A Different Blue(9)

“So Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon, rushing to his destiny. And it was a destiny both glorious and tragic. He reached the very pinnacle of power, and in the end he discovered power is an illusion.

“So that brings us to round three, people. Feel free to add pages as you need. This is the assignment we started the first day of school. And it's just going to keep on growing. You've written some of your history, at least in broad terms. Now I want you to take one moment from your life. A moment where the dye was cast, where you crossed your metaphorical Rubicon and you couldn't go back. I want you to tell me how it formed you or changed you. Maybe it was something that was beyond your control, something that happened to you, or maybe it was an actual decision you made. For better or worse, how did it affect the direction of your story?”

One by one, Wilson started passing papers to my classmates, making a comment here or there. I sighed, remembering how I had thrown mine in the trash. Again. The classroom got quiet as people got to work. I tore a clean sheet of paper from a notebook and prepared to start over. Wilson was suddenly standing in front of my desk, which unfortunately had remained right on the front row since he had assigned us to the seats we had “chosen” on the first day of school.

He laid a sheet of paper on my desk. I looked down at it in surprise. My eyes shot up to his and then back down to my paper. It was the paper I had thrown away. Twice. He must have retrieved it after I left the room that day. It had been smoothed and pressed flat again, as if he had laid it between a couple of heavy books. My words stared back at me, almost mocking.

“There's no sense in running from the past. We can't throw it away or pretend it didn't happen, Miss Echohawk. But maybe we can learn something from it. You have an interesting story, and I'd like you to tell me more.” He turned to walk away.

“Seems a little unfair to me,” I blurted out, and I immediately wished I had kept my big mouth shut when thirty pairs of eyes zeroed in on me.

Wilson raised his eyebrows, tilted his head inquisitively and folded his arms.

“What do you mean?” he asked quietly. I expected him to get red in the face or kick me out. That's usually what happened in my other classes when I couldn't keep my sassy comments to myself.

I shrugged and popped the gum I wasn't supposed to be chewing. “You ask us to bare all, write our little secrets down, our lowest moments, but I don't see you sharing anything personal with us. Maybe I don't want you to know my story.”

The class was quiet. Shockingly so. It seemed everyone was holding their breath, waiting to see if Blue Echohawk had finally gone too far. When Wilson didn't explode but merely eyed me owlishly for several long seconds, the tension eased somewhat.

“Okay. Fair enough,” Wilson acquiesed quietly. “But I am the teacher, which by definition means I instruct and you learn, so things are not going to necessarily be fair because we have different roles. And in the interest of time, I'm not going to spend the class period talking about myself.”

“How about twenty questions?” somebody spoke up from the back of the class.

“Or spin the bottle,” someone else shouted out, and a few people snickered.

“Tell you what. I will give you a brief timeline, just like you've done for me, and then I'll tell you my turning point moment. Deal? That way Miss Echohawk can be confident that everything is fair.” He winked at me, and I resisted the urge to stick out my tongue. Teachers were not supposed to be young and cute. Somehow that really irritated me. I just arched one eyebrow disdainfully and looked away.

“I was born in Manchester, England. I have two older sisters. One sister still lives in England, as does my mother. My oldest sister, Tiffa, lives in Las Vegas, which incidently is what brought me here. I am twenty-two years old. I finished what we call college when I was fifteen, which I suppose is about the equivalent of graduating from high school very early.”

“Wow! So you're really smart, huh?” This brilliant deduction was offered by a girl with a Marilyn Monroe voice who used glittery pens and wrote each letter of her name in a different color, surrounded by hearts and stars. I had dubbed her Sparkles.

I snorted loudly. Wilson shot me a look, and I decided it was probably time to shut up.

“We moved to the states when I was sixteen so I could attend university early, which is simply not done in England. My mum is English, but my dad was an American. He was a doctor and took a position at the Huntsman Cancer institute in Utah. I graduated from university when I was nineteen, and that's when I had my turning point moment. My dad died. He had wanted me to be a doctor like he was – actually four generations of men in my family have been doctors. But I was rather a mess after he died and decided to go another direction. I spent two years in Africa in the Peace Corp teaching English. I discovered I really liked teaching.”