20th July 2006The heat throughout the day had been ridiculous. Bad enough that her school had even allowed the boys to take off their ties, an almost unheard of privilege. That meant the night was too hot. Hot enough that dad’s window was probably open, which could be a problem. She’d waited long enough that he should be asleep, but even still, cmbering out of the bedroom window, scrabbling quickly over the tiles and down onto the fence left her feeling apprehensive. But thankfully even after waiting a minute or two there was no sign of him. Quickly, she slipped down the street towards the school. With every passing te night car, she berated herself for the foolishness of this idea.

  The st thing she needed was anyone spotting her, especially with the disk in her backpack. She’d really rather not expin that. A sudden, unexpected rain shower left her hot, damp and feeling more grumpy, mainly with herself. But the sight of the school’s sign, haloed by the haze of rain and a lonely sodium streetlight by the school gate brought her back to herself. And after slipping through the gates and to a side door, she relished the feel of the carefully duplicated key sliding in. Hours of work with the metal file coming to fruition.

  Damp hair clinging to her face, she shook her head and carefully put arguments about whether this was a good or bad idea into a box in her head for ter – a lot ter. She could cim it was a proof of skill if anyone found out. Just a demonstration of her hacking skills. That said, she’d rather that no-one ask him, the boy she was required to pretend to be, why he’d created a female student out of thin air. One who seemed to be doing, frankly, rather better than he was.

  For the moment, this figment of imagination would be made manifest, at least, in the school's list of students. Whether or not they would ever be more than a fiction was still something that couldn't be openly considered, even as it lingered persistently in the background. The social studies teacher had put an end to that idea just as she’d started to work out what “transgender” meant. Not that anyone was allowed to talk about that in school, at least, not in front of the teachers. Clearly people like that weren’t normal.

  Charlotte wouldn’t be like that though. She’d be the same as all the other girls. She just had to exist. And this was the first step.

  Turning on lights would be a risk, the caretaker was almost certainly in bed in the little house on the far side of the school. But it would just take one of the people in any of the houses that overlooked the school’s grounds calling the police and this little escapade would be over. And tonight was the st chance to put this pn in action, anyway. School reports were due today, all the grades entered and the whole lot would be printed this afternoon.

  Then the school would be switching to a new computer system and the RiscPCs relegated to history. Or more likely thrown around the school everywhere that they couldn’t afford a new computer. And the imaginary student would be off to (a real, but as yet unknowing) university, her pce in the school's history a matter of permanent digital record. Grades in pce, chunks of reports copied from the most average students in the css. Attendance records created with the odd absence. It might not produce perfect results, but it’d pass a cursory examination. And who’d give a damn about them once she was safely through school and better still, through university? No-one.

  Well, probably.

  At least, combined with the grades that were submitted to the various exam boards. That’d been a whole host of work. But the tight timing and the one time opportunity meant that this program would have one shot to work. The little green power light brightened, and the phosphors on the monitor started to glow, eventually shedding their light on her fingers cttering rapidly across a keyboard. One administrator login ter, and she slipped the disk into the floppy drive. The drive chuntered away interminably slowly, and while it worked she cast a quick final gnce around the room. No, despite her paranoia they hadn’t suddenly added cameras, even though they probably should. And no lights in the corridor. Good to go. As the filer window finally popped up she double clicked on her script and let out a slow breath she didn’t realise she’d been holding.

  “You’ve got this,” she whispered to herself, and watched the ‘percentage complete’ gradually climb.

  Lights in the car-park? Fuck. She gnced at the little clock on the icon bar – just past 3 am. That should have been plenty of time before those security types did their check. Maybe it was just someone lost. She slipped down and scrabbled across the floor, before sliding back up to stand in the corner. No, seriously, fuck. The security team had arrived an hour early. She watched through the window as the two figures outside grabbed umbrels and torches from the boot of the security car before starting to walk the grounds. Should she cover up the glow from the screen? They’d probably not know that it should be off, but might have seen the glow already and it suddenly disappearing would be worse. She watched them as they headed towards the music block. Okay, okay. She locked the door on the way back in…didn’t she?

  Didn’t she?

  She threw a look at the computer working away, squinting a little the hour-gss says 34%. She uttered a quick prayer to Acorn in general, and Sophie Wilson in particur, then ducked out of the computer room. Jogged back down the stairs, counting in the dark, and ran along the corridor. Down one more flight of stairs to the store room and in, the door creaked slightly and made her heart skip a beat. The only windows in this room are the frosted gss ones in the door, so there was no way to tell if security was outside. She swallowed slowly and slipped the key into the lock again. Thanking every deity for the fact she’d oiled this lock every day for the past few weeks, she slowly tried to turn the key. Of course. She did fucking lock it.

  Lights flickered across the door, and she stilled herself against the wall. They seemed to be having some kind of argument about Portugal and the World Cup. Surely they can’t still be on about that? The handle rattled briefly while they checked the door. She swallowed down bile the moment she realised the door stayed closed. “I am not built for this,” she whispered under her breath as the conversation faded and she quickly sprinted back to the computer room.

  The dialogue box reports just one word. ‘Success!’. She quickly clicked OK, grabbed the disk, logged out and flicked the monitor off. Took a quick moment to thank her dad for supplying a lot of the school’s kit. The practice run on his test system at home had worked well enough that he hadn’t noticed. Of course, the only way to check would be to call in a few years and ask for the attendance reports.

  Couldn’t quite pce her? Ah, that’s because she’d transferred in for the st two terms from that school across town that had closed. You probably just don’t remember her.