5 September 1984

This is the story of a boy who was late, and another who was going to be.

Jim Moriarty couldn't find his watch on his first day of school, so he tried to run the last few streets to make sure he was on time. He tripped over on the uneven pavement and cut his knee. This meant that he had to limp the rest of the way to school. As a result, he was out of breath upon his arrival to the classroom, and the left knee of his trousers was torn and slightly bloody. The pale skin of his leg, his entire complexion washed out from days sitting in the corner of his dark bedroom digging his penknife into the wall, highlighted the startling scarlet smear.

He shuffled from one foot to another as Mrs Lynch introduced him at the front of the class. All the other children's eyes were on him and his heart was hammering in his chest.

Look at the floor. Look at the floor.

Jim could hear sniggering and he knew what he must've looked like – un-tucked shirt, dishevelled hair, ripped trousers. He felt like a vagrant in comparison to their pristine jumpers and carefully styled hairdos. Whispers were rising but he didn't dare look up to see the source of them; it was enough to catch the barbed tones. They all thought they were so clever, he mentally hissed, so superior.

He thought of the beetle he'd dismembered the night before, and recalled its little legs squirming even as they were separated from the shining body. He remembered the glint of his penknife with fondness, replacing the shining of his new classmate's eyes with that of the shining blade. His knife was nice. It never laughed at him. Not like these people here. These children. He'd show them that he was much cleverer than any of them, and they'd respect him. They would.

His mum knew – she saw it in his eyes sometimes, but they never talked about it. He knew that she saw something in him that he revelled in; something dark and not-quite-right; something that no eight year old should have living inside them. Over the years he'd gotten better at masking his emotions and he was smart enough to know that his peers wouldn't appreciate his complexity. Best keep it hidden, for now.

"So, James," Mrs Lynch turned on him with a kindly smile.

"Jim." He instantly corrected her. The laughter grew louder still, maybe at his accent, maybe at his quick retort. Mrs Lynch's lips froze into a tight, thin, line.

She had been in the education business for a long time, Jim could see, by her impatient frown and her quick temper. Her understanding smiles were just an opaque front for the bitterness that could only be gained by years of teaching students who didn't want to learn. She was under some sort of stress, and it was probably affecting her sleep, judging by the shadows under her eyes. Yet she wanted to project severity and authority, which was apparent by her hair, scraped into a bun so tightly that the veins on her forehead bulged.

"Yes." She said, softly, "Jim."

He could have sworn her left eye twitched, and began to envision a number of scenarios that would have caused her to have a nervous tic.

"Why don't you tell the class something about yourself?"

Heart fluttering, Jim turned to look at the sea of faces, who were watching him with eager grins. This was way better than double Maths – watching the new kid wriggle under the microscope. His mind flicked through the different things he could reveal about himself, and he settled on the ordinary. Best to live up to their expectations.

"My family moved here from Dublin last month," he said. "They thought it was best to get settled before school started, because things are different here. Um… But I look forward to it…" He trailed off, quietened by his own ridiculous nervousness.

"What subjects do you like, Jim?" Mrs Lynch helped him, but her uncaring tone was obvious.

"Science." His answer was almost instantaneous. "I especially like Biology, particularly the study of the human anatomy." Everyone blinked in surprise at this, and he warned himself to dumb down a little, or they'd suspect something wasn't normal.

"Very good; you can sit down next to Carl." She gestured to the only empty seat in the classroom, in the back right corner. In those last four words, Mrs Lynch relinquished her control over Jim and he stumbled to the designated chair. Everyone watched him walk to his seat before turned back to the front of the classroom. The new boy with the Irish accent had lost his novelty.

Jim hauled his black bag onto the desk and rummaged through it, pulling out a pencil case and a leather-bound notebook. He laid the pencil case on the edge of the desk, exactly in the corner, and the notebook squarely in front of him, carefully adjusting it a few times until he was sure of its straightness. Then he got out a pen, a pencil and a ruler and placed them next to one another, in a row, meticulously parallel to one another.

He didn't know the boy next to him was watching him until he looked up.

"What are you doing?" The boy asked.

Jim lowered his gaze back to his stationary and opened his notebook, counting three pages in and left it open before him. "I have to do things this way," he muttered.

"Why?"

Still not looking up, Jim shrugged. He didn't know why – he'd set his equipment up that way every day at school in Ireland, and he wasn't going to change his routine here.

"That's weird." The other boy, who Mrs Lynch had called Carl, said decisively. Little did Jim know at the time, but once Carl had given you the label of weird there was nothing you could do to shake it. It was the beginning of everything.

"And you have a handbag too!" Carl continued. Jim didn't need to look up to know that he was smirking.

"It's not a handbag," He snapped, slightly too defensively. "It's a satchel. Indiana Jones has one."

"Indiana Jones? The fictional character?" The scorn was heavy in Carl's voice.

Jim didn't lift his head, instead choosing to pick at the edge of the table and nod silently. He kept his eyes on the deteriorating plastic of the table. What were these tables even made of? The stuff was coming off with every pull, and getting under his nails. He wished he had his watch, so he could see how much longer he had to endure this.

"Well you're very cool, Jimmy." Carl drawled.

"And you're very stupid." He hissed back.

There was a pregnant pause, and Jim immediately wished he could take the words back. He could sense the fury building up beside him, even without glancing up, like a storm. He knew he'd made a fatal error. But then Carl just snorted and Jim saw him bending over his own book and concentrating on the lesson. He obviously thought that any further conversation with the new boy was a waste of time. He obviously thought the new boy was an idiot.

Jim turned to the front of the classroom and tried to listen to what was being discussed: long division. He resisted the urge to raise his eyebrows at the monotonous simplicity of it, and wondered how long he could keep up the pretence that he was at the same intellectual level as everyone else in the room.

Back at home he'd not learnt to hide it until it was too late, and he'd been in put in a fast-track education program in the corner of the classroom, on his own. Words like "prodigy" and "genius" were thrown around a lot in meetings with his mum, and he'd been asked whether or not he enjoyed school, and whether he understood what was going on in class. By this time, though, the school had seen him as an asset and hadn't really cared about his answers – they'd given him books aimed at children academically years ahead of him, made him stay after school for extra tuition, given him more complex homework. His life had become school and only that. Eventually it got the point where the school seemed to be grooming him for Trinity College, at only the age of eight, so his mother had seen fit to pull him out.

As much as Jim had enjoyed feeling superior to his classmates, he hated their sneers and nicknames: "brainbox", "geek", "genius Jimmy". Not that he cared what they thought. Nor did he get lonely sometimes, sitting on the bench in the far corner of the playground with an apple for his lunch; or when he was the last to be picked for any sport, and even then they'd rather not him on their team.

Things would be different here, Jim hoped, he'd pretend to be someone else and that would make everything better. Of course he wouldn't pander to them – they had no power over him – but he'd rather keep his head down and act stupid and ordinary.

"Does anyone know the answer?" Mrs Lynch turned away from the board and brandished her stick of chalk threateningly at the sea of bemused faces. The silence that met her question was deafening.

Jim glanced around and saw his peers staring out of windows and at walls, blankly. They honestly didn't seem to care what the answer was; they didn't even seem to be listening. Carl still his head bent over his book, and seemed to be scrawling something.

The silence was dragging like a net along stones and nobody seemed to be willing to break it. Mrs Lynch had the stubborn face that Jim recognised well – she wasn't going to speak until the silence became so awkward that someone put their hand up, even if it was with the wrong answer. Conversely, the children seemed to be so uncaring that they wouldn't be bothered by a strained silence.

Hating himself, Jim slowly raised his hand. The answer was so glaringly obvious that he couldn't just let this pass. He'd just do it once, he promised himself, and then go back to trying to be invisible. It wouldn't be his old school, because this time he would hide his cleverness.

"Yes?" Mrs Lynch pointed at him. She didn't seem pleased or irritated at his contribution, merely coldly detached. Obviously, she assumed he'd get it wrong.

"Seven, Miss." Jim said, clearly and confidently.

She blinked and was quiet for a moment, before nodded slowly. "Well done, James."

"Jim."

Ignoring him, she turned to address the whole class now: "Everyone; do you all understand how he got the answer?"

She was met with a chorus of unfeeling yeses and half-hearted mutterings. It was clear that nobody really understood, or cared enough to try, but Mrs Lynch was so desperate to move on that she accepted their uninterested attitude. "Excellent!" She smiled wanly.

"Nice one, loser." A whisper from his left made Jim flinch. Carl had looked up from his book, but was still hunched over it, covering what he'd written. The effect made him look like a vindictive goblin guarding treasure, not helped by his wolfish grin. "Did they teach you maths in Paddy town?"

Jim didn't know what to do – how had this happened? He'd just answered one question, not overly intelligently. He hadn't done anything to warrant this, had he? He just looked at Carl and didn't say anything. Maybe the other boy would go back to whatever he was doing if he thought Jim wasn't upset by him.

"Hey, I'm speaking to you." Carl hissed. Suddenly, too fast for Jim to move away, his hand shot out and he stabbed Jim in the hand with the nib of his pen. It didn't hurt, not really, but the shock of it electrified his every nerve. He jumped a little too visibly, and Carl laughed softly. Jim could only imagine what he looked like – wide eyes like a rabbit caught in headlights, and a slightly gaping mouth. He still didn't trust himself to say a word.

"What's up, Indie, huh?" Carl jabbed him again, not as hard this time, "What's up? Don't you want to talk to me? Too clever for me? Huh?" He poked him again and again.

"N-no." Jim managed to whisper, staring at the blue dots that the pen had left on his skin. "Of course not."

"So." Carl's voice lost its villainous edge and was suddenly calm and friendly, but there was no doubt of his intentions. "How are you so clever?"

Jim shrugged in barely a movement. "I just know stuff, that's all."

"You just know stuff." Jim didn't need to look up to know that Carl was looking right at him, letting the absurdity of his statement sink in, letting the silence hang awkwardly. "Well, you're a right misfit, aren't you, Irish?" His tone was mockingly pleasant, like he was talking to a friend, and that made it even worse. Jim sat as still as he could, like an animal in front of a hunter.

All of a sudden, the bell rang, and Jim couldn't have fled the classroom faster. But he didn't need to turn back to see Carl laughing at him, because the sound followed him on his way.