Mr. Taylor knows this is history. The mouths of his students yawn. Along the sides of the room, bulletin boards show maps of the world. Earth in her colonized state stands exposed to the early morning light. The students blink.
Today they are building a wall.
“And so Berlin, though technically in the Soviet sector, was also divided between four different countries. What do you think were the implications of that division?”
*
Luther hears the words Mr. Taylor says but no, doesn’t actually hear them no they fall into the soft pounding mess between his ears. He closes his eyes and puts his hand in front of his face to hide his closed eyes but the pounding follows. Eyes open. Mr. Taylor’s hand is slicing the air into pieces like a cake. One two three four. Things divided. Luther wets his lips, tastes a little blood from where they got cracked last night. Must have been, it being so cold. If the night made more sense that would be better. But there was this feeling in his stomach waking up. Like a question. Or like a hollow maybe. Hot and warm and maybe good or maybe not so good but this pounding now maybe makes sense what with the cheap rum. He digs his hands into the sleeves of his sweatshirt. Under his t-shirt, his bruised rib aches from yesterday’s practice. And that and why? He can taste something between his teeth. Bacon left over from breakfast. He teases out the morsel and swallows. His mouth salivates. The brain slams back and forth and back. And what happened? He can feel his eyelids drooping. The pain jolts him awake.
*
“It made things tense probably,” June says, and then cracks the knuckle of her right wrist twisting it like okay she does not care. No one ever answers the guy when he talks and so she has to talk because it’s not so nice to say things and then everyone act like you never even said anything. In her mind, her mind grows bigger, swells, rots. A fat, old grapefruit ready to–June pushes a finger against the side of her skull. Her blond hair feels soft. Does playing with your hair mean something? Maybe. Or not. Maybe ask Oliver later if she does it a lot and never noticed til’ now. She twists a strand and stares at a map of the United States. She hasn’t been anywhere. All these places she has never even thought of. Nobody thinks about anything sometimes. So the stuff just sits there. Unthought about. Alone. Lonely? The hair feels good between her fingers. Like it’s hers. Tiny plaits of straw.
*
“Anyone care to expand on June’s answer?” Mr. Taylor beckons the room.
Silence. A shifting of legs under desks. A sweater buttoned. Unbuttoned.
“Let’s think about it this way. We have US, UK, French and Soviet occupation all in one city. A city that’s within a Soviet occupied zone. What else was going on in the world?” Mr. Taylor waits. Waits. Here, a classroom of young minds and he was once a young mind, too! The first time he saw the Grand Canyon he wept. The potential. The precipice. What would Isabel say? He fingers the tie she picked out for him that morning. ‘A good match,’ she said. All right.
*
Simon thinks, “You mean the cold war? Or I don’t know…I—” Simon doesn’t raise his hand—thinks to say something —doesn’t. He looks at his hand on his desk and pretends to see it from far off, from ten years from then, from a time where this is a memory. The right now isn’t always the best. But the inside of the head is a pretty good place, and he can pull in the outside people and make them live his way in the inside part of his mind. And sometimes it works. If he tries hard enough, Simon can pretend he isn’t in the classroom at all, and then remember he is. It’s a great feeling. To be nowhere and then be somewhere he knows. He can smell June’s shampoo from where he’s sitting. Like apples or summer or something ripe. She doesn’t know that he can smell it but he can. In his mind, she washed it for him. It is a reminder.
*
“So you mean the Berlin wall?” Theresa asks then glances toward the door to see, yeah, that was Jorge walking by. Not looking her way but yes looking because he knows she’s in here and they belong to each other, but not really. Berlin wall wall wall wall. The word feels funny when she says it in her head, like it makes her look like a fish. And like Jorge is a good person. With a pretty good face, sort of like a TV face, sort of. But also maybe a little dumb? But they are in love. They say it all the time. When they make out and when she’s blowing him and other times too like when he takes her to taco bell. They like the same hot sauce, for like real. Fire and all. So last night was a fuck up and it’s over now. And he walked by just now because he loves her and not because he called last night and she was not around. She sits up, rolls back her shoulders. She has shit posture and she’s supposed to remember to work on it for her or for her mother or both. And what? They’re young. But love makes you crazy and yeah that’s true. Wall wall wall wall. He doesn’t have to find out.
*
Mr. Taylor nods. “The wall is right, Theresa, but before we get there I want to examine the origins of the situation. Why was the wall the supposed solution?”
*
In the corner, Jason coughs. Then hacks loudly at the mucus in his throat. Andy and Iris laugh. Everyone else pretends not to notice.
*
Mr. Taylor hears the fluorescent lights hum to him overhead. Hello, Mr. T. Now this is something!
“Okay, everyone stand up. We’re going to try something new.” He rolls his sleeves to his elbows and straightens his tie.
The students rise begrudgingly. The air moves around them creating orbits of teenage smells. Bath & Body Works. Right Guard. Musk. The desks form five rows, with five desks per row. There are twenty students. Four students are absent with the flu.
Mr. Taylor orders them to move their desks into four separate blocks. The two sections on the left side of the room face the sections on the right. There is a wide aisle between them. This is where Mr. Taylor stands.
*
Simon doesn’t like how she can just be there and act like they were never friends or like he doesn’t exist and impress her smell into the air and he have to sit there just taking it. Like she’s perfect or something. Simon feels small and not the small he used to feel but the way that he grew up and no one noticed and they noticed it for other people. He’d like to smack that smell out of her hair. Tell her that his sister’s baby is loud as sin and he’s the one watching it all the time when his sister’s out being gross. She should know he’s a decent person. They grew up a mile apart so where did all this space come from? June doesn’t think about the good parts of Simon. She has forgotten he exists. He can tell. He is buried.
*
Luther’s desk has been moved to the left side of the classroom directly across from Theresa and next to Han. His face is still falling off into his hands but there’s this other feeling that is somehow worse and it’s in his stomach. It’s like an anxious thing like during a game when he’s going to get called in and he never gets called in and then he’s out there and wonders why he drank the night before cause he feels like shit and he’s gonna get yelled at and fuck up and cost the team. Or when a girl wants to touch his dick and he doesn’t know what to do. And like not all the way knowing about last night. But that there was puke in the car this morning and he felt maybe good right when he woke up. But that feeling is gone. He can feel Theresa looking at him. Which makes sense cause they were hanging out last night, right? But also doesn’t as they don’t hang out much anymore what with her being obsessed with Jorge. What is this feeling and why does he have to have it?
*
Mr. Taylor parades in the middle. He speaks from the ravine. “So pretty quickly the non-Soviet forces joined together in their plans to help get Germany back to being self-sufficient, but you ended up with a divided city. Soviet/Stalin-run East Berlin, and West Berlin, which was more liberal.”
*
Theresa runs her fingers through the ends of her hair to feel the blunt edges line up from where she had it straightened yesterday afternoon. Jorge took her once to see a movie about Berlin and the spies there. It was the foreign one that won the Oscar and Jorge took her to it to impress her, though they mostly made out and she was nervous cause she didn’t know how much he liked her then. It was a love story, but it was sad. Which is maybe how love is mostly. That’d be a good thing to show in class. Like maybe make people care. And we’re all watching each other anyway—so it’s like high school in a kind of way. Her mom says stop caring so much what other people think but it’s mostly impossible when you’re with people all the time and they can make your life good or bad or whatever. Luther won’t look at her which makes sense. Why did she let herself get so wasted? They belong to each other. It’s okay. You only have what you have right now. They could teach that.
*
“So everyone on this side,” Mr. Taylor says, swooping his arm to include the left half of the classroom, “is in East Berlin and everyone on the other side facing them is in West Berlin.” He listens to himself teach. It doesn’t sound like him. It sounds like someone else. He is the adult and they are the children. Isabel asks if he feels like a fake when he teaches. But the real question is, can they tell?
*
June tries to picture Germany, but fails and tries again and can’t. What does Germany look like anyway? Sometimes the imagination isn’t strong enough to make this place into something else. It hurts her insides when she fails like this. Like it’s lonely only being in your own head all the time. Or maybe it’s lonely not being in your head. Like loving a person so much that it makes you feel sick. Like Oliver. When she moves away it will be easier to imagine having loved this place. She’ll be able to be anywhere. Simon’s looking at her again. Vomit. He was someone she knew, but doesn’t really know anymore. It’s like he died and his ghost haunts the high school. She wiggles her ears. Does anyone notice?
*
“Soon the border between Eastern and Western Germany was closed. They actually erected a barbed wire fence. But Berlin was still open so it became a center for East German emigration.”
*
Jason burps loudly. A third of the class laughs. “Mr. T, I don’t see any barb wire. You got that coming soon?” Mr. Taylor smiles and shake his head, like oh that Jason, but Jason knows Mr. T can ignore him maybe now, maybe on the surface but inside the doubt swells. Which is good because it’s what he wants. Like Mr. T should know that Jason knows that this all of them all moving around the room is supposed to make the history come to life, but really the effort is kind of embarrassing. It’s like later today, Mr. T’s going to walk around and think he did something special, but then remember Jason and feel small. Feel angry. And Jason lives on. The voice of doubt and reason. Hilarious. When he tries so hard it’s painful to watch or at best it’s entertaining.
*
Theresa wonders why Jason has to talk sometimes when someone is trying to do something different. He thinks he’s funny and all of them think he’s funny but she knows he’s gross. And pretty rapey at least is what Anna said when she went on a date with him last summer. Not like Jorge, no. He’s so kind it kind of makes her well bored. If that wasn’t such a backwards way of thinking. Like you can love someone and then they love you back and it’s all so easy. And where’s the tension then? So maybe all she did last night was bring the tension up a notch. Theresa crosses her legs and raises her hand. “Why didn’t the West side just make the East be like them? Like, if no one wanted to live there and all?”
*
“Well, even if the Western countries wanted complete control, the negotiations had already taken place. Remember, the Soviets were a major world force at that point.”
*
Simon wipes his lip with the back of his hand and feels the drool there. He’s doing it again. Going somewhere else when this is where he is. And this is where he wants to be for as long as he is able. Surrounded by all the people he has been surrounded by for so many years since they were kids and were all much nicer and kinder to each other but that was so long ago. And he was probably nicer and kinder too. And before all the bad things had happened and before June fell in love with his best friend and before he did the bad thing and his friends weren’t around and before his sister got ruined and his life got ruined in the mix. He’s so close to June now, what with the two of them being in East Germany. But they’re not close and how do you just do that. Just say, see you later? It shouldn’t be so easy but it is.
*
Luther stares at Theresa’s lips. She always has them pursed. Like she is about to tell you to fuck off. Last night she was being hilarious like it made him miss seeing her now that she’s always with Jorge. And then the feeling comes back. The weird good but not good thing and it’s like there’s an umbrella in his gut and it’s opening and then closing. But at least the ache in his head is passing or passed. And then, this other feeling comes, all these feelings, Christ. But this is more of a memory and it’s him all blurry with her, a girl, Theresa? And they’re in his car and they’re laughing and then maybe she’s not wearing a shirt? But not possible, no. They were all in the church parking lot and yeah that made sense but then they went to someone’s house, maybe Aasif’s cause his parents were out of town. But he doesn’t like Theresa, doesn’t like any of them and that maybe makes the feeling make sense now. They were laughing and she was calling him gay and then she kissed him? No. They’re friends. She’s better than that. But he’s been staring at her mouth so long he didn’t notice she’s smiling at him. But Mr. Taylor isn’t smiling so much, he looks pissed. Luther raises his hand. “The red terror, yeah?” Sometimes you want to help him out.
*
Mr. Taylor can’t tell if they are ever really getting the point of it. But even if they don’t think about it now, maybe it will sink in later. Like Isabel, she hadn’t wanted to marry him at first. It took time. On their honeymoon, he took her out west. They stood on the South rim, gazing at the North rim. It was magnificent. You say to a student East Berlin! Apartheid! Genghis Khan! They need to remember a place. Themselves in a place. A right here right now. Something to reconstruct later. “Well yes, Luther. It was the Red Menace actually. But you’re close. So as far as places to be, East Germany wasn’t quite as thriving as West German fiscally. And don’t forget East Germany was a police state. So, does anyone living in East Berlin want to emigrate to the West?”
A pause and then LutherSarahMarkus emigrate. Luther takes an open seat next to Theresa.
“Okay, great. Now, in June of 1961, due to the increased emigration, the border in West Berlin was closed, and that’s when they started to build the wall.”
Mr. Taylor has four vacant desks dragged to the center of the room and placed in a line. The wall is begun.
*
June shifts in her seat in the Eastern bloc and can feel her thighs touching slightly through her jeans. Someone told her once (or maybe it was something she’d read?) the surest sign you’re getting fat is when your thighs touch when you walk. It was something she didn’t need to know. The fat is going to come so what good is knowing about it. Only that doesn’t make sense. She is already loved by someone so that means she can do anything, right? Like someone else has decided to validate her being and so if she gets fat or her face gets all withered or her brain stops working she’ll be okay. Outside the sun is sucking on the asphalt making it all hot and beautiful. She likes her mind. It is an okay thing. An okay place. But also she doesn’t like it like when she thinks that she likes it. Can she find a reason to walk around the classroom? She feels constrained with the Wall being so nearby. Or is it the secret police? Or is it Simon pretending not to look at her, but so clearly looking at her? Why is it so easy to hate yourself when you’re the only thing you have?
*
Simon is not such a bad person. He’s loving and he’s not ugly or hopefully not too ugly. He scans the classroom, looking at all the familiar faces. The memories of all these people froth in his brain. Lovely, when he thinks about it. They have all raised one another. It hurts his insides sometimes, how much he loves them all and how little that means. The older he gets the more he knows it doesn’t matter how much you love a thing, it is going to do whatever it wants to do. The baby cries all the time because it’s a baby and because that’s what babies do. And especially when its mom is nowhere in sight and so some boy like him has to pretend to know what to do. Like when June’s dad died and she didn’t want to talk about it and Simon was a good person because he was there for her even if she didn’t want to talk about it. It’s so tiring to have to say you’re a good person all the time and it be true and for no one to believe it or no one to care.
*
“Everyone who was living in West Berlin at the time was pretty isolated now because, keep in mind, they were still within East Germany, even if they weren’t part of the Soviet government.”
*
Jason can feel the sun hitting his back through the window. It feels like waves of boredom drilling into his skull. There are things that matter, sure. But they aren’t history and they aren’t some masturbatory exercise in creative teaching. He opens his mouth to say something and then doesn’t. He can’t think of anything funny to say and even though he’s bored as shit it isn’t helping him. Like he could say something about Mr. T and pitying the fools in East Berlin, but that’s lame and he knows it. The classroom feels hot and stuffy so he rubs his hand back and forth across his face like he is rubbing himself out of existence. You have to be somewhere, you always have to be somewhere and that’s how it is til’ you die. They always tell you what you are, even when they aren’t saying it out loud. They are saying it. Everything they are is saying it.
“Mr. T, I want to go to West Berlin.”
“I’m sorry Jason.” Mr. Taylor gestures at the wall. “Look’s like there’s a wall.”
“That’s a row of desks.”
*
Theresa interrupts. “But what if your grandmother was on the other side of the wall? Could you sneak her in, you know grab a ladder?” Theresa pictures her gram being hauled over a fence. No, maybe not.
“Good question, Theresa. No, if you were in East Berlin you were stuck and this caused lots of tension. Many families were separated with the construction of the wall.”
*
Luther doesn’t think the wall looks like so much, but the idea is maybe an all right one. The idea of recreating the past is sort of cool, like if he could go through last night and watch it happen. It might make more sense then cause he knows Theresa knows about him so that’s why last night doesn’t make sense in the first place. But maybe it does. They were drinking rum out of red cups and then they left the house to go sit in his car and talk? Maybe that was it. Tiredness hits him again. He licks the scab on his lip. Practice will be brutal. He doesn’t ever play but they still make him scrimmage. On the field, he uses his body like a wall. You have to think for the team. You have to think about what is going to be best for everyone else. That’s why it doesn’t make sense.
*
Theresa studies Mr. Taylor’s neck and how skinny it looks. This is a silly thing he has them doing. Silly, but maybe not the worst. She pulls out her lip gloss and applies it: top lip, bottom lip, smack. It’s funny that Luther is staring at her. She thought last night was a one-time thing. Him being gay and all. That was supposed to make him safe. But maybe not?
*
Simon’s mind drifts. The wall grows higher. Mr. Taylor says something about needing to make the wall higher and people are standing up and making the wall higher. Desks are being stacked on other desks. It’s okay though because he can still see everyone else, just not as clearly. It’s like the passage of time. Things move forward and the other things just get more blurry which is why stuff is so important. He will stand in front of his locker and touch the metal and think about how short-lived this is. He only gets to touch this metal for so long. Their brains are all growing, fattening like pigs in the feedlot. And then the rest of their lives will happen. He wishes he were Mr. Taylor sometimes. He wishes he could punch them and tell them how important this is, but they don’t know and they maybe never will.
*
There is a wall of desks in front of June’s face now, blocking the door, blocking Mr. Taylor. She and Oliver will move away from this place and then sometimes talk about it, but mostly not and they’ll be happy together because they have to be and because the other way around would be too sad. Too lonely. Too likely? Or maybe the thing that makes the most sense is to not be together. To end now instead of later when they’re old and hate each other for being themselves.
*
Jason can feel something bad coming but he doesn’t know what it is, like a terror, a tremor inside. Something like the thing that wakes him up at night and tells him everyone is garbage. He’ll hear the dogs barking outside and then he’s awake and he’ll have to go outside and tear their mangy faces apart before they kill each other, like why would you do that? Why would you try to kill your own kind—it’s stupid if it’s nothing else. He cannot wait to leave this town. To see places that are important and then figure out why they also suck. And he’s a realist. The world is ridiculous and it needs him to tell it like it is because so many others won’t. They like the game of it. They don’t mind losing.
*
Mr. Taylor stands before the divide. “Now turn to your neighbors. Discuss your feelings. The isolation. Pretend you’re there, imagine you’re really there.”
They turn to one another, east to east and west to west. There are seven on the Eastern side and thirteen on the Western. They turn in their seats and smile. Friend to friend. Comrade to comrade. They all know each other. Have known each other for years.
*
Theresa curls a strand of hair between her fingers. “This is pretty funny, right?”
Luther nods. “Yeah.” Is it possible he made it happen? But why would he want to. And why is he afraid to ask her about it.
*
“But at least it’s less boring than usual.” Theresa licks her lips to taste the lip gloss and rests her chin in her hands. She looks at Luther and he looks at her but then he looks away like he feels bad or something. And it’s not like she wanted to talk about it but they should probably say something so it doesn’t get said to anyone else. Luther’s a good one or that’s what she thought. No. Jorge is a good one. So why would she hurt him. Why did she want to hurt him before she even left the house last night, and then why did she do it?
*
“Last night was pretty crazy, huh.” Luther watches as Theresa arches her shoulders. She is pretty, but it’s not a feeling in him, it’s an objective fact. So did he do it with her to make people think he wasn’t how he is he? Or did he want it? Or did she make him do it. Jorge’s an all right guy. His insides don’t feel good.
*
“Yeah. Pretty drunk, too.” Maybe it would have been better if she’d blacked out. Then it would be not even a mistake but a thing that didn’t happen or at least something she couldn’t remember. They’d been laughing so hard. They were laughing so hard cause why? And it was like she wanted to see if he’d want her just cause she knew he didn’t. Cause he didn’t want any girl and it was supposed to be a secret but didn’t everyone know? And now if Jorge finds out. She can see his face in her mind and he looks real broken. Like a kid that got beat by his father for being too nice and too good.
“You talked to anyone else that was there last night?”
*
Luther shakes his head and then looks at the others in the Western bloc. No one is talking about Germans and does Mr. Taylor expect anything different? Luther should have slept in today. It doesn’t make a difference if he’s here or not. It would be better to be alone. He touches his bruised rib. It stings.
*
In the East, Simon tries to figure out how to say something about what he is thinking, but nothing is coming out right. He smiles at June, and she gives him a funny look in response. A half-frown. He wants to say something about them and the old days. Because it just happened that one day they weren’t friends and maybe it’s that she forgot he’s not so terrible. “I guess I don’t feel anything?”
*
“Why would you?” June is looking down at her nails. The moons bother her. They keep appearing.
Jason snorts in the seat behind them.
June figures Jason is trying to be noticed. Like by being the way he is he makes some sort of space in the world. But if no one has bothered to notice you yet, will they ever? That’s when it’s time to start over. Sure, she can appreciate this right now, but once she has, then it’s about moving on. That’s the problem with all these people. They hold on, they dig down. They bite into their sad, crappy lives and don’t let go. She and Oliver will never really work. She’s not stupid. You don’t marry your childhood crush.
*
Jason kicks the back of Simon’s chair. “Let’s make a break for it.”
“Huh?”
“I dare you, I dare you to climb the wall.” Jason laughs. Simon is one of those losers. Soft and easy and about to break.
*
Simon looks at June who has hunched her shoulders over her desk, her hair partially covering her face. He wants to tell her he didn’t do the thing she thinks he did. But he did. And it was a mistake. It was a bad mistake, but it wasn’t supposed to stop them from being friends. He can feel a longing building inside of himself. He can feel his own shoulders hunching like hers. He could take care of her, like how he tried to when her dad died. When they were children. He didn’t even know what rape was when it happened. And it wasn’t even her he hurt.
*
“Hey. Hey, Simon.” Kick. Kick. “I dare you.” Jason wants to see it. Wants to see someone do it. Him, him they’d expect. But not that scraggly fag, no. What would it be like to see someone else get punished?
*
There’s something about Jason, June can’t quite put her finger on. It’s as if they’d all carved their personalities out of a raw mind and now they were desperately seeking someone else to verify their handiwork. They are a collective, whether or not they want it, and each knows his part. Time and space trap them together. They breathe the same air and it’s making them all the same. It’s a wonderful thing.
“Do it. Do it.”
Or it’s the worst thing ever.
*
“The wall went through four stages of construction. Barbed wire. Improved barbed wire. Concrete. And a final amalgamation of the previous materials. With nails. And dogs. And always guards with guns.”
*
Theresa is getting antsy and the clock isn’t moving and this is the longest block period of her life. Bloc block, ha. She needs to talk to Jorge and make sure that things are good because it’d be stupid as hell to make someone hurt for no reason. There are less than ten minutes left in class. She glances at the clock again and catches Luther’s eye. She made it happen. She knows she did. They were drunk. It’s fine. He smiles at her and she shakes her head.
*
Luther can see Theresa telling Jorge and then outing him to make herself feel less guilty. And he thinks that some of them know but maybe not. Or the ones he doesn’t want to know might know now? There’s the feeling again. Like, oh fuck. But maybe it’s not anything cause they were all so drunk and he doesn’t even think they had sex or could have what with her being her and him being so so blacked out. First you form a line. Then you form a wall.
*
Mr. Taylor smiles. He can feel the mood in the room, all these young minds becoming some expanded version of themselves. This is history. This is like seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time. He and Isabel stood on the South Rim. The earth opened before them.
*
Tell her not to say anything? Form a wall. Stop the onslaught.
*
Theresa used to feel like she was good. She used to care about making others feel good. What happened?
*
Simon will remind June just how close they used to be. He will make her realize that he is not bad. He is a good person. He is a good person.
*
June should end up with someone like Jason. Dirty hair. A stupid face. Trying to be noticed. You can only get so far from the egg of failure. It breeds inside like the fat that waits to burst from your thighs.
*
“Do it, man. Come on. Get up, you pussy.” Kick. Kick.
*
Theresa knows she has something good and she is lucky. So why do you hurt what’s good? Her mother would tell her she’s a slut just like her sister.
*
“Theresa?”
“Yeah?”
*
Simon doesn’t know how to stop Jason—needs to stop him. He looks at June, but she looks sad. She looks out the window, picking at her teeth with her tongue. Her sweet red tongue. Thunk. His chair hits forward again into his desk.
*
“So about last night. You remember being in my car?”
“Uh yeah.”
*
Jason can feel the right now of the moment, the tension ridden like a bucking horse.
*
“Seriously?” Simon stands up.
June turns.
Mr. Taylor stops his speech on the German secret police.
Luther bites his lip.
*
Theresa leans forward. Isn’t sure she wants to hear what Luther is going to say.
*
Jason laughs and stands up facing Simon. “Climb the wall.”
“Jason.” Mr. Taylor steps forward and Jason steps closer to the wall. The barbed wire. The attack dogs.
“Nobody ever tried to escape, Mr. T?” He puts a foot on the desk, the wall, and stands above the class.
*
Mr. Taylor smiles. Pulls his hand into the shape of a gun. “When they did Jason, they were killed dead.”
He pulls the trigger.
It is a gift to silence him.
“200 casualties is the thought.”
*
Jason clutches his side where the imaginary bullet has entered and scans the eyes of his classmates. The people he’s known his whole life. He falls to the ground.
*
June shakes her head. Is that how it is supposed to end? Is that it?
*
Simon watches June watch Jason. If he had done it, would she be watching him?
*
Theresa rolls her eyes. What an asshole.
*
Luther laughs. It makes his chest hurt. He’ll need to grab a Gatorade between periods.
*
June turns to face Simon. “Why are you looking at me?”
*
Theresa smiles and turns back to Luther. “That fucking kid. So what were you saying?”
Luther leans in, touches Theresa’s arm. “I don’t really remember a lot of last night, but well are we okay?”
*
Simon shrugs at June. “I wasn’t looking.”
“Right.” June rolls her eyes. But then feels bad. It shouldn’t be easier to be mean than to be nice. She should learn to stop hating someone she used to love.
*
Jason lies on the floor, watching the fluorescent lights crackle and fizz. This is escape. This is the end of the line. This is the future. Today. If only his real life would go out in a blaze of glory.
*
“Get up, Jason.” Mr. Taylor says. Does the boy understand what has just happened? Do any of them? They stood on the South Rim and she turned and she smiled and she asked if maybe the view wasn’t better from the other side.
*
Theresa squints at Luther and his big dumb face. “Yeah, we’re okay. Things happen but no one has to know, right?”
*
Simon looks at June’s hands. She has changed and he wants to know this person, but she is not his to know. The ravine exists between them. The things that have happened. It is not his right to know this person.
*
June can feel Simon’s eyes on her still and it makes her sick. What does it take to help someone realize they don’t know you—they probably never did. We carry our burdens. We carry them in our hands. On our nails. In our teeth.
*
“November 9th, 1989 is considered the official date of the fall of the Berlin Wall, but it didn’t come down all in one day. It took some time for news to spread, but that was when the initial demolition began.” Mr. Taylor gestures to the class and then points at the wall.
The class stands, slowly, reluctantly and moves forward as one. Together they un-build the wall. Take down the desks. Jason is still on the ground, so they step over his body. Then June reaches out a hand and he takes it and stands up.
They all sit down. This is still history. First period. The bell about to ring.
*
Theresa hopes Luther is serious like her about keeping it quiet. She wished it hadn’t felt so good to feel another person’s skin.
*
Jason wonders if they will remember the time he got shot down by Mr. Taylor. He wants them to remember. It is the only true thing he’s ever seen happen.
*
Mr. Taylor smiles. Maybe today was a good day. Maybe.
*
June puts her head on the desk. Sometimes you have to allow that it is time to move on. From a person. A day. A place. A time. A life.
*
Simon writes the words down. I’m sorry. He is sorry. It isn’t enough.
*
Luther will tell Theresa he’s sorry but not today. He’ll say it later when they aren’t around other people. When he knows he’s safe. When he knows she is someone he can trust. Did people really always just stay the same?
*
The bell rings and the students rise. The wall undone, the day still beginning, they exit each alone.
Rebecca Bernard’s work can currently be found in journals such as Epiphany, The Journal, and Bat City Review. She received her M.F.A. in fiction at Vanderbilt University, where she served as fiction and music editor for the Nashville Review. She will be starting a PhD in Fiction at the University of North Texas in the fall.
