Dance in Shadow and Whisper (Marionettes of Myth #1)

Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

 

The next three classes were frustrating. I was scolded for the most arbitrary of things, such as getting up to use the toilet, or snacking in class, or ‘talking out of turn’, whatever that meant. My third period class returned from our field trip to the library with our soddy, overused history books. I took my seat with mine and flipped through the water-damaged pages to the more recent history—or the history that I was intimately familiar with.

Something caught my eye.

My hand floated into the air, stopping the professor in the midst of her over-rehearsed monologue on the importance of history. She threw her hands onto her hips and faced me. “Yes, Miss Andrews?”

I pointed to the page in question. “I don’t think this book is entirely accurate, professor. Is there another option?”

Her bowl-cut hair sprouted frizzies. “What do you mean, the ‘book isn’t entirely accurate’?” The snap of her voice on ‘accurate’ gave me a start, but I pressed on.

“Well, I was just glancing through. It basically insinuates here,” I gestured to the page in question, as if she could see, “that the United States government dropped the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki largely as retribution for their attack on Pearl Harbor, which I know is what Truman said,” I still remembered the headlines, “but that’s stupid. Pearl Harbor was attacked in ’41, and the bombs were ’45. It wouldn’t have taken us nearly four years to mobilize a response like this implies. There was the Manhattan Project by that point, which caused our military to have itchy fingers for experimentation, and our government also obviously wanted to, you know, ‘compare sizes’ with the Soviets. I mean, before we’d even dropped the bombs, we’d been firebombing the real shit out of over sixty of Japan’s most populous cities, and they had already exhausted all their resources and made several attempts to surrender. I don’t see even an inkling of any of that in the text.”

The silence percolated throughout the room, the type of silence where I could hear the wind in my lungs with every breath. I simply shrugged. “So, can we use a book that’s more accurate?”

The professor rattled in place as her entire head flushed the ripest shade of tomato.

Yuuhi hid his face in shame, a practice that he’d been exercising many times throughout the day on my behalf. Jason, however, in the neighboring seat, raised his eyebrows at me, his lips clinging to what I thought was an almost smirk.

“Young lady!” The professor threw down her fists. “That language will not be tolerated in my classroom!”

I blinked at her. “What language? Nuclear bombs…?”

“Your sarcasm is dually noted, Miss Andrews. Why don’t you save that for your essays, hm? Then I can dock you for those inappropriate word choices.” She stared me down, as if she expected some sort of answer or lame apology. I completely blanked. Rhetorical questions were not my strong suit.

Jason, however, lifted his hand.

“Yes, Mr. Anderson?”

“Well, can we use a more accurate textbook?”

His friends, all dressed in black with strange hairdos, laughed and jeered at him. I didn’t think he was joking.

During our lunch period, Jason and his darkly dressed friends found a table out on the patio in the far corner and made it their nest, which meant Yuuhi and I had to stake out a table nearby to watch them. I was pleased. The concentration of artificial chemicals that human teenagers painted themselves with had gained a coarse sawdust-like texture in my throat and made my eyes water constantly. The patio area wasn’t quiet by any means, but the breeze rolling off the wall of trees was refreshing.