oh dove | Daniel Applebaum

chapter 10: wintertime chirps

In contrast to the morning, Mrs. Giraud's class was uneventful which wasn't out of the ordinary. If she wasn't as scary as she was, her class would probably be everyone's designated nap time but fear of being victimized by her authoritarian rule prevented the idea from being brought into fruition. In fact, every class up until our first recess was uneventful, to say the least. I heard that most of the boys had banded together to confess during Ms. Couret's, but even then, that was forced upon me and I knew it wasn't any of my business so I didn't let it take any space in my mind.

~

"You did De Goff's homework yesterday, right?" Michèle asked me and Simone as we climbed up the school's stairs. "How were we supposed to find the angle of the triangle when we didn't even get any side lengths?"

I chuckled. "Did you look in the back of the textbook for the trigonometry table?"

Michèle ran a hand through her wavy, strawberry blonde hair as she practically caused self-inflicted blunt force trauma upon herself.

"I didn't even take home the textbook," she confessed to the humor of me and Simone.

"Oh yeah, guys," Simone stopped the group. "There aren't going to be any boys in class today, remember?"

I nodded, "Maybe that's for the better."

Michèle and Simone laughed as we stepped into the classroom that was supposed to be empty, only to find that there were many more people present than we expected. The three of us looked around, confused before whispering to one another.

"It looks like they were exaggerating when they said they had convinced most of the boys," Simone joked.

I giggled at her quip before waving the two goodbye and sitting next to Annick.

"I thought they were going to Bellanger's office this hour," I told Annick while unpacking my bag.

She shrugged, "I thought so too."

As the remainder of the student body settled down for English, it fell upon both me and Annick that not only were a majority of boys here, almost all of them were, even Dupin, Descamps, and Pichon, who one would think were the banner-men of the plan. In fact, there was only one person absent: Applebaum.

~

It was ironic that today of all days was when Applebaum had apparently decided to skip. Ms. Couret claimed that we were supposed to analyze The Beetles, who I recalled him being a fan of, but had to cancel it due to her inability to find a record from the band. Knowing the universe, The Beetles would somehow make their way back into the curriculum whenever he decides to attend class again, but for now, we were stuck discussing the rather morbid assassination of America's president for the entirety of the hour.

"I thought you guys were going to meet at Mr. Bellanger's office?" I called out to Pichon as we finally began packing up for English.

He looked up at me, already flustered at the idea of talking to the same person who scolded his friend just an hour earlier.

"I'm sorry, Lucienne..." he apologized.

I sighed, "I'm not mad at you, Pichon. I'm just disappointed that you're letting these boys push you around. I know that you didn't have anything to do with yesterday."

His face was now a faux red that he attempted to cover by pretending the contents of his bag were much more interesting than they were.

"Applebaum wanted to go alone," Pichon admitted. "Lucienne, I'm really sorry for how he or any of us have made you feel-"