Edenham Comprehensive

Tyler doesn’t turn up to school the next day. Casey’s not sure what it means for them, exactly, but the air is definitely clearer and people seem happier in a vague and indefinable way. It’s like his mere presence is enough to put them on edge and the lack of it takes away that edge, somehow.

But even when he strides in the day after, bright-eyed and as confident as ever, it’s the same. It’s almost like a switch has been flipped, like all of a sudden Tyler just doesn’t have any power over people any more and it’s- it’s strange. It’s strange, because this is what they were working for, what they were trying to achieve, and it should be perfect but- but it’s not.

Casey’s not sure what she was expecting really. Something... more. Their victory seems hollow, somehow, like it’s not even really a victory at all. Tyler’s still there, even if he’s not running the show any more, and somehow she can’t rid herself of the restlessness lurking just below her skin with his smirking face in the corner of her eye all the time.

It is, quite frankly, infuriating. Because he’s lost, it’s over, and he shouldn’t be allowed to look so smug all the time like he knows something they don’t.

Because then it makes her start to question if they’ve really won at all.

“I know, Case,” Reuben sighs when she voices her concerns. It’s nearing the end of the week, and they’re holed up in the den because neither of them particularly want to go home. “It’s not- he’s still got some kind of hold over people. They can’t fully relax with him still here. I think people still expect him to make a play for power or something.”

Casey nods, biting her lip. She’d been expecting it too, to be honest. This isn’t like Tyler, to just give in without a fight, and that knowledge only serves to make the knot in her stomach grow.

“Reckon it’s why he hasn’t gotten the shit beaten out of him yet,” he mutters, rubbing a hand over his face. “People are still afraid of him, aren’t they?” Casey doesn’t say anything; she doesn’t need to. “Maybe we could arrange it,” Reuben muses, “get someone to beat him up, show people once and for all that there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

She gapes at him for a few moments, mouth working like it’s trying to form words. “Reuben, no,” she says eventually with an emphatic jerk of her head.

“Calm down,” Reuben says, a little too quickly. “I was joking.”

It may have supposed to have been a joke, it even sort of sounded like a joke, but she knows she didn’t imagine the edge to Reuben’s voice or the hard look in his eye that said he was horribly, deadly serious.

“We’re not like him, Rubes,” she says, softly, gently. “We can’t be.”

“I know,” Reuben mutters, gaze trained on the floor. “I know, okay? I was joking.”

She bites her lip, glances down, wonders how to say what they’re both thinking but neither wants to admit. “Have we actually changed anything, really?”

His eyes snap up at that, but she’s still determinedly not looking at him.

“Don’t think like that,” Reuben says quietly, and something in his voice makes her look up at meet his gaze. “We have- it’s just- baby steps, Case, you know?” He shuffles closer to her so they’re sitting next to rather than opposite each other. “Things aren’t going to change overnight, you know that.”

Casey’s head drops to his shoulder as his arm snakes around her back. “I know that,” she mumbles, voice muffled slightly, “it just feels like maybe we- maybe we made things worse?”

She knows it was the wrong thing to say when she feels Reuben tense underneath her. “We could never make things worse, Casey. Not after everything Tyler’s done.”

“I know, that’s not- I just- there’ve been a lot of fights recently,” she says quickly. “A lot of fights. And it’s because of the Grades, because even if they’re not officially there any more, not really, people still... they still mean something to them. Even if it’s only in an abstract way. And I know that people’ve got a right to be angry about what they’ve been through, and maybe fighting it out is good for them, but it’s not-” Casey breaks off, gesticulating desperately when words fail her. “You get what I’m trying to say, right? It’s not good. Things aren’t good.”

“I know,” Reuben says slowly, stroking absently up and down her arm. “I know, Case, but they will be. We can work this out. We can. Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay,” Casey says, and her voice is tiny and shaky and a little bit scared. “Okay, yeah. I, um, I might have an idea. A way to make things better, a little.” She glances up at him, furtive, before looking away again. “But you aren’t going to like it.”

“Try me.”

“We need a leader. Not like Tyler was,” she says quickly, at the look on Reuben’s face, “but we need someone, anyone, to keep people in line, keep them in some form of civilisation.”

“What about teachers?” Reuben suggests, but his smile is bland. “That is their job, after all, isn’t it?”

“People stopped caring about the adults’ laws a long time ago, if they ever did in the first place,” Casey says quietly. “They need one of us - one of them - to lead them.”

“Are you sure it’s a good idea?”

“I don’t know, Reuben.” Casey lets out a high-pitched, hysterical bubble of laughter. “I know less than nothing about politics. I just know that sometimes people need someone to look to, you know? Someone to lead them and guide them and tell them what to do. People need that. I don’t know if it’s an intrinsic thing, like human nature or something, but...” She trails off, unsure how to finish.

“Tyler was right,” Reuben says slowly. “He said, when we had that fight, you remember, about people, people needing someone to tell them what to do, to keep them in order.” He laughs, but it’s hollow and heavy and a little bit painful. “He was right.”

“We’re not like him,” Casey says, voice fierce and determined and convinced enough to make him glance up at her. “We’re not, Reuben, you know that.

“Yeah, you’re right, we’re not.” Reuben tugs her closer to him, suddenly desperate for comfort and reassurance and warmth. “Which is why we’re not doing it his way. We’ll have- we’ll have an election, get the people to decide who they want in charge.”

He can practically feel Casey smiling next to him, even though he can’t see it. “You know they’d all pick you, given the choice,” she says lightly. “You’re the best person for the job, easily.”

“Yeah, well.” Reuben shifts, relaxes his grip a little to get more comfortable. “We’ll let them decide that, yeah?”

She nods, a hesitant smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “We’re really doing this, then? We’re going to have elections and everything?”

“Yeah.” Reuben laughs softly. “Proper organised, aren’t we?”

“Oh yeah, we’re so not just making this up as we go along,” Casey teases, but they’re both laughing even though it’s not particularly funny and the tension eases between them, a little. “I’ll get Georgia to spread it around, about the elections and stuff. You know what she’s like; it’ll go viral in a matter of minutes.”

Reuben can’t help but smile at that. “Thank the lord for Georgia Turnstile, eh?”

“Yeah,” Casey agrees, “we couldn’t do this without her.”

* * *

It’s all anyone can talk about the next day at school. It was all over Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr and various other social networking sites.

Apparently, someone’s set up a betting pool on who’ll end up as leader. The odds are nearly one to one that Reuben, and he finds it kind of flattering that they’re so sure he’s going to win that they’d stack the odds that high.

People approach the three of them – because Georgia is officially a part of their group now, no matter how strange that feels sometimes – all day, asking questions and listening patiently when Casey explains that they don’t have any answers. Yet. They’re still figuring things out, working through the kinks.

Every last one of the people who approach them is interested and enthusiastic and leaves saying something along the lines of, “Awesome idea, guys, seriously,” complete with earnest eyes and shy smiles.

An easy camaraderie is spreading throughout the school along with the gossip, and for the first time that week, not a single fight breaks out all day.

* * *

They spend the weekend working out a plan of action: how to organise the nominations, how many nominations they should allow, when to have the actual elections, all that boring stuff.

They decide to only allow nominations of Year Elevens, because Tyler may have been able to command his elders when he was as young as eleven, but Tyler’s a precocious, power-hungry prat who no one’d ever been able to defy before, so. Beyond that, though, anyone and everyone is accepted, regardless of race or gender or creed or Grade.

“The actual nominations, though,” Casey says, chewing her lip. She glances up at the other two as she leans back against the wall of Reuben’s parents’ room. “How are we doing that?”

Reuben shrugs. “Get people to put names in a box?”

“People could write on the wall of the Facebook group,” is Georgia’s suggestion.

“That’s not actually a bad idea,” Casey says thoughtfully. “People could either nominate themselves or others and provide like a little speech thing to show that they’d be committed to it. And then when we’ve got nominees we could get them to run a campaign to get people to vote for them.”

Georgia smiles at that. “Like a proper election, you mean? I like it. It’ll give people something to think about for a few weeks, keep their minds on something other than beating the shit out of each other.”

Casey nods vigorously. “Yes, yeah, that’s what I was thinking, make it more like a game to keep people interested.”

“Okay,” Reuben says, nodding to himself, “let’s get this on the road, then. Georgia, you can set it up on the group since you set up the group in the first place, and we’ll see how many nominees we get between now and the end of the weekend.”

Nodding, Georgia turns to the computer and starts flexing her fingers over the keyboard.

“You going to nominate yourself?” Casey asks, trying for casual but missing by a few hundred miles. “People are kind of expecting it.”

“Exactly,” Reuben says flatly. “I don’t want this, Case, I don’t want that kind of responsibility. It’s not- it’s not why I’m doing this, it’s never been why I was doing this.”

“I know,” she says, voice soft. “You’d make a pretty great leader, though, just so you know.”

And before Reuben can say anything she’s trudging out of the room, mumbling something about needing the toilet. He watches her go with a strange look on his face, only snapping out of it when Georgia calls his name, asks him what he wants her to write.

“Okay, done,” Georgia announces, when she’s written the few paragraphs that Reuben’s dictated. Her finger hovers on the submit button. “You sure about this, Reuben?”

He chuckles. “Bit late for second thoughts now, isn’t it?”

She looks at him hard. “Are you sure you’re not just doing this for her?”

Reuben stiffens. “It was my idea too, Georgia. Besides, it’s the best course of action we have. It’s the only thing we can do.”

“I know you believe that,” she says carefully, “and that’s the only reason I’m not calling bullshit and pulling the plug on this right now.”

“You seemed perfectly fine with this plan before,” Reuben reminds her, tucking his knees into his chest. “What’s wrong with it?”

Georgia snorts, but she’s still looking at him carefully, like she’s still working out how much she can push before Reuben snaps. “Forgive me if I’m not so sure that chucking another power-hungry douchebag at Edenham is going to solve this problem.”

“It’s not going to be like that-”

“Again, I know you believe that,” she cuts him off, giving him a hard look. “Seriously, Reuben, do you think Tyler started out the way he is now?”

Reuben doesn’t reply, mostly because he doesn’t know how. He kind of assumed he did, actually. Mostly, anyway. Eleven-year-old Tyler can’t have been completely evil.

“I just want to make sure you’re sure about this,” Georgia repeats, eyes as soft as her voice. “Are you?”

The door creaks open and Reuben glances up to see Casey plodding back into the room.

“Yeah,” he says, voice even, calm, confident. “I’m sure. We haven’t got any other options, George.”

Georgia nods, resigned, before turning and pressing the submit button.

* * *

By midnight on Sunday, the official deadline for nominees, they have hundreds of joke nominations, thirty five actual nominees and six people who’ve confirmed that they want to be running for the position of official (democratic) head of Edenham.

At least three hundred people nominated Reuben.

Georgia put up a notice saying that he didn’t want to be nominated, he wanted to keep it impartial and fair and it wouldn’t be if he was in the running seeing as he helped organise it.

It’s actually true, really, even if it’s not the real reason, but it stems the flood of nominations for him considerably enough for him not to feel guilty about not telling the whole truth.

“Well,” Reuben says, as Georgia closes the nominations thread and puts up a notice thanking everyone for taking part, and giving details about the election process. “That went well?”

Casey squeezes his shoulder, offers him a cup of coffee, watches while he drains the contents greedily. “That went well,” she confirms, leaning across to hand the other cup to Georgia.

“We’re really doing this?”

“We’re really doing this,” Casey and Georgia say simultaneously, and Reuben chuckles to himself.

“I wonder what Tyler thinks about all this,” he muses.

Georgia’s lips twist into a smirk that is entirely reminiscent of the man himself. “Honestly,” she drawls, pitch perfect and with just the right amount of haughtiness, “do they really think they can defeat my evilness with such a pathetic ploy? Pah. I am unstoppable!”

Casey bursts into hysterical giggles, and Reuben shakes his head at her.

“We’re doing this,” he says softly. “We’re doing this and he said we couldn’t and we’re doing this. I bet he’s pretty pissed off, to be honest.”

“He’s probably plotting our imminent doom,” Casey says matter-of-factly.

“Don’t say that,” Georgia groans, “because it’s totally the kind of thing he’d do, seriously.”

“Well, whatever he thinks,” Reuben says, grinning, “there’s nothing he can do about it now because we’re doing this.”

“Yeah, Reuben,” Casey says, blowing out a long-suffering sigh between her teeth, “we got that the first hundred times you said it.”

But she’s giggling when he lobs a pillow at her and ducks so it hits Georgia instead, and she growls, “Oh no you didn’t,” and then it just dissolves into a full on pillow fight.

And among the squeals and the yells and the helpless laughter, Reuben wonders why overthrowing a corrupt dictator and forming a fairer society can’t be this fun all the time.