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12: If Heaven and Hell Decide
“Um…”This is not an uncommon occurrence, so she just waits.“Delilah?”As if. “Nope.”“Delia?”She wished. “Nope.”“Dinearys?” Her eye widen as her eyebrows rise. “Huh? I don’t even know that name.”“Oh, um…” The gawky young woman blinks at her, cheeks coloring. “Um, from Greek mythology?”She shrugs. “I don’t do mythology so much—“The young woman’s embarrassment begins to turn smug.“—I’m more into the architecture and the engineering. Particularly the Romans. Don’t pay much attention to the art or the mythology.”The young woman’s face falls.She just keeps staring.“So, um, your name…”Her arms aren’t crossed over her chest, but the jut of her hips is confrontational, daring. And she keeps staring.“Um, I…how do you say it again?”“Dee-nay-lees,” she says, carefully and patiently, taking her time. “Dinaelise. But people call me Dinah.”Ears and neck a bright red, the woman handed over Dinah’s paperwork. “Have a good first day.”Dinah nods and thanks her before turning to walk away.She hears, “Did you see how aggressive she was? She’s going to be trouble, watch,” before she makes it out the door.It’s her first day of Ninth grade at a school at the far end of the city. She asked to be here.“Miss Torres…”“Yes, sir.”“Had you been studying this subject at your old school?”“Not yet. I don’t think we would have gotten to it until later in the year.”“…Then how do you know so much on the subject?”“Ancient architecture?”“Of course.”“I-I read about it.”“On your own?”“It was in the textbook.”“So your teacher assigned it to you?”“No, sir. I got bored and read ahead.”“That so?”“Yes, sir.”“Hmm.”“And I read on my own.”“Oh?”“I…I like architecture. And engineering.”“That so?”“Yes, sir.”“That will be all. You can take your seat.”Nodding, Dinah tries to sit in her chair instead of falling into it. The chairs in the classroom are arranged along the walls so that they form a U around the teacher’s desk. They only go two-deep, so there had been nowhere to hide during her interrogation. If she’d known that having the right answer would have led to all that, she would have kept her mouth shut the way she’d done at her old school. As it is, she holds her pen in an iron grip and refuses to tear her eyes away from her spiral notebook. Mr. Williams seems to neither notice nor care.The sweat on her palms has dried by the time the bell rings for the next class. She quickly packs her things, but still ends up near the back of the line trying to get out of the room, just ahead of Mr. Williams and another teacher who had been sitting in a corner near the windows. So it’s no wonder that she overhears: “I think we may have found our star.”She marvels at the words for days.Fin[ite]