her eyes for signs of life, but the angle was too great. Iâm getting a kink in my neck.â
âWhat can I say? Sheâs typical. She isnât dead; she just doesnât care. Youâre going to have to adjust to the fact that the different one isnât Daphne. Itâs you.â
âIâm starting to get the picture,â Paul sighed, sitting down on a window ledge. âYou know, at my old school, they told us we were the citizens of tomorrow.â
âTheyâd never do that here,â said Sheldon. âItâd be too depressing. But as near as I can tell, people do learn things here. I donât know how it happens, but it happens. There are bad grades and there are good grades, but Donât Care students graduate.â
âBut why is it like this? The âDonât Careâ thing, I mean?â
Sheldon shrugged. âItâs hard to say. It could be Manhattan, but there are perfectly normal schools not a mile away. It could be this one-hundred-forty-year-old building, but there are worse, I guess. Maybe itâs the legacy of Don Carey and his sewage. But look. Look behind you out the window. What do you see?â
Paul swivelled and squinted through the unwashed glass. âLooks like a highway interchange.â
âRight,â said Sheldon. âItâs the 22nd Street ramp for the Henry Hudson Parkway. It also happens to be Donât Care Highâs athletic field. Look, you can still see one of the goalposts in the centre of the cloverleaf. They had to cut off the left upright to make room for the right lane merge. And if you look real hard, you can see the fifty-yard line by the base of that parking garage.â
âBut how did that happen?â
âWell, the story goes that twelve years ago, when the city wanted somewhere around here to put their new ramp, it just so happened that the school board was looking for real estate to build a fancy new school uptown. So they gambled that, at Donât Care High, no one would notice, let alone care. Donât Care always concentrated on basketball rather than football anyway, since itâs a lot easier to find five players than twelve. So they traded our playing field for the uptown land. Anyway, a few years later they started a subway tunnel under there, but ran out of money, and eventually the ground caved in. So they paved it, all but that little patch around the fifty-yard line.â
Paulâs face flamed red. âThatâs ridiculous! What kind of city would do that?â
âOh, the city would have backed down if there had been any kind of protest. But this is Donât Care High ââ
âItâs terrible, thatâs what it is!â Paul interrupted hotly. âAll this school needs is someone to take care of its interests, someone to represent it!â
Sheldon looked mildly amused. âWhy not you? Want to be student body president?â
âAre you crazy? Itâs my second day in the school. No one knows me.â
âThatâs no problem. Itâs not as though thereâs going to be an election or anything like that. We just nominate you, and you win unopposed.â
âAnd then what?â
âOh, nothing, of course,â said Sheldon. âNo one can do anything with this place.â
âForget it,â said Paul. âI donât want to be president just because nobody cares enough to run against me. Why donât
you
run?â
âNo way,â said Sheldon quickly, âIâm strictly a behind-the-scenes man. But I think youâre right. It
is
about time someone took over the reins of power around here.â His eyes scanned the near-deserted hallway and lit on a lone figure standing in front of a locker. âHim, for instance.â
Paul stared in shock. There at the end of Sheldonâs gaze stood a bizarre character, motionless by his open locker. He was of medium height, slight and very dark,