"I don't believe you have to be better than everybody else. I believe you have to be better than you ever thought you could be." - Ken Venturi

***

Codi twiddled her thumbs idly, staring at the floor. Currently seated waiting outside the disciplinarian’s office, she had little else to do but play over the event that had bought her here for the umpteenth time. Trouble seemed to follow her around like a pack of dogs.

The latest incident resulted in something a little more serious than usual, however, when she’d broken a sixth-former’s nose after a heated dispute about a foul in a game of tackle-ball. Maybe she had cheated a little by tripping him, but that didn’t give him the right to shoot his mouth off like he owned the place. Brushing a stray loop of her long black hair behind her ear, Codi sighed. As far as she was concerned they were both out of line, but she’d swung first. She always did.

“Miss James, you can come in now,” barked a muffled voice from behind the door. She took a steadying breath, brushed down her crumpled grey hoody and stood up. Time to see what her latest punishment would be; hopefully not an expulsion as she’d already managed to accumulate her fair share of those.

Opening the door she stepped sheepishly into the white-washed office of Mr. Barrow, the school’s head disciplinarian for the last ten years. Codi had been around for maybe six months of that time and was practically on first name terms with the man. He sat at the meticulously organised desk, giving her an exasperated look from behind his spectacles.

“Take a seat.” Barrow gestured to the empty chair opposite him with a pen. As she sat down he ran a hand through his short grey hair and sighed. “Codi, what am I going to do with you?”

“Well it’s not my-,”

“Enough,” he snapped. “I’ve heard it all before. ‘He started it’ – ‘she’s always giving me looks,’ – I get it. You’ve got a hair-trigger temper that you don’t even try and control.”

Codi frowned and lowered her gaze to the floor.

“And now you’ve sent a pupil to the hospital. Pranks, names, a cut or a bruise: that I can explain away, but this really is the last straw.” Barrow tossed his pen onto the desk, leaning forward and examining the screen of his computer. “In the last three years you’ve been shifted to eight different schools on the continent for one reason or another. What is it about education that you hate so much?”

“It’s not that,” she exclaimed. “I just…I don’t know. People just don’t like me. They don’t accept who I am.”

“So it’s everyone else that has the problem, not you?”

He was twisting her words again. She glared at him. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Well what did you mean?” He put his hands on the desk and looked her in the eye. “You have to understand, there’s nothing I can do for you this time. If the headmaster decides you’ve caused enough havoc and wants to expel you, then that’s exactly what he’ll do!”

“Then let him!” she shouted back, her voice wavering. “It’s not like I belong here anyway.”

Barrow turned his eyes skyward and leaned back in his seat. She bit her lip and looked at the floor again. Every school was the same; a bunch of self-entitled jack-offs looking down on her for a situation she didn’t ask for and couldn’t control. They could always spot somebody from the orphanages – the surplus supply clothes and belongings that made it seem like she’d raided a garbage dump – but she’d one-upped everybody. In ten years not a single foster family had even given her a second look. The orphanage workers told her to be patient, but she’d been patient for far too long.

“Codi,” Mr. Barrow began. “I know you’ve not had it easy.”

“Oh, you do?”

“I do. And because of that I’ve done my best to try and cut you some slack. I’ve been running interference between you and the rest of the faculty since you arrived here.”

“Well I didn’t ask for that.” It came out all wrong; too sharp, too harsh. She didn’t look him in the eye.

His tone softened. “Why do you think you have trouble fitting in? I just want an honest answer. For once drop the tough girl, knee-jerk, snap reaction and actually think about it.”

Her hands fidgeted with frayed hem of her hoody. She tried to do as he asked. Why was it that she never managed to keep a steady life together? She’d managed to make the odd friend here and there but always something else got in the way. Sometimes the people she found as friends where just as mischevious and delinquent as she wanted to be. But she dismissed that thought. She was worse than them. Nobody else had managed to be expelled from three schools in a single year.

People always brought up her parents, but she dismissed that too. Lots of kids were orphans and they struggled along somehow. What was it that made her so utterly incompatible with the world she lived in? The only constant she had was a temperament that rivalled an active volcano.

“I just…can’t help it,” she said eventually.

“You’re not stupid, Codi,” Barrow replied. “I’ve seen what happens when you bother to apply yourself. And all this mischief aside, I don’t think you’re a bad kid, but something is holding you back, and until you figure out what that is it’s going to be an anchor on your life.”

“I just don’t care. Maths, history, all this bullshit just makes my head spin. I want something that’ll make me stand out. I want to do something important.” Now she met his gaze and found him looking back, head cocked quizzically to one side.

“Really?”

She shrugged. “I guess.”

“People don’t just leapfrog into greatness, Codi. You’ve got to work for it.”

“I know that! But there’s got to be something better than trawling through a million textbooks, throwing it all back up in some exam then jumping into some dead-end job in the cities. I can’t do that. I won’t!”

“So what do you enjoy about school?” he asked.

“Well…I guess I like sports.”

“Which sports?”

“I dunno, tackle-ball.”

“You’re good at that?”

She smiled. “Very.”

Barrow drummed his fingers on his desk thoughtfully and nodded. “Alright, Codi, you’d best head home for the day. I’ll see what I can do about pacifying the headmaster. Until they reach a verdict on your conduct I’m afraid you’re on suspension.”

Codi felt a lump in the base of her throat. This had all the tell-tale signs of another expulsion. As much as Barrow tried to portray himself as some crusader standing up for her, the other disciplinarians had been the same, each of them saying they would try to help her, all of them failing. And this would be no different. Standing up, she nodded and wordlessly left the room, slamming the door behind her.

*

After watching the girl leave, Jacob Barrow rocked back in his seat, removing his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. He’d dealt with the worst kids Kantha’s schools had to offer over his years as disciplinarian, from islands to the continent, but none of them as wild and unpredictable as Codi James.

What he was considering now, however, was a first. The only thing she seemed to be good at was fighting, a trait that would never see her fit in the school system. She needed something different, something that would discipline her and nurture the talents she had, or at least those she would admit to. With a long sigh of dread, Barrow picked up his phone, praying this would be the right decision.

He punched in a number and waited.

“Hello, you’ve reached the Brax-Delta training academy. How can I help you?” a pleasant female voice enquired.

“I’d like to speak with head instructor Vasco please, it’s important.”

“I will have to check if he is available. May I have your name, sir?”

“Barrow, Jacob.”

“If you’ll hold on a moment, sir.”

He waited, tapping one foot against the floor as the seconds ebbed past. After a few minutes of patience the woman returned on the line. “Mr. Vasco will speak with you now. If you’ll hold on I’ll patch you through to his office.” A few more seconds passed.

Then a grating, impatient voice ripped through the phone’s speaker. “Barrow, what is it you want? I’ve got a season that’s starting up in a month and this dump is nowhere near ready to field a damn tackle-ball tournament, never mind a Gauntlet team.”

“Hello to you too, Drake.”

“Don’t be a smartass. You know I’m busy. Now you said this was important.”

“It is,” he said. “I need a favour. I know there’s a policy on late entrants into the program-,”

“Six weeks notice, at least.”

“Well I need you to bend this rule, just this once.”

“You think it’s that simple?!” Drake exploded down the phone.

Barrow smirked. Time to play his leverage. “I know you did it.”

A moment of silence passed before the other man spoke. “Alright, what do you want?”

“I’m doing you a favour, at least I hope so.” Barrow took a deep breath. “I think I’ve found you a new recruit.”