Don't Stop The Music

-three-

CHAPTER III

- silence and slow time –

[Liam]

Liam's AS English Literature class was an 11-strong group of eager looking students, seated around a square arrangement of desks in room 8B. It was a small, comfortable room that overlooked the only patch of grass at school, framed by trees and ornamental plants. Apparently, it used to be a library, and perhaps because of this always smelled faintly like old books; the perfect setting for an English class, he decided.

His teacher was a fortysomething man with neatly combed back dark hair and an enthusiastic grin. "It's good to meet you all," he said, after he'd walked in and sat on the desk in front of the whiteboard. "My name is Mr. Maddison. I'll let you in on a secret: this year is going to be brilliant. I've been looking over the set works this term and they're all fantastic. Now, before we start, let me just put something out there: I hate lessons where I just talk and you write down what I say and then copy it back out onto an exam paper. That's not real English, that's copywriting. I'm not being to paid to lecture; you have to wait until you start going to University to get that kind of privilege.

"What I want from you is participation. I want us to really understand the set works we're going to do this year, and to do that, each and every one of you needs to pull your own weight. Trust me, I've taught A-level classes where nobody talked, and I can honestly say that I think I wasted a year of my life there. Don't get me wrong, I'll teach you absolutely as best as I can; this is a good school and you all worked hard to get here. But I want you guys to do absolutely your best with me too. Talk with me, and with each other. And if you guys stick to that golden rule, I'll give you cake. Do we have a deal?"

The class exchanged glances and nodded enthusiastically. Liam grinned. Free cake and all he had to do was talk? This was his kind of English lesson.

"Good. I can tell you and I are going to get on just fine. Now, I'd have liked to jump straight into our set works today, but we're all going down to the Main Hall in a little to listen to a talk about the representation of Nature in Romantic Poetry, which ties in quite neatly with the poetry we'll be doing this year, so I couldn't have asked for a better beginning. In the meantime, I want to find out a bit more about yourselves, so I've prepared a little questionnaire."

He handed out a sheet of A4 paper for them to fill in. Some questions were academic: Of the following set works, which are you familiar with/heard of: Keats – Ode on a Grecian Urn/Ode to a Nightingale/To Autumn; Coleridge – The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby; Shakespeare - The Tempest, or Of the set works you have studied up to A-level, which was the one you enjoyed the most and why? What about the least? Some were more about themselves, verging on the slightly scatty: what is the most recent book you read? What do you plan on studying at University? Give the name and a quick summary of the best TV series you've watched this year (I'm looking for something to get addicted to this term). What is your spirit animal?

After 15 minutes he took them all in and promised to look them over before they're next lesson, before ushering them off to the hall so they could get seats for the lecture. They started off in a big clump, but people who had been at the school already had friends and started to separate off into smaller groups, and Liam was still considering things and started to lag behind the main group, thinking. Anthea had come up to him in his further maths class yesterday and told him he'd got the part of Ezra's sound double and he had rehearsals two nights a week, plus emergency sessions the last three lunchtimes this week to learn the lines and choreography. He wasn't sure whether or not to tell his parents he was performing; he knew they'd disapprove. It would probably be easier to tell them he'd signed up for maths club or something instead. Besides, he hadn't picked a name for this other thing he'd been roped into, and he'd been thinking about it for a while. He kind of liked the idea of having a codename, it made him seem more badass, somehow...