Bows and Arows
By William Borley Birds flicker on the edge of Cyril’s vision. Well, maybe moths. Or bats. Shadows,
occasional black splotches that flutter in and out of the sunlight filtering through the horizontal blinds onto his fake-wooden desk. The girl who sits in front of him — Charlotte? He's never been entirely sure — snaps him back to attention with a well-timed thump of her world history textbook on her own desk. “He called on you,” she whispers, and turns back to the blackboard. “Well, mister Thierry? Didn’t you do the reading? What happened to HMS Valencia?” No, he didn't. He's already forming an excuse to get out of the rest of the period: last night my mom took me to this Yousafzaian place for dinner and I think I got food poisoning, can I go to the nurse? He's had to get more creative, exponentially more detailed in his lies to skip class as the year’s gone on and Perkins quit accepting a simple I don't feel well. There's causality diagrams drawn on the board in a rainbow of chalk, but for what, he's got no idea. Cyril clears his throat and says, “It. Um. It sunk off the coast of Boquete after a routine trading voyage out to Tatsumi-Osaka. No survivors.” Perkins raises his eyebrows. “Correct! What makes it different from all the other sunken ships out of Brittany?” All eyes are on Cyril, or it feels like it, and he's very aware of how he forgot to shower this morning. “One of the crew washed up on the beach two weeks later, and… um. And.” And his voice fails him yet again. “And, mister Thierry? Does anyone want to help him out, miss Moreau, since you were
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