The Odd

Chapter 1: Extraordinary

Chapter 1

“Extraordinary”

For about 2 hours, I had been listening to my history teacher in front of the class. It was the same routine that I had to be stuck with on Friday. I was always praying to God at this time of the day to just make Mr. Kurt let us go home and then, I would go chilling out my Friday night early. Mr. Kurt was the history teacher who was so obsessed with the past. I saw his mouth opening up and down which was so boring to me. He talked about some nonsense things that I never ever got the idea of it. I hated to study history because I didn’t understand why people had to dig it up and study it again and again since, for real, we should put more details on future than history. It didn’t make any sense for me that the past would help anything except remember and regret.

My attention was back to the present time as I saw Mr. Kurt glanced to see the time on his own watch. So, I did the same thing but I had to glance to the clock hanging above the classroom’s door because I forgot to bring mine this morning. Well, it was ten minutes left. I was going to be free.

Thought of the time before the class ended, I made myself sat straight and looked directly to Mr. Kurt. Doing this was one of my tricks making him see that I was still with his lesson, so, I won’t be the one who had to answer his question before going home. I glanced to the clock again, well, it’s time.

“Now, before I’m going to end the class, I want to -” Before he could finish his sentence, he was convened by some phone’s ringtone. He stopped and searched for whose it is. Oh. Crap. It was my stupid damn phone. My dad was calling. I dropped the call and looked directly to see Mr. Kurt. Now, he was looking at me too, also, my classmates.

“Oh. I’m sorry, Mr. Kurt. I forgot to -” Then, he raised his hand, telling me to stop.

“That’s okay, Miss -” He paused. I had no doubt why he couldn’t remember my name. I stood up and answered him.

“Bales, sir.”

“Okay. Now, Miss Bales. Would you mind if I ask you some question?”

Oh. Yes, sir. I didn’t want to answer any of your questions. I wanted to go home. And I was pretty sure that the question was going to be so hard that I would not be able to answer and then, I had to be stuck for one more hour with you and your beloved history. But I couldn’t force myself to speak like that anyway. I didn’t want to end up two hours instead of one. So, I answered him, “No, sir.”

“Great.” He walked back to his own thick book to search for the question. “I saw you were paying a lot of attention to my class lately. So, you should be able to answer my question. Umm… Which year was the World War II end, Miss Bales?”

My eyes went wide after I heard the question. Now. Great. I absolutely was going to spend an hour with him for sure. I had no idea what the answer was and which one was I supposed to guess. I held my head up to look into his eyes and then, I saw him smirking. That’s the disgusting smirk I had ever got. It’s your intention right, Mr. Kurt? I asked him in my mind. It seemed like he felt so good asking me this. I closed my eyes, tried to think of the answer and the lesson that I turned into deaf to. I heard noise from all around me. I guessed my classmates were talking about how hard the question was. I heard him said it once at the beginning of the class. Try to think, Ches. What is it!

“Can you answer, Miss Bales?” He asked me and suddenly, the class fell into silence again. They all were staring at me. I could see his face. It was flouting me. “Well, if you can’t -”

“It’s - ” I spoke slowly as I heard someone saying something in my head.

It’s 1945. Please make a right guess, Ches!