Page 13 of Darkened Wings
“The least she could do is not make a spectacle of herself.”
“Ugh, broken and damaged, seat for one.”
This time, they seemed to stab me a little deeper. These people didn’t even know me. They clearly knew something about my parents and that I was damaged, but that was the extent of their knowledge. But of Gwen, as a person, they didn’t have the faintest clue.
People judged you based on rumors or what they pretended to know.
I’d learned not to do that a long time ago.
One of my counselors at the group home had said that hurt people. For me, that wasn’t true at all. I knew what it felt like to be hurt by others. I knew the pain in my chest, staring into the night after a day of jeering and taunting. Humans picked on me for no other reason other than I was alone in this world. They had no idea that the beautiful beast inside me was actually a gorgeous disaster.
Hurt people didn’t hurt people. Hurt people made it their goal not to cause others pain because they knew the scars left on a soul.
As I took my seat and pulled out a notebook, I took a few deep breaths, trying to slow my heartbeat so I could actually pay attention. My life and getting out of here unscathed depended on it. I would bury myself so deeply in studying and learning that the rumors and whispers would fail to reach my ears.
Silence sounded nice.
The professor announced her name. She was not only the homeroom teacher but the history teacher. I wouldn’t have to move classrooms. That was one plus for the day. She took attendance, sneering over my name and not even waiting for me to raise my hand before moving on. Of course she knew I was there.
She had made an example of me.
As I listened to the others’ names, my mind wandered to the words she had said to me while I was at the front of the classroom. I knew I was a legacy because of my parents. Wasn’t news to me; it was the only reason I’d gotten in here in the first place.
The rest of the things she said caused my mind to spiral.
Exactly what privilege would I have because of my parents? As far as I knew, my parents were hardworking, middle-class people. We had enough when I was growing up, but there was nothing fancy about our life. Our home was a small two-bedroom place in a normal neighborhood. My dad and mom both worked full-time jobs, and during the holidays, my mom would sell her baked goods for extra cash.
Her gingerbread loaf was to die for. People pre-ordered them, they were so good. After they passed on, our neighbor asked me for the recipe. It was one of the few things I’d gotten to keep after social services came to get me.
No way I was giving that up. It was a piece of my mom.
I racked my brain trying to think of what in the hell the professor meant by her comments but came up with nothing.
Didn’t matter, I supposed. All I had to do was endure their jeers and taunts for a few years and then spread my wings.
It sounded all so simple in my head, but I was well aware of the heartbreak and pain I would have to go through if they kept this up.
Damaged people were easy to bully, and I hadn’t quite found my spine yet.
A bell rang above me, and I held my pen poised over my empty notebook, ready to begin my journey. Syllabi were passed out among the students, and several groaned over the sheer size of it. From movies, I always thought a syllabus was a one-page outline of what the semester would hold. This woman had turned an outline into a novel.
“Now that you’ve all taken a moment to look over the syllabus and made your wordless complaints, let’s get to work. Remember, this is not just some history class, this is your past and your future because we can’t move on without knowing where we came from. Now, page one of your syllabus is the rules. We will begin with page two of your syllabus. Let’s begin.”
The professor had a large white screen that she controlled from the laptop. It was easy to see, and she had put a picture of a raven on each slide, dressing them up, so to speak. She announced early on that despite her large syllabus, she would be adding to the notes already in there. Basically her syllabus was a study guide, but the information used to formulate tests would be from her lectures.
First class, and already I was stressed. I might not ever pick my head up from a book again, I’d be studying so much.
Still, it would be nice to learn where I came from, other than my parents.
Focused, I wrote down everything she said, flipping the pages of my notebook like a madwoman. Sometimes she would flip to a new screen before I even got everything down. She’d paused to go to her podium and drink some water when I noticed the rest of the students weren’t paying attention at all.
Some didn’t even have notebooks out. Most were using their thumbs to scroll on their phones, while others whispered to each other or looked at me over their shoulders.
Didn’t they care about passing the class?
Then, as the teacher returned to lecturing, I realized why. They knew these histories. Their parents probably passed down the stories while their kids sipped on hot chocolate in front of a blazing fire or a similar situation.
Raven history was old news for these people, and they knew it well.
