect all the Year 11s to be there."

"It's just so we don't all bunk off this afternoon. Everyone will have been planning on sneaking off after their exam," Sellan said. He had a petulant tone that might have suggested he'd planned to bunk off that afternoon, which Elle knew almost certainly wasn't the case. Sellan didn't speak all that often, and when he did Elle often found his tone unusually harsh or emotional. She always thought of him as one of those brooding, thoughtful people who only spoke when something was really important to him. It's just that the things he found important were sometimes surprising.

"It's torture is what I call it," Russell said huffily.

They all stood despondently for a few moments, but in the end it was David who broke the silence.

"Well, if we have to go then we have to go, don't we?"

He gave them all a good-natured shrug and a smile, and that was enough to get them all moving off reluctantly across the quad.