The Crash of Hennington by Patrick Ness Page B

O’Mahoneyham, overthrower-to-be of Archbishop Carl Sequin, and probably on her way to the Bondulay High Papacy had Hennington’s future not taken the route it did.
    (At that point, though, that was all a good ways off – and still remains a ways off now, though becoming uncomfortably close for more vaguely clairvoyant Henningtonians. If Archie Banyon’s body had been more specific about what awaited, he might not have given up smoking after all.)
    Jarvis toddled along unremarkably and had just begun his third year when he met the woman who should have been the love of his life. Her name was Diana. Long brown hair cascading in waves around a breathtaking face without a trace of make-up; a serious, challenging brow that let you knowyou had better have more to your argument than just opinion; a nose slightly too wide over lips slightly too crooked placed on a face just slightly too large. Diana was stunning, not in the euphemism-for-beauty way, but actually stunning, as in it was difficult to find words for small talk when you first met her and equally difficult not to feel like you were trying to squirm out of the truth when she questioned your ideas. Most of the cocksure, popular, handsome boys at the seminary were terrified of her, and there was more than one malicious and erroneous story floated along the grapevine by those who felt threatened, which was more or less everyone.
    Jarvis, on the other hand, too engrossed in his studies and too chaste in his temporary celibacy vow to notice any female, wouldn’t have registered Diana at all if she hadn’t insulted him publicly during a History of the Sacraments seminar. The class had reached the contentious subject of Hildegard Robham’s schism from the Bondulay during the Gentlemen’s War. In the old story of Pacifism pitted against The Regrettable Use of Force, Jarvis had taken the mildly surprising but by no means unprecedented position of agreeing with Robham’s pacifist principles. Diana had turned to face him from her seat in the seminar, nostrils blazing.
    —I suppose I can understand your abhorrence to war, but to eliminate all use of force under every circumstance is naïve, suicidally idealistic, and in the most morally repugnant sense shirks adult responsibility. Pacifists allow their consciences to be free while still subsisting on the fruits of war.
    Jarvis tried to argue back, but it was too late. He was already in love.
    —How can you call the anonymous killing of strangers you’ve never met morally justified under any humane religion?
    —In a theoretical argument about an uncomplicated world,you’re completely right. In this world, however, your argument is complete sheep’s balls!
    —Miss Avisham!
    —Sorry, Professor, but suppose, whatever-your-name-is, we’d taken a pacifist stance against Pistolet? Where would we be then?
    —Don’t you believe the moral high ground would have eventually won out?
    —Eventually? Eventually ? You arrogant, self-satisfied, brainless pile of treacle. How many more people would your ‘eventually’ have allowed Pistolet to kill? How many more millions deserved to be tortured, raped, and murdered because of your grand ‘eventually'?
    —Surely you concede that if we’d acted earlier on, with diplomatic means—
    —I concede nothing! War is a horrible, atrocious, awful, awful thing, but war was not the monster, Pistolet was. You’re applying an absolute principle to an in-absolute world.
    —But we’re talking about dogmatic philosophy, not practicum.
    —And you’re hiding behind your hot air, you coward!
    Diana held up the main textbook for the course.
    —The world doesn’t exist in this. The world exists out there.
    Jarvis didn’t have time to duck before the book connected with his nose and broke it. Later, remarkably not expelled and courteously walking home the newly bandaged and cotton-packed Jarvis, she had clarified her points.
    —I’m sorry about your nose, but you were completely in the