Where the Moon Isn't by Nathan Filer

gas taps on the tables for fuelling Bunsen burners. It might have been that Jacob put his mouth over one of them and was sucking at the gas to see what would happen – it might have been his face that was turning purple, his neck veins throbbing. Perhaps he was set to exhale it onto a lighter flame, to breathe fire.
    Jacob wanted to make lessons fun too.
    We’d met on the very first day.
    It happened like this:
    Dad had taught me to knot my tie, as promised. Jacob turned up to school without one. In registration he started whispering into my ear, as though we’d known each other for years. He was going on about needing to see the Head Teacher, how it was private, and really important. I didn’t listen properly. My mind kept taking me back to what I’d said to Mum, about hating her. She’d driven me to school in silence. I pressed my face against the cool glass, and she flicked through radio stations. I’d hurt her feelings, and was trying to decide if I cared. Jacob was still talking, only now I realized he was anxious. His words were tripping over each other. He had to see the Head Teacher, but he didn’t have a tie. That was the crux of it.
    ‘You can have mine if you want.’
    ‘Can I?’
    I gave him my tie and he wrapped it inside his collar, then looked at me helplessly. So I knotted it for him. I turned down his collar and tucked the end inside his shirt. I suppose it made us friends. He sat next to me in lessons but at breaks he’d be gone, bolting through the school gates with his rucksack held tight to one shoulder, and his anorak flapping in the wind. He had special permission to go home. This wasn’t something he talked about.
    Mr Philips crashed a fist onto our table, ‘It’s not good enough Jacob! This constant childish, dangerous behaviour—’
    ‘Sorry sir.’ Even as he said it, a smile crept across his acned face. It is strange how fast we change – he wasn’t the sort to give a shit about school ties any more.
    ‘Get out! Get out of my classroom!’
    He slowly moved to pack his stuff away.
    ‘Leave your bag. You can get it after the bell.’
    ‘But—’
    ‘Out! Now!’
    The problem with sitting next to Jacob was that whenever he drew attention to himself, everyone looked at me too. I felt a surge of anger towards him then. Here is a question:
    What do you have in common with Albert Einstein?
    1) You are made out of similar kinds of atoms
    2) You are made out of the same kind of atoms
    3) You are partly made out of THE SAME atoms
    Jacob Greening slammed shut the door behind him, and Mr Philips asked that we all settle down again and look at the whiteboard. It is a good question, I think.
    ‘I’d like you all to decide which statement you think is true, and write down one, two or three in the back of your exercise books.’
    ‘Sir?’
    ‘Yes Sally.’
    ‘What if we don’t know, sir?’
    ‘I don’t expect you to know. We’re going to work it out together. Let me ask you another question. How much do you think I weigh?’
    ‘What?’ Sally shrugged, and I imagined how it might be to kiss her neck, or what her tits would feel like.
    ‘Have a guess.’
    ‘About twelve stone?’
    ‘Good guess.’
    Sally smiled, then saw me staring. You’re weird, she mouthed silently. I turned away and picked up Jacob’s pencil case. He was the kind of boy who drew knobs on his own pencil case.
    I never worked him out.
    Mr Philips stood beside the whiteboard. ‘I weigh nearer to eleven and a half stone, or seventy-four kilograms, which means I have approximately, 7.4 x 10 27 atoms in my body.’
    That is a way of abbreviating really huge numbers. Here is the number written out in full:
    7,400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
    Jacob was kicking the wall in the corridor. Sally was copying out the zeros. Someone else was looking out of the window. Someone else was imagining their future. Someone else could feel the start of a headache. Someone else needed a piss. Someone else was trying to keep up.