Part 3 – Apostates
Theodora
session of the year, Mr Ambrose greets us in his office with a small feast and some presents.
The usually austere office is decorated with green garlands tied with red velvet bows, and there’s even a Christmas tree near the window, fully adorned in baubles and fairy lights.
There are only six of us remaining at this point. At first, we all stand in shock, exchanging confused glances. Mr Ambrose greets us with a smile.
“I’ve worked you all very hard indeed this term. I’ve been exigent, relentless, and at times, I’m sure, rather cantankerous. But we are one week away from Christmas, and God forbid I should ever be accused of Scroogery. So, please help yourselves to some mulled wine and food. I especially recommend the Christmas cookies—at least, I recommend you try them before they all inevitably make their way inside my belly.”
It’s odd seeing Mr Ambrose so jovial, and we’re all a bit awkward at first, swapping looks of uncertainty. The table, with its gleaming pastries and colourful cookies, makes my stomach squirm uncomfortably. My eating is never the best around exams, but combine exams with the orgiastic displays of food that seem to be the defining factor of Christmas, and it’s enough to make me want to crawl back inside my skin.
A shoulder presses against mine, and I find Zachary standing next to me with two small cups in hand. He hands me one with a little smile. “Will you at least have a few sips of mulled wine with me? Enough for a toast or two?”
I take the cup with a little smile. “Thank you. What shall we toast to?”
“Mm,” he taps his chin. “I suppose to Mr Ambrose, the master of the feast. To you, my adored rival. And… well, to kisses?”
“You’re ridiculous,” I tell him, but I tap my cup to his, and we both drink.
He gives me an unrepentant shrug and a crooked grin which sends a flutter through my chest.
We sit side by side near Mr Ambrose’s desk, and once everyone is settled, Mr Ambrose gives a brief speech about how impressed he is with us so far, how convinced he is that we are one of the best cohorts he’s had in years, and how happy he is to see so many of us still in the programme.
He toasts each one of us individually, and we toast him in return.
Zachary speaks up, confident as ever. “Does your magnanimous spirit mean no assignment over the holidays, sir?”
Mr Ambrose gives a booming laugh. “It certainly does not, I’m afraid. Without an assignment to keep you all sharp while you’re away, you might all return in the new year with your brains turned to mush. No—I must find a way of compelling you all to crack a book at least once or twice over the holidays.”
“Boo, sir,” Sai Mahal calls out. A prodigy in physics and maths, he is also the only boy, with Zachary, who is still in the programme.
“Easy, Sai,” Mr Ambrose says, leaning back against his desk and crossing his arms. “I’m not a tyrant—and as I promised, not a Scrooge. This assignment will be a unique one among your Apostles assignments. You see, I was particularly impressed by your aesthetics essays, and the key to how successful you all were in that assignment, I think, lies in the fact I asked you all to veer away from research and references and dissections. I asked you all to look inwards, to write about your own emotions and opinions, and this resulted in a collection of essays I was not only impressed by but more importantly, intrigued by. And trust me, after a quarter of a century teaching, finding an essay interesting is a whole challenge in itself.”
He pauses, and his face breaks into a beam.
“So, for your next assignment, I would like to present you all with a new challenge: happiness.”
Silence follows his announcement. His beam doesn’t break.
“Happiness, sir?” asks one of the girls in an incredulous tone.
“Yes. Happiness. Christmas is an interesting time: a festival that ostentatiously celebrates happiness, and yet doctors and mental health professionals report higher rates of depression and mental health issues during that period. What does that tell us? That the expectation of happiness is counter-productive to happiness itself? So what is happiness, and where does it stem from? Do you create your own happiness, or do you draw it from something? From Plato to Frankl, Al-Ghazali to Nietzsche, philosophers from every era, country and culture have tried to explore the meaning of happiness. From ataraxia and eudaemonia to utilitarianism to nihilism, from cynicism to hedonism—most philosophical schools concern themselves, either to a smaller or greater extent, with the question of happiness.
“So, for this assignment, I wish you all to do the same. Concern yourselves with happiness—that is all. You may do so in whatever way you wish. You may read and research the idea, you may explore it via the medium of poetry, fiction, art”—he gestures to Sai with a respectful nod—“or even through formulas and algorithms. You might try the simplest—and perhaps the most difficult—approach and set out to find happiness itself, then record your findings. You can do so in the form of journal entries, scientific notes and graphs, it’s completely up to you. There will be no set word count, you are not expected to submit a bibliography unless you wish to. I will mark your assignment on the sole criteria of whether or not I glean within it a true exploration of happiness.”
He claps his hands together, startling a few of us. “And that’s it! That’s your assignment—nothing more, nothing less. I hope you all learn something from it. The submission deadline will be the first Monday back. If you have any questions—I beseech you—do not email me during the holidays.”
Mr Ambrose spends the next hour answering questions and discussing possible ideas with students, in groups or one at a time. Zachary has already whipped out a notebook from his bag and religiously notes down everything Mr Ambrose says, even when it’s not addressed to him.
Finally, once it’s time to leave, Mr Ambrose wishes us all good luck and an excellent holiday. We all bid each other goodbye and trickle out of the room one by one. Zachary is last to leave—I suspect he must have waited to ambush Mr Ambrose with a dozen final questions—but he catches up with me in the staircase.
“Theodora.” He’s slightly out of breath as if he’s been running all the way from Mr Ambrose’s office.
I look up and lean against the glossy black balustrade, watching him as he catches up with me. He goes down a couple of steps past me, turning around to face me, and standing, for the first time since we were kids, perfectly face to face.
“Here.” Zachary pulls a white parcel out of his pocket and hands it to me. I open it: two of Mr Ambrose’s Christmas cookies, one shaped and decorated like a bell and the other like a present, tucked neatly away in a snow-white handkerchief.
Zachary looks up at me with a little smile. “Thought you might want to try them alone, later. Or not—whatever you like.”
I fold the cookies back up in the handkerchief and slip them carefully into my blazer pocket. “I actually wanted to try them,” I tell him. “So thank you.”
“Yeah, I noticed you glancing at them a couple of times. Caressing them with your gaze.”
I roll my eyes. “I caressed nothing with my gaze.”
“Ah—my apologies, maybe I was mistaken. If you do wish to caress something with your gaze, you know I am forever your servant in all things.”
“You’re in quite the ridiculous mood this evening, Zach,” I point out. “What gives?”
“I’m having one of those days I can’t explain. You know, one of those days where it feels like luck is on your side, like being dealt a hand and knowing your cards are going to be good before you look at them. That kind of day.”
“I can’t say I’ve ever had such a day,” I tell him.
But Zachary’s cheer is strangely contagious. I have the odd feeling that whatever luck Zachary might be having, it would spread from him and straight through me if I was standing close enough to him.
Following that impulse, I lean forward and kiss his smiling mouth.
When I pull away, he raises his eyebrows slightly as if in question. I tap my lips with a finger. “Hopefully, I’ll catch some luck off you now.”
“Mm, that kiss wasn’t very lucky, I could tell. Here.” He presses a kiss to my mouth, a kiss that tastes soft and warm and sweet as sugar cookies. “Now you’ll definitely catch my luck.” Taking my hands in his, he kisses both of them. “Lucky hands, too.” He reaches up and kisses my eyelids. “Lucky eyes.”
I laugh and push him away. “Alright, alright, enough. You’ll have no luck left for yourself if you continue.”
He tilts his head. “You can give me some of it back if you wish.”
“No, Romeo, you’re not getting anything back.” I push myself away from the bannister and resume walking down the stairs, but Zachary stops me with a gentle hand on my arm.
“Theo.”
“Yes?”
“Come spend the holiday with me.”
My heart falters and stutters to a stop like a failing engine. My mind malfunctions: I stare at him with my mouth in an O, incapable of formulating a reply.
“Pardon?” I say finally, more to buy myself time than because I want him to repeat himself.
“Come spend the holiday at my house. My parents always have family and guests over and host those outrageous Christmas parties, so you wouldn’t be the only guest—and I think my parents would enjoy meeting you—even if they can be, well, excessive at times. And you can meet my little sister.”
“I—I wouldn’t want to impose,” I say, stealing the sentence straight out of my mother’s diplomatic phrase book.
“You could never impose,” Zachary says. “And in any case, I intend to take Mr Ambrose’s assignment very seriously, and for research purposes, it would be best if I didn’t have to be parted from you for the entirety of the holiday.”
“I’d have to ask my parents…” I say in a murmur.
The thought of it fills me with dread.
My father would probably rather hang me himself than let me spend the holiday at a boy’s house. On the other hand, Zachary isn’t my boyfriend, and his family is old, powerful and influential—the kind of family my father married into.
And if there’s one thing I know about my father, it’s that he never underestimates the importance of making friends in high places.
The reality is that the moment I stand in front of him to ask him, my words will crystallise like a marble egg in my throat, and I’ll choke on it before I can ever speak.
“What if we send an official invitation?” Zachary says. “From my parents, in their letterhead, to your house? Your parents might say no to you, but they might think twice before declining a Blackwood invitation.” He raises an eyebrow. “We could invite them too if you wish.”
“No.”
“No?”
I hesitate and then give him the most tactful version of the truth. “I need to work on Mr Ambrose’s assignment too, and… I could do it around you, but not around them.”
His expression changes almost imperceptibly.
A flash of something appears in his eyes—something that almost looks like pain—and disappears just as quickly. He watches me in silence for a while, searching my face with those clever eyes of his.
Finally, he nods. “I understand.”
It’s the simplest of replies, but it makes my throat so tight I can barely breathe. I feel like I just handed Zachary a tiny, delicate morsel of myself, a morsel I’ve never shared with anyone else before, never so much as revealed.
And Zachary just took the morsel and folded it away, in his careful, calm manner, and tucked it, safely and softly, right inside his heart.
