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CHAPTER FIVE birds of a feather
⋆*✧･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:
SURPRISINGLY, NADINE HAD managed to go a year and a half at Dallas Aquarium without physically lashing out. Even with her infuriating coworkers, condescending boss, and aquarium patrons with "the customer is always right" mentality, she'd somehow managed to get by without wringing a neck or two. The self-restraint she'd demonstrated as an employee here had been remarkable, but there was always going to be a day where that ended. Where she'd receive the final blow that knocked her over the edge.
Today happened to be that day. Nadine had woken up with the sun, burdened with the knowledge of another day spent in 1963, and a piece of her had cracked. Her impatience—which was always needling at the back of her mind, like an irritating itch she could never quite manage to reach—had floundered to the surface, berating her with memories she couldn't push away. Her morning run only provided her with temporary relief. As soon as she'd ground to a halt, all of those names had wormed their way back to the forefront of her mind.
Thomas had been bothering her since he'd first moved into his posts, but today, he'd taken it one step further. His marriage proposal—and the inherent misogyny that came with it—had been enough to break the strained rubber band holding Nadine together in two, and she'd finally snapped. Her world had been so clouded over with red that she'd forgotten where she was, and by the time she realized that she was manhandling Thomas in front of her coworkers, it was too late.
Well, well, well, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions.
Sitting in Mr. Flannigan's office, awaiting her punishment, made Nadine feel distinctly thirteen years old again, being chastised by her principal for getting into fights at school. M Alexandre had never expelled her, but she had been suspended on multiple occasions; black marks that marred her school record.
"Vous devez utilizer vos mots, Nadine," he'd tell her, tapping his fingers irritably on his desk. The surface would always be cluttered with trinkets, and it would be a struggle to focus on what he was saying when the Bob Ross bobblehead nodded at her and the cactus growing from a pot painted like the France flag begged to be touched. "Vous ne pouvez pas résoudre tous les arguments avec vos poings." You need to use your words, Nadine. You can't solve every argument with your fists.
"Pourquoi pas?" Nadine would always ask, imagining pricking herself on one of the cactus's spines. Why not?
"Parce que la violence n'est pas la réponse," her principal would reply, arms crossed. Because violence isn't the answer. It was such a textbook, moronic, and absurdly childish way of thinking that Nadine always rolled her eyes. Maybe violence wasn't always the answer, but there were a great many scenarios where it was. Like when Denis Cantillon had thrown gum in her hair for the third day in a row, and pleaded innocent whenever Nadine had attempted to tell her teachers. She'd had to cut around it, which made her hair uneven and shorter than she would've liked. So when Nadine felt the wadded-up lump of strawberry-mint land in her hair yet again, she'd stood up, walked right up to Denis, and kicked him in the nuts.
