of being, with a white blouse, black high heels, short skirt, and blood red lip stick she caused the boys in her class to sit up straighter and the girls jealous.

Fernie looked upon her substitute teacher with the annoyance that only a pubescent teenager with image troubles could.

It wasn’t easy for a young girl from India to feel comfortable in a nearly all white society. Her father had come to Britain due to business and had made a small enterprise for himself.

Fernie didn’t feel the bullying from her peers as her mother had feared but she did feel like an ugly duckling locked inside a glass case. She was bright, which her father detested, she wasn’t pretty which caused the boys to ignore her, and India was seenas a less advanced civilisation that was in the middle of civil wars, which somehow leaked onto her social status. She supposed it could’ve been worse.

Ms Phillips wasn’t especially mean to her, the substitute had come into the classroom with no warning and in a few days had the boys and several girls eating out of her hand. Not only had she so casually become popular she had also thrown out the schedule and brought out a topic that Fernie had been unprepared for.

“Now, who can tell me their most favourite Mycenaean myths.” Ms Phillips asked.

A dozen hands went up and it was not missed by Fernie that most of them belonged to the boys, who were trying to hold back from drooling over their substitute.

Mel leaned into