Title: Mhairi
Author: kbk
Claimer: It's mine, all mine, I tells ya! Not that anyone would want it...

Mhairi sat down to write her English talk. As soon as she sat, she started to think. Why was it called an English talk? Her rational side immediately replied. Because the talk will be delivered in English. Her inbred inferiority complex chipped in: The English have taken over everything in Scotland. Her argumentative side: Why not? And her patriotic side: Why not call it a Scots talk, and deliver it in the dialect? She reminded herself that she only really spoke English, like everyone else. The patriot and the inferiority complex both wanted a shot, but she wouldn’t let them, and told them both to keep quiet. She made a mental note to ask her friend’s psychiatrist mother about multiple personalities. But she wasn’t really mentally ill. She knew that. If she was, then she wouldn’t be so aware of it. She was merely weird. She couldn’t think what to write, so she picked up a book from the shelf. Burns. No. Too Scottish. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but her talk was supposed to be about the UK. Robespierre? No, he was French. Maybe she could work in the “Auld Alliance” somehow. Or maybe not. She suddenly realised she didn’t really have a clue what the talk was supposed to be about. So she turned back to the desk and read the task. “What do you think will be happening in the UK when you are an adult?” According to some, her argumentative side spat out, she was already an adult. Or a young adult at least.

"When you are an adult" is so vague, she mused. Why not: when you are forty? In sixty years time? She realised that not many people shared her pedantry, and sighed at this. Ah, well, she thought. Takes all types. She sighed again, and moved quickly across the room, to a piano. She sat down, and started to play a piece from memory, allowing her mind to roam freely as she concentrated on the ivory keys. Her thoughts were trundling along nicely, when her fingers stumbled and threw a sleeper onto the tracks in front of her train of thought. She stood up, didn't swear (a miracle!) and returned to the desk. She took a piece of scrap paper, and attempted to salvage some ideas from the wreck. Take some of the history, and continue the themes to the future. Do some of the new technology stuff, refer to at least one literary concept, to keep the teacher happy, and add some jokes so the kids can laugh and the teacher give marks for understanding the audience. A sudden thought struck her - a piece of the wreck which had nearly gone into orbit, but came back down to lend a hand. Talks don't have to be monologues. She started to script a dialogue.

Twenty minutes later she stood up, and looked down at the two sides of A4 that she had closely covered in her disorganised handwriting. She picked it up, and read slowly through it as she made her way to the kitchen to throw together some supper. Not bad, even if she did say so herself. A discussion between her current twisted, embittered self transplanted to a different time, and her idea of her twisted, embittered, adult self at the age of about 53. And two months, a week and five days.

"One of your school friends made thirty million pounds in one year, got divorced six times and died mysteriously at the age of twenty-eight. He is now an international icon. Another went into prison for running an assassination agency which eliminated one third of the MSPs, as well as quite a few MPs, MEPs and two members of the Welsh assembly. Most of the others are pretty well off, apart from the sixteen that died drugs-related. That's not exactly a representative sample of our new society, but the success and failure of these people can be directly linked to the changes that took place around about the time of the start of this millennium. Anything else?"

"Who do you class as the biggest success?"

"The assassin. At least a billion in off-shore accounts, and she did rid the world of quite a few pests."

"What about technology?"

Mhairi tried to think of a better way to segue into this topic, but she couldn't. Less of a discussion, and more of an interview, then. Themes check, technology check, concept check, jokes… Hmm. There were jokes, but perhaps they were a little too sophisticated for the boors in her class. She decided a little "dumbing down" was in order. But she couldn't be crude about it, because the teacher wouldn't like it. Why did she have to walk this fine line between adult and teenager? Why was she so hopelessly self-aware? Why did she always have to know why? Why not?

She decided to quit the stream-of-consciousness stuff, and just do the work. Harder than it sounded, though. She was so used to cataloguing her thoughts that she did it virtually without thinking about it - the stereotypical self-aware over-intelligent teenager, who didn't exist outside of fiction, according to everyone apart from her. She swore at herself mentally, then wandered back to the piano. The gentle flowing notes rising and falling out of the piano relaxed her for a while. Not for long, though. She looked up at the clock and realised she should be in bed - her father was normally home from the pub around about now. She bolted down supper, got through the bathroom in record time, and was safely ensconced in her room before she heard the car roaring up the drive.

Mhairi waited until the crashing and cursing had stopped, then moved to the door. She could hear the television blaring, six or seven decibels too loud, but even this didn't drown out the snores coming from her father. Any minute now… there it was! The downstairs neighbour, crabbit old man that he was, was banging on his ceiling. She gently opened her door, went into the living room and switched off the TV. She turned to her father who was still snoring away. Rolling him over took two seconds - she was used to it by now. She pulled a blanket over him, and left a jug of water, a glass and three aspirin on the table by the couch. With the satisfaction of a nightly routine completed, she returned to her bed, and drifted off into a sound sleep.

The next morning was also routine - a routine scramble to pack her bag and get out of the door in time to walk the mile from her home to her school. She grabbed her talk as she dashed out of the flat, and quickly read over it as she sprinted down the stairs. It had seemed such a good idea the night before! There was nothing she could do about it now, because she had a Religious Assembly this morning, and English was straight after that. The teacher would be sure to pick her to go first - he was such a jerk! Just because she got the best mark in the class for her last talk, didn't mean she had to go first this time! But that was the way he worked, and there was nothing she could do about it. She checked her watch, and screamed at herself inside her head. She speeded up her walking.

As she walked up to the school gates, the bell rang. She sighed with relief - just made it! But that did mean she had to sit through the reverend minister droning on about God, and success, or self-esteem, or whatever it was he was going to talk about this month. Better than detention for being late, though, she supposed. The talk turned out to be about setting goals for yourself, and aiming for the stars. Mhairi turned to the girl next to her at this point and said "I always aim for the stars with my nuclear missiles. But they don't really have that sort of range. I got one to the Kuiper belt once, but that was a fluke." The girl looked at her like she was totally insane, then turned to listen intently to the minister. Mhairi wanted to scream at her that it was a joke, but her natural restraint, reserve and shyness wouldn't let her.

After what seemed like an eternity ( or an hour at least ) they got out of the Assembly Hall and dispersed to their classes. As Mhairi had predicted, the teacher picked her out to present the first talk. She swallowed slightly, then walked out to the front. She stopped and asked the teacher if it would be all right for her to give the talk in this format. He seemed a little dubious - a lot dubious, actually - but allowed her up to the desk. She made a snap decision as to the voice she should use for her grown-up self, and began. She prefaced the talk with a slight explanatory note, then leapt straight in, having thought about it for some hours beforehand - like a shortened version of the Scottish Parliament. Pleased with the somewhat heavy-handed analogy, she felt fairly confident as she approached the first joke. She paused for laughter, but none was forthcoming. She bit her lower lip, and continued.

"You know they had a referendum a few years before you were born… I was born… we were born… Whatever. Anyway, they did that again and again, and went against the findings in about two out of three cases, including single currency and nuclear submarines. Or was it independence and an international revival of the Star Wars project? I don't remember, I'm too old. I had problems remembering stuff when I was you, so why should I remember it now?" Someone laughed! Of course, they were laughing at her and not with her, but would the teacher care? No! Her confidence boosted, she was on a roll, improvising lines, improving changes of topic, glossing over slips of the tongue. Another laugh! This one at the right place, in appreciation of one of her more subtle jokes. She shot a look of gratitude in the direction of the laugh, to discover it came from one of the cuter guys in the class, whom she had assumed had cheated in the streaming test because he had always appeared to be, colloquially speaking, as thick as mince. She realised he was in every one of her classes that the school had streamed according to intelligence. The guy was bright! She was utterly astounded, and totally put off her talk. However, she continued, and had regained her composure by the time she finished speaking.

The teacher halted her as she moved to go back to her seat. He gave her a good mark for the talk, but warned the class that he was expecting all future talks to be traditional monologues. A mock groan of disapproval came from various points around the classroom, but he ignored it and sent Mhairi back to her seat. The boy who had laughed winked at her as she walked past, and she felt a small smile on her lips, which she instantly suppressed. She barely listened to the next talk, but when the teacher called the boy who had winked at her out to the front, she snapped to full attention. His talk was inventive and well delivered, and deserved the excellent grade the teacher gave it. She couldn't think why she hadn't noticed him before, as she tried to keep tabs on who was getting good marks, and could conceivably be competition for Dux in a few years time. She returned to her inattentive and almost catatonic state until the bell rang out, shaking her from her stupor.

As she walked out of the class, the boy was waiting for her. It turned out his name was Danny, and they arranged to go to lunch together. Someone sniggered at her as the pair sauntered along to their next class, but when they noticed she was walking with Danny, quickly shut up. They continued the themes of their talks in their discussion - Mhairi was delighted to find someone she could discuss things intelligently with. That lunchtime was a bright spot in her otherwise miserable life. On the way out they talked about philosophy, the meaning of life, politics, the useless politicians, whether Scotland would become independent, and so on and so forth. Walking back from the chip shop, Mhairi ended up spilling her guts to Danny - the whole works. There was something about him that made him eminently easy to talk to. She told him about her mother who left when she was eight, starting her father on the booze. Or was it because of the booze that she had left? Danny didn't really have anything comparable, as he came from the stable family unit, which is such a rarity nowadays. He told the stories of petty irritations, and fights to get control of the remote control, in such a way as to cheer Mhairi up immensely.

The good mood lasted until about halfway through the next class, when she had finished the work and didn't want to do anything else. It was one of the classes that hadn't yet been streamed, so Danny was in another class, and she couldn't talk to him. She winced as she remembered the things she had told him. What did everyone say? Don't scare the boy away on the first date. Actually, they said don't kiss him, but to her, they said don't scare him away. Her paranoia and low self-esteem returned with a vengeance, upset at having been shut away for an hour and twenty minutes. She reminded herself that it was just lunch, and not a date. But that was even worse! She'd scared him away before the first date! Not that she was hoping there would be a first date anyway. No matter that he was cute, funny, sweet, popular and intelligent. So what if she did want a date? She was a teenage girl! She scolded herself until the bell rang for the next class, when she realised that she would be sitting right in front of Danny. She considered going to the Medical Room, or even truanting, but decided to face her fear. It was worse than she had imagined. Danny moved forward and sat beside her. He talked to her, and she replied shortly and sharply. He couldn't work out what was wrong, but asked her on a date anyway. And she accepted.