Spellcheck

The first day of Grade 10 began, the way most things in Toronto began, with the TTC being slightly on fire.

Not actually on fire. There was just a smell. A hot, electrical, burnt-toast smell on the 29 Dufferin bus at 8:14 in the morning, and the bus sitting dead at a green light while the driver announced a short delay due to a mechanical issue, which everybody on board knew meant the brakes, and a man in a Leafs jersey saying "Every single year" to nobody, with deep feeling.

Elias stood by the back doors with a backpack that still smelled like the store and a timetable printout from the school website folded into a tiny square, and thought, not for the first time, that being fifteen was mostly standing around waiting for things to happen to you.

The bus lurched on. It was packed. Elias got wedged between a woman with a cello case and a kid in a Garrison Creek hoodie who was asleep standing up, which was a skill Elias intended to learn this year. Across Bloor. Off a stop early, because of the smell, into the bright September morning, where the air smelled of hot asphalt and someone's coffee and the first faint dry hint of leaves, and then the long walk north past the bakeries and the phone repair shop and the place that sold only dumplings and the place that sold only socks.

Elias had walked this way every school day for a year now, and still liked it: the way the street changed every block, Portuguese bakery, Korean grocery, Ethiopian café, a Polish deli with a hand-painted sign, a vintage shop with a mannequin in the window wearing a raccoon hat, and every single one of them with a little laminated sign in the window that said, in three or four languages, some version of Back to school! Ask about our student special!

And there it was. Garrison Creek Collegiate Institute.

It had been built in 1912, and it looked like it: three storeys of dark red brick with tall windows and a stone arch over the front doors with the name carved into it in serious capital letters, and a little bell tower with no bell, and ivy that the board kept trying to kill. Under it, everybody knew, ran Garrison Creek itself, which had been buried in a pipe a hundred years ago and still, on wet days, made the basement smell like a pond. Out front, on the lawn, a sign on two posts, brand new and very shiny, said:

WELCOME BACK, GRIFFINS! THIS YEAR AT GCCI: PROOFWISE IS HERE! WRITE SMARTER!

Under it someone had already added, in neat Sharpie, WHY.

Elias went straight in, through the stone arch and the heavy doors, into the front hall, which smelled of floor polish and paint and new-year panic, and joined the river of people going up the main stairs.

Locker 2114 was on the second floor, east wing, between a kid who had already decorated the inside of his door with photos of a specific breed of lizard and a girl who was crying into her phone about a timetable error. Elias spun the combination three times before it opened, which was about average, and stood looking into the narrow grey metal box that would hold Elias's whole life for the next ten months.

On the inside of the door, someone from last year had scratched, very small, near the top: the library knows.

Elias looked at it for a second. Then shut the door. Probably it meant something about a book. Probably it meant nothing. Lockers were full of messages from strangers. Last year Elias's had said Devon owes me $5, and nobody had ever found out who Devon was.

When Elias turned around, Leila and Minh were standing there.

Leila Haddad had been Elias's best friend since a Grade 3 science fair, when they had both built volcanoes and both volcanoes had failed to erupt, and they had stood side by side in the gym in silent shared disgrace for an entire afternoon. She was small and very precise, wore the same black hoodie every day of the year whatever the weather, wrote code for fun the way other people did crosswords, and said about four words an hour, every one of them devastating.

Minh Tran had arrived in Grade 6 and had immediately become everybody's best friend, the way weather becomes everybody's weather. He was in every play, every musical, every improv club, every anything with a stage and a light. He talked faster than anyone Elias had ever met. He had once, in Grade 8, talked his way out of a detention by performing a monologue about the detention itself, and the teacher had laughed so hard she had to sit down.

"Have you seen it?" said Minh, appearing, already talking. "The Proofwise thing? They've put it on everything. Every Chromebook. Every school account. It's on the board's whole system. It corrects your grammar, it corrects your spelling, it suggests better word choices." He did air quotes so hard he nearly hit a Grade 9. "I typed my name into it and it suggested Mint."

"It's an autocorrect," said Leila. "With a press release."

"It's an attack on art," said Minh.

The first bell rang, a long, harsh, ancient electric clang that the board had been promising to replace since 1987, and the whole front hall surged toward the stairs.

The first period was English, with Ms. Abara, room 204, and the first thing Ms. Abara did, after the attendance and a speech about kindness and a second speech about phones, was hand out a printed sheet from the vice-principal's office.

Dear Griffins, it said. This year Garrison Creek Collegiate is proud to be part of the board's Proofwise pilot! All written work submitted through your school account will be checked by Proofwise, which will automatically correct spelling and grammar errors. Proofwise uses a custom dictionary tailored to our school community. Write smarter! — Ms. S. Farrokh, Vice-Principal.

"Tailored to our school community," said Leila, under her breath. "What does that even mean?"

Nobody knew. Nobody cared, much. It was the first day of school. There were timetables to sort out and lockers to jam and people to see who had changed over the summer. Somebody's older brother had got a tattoo. Somebody had moved to Vancouver. Somebody had dyed their hair the exact green of a TTC sign.

At lunch the three of them sat on the low wall by the side doors, where they had sat every lunch for all of Grade 9, and ate, and watched the school. Minh had a container of his grandmother's rice rolls and was defending them with his elbows. Leila had an apple and a sandwich cut into four exact squares. Elias had whatever had been in the fridge at 7:40, which today was a cold slice of pizza and a juice box, and was not ashamed.

"Big year," said Minh. "Grade 10. This is the year things happen. I can feel it. In my bones. In my art."

"Nothing happens in Grade 10," said Leila. "Grade 10 is the year they put the photocopier on the second floor."

"Something's going to happen," said Minh stubbornly.

Across the lawn, by the big front windows of the old library, a tall, stooped, white-haired man in a cardigan was standing alone, looking out at the street with his hands behind his back. Mr. Abernethy, the librarian. He had been at Garrison Creek for thirty years. There was a rumour that this was his last one, and another rumour that it was the library's last one too: that the board wanted to turn it into something called an Innovation Hub, with standing desks and a 3D printer and no books. Mr. Abernethy did not look like a man who was enjoying the first day of school. He looked like a man saying goodbye to something.

Elias watched him for a moment. Then the bell went, and the moment went with it.

And Proofwise sat quietly on every Chromebook in the building, under every essay, every lab report, every note, every email, waiting for a mistake.

It would get one on the seventeenth of September. From Elias. About a vending machine.