'Jo blustered into our class this afternoon and sat down, looking right at me. I wanted to shrink into the wall. I feel like she's doing this just to torture me. Like it's this big fucking joke. All the popular people were laughing and joking and she just sat there, looking so fucking pleased with herself. I wanted to scream in her face. I want her to discover beauty. I want her to be what she is not, what she will never be. I want her to be strange. I want her to be peculiar. She fits with what I have never been, what I will never be.' I look around the room but there is only dust revolving in the beam of light that shines from the roof-light. I feel like I am talking only to myself, and I guess that's about right, is about the way it's always been. I know that at this moment she is on the field, resting in the crater, laughing at me and the clouds. The marvellous clouds that go past. I say 'and I bet she hasn't read Baudellaire'.

I look around and call out Chris' name. His face appears through the dust, slowly ebbing and flowing in the movement. I go, not necessarily to the face, ' why can I not escape this? The knowledge that we are trapped inside of our bodies, that we can be still trying to come to terms with events from our earlier years, and sometimes we do not even realise this until we can stop and look inwards, and sometimes it takes strange people in peculiar circumstances to make this happen.'

Chris' mouth opens but the only sound that is heard is a far away hum of computers on desks.