'Most likely to...' by Anna Faherty

Looking back, it wouldn’t have been half as funny – funny ironic, that is, not funny ha-ha – if Miss P hadn’t done that speech. Standing on the podium wearing a perfectly pressed suit and gleaming pearls, she looked like some kind of Stepford clone banging on about ‘truth’ blah, ‘ambition’ blah, ‘achievement’ blah. As if every single girl in the assembly hall couldn’t recite the school motto backwards in their sleep: truth, ambition, achievement. We’d had it drummed into us for six and a half years, after all. Her last few lines were so predictable that a whole row of girls from 6W mouthed the words in time, ‘you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Choose any path, chase any dream, grasp any opportunity. Be true, be ambitious, be anything you want to be.’

And there it was. The end of Speech Day. The end of sixth form. But not before an evening down the King’s Arms, knocking back a gallon of cider and getting everyone to sign our US-style yearbooks. They’d been piled high on a trestle table at the back of the hall ready for us to buy. What a cheek! Still, a tenner was a small price to pay for a chance to be listed as the girl ‘Most likely to succeed’. Personally, I’d expected to be ‘Most likely to marry a millionaire’ – I’d never made a secret of my disdain for work or my attraction to boys with money. It was a shame they must have done the voting the week I was off with ‘flu. I’d been quite looking forward to doing the whole crystal ball thing.

Prefect duty meant I had to help clear up the hall afterwards. By the time I made it to the pub, yearbook shoved under my arm, things were surprisingly lairy. I knew I’d missed a round but, from the shouting and screaming, it sounded like everyone was already smashed. I bought a pint and strolled up to the hockey gang huddled around Amanda Richards. They were pawing the open book in her hand. ‘So who got it?’ I asked. I don’t know why. I was pretty sure Amanda herself was the prime candidate for success. Gorgeous looks, athletic ability and, if she tried, a brain to match. Always surrounded by wannabe acolytes, always teacher’s pet and always getting special treatment. If she wasn’t ‘Most likely to succeed’ I’d eat my shinpads. The expression on her face soon made me regret that thought.

‘Take a look,’ she glared at me. ‘Crim.…’

‘Crim?’ I wondered how much she’d had to drink. Maybe they’d smuggled a hip flask into the speeches.

‘Yeah, I might be going to die young but at least I won’t be an undesirable.…’ Amanda leant across the glass-strewn table, pulled my yearbook out from under my arm, flicked through, and shoved it back towards my face. At first I was quite pleased: they’d used a picture from the school play when I’d had professional make-up done. But then I read the description: ‘Most likely to lead a life of crime’. It had to be some kind of joke. I’d never even pocketed a packet of chewing gum from the corner shop. I dropped down onto the frayed bar stool and flicked through the rest of the book. Sure enough, Amanda was described as ‘Most likely to die young’ and they’d given the success tag to little Jenny Khan, just about the quietest girl in school. Who were they kidding?

‘There they are!’ shouted Amanda. I followed her pointed finger to see Chloe Crick and Becky Watson standing by the door: the surprise pair who had been chosen to edit the yearbook. ‘Hey, Cricky!’ Amanda’s hysterical screech silenced the entire bar. ‘What’s all this about?’ She climbed on a chair and launched her yearbook across the room. It was a perfect shot. Chloe and Becky ducked down before glancing over at us and shrugging. Amanda looked like she was ready to leap across the table and rugby tackle them.

‘I’ll talk to them,’ I said, keen to avert a scene.

‘Hey,’ said Chloe as I approached.

‘Don’t “hey’’ me. Like Amanda said, what is this?’ I waved my yearbook in front of the pair of them. The red, green and blue ribbons snaking around the cover glowed under the fluorescent entrance light. ‘Are you nerds just too socially challenged to know anything about actual people? Or is it some kind of sick joke? God knows why they let you have the job in the first place…’

‘It’s not a joke,’ said Becky. She stared at the floor as she spoke.

‘You’re right. The quietest girl in school becoming the most successful. The most athletic and healthy dying young. The most honest heading for incarceration. It isn’t very funny is it? Did you just ignore what everyone said?’

‘It’s not a joke,’ said Becky again. This time she raised her head to look at me. There were tears forming in her eyes. ‘It’s just the results.’

‘Are you seriously telling me this is what people predicted?’ I knew some of my classmates were mean and bitchy. But even so...

‘No,’ said Becky, her voice now starting to tremble.

‘We didn’t do the voting thing, remember?’ said Chloe.

‘It’s what we found out,’ said Becky. ‘I guess maybe we shouldn’t have printed it.’ She looked at Chloe, who bit her lip and shook her head.

‘Look, I think we probably made a mistake,’ said Chloe. ‘But you all agreed to it.’

‘Agreed? To what? To letting my parents see that everyone at school thinks I’ve got criminal tendencies?’

‘It’s not what everyone thinks,’ said Chloe. She was just making things worse. By now I was almost as angry as Amanda.

‘You can keep your stupid yearbook!’ I dropped the book ostentatiously on Chloe’s foot. It fell open at the page with Marcia du Bonnet and Pui Wong’s photos. The caption read: ‘Separated at birth’. As if!  

‘Remember the swabs...?’ said Chloe as I shoved past her, desperate to get some fresh air.

The swabs had been weeks before. Part of some geeky science project. What could that possibly have to do with this, with tagging us with unrealistic – and hurtful – labels? As I calmed down, I remembered that the swabs were samples, samples of our saliva. The nerds had asked for volunteers, offering cream cakes in return (or blueberries for the diet freaks). Everyone obliged. Rub a cotton bud around your mouth for thirty seconds and be rewarded with a gooey chocolate éclair? Who wouldn’t? The samples were something to do with DNA but that really didn’t mean much to me – apart from that mad monk and his peas.

When I walked back inside, Chloe and Becky were surrounded. The angry mob were stamping on a pile of yearbooks and screeching at the tops of their voices.

‘Most likely to have mental health problems? Well that’s motivational!’ screamed Lara Lancombe, rapping her fist against her forehead. Actually, I didn’t dispute that description. Lara had always seemed a bit unstable. But it was still, frankly, quite mean.

‘Most likely to become an alcoholic? How dare you?’ shouted Sophie Fernando, waving her customary orange juice at Chloe. For a minute I thought it was going to end up down Chloe’s cleavage.

 ‘Guys ... guys!’ I pushed my way through the infuriated crowd.

‘Oh watch your pockets, it’s the artful dodger,’ whispered some smart alec behind me. I ignored her and got to the middle just in time to stop Amanda from tearing Chloe’s hair out.

‘Amanda, it’s not worth it.’ I yanked her arms away from Chloe’s face. She snarled at us both.

‘I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this. Right?’ Chloe nodded and Becky almost managed a smile. ‘Let’s all grab another drink and sit down and then you can explain all about the swabs and the DNA or whatever it is. Yeah?’ Becky nodded again and she and Chloe moved to an empty table by the fruit machines. Amanda and the mob didn’t bother to follow. They sent Sophie – who looked the oldest – to buy a round of sambucas.

Fifteen minutes later and it all made sense. Well, not all the detailed science stuff they went on about, but what had happened. They’d sent our swabs to a lab where Becky’s uncle worked and he’d sent details about our DNA back. Originally they just wanted to study something about left- and right-handedness, but once they had the info, they came up with the yearbook idea. Why not use science rather than votes to predict people’s likely futures? Why not indeed... But apparently Miss P had thought it ‘inspired’ and gave them the go-ahead.

‘Didn’t it occur to you that people might not like this?’

‘We thought you’d want to know,’ said Becky. I shook my head.

‘And it’s only a probability thing,’ added Chloe. ‘You can’t actually say whether someone will or won’t be a criminal...,’ I raised my eyebrows, ‘...or whatever. Not by genes anyway.’

‘Do you think these people know that?’ I waved my arm around the bar. It looked like Sophie’s prediction was already coming true if the flaming sambuca heading for her throat was anything to go by. ‘And who gave you permission in the first place?’

‘You did,’ said Chloe.

‘Ye-ah. To see whether you could tell if I was right- or left-handed. Out of interest, what did it say? I always felt those tyrants at primary school forced me to use my right hand.’

‘Oh, you’ve got the leftie gene,’ said Becky. She looked quite pleased with herself.

‘Good to know,’ I quipped, deliberately picking my drink up in my left hand. I wondered for a second if my appalling tennis serve could be blamed on my genes. ‘And what’s more you sold the results. To everyone here.’

‘More and more people are getting their genome sequenced these days. It can be medically beneficial to know what you have a propensity for.…’ Becky sounded like she’d swallowed an encyclopedia.

‘Oh yeah? So did you two sequence, or whatever, each other?’

‘Yes,’ said Chloe, suddenly losing some of her confidence.

‘She’s got the lung cancer gene,’ explained Becky, ‘and I could have a tendency to obesity.’

‘What’s the problem? Sounds like the perfect excuse to smoke and snack like crazy.’ It felt good to turn the tables. ‘It wasn’t me, Doctor, it was my genes.’

That angry night had been so long ago. But even now, a decade later, it was still crystal clear in my mind. The start of our ambitious, opportunity-filled adult lives was also the day the entire year found out each and everyone’s genetic secrets, whether we wanted them to or not. It made the motto of Sheldon School laughable. What did truth, ambition and achievement mean if your destiny was already mapped out? Of course if you bothered to read the small print (included at the back of the yearbook, to give Chloe and Becky their due), you’d have known that this wasn’t your divinely decreed, unchangeable, destiny. Then perhaps you’d have licence to choose other paths and dreams.

As I walked under the garish banner in the familiar hallway, my heart skipped a beat. Almost ten years to the day since the most thought-provoking Speech Day ever, what new revelations might come out in that assembly hall? I looked up at the letters messily stapled above me, took a deep breath and stepped under the words ‘Welcome back Sheldon girls!’ Inside, the gathered class looked different yet strangely familiar. Sure their hair and clothes had changed but, plastic surgery aside, you couldn’t hide the same pale, freckly or tanned complexions, the sparkling or squinting eyes and the confident smiles or nervous tics.

Amanda Richards was unmistakeable, sitting beside the central table, eager helpers all around. And it looked like she needed them. Her delicate frame, still as beautiful as ever, was hunched in a chrome-plated wheelchair. Her withered arms didn’t even look strong enough to hold one of those old yearbooks, let alone throw it across the room. Was it any easier, I wondered, to deal with debilitating illness, if you knew it was coming?

Chloe and Becky had both become science teachers. They looked perfectly healthy and it seemed neither smoked nor overate. Ever. I couldn’t help but think they were treating tonight as some kind of ‘Results and Conclusion’ amendment to their great scientific experiment and tried my best to avoid them. Sambuca Sophie had led a bit of a wild-child existence (and apparently told the police it was her genes, not her, that were guilty each time she’d been arrested for being drunk and disorderly) but seemed to have calmed down now. She was married with a young son. ‘I’m going to get him tested for the alcoholic gene soon. If he’s got it, he’s never, ever, having a drop.’

Little Jenny Khan surprised us all. A supremely confident speaker, she looked like she’d physically grown in stature and her successful city job was probably the most highly paid in the room. It seemed like Chloe and Becky had got it right. But was her success down to genes? Or because she’d been encouraged by being singled out? Certainly some would say, just like good old Miss P, that if you believe, you’re more likely to achieve.

There was no sign or news of unstable Lara and I never got to the bottom of the alleged Marcia–Pui birth separation thing either. As for me? I decided to use my supposed inbred knowledge of the undesirable underworld for the greater good. Two degrees and a lot of hard work later and I’m now a successful criminal psychologist. All that CSI stuff is all very well, but if you can’t understand the mind of the perpetrator, personally, I think it’s all just useless data. So despite the shocks, rants and raves, somehow that day actually helped reinforce the Sheldon motto for me. ‘Be true, be ambitious, be anything you want to be’. And damn the genes.…