Chapter 5
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Jack leaned over to take a look, raising his eyebrows. “Seriously? Your history grades…”
He didn’t finish, but his meaning was clear. My history grades, in Mr. Smith’s words, were “an ongoing disaster.”
“I don’t want ‘problem student’ engraved on my tombstone,” I said calmly as I capped my pen.
“Alright,” he nodded, pulling our history textbook from a pile of old books nearby and dusting it off. “Leave it to me.”
For the next week, my secret hideout became our private tutoring room.
I used to think history class was just a bunch of unrelated names and dates, as dry as chewing on stale bread. But in Jack’s telling, history came alive.
Speaking about the American Revolutionary War, he didn’t recite memorized clauses but told me how Benjamin Franklin, while serving as a diplomat in Paris, used his personal charm and a few romantic affairs to completely win over the French, making them eagerly provide money and weapons.
“Just think about it,” he said, eyes bright, “an old printer making all the European nobility dance to his tune—isn’t that more fascinating than any movie?”
When discussing the Civil War, he didn’t talk about the battles but about Lincoln.
“Everyone, including his wife, thought he looked like a country bumpkin—awkward and gloomy. But those letters he wrote, those speeches—even by today’s standards, they’d be considered brilliant writing. He was a poet who happened to become president.”
I was captivated by his stories. Those black-and-white historical figures who had been sleeping in textbooks came alive one by one, gaining flesh and blood, experiencing joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness.
During Wednesday’s history class, Mr. Smith posed a bonus question about the Emancipation Proclamation, asking what its true strategic significance was at that time.
The classroom fell silent.
As if possessed, I raised my hand.
The entire class’s gaze swooshed toward me at once, including Mr. Smith, whose glasses flashed with undisguised surprise.
“Emily Thompson?”
“It… it was more like a propaganda weapon at the time,” I said nervously, my mind full of what Jack had told me yesterday. “It was mainly meant for Europeans to hear, especially Britain and France, making it morally impossible for them to support a South that maintained slavery. This way, the South’s foreign aid was cut off.”
The classroom was so quiet you could hear leaves rustling outside the window.
Mr. Smith adjusted his glasses and stared at me for a full five seconds.
“…Very insightful observation, Emily. Very insightful.”
After class, when several classmates passed my seat, the way they looked at me had changed. The feeling was strange, as if I’d been invisible all along but suddenly gained color.
On the day of the history exam, I wasn’t nervous at all.
When I received the test paper and looked at the questions, what appeared in my mind weren’t memorized facts but vivid stories.
The last major question asked us to analyze the turning points of the Second World War.
I barely hesitated before I began writing. I wrote about Stalingrad and Midway, but I also wrote about Alan Turing and his code-breaking team. I wrote about those geniuses at Bletchley Park who fought against the Nazi machine with brilliance and perseverance, their victory silent yet devastating.
All of this was what Jack had told me. He said: “Sometimes, what changes the world isn’t just guns and artillery, but a piece of paper filled with formulas.”
On the day the results were announced, the name at the top of the ranking list, boldly written with a black marker, hit me like a beam of light.
A+
The world seemed to hit mute in that moment. I could hear the whispers of classmates around me and feel their gazes—shocked, doubtful, disbelieving.
After the crowd dispersed, Mr. Smith walked over. He stood beside me, looking at the grade sheet.
“Emily,” he began, with a seriousness I’d never heard before, “I apologize for my prejudice. You are a student with great potential.”
My nose stung, and tears threatened to fall.
Back at the secret base, I slammed the grade sheet in front of Jack.
He picked it up and looked at it, showing no surprise, just the corners of his mouth curving into a beautiful arc.
“I told you,” he handed the grade sheet back to me, “even presidents can be poets. What’s so special about you getting first place?”
Looking at him, I suddenly felt that in this grave that was about to bury me, a tiny flower named “hope” had somehow bloomed.
