In the Woods When First We Met

47. Rise

Anne had been so distracted and slow in the morning working on math that she hadn't finished the problems and decided she would take them home with her to work on them in peace.

Mr. Phillips had assigned everyone to work on the math together with their desk partner- presumably so he didn't have to actually teach the lesson, Anne thought wryly. But after Gilbert did...well, whatever it was he did- Anne still didn't understand what Gilbert had communicated to Billy through their eye contact- Billy had suddenly lost interest in her and did the work by himself.

Of course Anne preferred it that way.

But when Mr. Phillips collected "their" paper from the math work, she wondered how many problems Billy had gotten wrong and how it would reflect poorly on her own grade. She would have preferred to turn in her paper as "their" paper, but since she hadn't finished, they'd have to just go with his.

The afternoon was better because it began with reading.

With the morning out of the way- Anne was eager to consider the morning past and the afternoon new with nothing bad in it- she looked forward to reading in her reader.

She finished the assigned reading passage and then worked on the questions in the book.

Once she finished, she moved ahead in her book, looking for something new she could read to fill the time.

She stopped on a poem in her book. Emily Dickinson. Anne liked when the writers in her book were women. There weren't nearly as many of them as men, and Anne felt uplifted by them. They were women with voices, making their voices heard. Their thoughts were printed into books and sent all over the country- maybe all over the world- for countless people to be inspired by.

We never know how high we are

Till we are called to rise;

And then, if we are true to plan,

Our statures touch the skies—

The Heroism we recite

Would be a daily thing,

Did not ourselves the Cubits warp

For fear to be a King—

Anne sat back, thinking about this.

I can't lose myself. The thought came into her mind like a flash of lightning, so striking and bold it was as if God himself had put it there. Billy may have taken things away from me, but he can't take me.

She sat up from her book, new resolution firming itself. No matter how he knocks me down, I'm still me, and I'm perfectly capable of rising.

She had a few minutes free and she decided to try writing a little story about a plucky heroine who finds herself battling a big, fiery breathed dragon.

She felt very inspired.

It didn't take long before she found herself faced with a test of this new resolve.

Billy finally finished the reading and started answering the question portion. He began looking over at her paper to steal her answers. But he noticed she wasn't still answering the questions, she was writing something else.

Anne could feel him peering over her. She wanted to pull away from him and cover up her paper, but she fought that urge. She refused to change anything she was doing for him- she wasn't going to move, she wasn't going to cover her paper, she wasn't going to act as if it bothered her at all that he was even there. She kept writing. He can look at my paper all he wants, she thought, why not? If Mr. Phillips sees him, he'll get in trouble for looking at someone else's paper, and it'll be his own fault. She kept writing and ignoring him.

Billy was surprised- he was sure she was aware that he was looking, and he had expected a reaction by now. Why wasn't she doing anything? Maybe he needed to do something more drastic.

He snatched her paper.

Anne, startled, stared straight ahead breathing hard as if she was trying to stay calm. Her face looked exactly the same way it had looked when Gilbert grabbed her hair that day. This is great, he thought, she's about to blow up.

But she didn't. She turned to him, eyebrows raised.

Billy didn't even have to speak that quietly since there were different groups doing different things and there was a steady hum of quiet conversation in the room. Whatever he said could blend in without attracting much attention.

Holding her paper up, he said, "What have you got here?"

Anne said coldly, "Don't you already know? I thought you'd finished reading it by now."

Billy, in a mocking tone, read her title aloud. "The Tale of Persephone and the Dragon".

Through tight lips, she said, "It is pronounced 'Per-SEFF-uh-nee', not 'PER-seff-on'. It is Greek."

She wanted to snatch her paper back, but she didn't. She didn't want him to know how angry he was making her.

Billy wanted to make fun of her story, but he didn't know how to. It annoyed him because he actually thought it was really good. It sounded like a real story, one you would read in a book.

"That's stupid," he finally said, letting the paper drop on the desk.

"I didn't realize you were a literary critic."

"A what?"

Anne said, "You might want to go back to your work now. It would benefit you to learn something." She turned back to her paper and began to write again.

Billy was going to start his work again, but now he couldn't, because she had told him to.

So instead he took his pen and dipped it, slowly and deliberately, into her inkwell.

"Get. Your. Pen. Out of my. Ink." Her voice was icy.

He took his pen out, but then dipped it back in again, grinning at her.

They'd been quiet, but Gilbert happened to glance backward then- he'd been looking back from time to time, and now he turned and saw Billy's arm resting across Anne's side of the desk with his pen in Anne's ink.

Gilbert looked at Anne's face. "Billy-" he said, loud enough that the two boys between them looked up.

Billy smirked. "I'm done letting you boss me around, Blythe".

Anne was shaking inwardly, but took a deep breath. "It's fine, Gilbert," she said to him.

She looked back at Billy. A brief snippet in time flashed across her mind of the way his eyes had looked in the woods that day. She blinked it away and firmed her resolve. As confidently as she could, forcing herself to stare straight into Billy's eyes, she said:

"I am not afraid of you."