Fall

Chapter 3: Harrowing Vicissitudes

I doodle in my notebook, bored with the lesson given by Mr. Tanner. Instead, I go through the different weapon designs I had seen in my dreams last night. I had seen a pair of daggers with a plastic clip attached that could be hidden in a ponytail, as well as another pair of ring daggers that were infused with two different flowers I'd never seen before. I draw the flowers as well, looking forward to showing these to Ms. Skuld after school and potentially create them together.

"The battle of Willow Creek took place right at the end of the war in our very own Mystic Falls." Josh sits next to me, muttering lyrics to more songs under his breath as he fiddles with the zipper of his jacket. He zips it up and down, up and down. I grit my teeth and try to drown it out, even getting to the point of preferring to listen to this history lesson -- one who's details I already know all about -- rather than his incessant zipping. "How many casualties resulted in this battle?" He questioned. People sank in their chairs or looked down to avoid being called on, but I shot my hand in the air as the answer came to my mind.

He looks at everyone but me, clearly not a fan of the Gilbert/Sommers family, and calls on Bonnie instead. "Ms. Bennett?" Bonnie startles and looks up, pressing her lips together as she draws on her own notebook and tries to come up with an answer.

"Um...a lot? I'm not sure." She takes a moment before smiling as people chuckle at her. "Like a whole lot?" Mr. Tanner walks to the front of his desk with annoyance on his face, keeping his hand on our history textbook.

"Cute becomes dumb in an instant, Ms. Bennett." He clips distastefully, before looking around her to Matt at the back of the class. "Mr. Donovan? Would you like to take this opportunity to overcome your embedded jock stereotype?" Matt looks at him with bleary eyes, as if he had been sleeping in class. For all intents and purposes, he probably was.

"It's ok, Mr. Tanner. I'm cool with it." We all laugh at that, at how cavalier he is. Mr. Tanner presses his lips into a thin line, in what could be called a smile if we couldn't feel the frustration coming off of him in waves. I keep my hand in the air, but he ignores it. He instead turns to Elena on the other side of me.

"Elena? Surely you can enlighten us about one of the town's most significantly historical events?" I look to my right to see if Elena knows it. She takes a deep breath but has a blank look on her face. I keep my hand up, but use the other to write down the number on a scrap of paper to try and pass to her. Mr. Tanner shoots me a dark look as I make to do so, and I hesitantly stop in my motion.

"I'm sorry, I...I don't know." He looks at her as his frustration boils, and I put my arm down and feel my body tense with protectiveness.

"I was willing to be lenient with you and Kara last year for obvious reasons, Elena. But the personal excuses ended with summer break." I feel my hand twitch in anger, wanting to deck him, as he walks over to my desk. "Kara here was in the crash too, but she's doing better than you. What's your excuse?" I slam my hand on my desk to get his attention from an increasingly defeated Elena, and his dark eyes turn to me.

"There were 346 casualties, unless you're counting local civilians. Satisfied, Mr. Tanner?" I respond to his question bitingly, clenching my hand around my pencil so hard that it seems a second away from snapping. I am going straight to the principal after this class, I dare Mr. Tanner to be able to excuse away his behavior today. Mr. Tanner glares back at me, seemingly taking delight in us failing and getting miffed when one of us succeeds.

"That's correct. Except, of course, there were no civilian casualties in this battle." He smirks at me. He moves back to the blackboard to write something on it with the chalk in his hand, until a certain new guy behind us speaks up.

"Actually, there were 27, sir." Mr. Tanner turns around to give Stefan a bewildered stare. "Confederate soldiers, they fired on the church, believing it to be housing weapons. They were wrong. It was a night of great loss. The founder's archives are, uh, stored in civil hall if you'd like to brush up on your facts, Mr. Tanner." I can't help the smile that tugs at my lips as I see how utterly speechless he made Mr. Tanner. I turn behind me to look at Stefan, mouthing a 'Thank you' to him.