Thursday afternoons were made for lazing about.

Technically Valery Battersby-Wilkes was meant to be researching the sociological effects of religious revolution, but the topic was just so broad, and the library just so big, and the sun outside just so bright, that he gave up after half an hour and went to curl, cattishly against the glass, on one of the wide, leather-covered window-sills in the library’s sporting history section. It was one of his favourite places in the college: nice and warm no matter what the season and it offered a lovely view. Looking out and down from the third floor window, Valery could see the undergrad football team jogging in circles around the school oval. They were getting in shape, Valery supposed, for next week’s big game against the reigning intercollegiate champions, St James. A fat lot of good that would do them: St James hadn’t lost a match since 1968, and Hartbridge’s curriculum was unfashionably biased toward academic, rather than sporting endeavours. The game was already in the bag, and all the boys at Hartbridge knew it… but they’d come to watch the match anyway; they always did.

Valery didn’t know whether it was school spirit or some form of communal masochism that brought in the Hartbridge crowds, or perhaps even a little bit of both? He knew why he’d be going though. In fact, just thinking about the why made him feel simultaneously queasy and excited, the type of feeling you got at the top of a roller-coaster during those terrible, wonderful seconds before the fall. The why had a name: Ingemar Vladistov. Dark, foreign Ingemar, from Mr Grecio’s first year Remedial Mathematics class, who never knew the right answers to anything but always put up his hand regardless; who wore a school jumper a size or two too big so it always fell low over his left shoulder in a way Valery couldn’t decide was cute or plain goofy; who always touched his mouth when he was annoyed, as if to try and physically stop the anger from spilling forth.

Ingemar was probably the closest Hartbridge would ever get to a bona fide sports star; and probably the closest Valery would ever get to him would be three desks to the right.