Futuretrack 5 Read Online Free

still appeared to be standing, talking, shifting their weight from one leg to another, yet all the time they were drifting away. Faces like chalk, sweat beading out, tongue tips licking lips, Adam’s apples bobbing with compulsive swallowing. The staff were openly leaning out of the staff-room windows now, eager as spectators at a boxing match, making bets who’d crack first.
    Rog and Alec and I didn’t budge. We’d spoil their rotten fun if we died for it. Roger grinned at Alec and me; a grey grin out of hell.
    “Cheer up— you’ve passed. Have a fag.”
    “No, thanks,” said Alec. “I’ll wait till it’s over, now. In another ten seconds, they’ll be late.” Voice calm, but his scalp twitching, making his pillbox tassel bob up and down.
    The college clock chimed, its mechanism audible. The college doors opened. Miss Beswick, college secretary, tweed skirt, twinset, and pearls emerged, long white paper in her hand. Four school sergeants with her. Ex-coppers, huge in white caps. Laughing loudly, loving it all.
    “Stand back, lads. Only a routine notice.”
    “Mind the lady. We’ll need her next year.”
    Last year, things had got out of hand. Miss Beswick had been on crutches till September. She unlocked the notice board, with maddening, trembling slowness.
    On the fringes, Bairstow fainted.
    They left him lying.
    The glass doors swung open, winking hugely red. Miss Beswick pulled out four drawing pins, put three between her pale, prim lips. Was she being slow on purpose?
    The sergeants, red-faced and straining, had linked arms to protect her. One drawing pin went home, two, three, four. The notice board winked redly shut. She relocked it precisely and the sergeants got her away by main force. Just in time. One sergeant was doubled up with pain, another nursing his wrist, as civilisation collapsed into a heaving, straining, rugby scrum.
    Pillbox hats falling in showers, crunching underfoot. A blazer ripped, in the savage panting, struggling silence. Then, with a crash and squeal, the glass of the notice board broke. I hoped it wasn’t somebody’s face; people had lost eyes. I’d suggested to the Head a perspex notice board, padded with sorbo-rubber. But tradition said glass, replaced every year.
    We looked up at the staff leaning out, open-mouthed, drooling.
    “Revolting,” said Alec.
    “Pigs at a feeding trough,” said Roger; but his big fists were clenched white.
    No news emerged. People who knew their results couldn’t get out for those pushing behind. Then Fatty Jobling crawled out through the forest of legs, bent spectacles hanging around his jaw and one ear bleeding. He raised his arms, eyes still shut, still on his knees.
    “I’ve passed, I’ve passed.” Then he burst into tears.
    Other battered figures crawled out. But, in the main ruck, kicking and punching. The notice board, wrenched from its moorings, reared up, wobbled, then dropped down out of sight. Splintering of cracking wood.
    “Oh, my ribs, my ribs.”
    Feeling our eyes on him, Fatty stood up, recovered his glasses, pulled the rags of his blazer round him, and staggered across. He embraced Alec.
    “You’ve passed. You’re top!”
    Alec freed himself with a fastidious shrug; but color was flooding back into his face. “Any other results?” he asked casually. Only he could ask.
    Fatty’s eyes skated over Rog and me, dropped. “I only noticed you, because you’re top.” Liar; he couldn’t get away fast enough. We stared at each other, helpless. Till the end, we’d hoped for Rog.
    “Go on, off to the flagpole then,” said Rog savagely to Alec. It was tradition that those who passed stood by the flagpole. Those who failed waited outside the gate.
    Alec opened his mouth three times to say something, then walked away.
    “Seeya,” said Rog abruptly. Walked out through the gate, stood staring across the Solent.
    “You might have waited,” I shouted. “I might have failed too.”
    “Pigs might fly,” he shouted without