Sacrifice for a Dream

Chapter 4

History was subdued. It was taught by a tiny man in a bright blue suit. Every time I looked at him, I wanted to laugh. He looked like an exceptionally large blueberry and his whole classroom smelled like peppermint. Mostly because he kept a large jar of peppermint candies on his desk, and constantly grabbed more and popped them into his mouth. His name was Mr. Green oddly enough. But since I knew what it felt like to be laughed at, based on something they couldn't help, I kept myself in check.

Mr. Green checked me into his classroom, and I was assigned a seat based on alphabetic order. I sat in a desk between Delta Honeycutt, who I now knew was a swimmer and Ash McAllister, a friend of Glimmers'. The class was oddly subdued after last period and Glimmer was nowhere to be found. When the bell finally rang and everyone was in their seats except Glimmer and another boy, Morgan who had apparently been sick. I let out a breath I didn't even know I had been holding.

I leaned down to get my laptop, notebook, pencil, eraser and pen out of my backpack like I did every time I entered a classroom. Being prepared was the best way to succeed in school. When I righted myself in my desk to place my things, I noticed there was a small paper bird sitting on my desk. It had a sharp tail and beak and had been made by using some blue paper I had seen littering the hallways advertising a school dance. I looked around the classroom, trying to find the culprit who had made the bird, but no one made eye contact. I picked up the bird and held it in my hand studying each of its' precise folds.

Mr. Green started the lecture on ancient Greek philosophers. I kept notes on the men he spoke about who had lived and died long before I was ever born.

Before the bell rang, Mr. Green assigned homework, a simple question we would all have to answer in detail; would you kill one person to save ten? I had no idea how to answer it. Mr. Green told us to use our imagination and that there was no right or wrong answer. I felt like I needed so much more information before I could answer the question. Was the person I needed to kill old or were they a child? Was it their actions that caused the ten people to die? I kept thinking about the question, turning it over and over in mind. Even though it was just a hypothetical question, I felt like I held the fate of those eleven people in the palms of my hands.