October 29th, 2009 3:19pm
SLUNGBLADE
Land of Talk - “Sixteen Asterisk” “Who tore the paper?” asks Lara Wright, standing at the front of the class. They watch her and say nothing. “Didn't you hear me? Which one of you tore my paper?” She lifts it from her desk, bedraggled, crumpled and ripped in two places. “It didn't just tear itself,” she says, mouth crooked. There's a funny glassiness to her eyes, something the class hadn't ever seen before. There are spots of flush in her cheek. “Nobody in all of 4-2 saw who tore this paper while I was outside with Mr Mackie?” It's just an attendance sheet, they think to themselves. “Let me ask again,” Ms Wright says. Her voice cracks -cracks like dry savannah, like wood under an axe, like cold steel strings. “Who tore this?”
