“Can anyone tell me why the-”

Jackson’s echoes echoed through the silent classroom. All the students had been watching for quite some time. In fact, even when he wasn’t sleeping, Jackson was the main focus of his class. After all, they were in fact the lucky ones, seeing the careless child of the even more careless family each day and night. They were lucky. He was lucky. Everyone in the world was lucky. Well, except of course those from the incident.

“Mr. Thurmond, perhaps you’d understand the lesson if you actually paid attention to it?”

It wasn’t a question. Nothing Professor Percy posed was a question. He only spoke in commands, even on his exams. It wasn’t, “can you list the reasons of the American Revolution.” There was a question mark and everything, but it was not a question.

And after two long years trapped between the brick walls, Jackson knew that.

He slowly raised his head- a spittle of drool slipping from the corner of his mouth. Wiping it with the corner of his uniform, Jackson scanned the board.

“The Colonization of the New World” was scribbled across the blackboard- the very one he knew he’d be washing later. Further down told of Columbus and of Vespucci and of Cortes. Jackson looked down at his empty notebook and laughed.

“Mr. Thurmond, care to share what you think is so funny about the discovery of the land you live on?”

He didn’t particularly, but there were no questions. Jackson, for the first time that morning, raised his head, eyes glowing bright.

“I don’t like that the fact our inventors, so to say, we're so stupid that our country is based off of a failed discovery.”

Professor Percy, much like the rest of the class, was less than enthused. Jackson, knowing the process, shut his mouth and slumped back down wishing the scratchy wool would conceal his entire existence.

It wasn’t always like that. People used to hear what he said. But then the incident happened and he ended up trapped there in room A-319 of Gregorias Institute of Fine Arts and Education. And, as far as he was concerned, he was going to be there for the rest of eternity.