Never Take the Brown Bomber Jacket

When Anime Characters Come to Life

A week went by without incident.  It happened to be Friday again, the last period of the day: period 11, AP World.

            "So, class," my teacher, Mrs. Miedner, said loudly, demanding our attention.  "I have graded your projects from last week, and you all have to present them in front of the class."  The entire room groaned loudly.  "I'll pick randomly who will go first."  She closed her eyes and pointed to a random name on the attendance list.  "Holly," she announced.

            I froze.  There were no other Holly's in this grade, so she could only mean me.  Everyone was staring at me as I stood up and walked semi-robotically to the front of the room.  I turned around to face the class after Mrs. Miedner put my flashdrive in and gave me the thumbs up.  I swallowed nervously.  Cassie was in the back of the room, watching me worriedly.  Mostly everyone in the class knew that I had severe stage fright, and what made this even worse was that I was going first.

       After a slow, full minute of me just staring at everybody's faces and not speaking a word, Mrs. Miedner placed an encouraging hand on my shoulder.  "You can do this Holly," she said quietly.  "It should take less than ten minutes."

            I bit my lip and nodded.  She sat back down in her chair.  Cassie smiled at me, and I took a deep breath and opened my mouth to speak when--

         "Hey, you!" a somewhat familiar voice shouted.  Everyone's attention turned to the young man standing the doorway, pointing at me.  My jaw dropped in surprise and shock.  America from Hetalia was standing in the doorway to my classroom.

            "Give me back my jacket!" he demanded, marching towards me.

            I looked down at my outfit.  I forgot that I was wearing the jacket today; nobody really mentioned it.

          However, that wasn't really the problem here.  The problem was that Alfred F. Jones just marched into my classroom and was standing in front of me with his hand held out, expecting his jacket back.

            I couldn't move, and everyone else seemed to be frozen as well.  "A-Alfred?" I asked quietly.

            "Holly," Mrs. Miedner said.  "Do you know who this is?"

          I looked at her, then back at Alfred, who's face was as red as the tomatoes Spain and Romano eat.  "Holy fucking shit," I whispered.

          Taking advantage of everyone's shock, I grabbed America's wrist and dragged him out of the room as quickly as I could, repeating "Holy shit, holy fucking shit," along the way.

            I brought the nation to a section of the school where I knew there were no classes in session and where the cameras couldn't see us.  Thankfully, he didn't struggle or we would've had a problem.

        "What... the... hell?" I said slowly as I stared at him with wide eyes.  "Are you even real?  Well, apparently you are, because everybody in my AP World class just saw you!"  I threw my hands up in the air and let them fall back to my sides.

            Alfred just stared at me for a moment.  "Wait," he said.  "Dude, you remember me?  You know who I am?"  A huge grin broke out on his face.  "Do you, like, know how awesome that is?"

        I face palmed.  There's America for you.  "Yes, I know who you are.  There's this show called Hetalia that's about all of the nations and--"  I stopped mid-explanation.  "Wait a moment, so this is actually yours?" I asked, grabbing the jacket.

            "Yeah!  Well, at least I think it still is."

            "What do you mean by that?"