Classmates Missing Quotes

We are no longer worried that children are missing school because of video games, though. We are worried that they are murdering their classmates because of video games.

My classmates surround me as I sit in this folding chair. They laugh and hug one another and talk about how much they will miss each other once they're gone. And all I can think is that I have been gone for a long time, but none of them miss me.

It shouldn't have mattered, not when Miel and the other girls in his class wore jeans more than they wore skirts. Not when they told their brothers what to do, and borrowed their fathers' books. But there was everything else. The idea of being called Miss or Ms. or worse, Mrs. The thought of being grouped in when someone called out 'girls' or 'ladies.' The endless, echoing use of 'she' and 'her,' 'miss' and 'ma'am.' Yes, they were words. They were all just words. But each of them was wrong, and they stuck to him. Each one was a golden fire ant, and they were biting his arms and his neck and his bound-flat chest, leaving him bleeding and burning. 'He.' 'Him.' 'Mister.' 'Sir.' Even teachers admonishing him and his classmates with 'boys, settle down' or 'gentlemen, please.' These were sounds as perfect and clean as winter rain, and they calmed each searing bite of those wrong words.

The fact that Aracely might understand what he could not say, it seeded in him a want, new and raw, like not knowing he was thirsty until water was in front of him. No one else, not his mother, not even Miel, could understand this wanting to live a life different from the one he was born into, so much that his own skin felt like ice cracking. It shouldn't have mattered, not when Miel and the other girls in his class wore jeans more than they wore skirts. Not when they went out as late as they wanted. Not when they told their brothers what to do, and borrowed their fathers' books. But there was everything else. The idea of being called Miss or Ms. or, worse, Mrs. The thought of being grouped in when someone called out 'girls' or 'ladies.' The endless, echoing use of 'she' and 'her,' 'miss' and 'ma'am.' Yes, they were words. They were all just words. But each of them was wrong, and they stuck to him. Each one was a golden fire ant, and they were biting his arms and his neck and his bound-flat chest, leaving him bleeding and burning. 'He. Him. Mister. Sir.' Even teachers admonishing him and his classmates with 'boys, settle down,' or 'gentlemen, please.' These were sounds as perfect and clean as winter rain, and they calmed each searing bite of those wrong words.

Though his classmates supposedly hailed form "all fifty states, Guam, and twenty-two foreign lands," as President Affenlight said in his convocation address, they all seemed to Henry to come from the same close-knit high school, or at least to have attended some crucial orientation session he'd missed. They traveled in large packs, constantly texting the other packs, and when two packs converged there was always a tremendous amount of hugging and kissing on the cheek.

In general, here is how it works: The teacher stands in front of the class and asks a question. Six to ten children strain in their seats and wave their hands in the teacher’s face, eager to be called on and show how smart they are. Several others sit quietly with eyes averted, trying to become invisible, When the teacher calls on one child, you see looks of disappointment and dismay on the faces of the eager students, who missed a chance to get the teacher’s approval; and you will see relief on the faces of the others who didn’t know the answer…. This game is fiercely competitive and the stakes are high, because the kids are competing for the love and approval of one of the two or three most important people in their world. Further, this teaching process guarantees that the children will not learn to like and understand each other. Conjure up your own experience. If you knew the right answer and the teacher called on someone else, you probably hoped that he or she would make a mistake so that you would have a chance to display your knowledge. If you were called on and failed, or if you didn’t even raise your hand to compete, you probably envied and resented your classmates who knew the answer. Children who fail in this system become jealous and resentful of the successes, putting them down as teacher’s pets or even resorting to violence against them in the school yard. The successful students, for their part, often hold the unsuccessful children in contempt, calling them “dumb” or “stupid.” This competitive process does not encourage anyone to look benevolently and happily upon his fellow students.77

Avoiding School or Dropping Out Unfortunately, school sometimes becomes so difficult for people with social anxiety that they start avoiding it as much as they can. This has a serious effect on a person’s future. It is difficult to get a good job with a decent salary if you do not have a high school diploma. If you drop out, you are setting yourself up for a difficult time. Cedric has always had a hard time in school because of his extreme social anxiety. He feels uncomfortable with his classmates and avoids speaking with them. During classes, he always sits in the back and never participates. When teachers call on him, he usually mumbles “I don’t know.” As a result of his social anxiety, he has low self-esteem and suffers from depression. One day, he decided that it didn’t matter if he went to school or not. Some mornings, he hides in the yard until his mother leaves for work, and then he stays in his room all day. Other times, he wanders around the woods. Cedric has no idea what he wants to do with his life. He knows it is only a matter of time before his mother finds out he has been missing school. He wishes he could just hide and hibernate. Deep down, he knows he has a problem, but he doesn’t know what to do about it. Secretly, he hopes his mother forces him to see a therapist because he is afraid of what the rest of his life is going to be like.

Well, Doctor Dillamond seemed to think they were in questionable taste, given the Banns on Animals Mobility." "Doctor Dillamond, alas," said Madame Morrible, "is a doctor. He is not a poet. He is also a God, and I might ask you girls if we have ever had a great Goat sonneteer or balladeer? Alas, dear Miss Elphaba, Doctor Dillamond doesn't understand the poetic convention of irony. Would you like to define irony for the class, please?" "I don't believe I can, Madame." "Irony, some say, is the art of juxtaposing incongruous parts. One needs a knowing distance. Irony presupposes detachment, which, alas, in the case of Animal Rights, we may forgive Doctor Dillamond for being without." "So that phrase that he objected to - Animals should be seen and not heard - that was ironic?" continued Elphaba, studying her papers and not looking at Madame Morrible. Galinda and her classmates were enthralled, for it was clear that each of the females at opposite ends of the room would have enjoyed seeing the other crumble in a sudden attack of the spleen. "One could consider it in an ironic mode if one chose," said Madame Morrible. "How do you choose?" said Elphaba. "How impertinent!" said Madame Morrible. "Well, but I don't mean impertinence. I'm trying to learn. If you - if anyone - thought that statement was true, then it isn't in conflict with the boring bossy bit that preceded it. It's just argument and conclusion, and I don't see the irony." "You don't see much, Miss Elphaba," said Madame Morrible. "You must learn to put yourself in the shoes of someone wiser than you are, and look from that angle. To be stuck in ignorance, to be circumscribed by the walls of one's own modest acumen, well, it is very sad in one so young and bright." She spit out the last word, and it seemed to Galinda, somehow, a low comment on Elphaba's skin color, which today was indeed lustrous with the effort of public speaking. "But I was trying to put myself in the shoes of Doctor Dillamond," said Elphaba, almost whining, but not giving up. "In the case of poetic interpretation, I venture to suggest, it may indeed be true. Animal should not be heard," snapped Madame Morrible. "Do you mean that ironically?" said Elphaba, but she sat down with her hands over her face and did not look up again for the rest of the session.

She found it difficult to discuss physics, much less debate it, with her predominantly male classmates. At first they paid a kind of selective inattention to her remarks. There would be a slight pause, and then they would go on as if she had not spoken. Occasionally they would acknowledge her remark, even praise it, and then again continue undeflected. She was reasonably sure her remarks were not entirely foolish, and did not wish to be ignored, much less ignored and patronized alternately. Part of it—but only a part—she knew was due to the softness of her voice. So she developed a physics voice, a professional voice: clear, competent, and many decibels above conversational. With such a voice it was important to be right. She had to pick her moments. It was hard to continue long in such a voice, because she was sometimes in danger of bursting out laughing. So she found herself leaning toward quick, sometimes cutting, interventions, usually enough to capture their attention; then she could go on for a while in a more usual tone of voice. Every time she found herself in a new group she would have to fight her way through again, just to dip her oar into the discussion. The boys were uniformly unaware even that there was a problem. Sometimes she would be engaged in a laboratory exercise or a seminar when the instructor would say, “Gentlemen, let’s proceed,” and sensing Ellie’s frown would add, “Sorry, Miss Arroway, but I think of you as one of the boys.” The highest compliment they were capable of paying was that in their minds she was not overtly female. She had to fight against developing too combative a personality or becoming altogether a misanthrope. She suddenly caught herself. “Misanthrope” is someone who dislikes everybody, not just men. And they certainly had a word for someone who hates women: “misogynist.” But the male lexicographers had somehow neglected to coin a word for the dislike of men. They were almost entirely men themselves, she thought, and had been unable to imagine a market for such a word. More than many others, she had been encumbered with parental proscriptions. Her newfound freedoms—intellectual, social, sexual—were exhilarating. At a time when many of her contemporaries were moving toward shapeless clothing that minimized the distinctions between the sexes, she aspired to an elegance and simplicity in dress and makeup that strained her limited budget. There were more effective ways to make political statements, she thought. She cultivated a few close friends and made a number of casual enemies, who disliked her for her dress, for her political and religious views, or for the vigor with which she defended her opinions. Her competence and delight in science were taken as rebukes by many otherwise capable young women. But a few looked on her as what mathematicians call an existence theorem—a demonstration that a woman could, sure enough, excel in science—or even as a role model.

Are you Hilary Westfield?” She sounded like she hoped it wasn’t the case. Hilary nodded. “Oh. Well, I’m Philomena. I have to show you to your room.” Hilary looked wildly at Miss Greyson. “I’m Miss Westfield’s governess,” Miss Greyson said, to Hilary’s relief. Maybe talking politely to people like Philomena was something you learned at Miss Pimm’s, or maybe getting past Philomena was a sort of entrance exam. “Is there any chance we could see Miss Pimm? We’re old acquaintances. I used to go to school here, you see.” Miss Greyson smiled for the second time that day—the world was getting stranger and stranger by the minute—but Philomena didn’t smile back. “I’m terribly sorry,” said Philomena, “but Miss Pimm doesn’t receive visitors. You can leave Miss Westfield with me, and the porter will collect Miss Westfield’s bags.” She raised her eyebrows as the carriage driver deposited the golden traveling trunk on the doorstep. “I hope you have another pair of stockings in there.” “I do.” Hilary met Philomena’s stare. “I have nineteen pairs, in fact. And a sword.” Miss Greyson groaned and put her hand to her forehead. “Excuse me?” said Philomena. “I’m afraid Miss Westfield is prone to fits of imagination,” Miss Greyson said quickly. Philomena’s eyebrows retreated. “I understand completely,” she said. “Well, you have nothing to worry about. Miss Pimm’s will cure her of that nasty habit soon enough. Now, Miss Westfield, please come along with me.” Hilary and Miss Greyson started to follow Philomena inside. “Only students and instructors are permitted inside the school building,” said Philomena to Miss Greyson. “With all the thefts breaking out in the kingdom these days, one really can’t be too careful. But you’re perfectly welcome to say your good-byes outside.” Miss Greyson agreed and knelt down in front of Hilary. “A sword?” she whispered. “I’m sorry, Miss Greyson.” “All I ask is that you take care not to carve up your classmates. If I were not a governess, however, I might mention that the lovely Philomena is in need of a haircut.” Hilary nearly laughed, but she suspected it might be against the rules to laugh on the grounds of Miss Pimm’s, so she gave Miss Greyson her most solemn nod instead. “Now,” said Miss Greyson, “you must promise to write. You must keep up with the news of the day and tell me all about it in your letters. And you’ll come and visit me in my bookshop at the end of the term, won’t you?” “Of course.” Hilary’s stomach was starting to feel very strange, and she didn’t trust herself to say more than a few words at a time. This couldn’t be right; pirates were hardly ever sentimental. Then again, neither was Miss Greyson. Yet here she was, leaning forward to hug Hilary, and Hilary found herself hugging Miss Greyson back. “Please don’t tell me to be a good little girl,” she said. Miss Greyson sniffed and stood up. “My dear,” she said, “I would never dream of it.” She gave Hilary’s canvas bag an affectionate pat, nodded politely to Philomena, and walked down the steps and through the gate, back to the waiting carriage. “Come along,” said Philomena, picking up the lightest of Hilary’s bags. “And please don’t dawdle. I have lessons to finish.” HILARY FOLLOWED PHILOMENA through a maze of dark stone walls and high archways. From the inside, the building seemed more like a fortress

Walking around her [Sasha's] classroom at Sidwell's parents' night that fall, I'd come across a short "What I Did on My Summer Vacation" essay she'd authored, hanging alongside those of her classmates on one of the walls. "I went to Rome and I met the Pope," Sasha had written. "He was missing part of his thumb." I could not tell you what Pope Benedict XVI's thumb looks like, whether some part of it isn't there. But we'd taken an observant, matter-of-fact-eight-year-old to Rome, Moscow, and Accra, and this is what she'd brought back. Her view of history was, at that point, waist-high.

When Bindi, Robert, and I got home on the evening of Steve’s death, we encountered a strange scene that we ourselves had created. The plan had been that Steve would get back from his Ocean’s Deadlist film shoot before we got back from Tasmania. So we’d left the house with a funny surprise for him. We got large plush toys and arranged them in a grouping to look like the family. We sat one that represented me on the sofa, a teddy bear about her size for Bindi, and a plush orangutan for Robert. We dressed the smaller toys in the kids’ clothes, and the big doll in my clothes. I went to the zoo photographer and got close-up photographs of our faces that we taped onto the heads of the dolls. We posed them as if we were having dinner, and I wrote a note for Steve. “Surprise,” the note said. “We didn’t go to Tasmania! We are here waiting for you and we love you and miss you so much! We will see you soon. Love, Terri, Bindi, and Robert.” The surprise was meant for Steve when he returned and we weren’t there. Instead the dolls silently waited for us, our plush-toy doubles, ghostly reminders of a happier life. Wes, Joy, and Frank came into the house with me and the kids. We never entertained, we never had anyone over, and now suddenly our living room seemed full. Unaccustomed to company, Robert greeted each one at the door. “Take your shoes off before you come in,” he said seriously. I looked over at him. He was clearly bewildered but trying so hard to be a little man. We had to make arrangements to bring Steve home. I tried to keep things as private as possible. One of Steve’s former classmates at school ran the funeral home in Caloundra that would be handling the arrangements. He had known the Irwin family for years, and I recall thinking how hard this was going to be for him as well. Bindi approached me. “I want to say good-bye to Daddy,” she said. “You are welcome to, honey,” I said. “But you need to remember when Daddy said good-bye to his mother, that last image of her haunted him while he was awake and asleep for the rest of his life.” I suggested that perhaps Bindi would like to remember her daddy as she last saw him, standing on top of the truck next to that outback airstrip, waving good-bye with both arms and holding the note that she had given him. Bindi agreed, and I knew it was the right decision, a small step in the right direction. I knew the one thing that I had wanted to do all along was to get to Steve. I felt an urgency to continue on from the zoo and travel up to the Cape to be with him. But I knew what Steve would have said. His concern would have been getting the kids settled and in bed, not getting all tangled up in the media turmoil. Our guests decided on their own to get going and let us get on with our night. I gave the kids a bath and fixed them something to eat. I got Robert settled in bed and stayed with him until he fell asleep. Bindi looked worried. Usually I curled up with Robert in the evening, while Steve curled up with Bindi. “Don’t worry,” I said to her. “Robert’s already asleep. You can sleep in my bed with me.” Little Bindi soon dropped off to sleep, but I lay awake. It felt as though I had died and was starting over with a new life. I mentally reviewed my years as a child growing up in Oregon, as an adult running my own business, then meeting Steve, becoming his wife and the mother of our children. Now, at age forty-two, I was starting again.

serious cash to free April? And there was no word yet from the kidnapper. Usually, as Theo remembered from television, the family gets word pretty soon that the bad guys have the child and would like a million bucks or so for a safe return. Another report from the morning news showed Mrs. Finnemore crying in front of their home. The police were tight-lipped, saying only that they were pursuing all leads. A neighbor said his dog started barking around midnight, always a bad sign. As frantic as the reporters seemed to be that morning, the truth was that they were finding very little to add to the story of a missing girl. Theo’s homeroom teacher was Mr. Mount, who also taught Government. After Mr. Mount got the boys settled, he called the roll. All sixteen were present. The conversation quickly got around to the disappearance of April, and Mr. Mount asked Theo if he’d heard anything. “Nothing,” Theo said, and his classmates seemed disappointed.

and peered over the edge at the damp walkway below. It led into the student parking lot. Everyone was in fifth period . . . everyone except for the identical twins standing over the heads of their oblivious classmates and teachers. A suicide threat, seriously? This is why Gray was missing English? They were supposed to be discussing Yeats that afternoon and Gray didn’t appreciate having Charlene’s minion stop her on the way to class with a message that

He missed being broke, because when he had nothing he owed nothing and most of his classmates were in the same boat. Now that he had an income he worried constantly about mortgages, the overhead, credit cards, and realizing the American dream of becoming affluent. Not wealthy, just affluent.

The Guildhall was in the middle of Plano, Texas. Plano Texas, is brown and not much else. They have a Frito-Lay factory, parking lots, and a videogame school. At the time, I kept a strict vegan diet and didn’t drive. There was nothing to eat and nowhere to go. But the latter didn’t matter; when you were at the Guildhall you had no life outside the Guildhall. I remember the first day of orientation, sitting in a lecture hall with my future classmates and the spouses they’d brought with them to this wasted brown land. One of the other level design students had his wife and their year-old child with him. “Give her a kiss and say good-bye,” the director of the school told him in front of the assembly. “You’re not going to see her for two years.” I was in Plano, Texas, for six months. You’re at school from nine to five. You stay after and do your work with the teams they’ve assigned you to. Late at night you drag yourself home and do your actual homework. Maybe you get a few hours of sleep. The idea behind the school is that you’re always in what the Big Games Industry calls “crunch time”: unpaid overtime. Your masters want the game done by Christmas, so you don’t leave the office until it’s done. This is why people in the industry aren’t healthy; this is why they burn out and quit games within a few years. This is why you miss the second year of your daughter’s life. This is their scheme: you put up with crunch time all the time while you’re in school, so when you work for a big publisher—or, rather, a studio contracted by a big publisher—you won’t complain about being told you can’t see your daughter until the game’s done. The Guildhall boasts an over 90 percent employment rate, and it’s true: they will get you a job in the games industry. That’s because they will make you into exactly the kind of worker the games industry wants. It’s that kind of school. And it works; that’s the horrifying thing. My classmates were all self-identified gamers and game fans and were willing to put up with anything in order to live their dream of making videogames. That’s the carrot the industry dangles, and it’s what we take away from the industry when we create a form to which anyone can contribute. As long as the industry is allowed to continue acting as the gatekeeper to game creation, people will continue to accept the ways in which the industry tramples the lives and well-being of the creative people who make games, rather than challenging the insane level of control that publishers ask over developers’ lives.

Giovanni, in love with her unabashed feminine strength and her reconciliation of love and revolution. I spent nearly every waking moment around Nikki, and I loved her dearly. But sibling relationships are often fraught with petty tortures. I hadn’t wanted to hurt her. But I had. At the time, I couldn’t understand my mother’s anger. I mean this wasn’t really a woman I was punching. This was Nikki. She could take it. Years would pass before I understood how that blow connected to my mom’s past. My mother came to the United States at the age of three. She was born in Lowe River in the tiny parish of Trelawny, Jamaica, hours away from the tourist traps that line the coast. Its swaths of deep brush and arable land made it great for farming but less appealing for honeymoons and hedonism. Lowe River was quiet, and remote, and it was home for my mother, her older brother Ralph, and my grandparents. My maternal great-grandfather Mas Fred, as he was known, would plant a coconut tree at his home in Mount Horeb, a neighboring area, for each of his kids and grandkids when they were born. My mom always bragged that hers was the tallest and strongest of the bunch. The land that Mas Fred and his wife, Miss Ros, tended had been cared for by our ancestors for generations. And it was home for my mom until her parents earned enough money to bring the family to the States to fulfill my grandfather’s dream of a theology degree from an American university. When my mom first landed in the Bronx, she was just a small child, but she was a survivor and learned quickly. She studied the other kids at school like an anthropologist, trying desperately to fit in. She started with the way she spoke. She diligently listened to the radio from the time she was old enough to turn it on and mimicked what she heard. She’d always pull back enough in her interactions with her classmates to give herself room to quietly observe them, so that when she got home she could practice imitating their accents, their idiosyncrasies, their style. Words like irie became cool. Constable became policeman. Easy-nuh became chill out. The melodic, swooping movement of her Jamaican patois was quickly replaced by the more stable cadences of American English. She jumped into the melting pot with both feet. Joy Thomas entered American University in Washington, D.C., in 1968, a year when she and her adopted homeland were both experiencing

He’d just have to ask Cho for a private word, that was all. . . . He hurried off through the packed corridors looking for her, and (rather sooner than he had expected) he found her, emerging from a Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson. “Er — Cho? Could I have a word with you?” Giggling should be made illegal, Harry thought furiously, as all the girls around Cho started doing it. She didn’t, though. She said, “Okay,” and followed him out of earshot of her classmates. Harry turned to look at her and his stomach gave a weird lurch as though he had missed a step going downstairs. “Er,” he said. He couldn’t ask her. He couldn’t. But he had to. Cho stood there looking puzzled, watching him. The words came out before Harry had quite got his tongue around them. “Wangoballwime?” “Sorry?” said Cho.

Was he thinking serial killer? She was but did not want to voice that opinion yet. This was different and the same. Very much the same as Gail and Charlie, her mother’s superiors, made inferior by Arleen’s knife. Her mom’s killing streak ran for twelve years, and would have continued indefinitely, if she had not taken Nadine’s classmate. Right after Nadine had told her mom that Sandra was terrorizing her, the high school senior went missing.

I started talking to some of her classmates. They said she hasn’t spoken here at all for a week.” “At all?” “And in the months before that, she averaged a few words a day. Only when spoken to. Now, I understand she was homeschooled before she came here…” “So?” “Well, some would say home learners miss out on proper social development, and—

If I’d felt insensitive earlier, it wasn’t long before I was feeling downright callous. Everyone kept telling me they’d heard what had happened and how horrible it must have been. But inside, I was still buzzing, my pulse racing, as giddy as the time Serena and I sneaked champagne at her cousin’s wedding. Rafe didn’t make it easy, either. During first period, he found an excuse to walk past my desk and drop off a note. It read, “Not dating classmates means you’ve missed out on an important part of fifth grade. Time to catch up.” Below that, he’d drawn a heart with our initials in it. I’d laughed, added “2 be + 2-gether = 4-ever” and passed it back. And so it went, all morning, the page getting filled up with doodles as it went back and forth. It was completely fifth grade and completely silly and I loved it, because he wasn’t afraid to be silly. It was like kissing him first--I could do whatever I wanted, and not have to worry what he’d think of me. Five minutes before lunch, he dropped off another note marked “Open at the bell,” then excused himself to use the washroom…and didn’t return. When the bell went, I unfolded it to find a rough sketch of the school, with a dotted line from our class to an X by the principal’s office. I stuffed the note in my pocket and took off. At the office, I found an X in marker on the floor beside the trash can. I moved it and found another note. Another dotted line, this one leading outside to another X. That one ended just inside the forest, where I found a third note under a pebble…It was blank. I looked up. Rafe’s laugh floated down from the trees. “Can’t fool you, huh?

When it was over, no one clapped or said a word. It seemed as if those sweet notes were still drifting around the room. “That was lovely, Sayeh. Thank you for sharing your beautiful voice with us,” Mrs. Brisbane said. I wish she’d speak that way to me someday. Nice. Encouraging. Friendly. Anyway, the tricks continued. And after A.J. told a few riddles, Mrs. Brisbane looked around the circle and said, “Did I miss anyone?” This was the moment I’d been waiting for. No one had noticed, but the night before, I had sneaked one of Aldo’s white dusting cloths into my sleeping hut. I had to act quickly. I pulled out the cloth and crawled under so it completely covered me. Then I stood up and began to shout like I’d never shouted before. “Trick or squeak!” I cried. “Trick or squeak!” Miranda noticed first. “Look!” she yelled. “It’s Humphrey!” I wish I could have seen the faces of my classmates, but it was DARK-DARK-DARK under the cloth. I could hear them, though. First there were gasps, then giggles, then shouts of “Look!” and “Humphrey’s a ghost!” I continued to squeak my heart out until I heard Mrs. Brisbane’s firm footsteps coming toward my cage. “Who did this?” she asked. “Who put that on Humphrey?” No one answered, of course. Not even me. “He could suffocate under that,” she said. “But he looks so cute,” Heidi called out. Mrs. Brisbane didn’t answer. She just said, “Will someone please uncover him?” Golden-Miranda opened the cage door and whisked the cloth away. “Humphrey, you are a riot,” she said. Only a riot? Let’s be honest here: I was a smash hit! Then the room mothers served up cupcakes with orange icing and cups of apple juice, and my classmates played games. Just before the bell rang, Mrs. Brisbane clapped her hands and made an announcement. “Mrs. Hopper and Mrs. Patel and I have consulted

inhaled, making her head spin. Were they going to kill her? Would the Black Swan really destroy their own creation? What was the point of Project Moonlark, then? What was the point of the Everblaze? The drug lulled her toward a dreamless oblivion, but she fought back—clinging to the one memory that could shine a tiny spot of light in the thick, inky haze. A pair of beautiful aquamarine eyes. Fitz’s eyes. Her first friend in her new life. Her first friend ever. Maybe if she hadn’t noticed him that day in the museum, none of this would have happened. No. She knew it’d been too late even then. The white fires were already burning—curving toward her city and filling the sky with sticky, sweet smoke. The spark before the blaze. ONE MISS FOSTER!” MR. SWEENEY’S NASAL voice cut through Sophie’s blaring music as he yanked her earbuds out by the cords. “Have you decided that you’re too smart to pay attention to this information?” Sophie forced her eyes open. She tried not to wince as the bright fluorescents reflected off the vivid blue walls of the museum, amplifying the throbbing headache she was hiding. “No, Mr. Sweeney,” she mumbled, shrinking under the glares of her now staring classmates.

You’re evacuating us, aren’t you?’ I said in surprise. ‘But you can’t. I mean… you need us here… we need to be here.’ That was always what Mum said. We needed to be together, especially after Dad went off to fight. When war was declared, all the schools round our way closed. Our classmates and our teacher Miss Higgins got evacuated to Kent and for a while I’d get postcards from my friends Maggie and Susan, who told me all I was missing – which wasn’t much by the sound of it.

For the first half of 7th grade, I was so distracted by a new middle school and a huge batch of new classmates and friends that I barely noticed that I hadn’t worked much. I was grateful not to be working, in fact, because I didn’t want to miss a minute of my new life. I moved from class to class, mixing with different kids every period. I had eight teachers instead of one, a whole range of new subjects to dig into, like chemistry and Spanish. And then there was a brand-new selection of boys. The student body was almost 10 times the size of my old school.

My classmates stood and cheered when President Kennedy’s assassination was announced over the school’s intercom. I was in the eleventh grade in Helena, Arkansas in 1963. Even then, the cheers seemed rehearsed. How could teenagers express such rank emotion from something so vile and tragic? Was this something they had heard at home —“someone should shoot the son-of-a-bitch”? Just the year before, we had cheered the President for standing up to the Soviet Union in the Cuban missile crisis. The crisis was the threatening prospect of Soviet nuclear missiles ninety miles from the US shoreline. Kennedy had backed down the Russian premier, Nikita Khrushchev. Who knows what really happened? Now, we welcomed his brain being splintered by a rifle bullet next to his wife. A lone gunman did it. The Kennedys were for “civil rights.” This is the reason we cheered. Anyone“for civil rights” should have his head blown off. No one expressly said it, but I knew it. There were only two things for which we cheered so raucously back then: either a victory by the Arkansas Razorbacks (or, in my case, the Ole Miss Rebels) in a football game, or the defeat — in this case the murder — of a suspected civil rights leader. No international intrigue like missiles in a communist Cuba would have done it. Civil Rights. That was the reason. Later, we would say the same when John Kennedy’s brother, Robert, was killed. The Kennedys were for civil rights. That’s what got them killed.