Light in Dawn

Chapter Nine - The Fountain Pen Borrower

"Hey," Raylene tapped his shoulder, her fingertips lingering on his shirt for three seconds longer than necessary. "Julyan? Do you mind if I borrow a blue pen from you? Mine ran out of ink."

Julyan nodded and pulled out a dark blue fountain pen from his unzipped pencil case. He recalled that Raylene had a few spare blue pens - those new ones from America - and she had flaunted them around on his first day. He could guess why she chose to borrow from him though - it wasn't the first time girls made random requests from him, however trivial.

Next to him, Raylene received the pen with a soft "thank you". He made a half-hearted sound and turned back to the board; history notes would deserve more attention than this whole class combined, any day.

The Second World War.

His eyes were fixed on the phrase. He had heard of it before. Studied it, even, back at home, but without the same depth and emotion.

Of course they were different. Back in his world, completely detached from the events, the view was objective. They saw the wars as a mirror, clear and free from pretence - it was a history that well could be theirs if they were not careful. Here, history was taught like a painting. The painter obscures one aspect and focuses on another, volunteering details when the mind could not, or would not, recall the truth. The painting was designed to evoke feelings: sympathy for loss lives, abhorrence for the villains, pride from the victory of justice.

"Ah... Do you have a ball pen by any chance?"

Julyan shook his head and hid a smile, pretending not to see Raylene's ink-stained fingers. He was so used to using fountain pens for formal documents that he never bothered with ball pens, which the people here seemed to prefer. "No, sorry."

"It's alright. I'll just use pencil for now," she answered, rolling the borrowed pen back on his desk.

He glanced at her notebook. It was clear that she kept a system with coloured pens - red for headings, blue for body text, black for summaries and key facts. Julyan raised an eyebrow. Raylene didn't strike him as a perfectionist, but then, he knew better than judging people by appearance.

Raylene wasn't as simple as she seemed. Just then she has the choice of either admitting she had hidden her spare pens or abandoning her system altogether, but the decision she made dissolved the dilemma easily. In fact, he was slightly impressed.

"History classes are draining, don't you think?"

"What?"

"Mr G just goes on and on and on. About the World Wars, and the Revolutions, about racism, classism," Raylene's head bounced on every point, stressing the weariness, "and things that no one here cares about."

Huh. Maybe he'd overestimated her. "A useless subject, then?" He smiled, but took more notes instead of looking at her.

"Absolutely. Don't you think so?"

Absolutely not. For him, history, geography and sociology had always been the most important part of the curriculum. His Politics tutor favoured him over the rest of the class because he was by far the most diligent and the most talented.

If he had lived a different childhood, perhaps, he would agree with Raylene.

"Honestly?" He paused for a second as if giving thought to the question. "I've never thought about it."

"You're a good student then," she laughed teasingly.

"Good?" He didn't bother to put down his pen this time. "I skip all the useless classes."

That was true. If he didn't have keep watch on Andriana, he would have skipped many of the classes he shared with her - Art, Musical Performance, Literature...