1938

It was the middle of January. The teacher gave back our science exams, from the previous day. I'd struggled with a lot of those questions, and my grade told me she'd been none too impressed with my answers. I knew that meant I'd be catching shit from my mom, and that she might not let me out on my date with Lana, later that evening. I decided to ask for a redo. Ms. Finch was an old bird of white hair and glasses, and she seemed to have a very low opinion of me. The feeling was somewhat mutual, but I knew to respect my elders.
I begged, "Please, Ms. Finch, can I just get one more chance?"
She grimaced. "Fine. Come back at lunch, I'll be grading other work. But this is your only chance... you won't get another one."
"Thanks, Miss. You're a lifesaver," I told her.
I sat back down, and looked to my right. There was a boy I didn't recognize, with short red hair swept to the sides, a squared jaw, and a pale face of freckles. He was shorter than I was, but with broader shoulders, and thicker arms and legs. He looked friendly enough.
"Hey, I said to him. "How'd you score?"
He looked up, and squinted at me through thin-lidded eyes. Then he smiled, with thin, straight teeth. "Perfect, actually. One-hundred percent."
Oh, ouch. But 'perfect' indeed. I asked, "You mind helping me out for a bit? I need to see where I went wrong."
Free time was the benefit of a good test score, as the paper airplanes flying around us would suggest. But we lived in a town without much to do, for a kid. Things were easy, here. School was all we really had that mattered, and then more school. All the bars and theatres, the billiards halls and jazz clubs, those weren't ours yet. All we got otherwise was the forest out back for building stick-forts, the fields to kick balls in (sporting or otherwise), and the local pool. Like I said... it was the dead of winter. Forecast: minus twenty degrees celsius, with a chance of boredom. So as it happened, my new friend was bored of his success. He looked excited to have a protégé.
He said, "I'm Russell, Arrow. You can call me Russ."
We shook hands.
I asked, "I don't remember you, did you just get here?"
He frowned. "I'm Jules' little brother, dumbass. I've been here the whole time. I watched you guys do all that dumb vampire shit. I had to do my homework while the two of them were making out in the attic, moaning about 'dark forces'."
I laughed, feeling bad for him. "Oh my God. I'm so sorry. Does that mean you heard him scream 'you owe me'? That night I was there?"
He put his elbow onto his desk, and his jaw into his palm. "I was in the kitchen, getting snacks. I skipped the dance, but I saw you in a dress. He was a real piece of work that night, woke everybody else up just to yell about you. Ranting and raving, we had to let him polish off the vodka just so he'd finally go to sleep. And I was there the day you scared the shit out of my brother, and his stupid friend."
"Really?"
"Oh yeah. Remember that long shadow on the wall? That everyone said was 'your grim powers'?"
I nodded.
He grinned. "That was me. I was adjusting the projector, finishing up my notes."
"Hahaha! No way!" I laughed again. "You're my partner in crime already, then, aren't you?"
His face shone with a bit of delight. "You're Garcia, right? Romero? You Mexican, or something?"
"Brazilian, to name one. I'm practically a pick-platter from all over the world. The Nazis would hate me for all of it," I joked. "If I danced right in front of them, I could spark a new international conflict. They'd have to fight off the whole damn globe in my honor."
"Oh, I'm so sure. Like what? Where are you really from?"
"Alright," I prepped, "you ready?"
He shook his head with a grin. "Get on with it."
Here goes. I listed them off on my fingers: "Russian, Jewish, Romani, Egyptian, Congonese, Brazilian, Rhodesian, Aztec, Nigerian, Hawaiian-" I took a breath, and started over on my fingers. "Métis, Inuit, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Thai, Taiwanese, Persian, English, French, Spanish-" I took another. "German, Norse, Scottish, Swiss, Lithuanian, AND IRISH, thank ya kindly."
He laughed, head back a bit.
I added, "...and I might have missed a few."
He nodded, and slow-clapped. "Very impressive recall, if anything. Not that anyone can really BE all of those things at once. You realize only so many genes can be passed on at a time?"
I shrugged. "Says who? I've got a little of everything. I can see it plain as day on my own face, in the mirror, and on everyone else's. It's all in the blood! And if nothing else, the spirit, as long as you nurture it."
He looked unconvinced. "I'm surprised you aren't in a reservation, for everything you say you are. Or a residential school. What the hell are you doing here?"
"I guess I blend in," I countered.
He said, "That ruins your whole point."
That hurt to hear. I swayed in my chair a bit. "Alright, well, genetics are a new science anyway. We barely understand them. What about you, where are you from? You and Jules have the same parents?"
He sighed. "Yes, but I like to think I'm adopted. Far as I know, we're from Ireland, probably Norway and Scotland too. Maybe Sweden, I'm not really sure. I think we have a grandparent from Serbia, that's next to Romania. The Germans would hate me, too. They hate all the gingers, I heard." He looked weighed down by it.
I reached over to pat his back. "Relax, I'm German too, and I like you just fine. It's the NAZIS we gotta worry about. It's not about where you're from, it's about what you believe!"
"Well, the Nazis believe all of us should be exterminated."
"Right, so how's that foreign policy gonna work in a global community? The world runs on more than just one set of ideals."
He barely reacted. "Not according to them."
I tried to cheer him up. "It's like... you ever hear the one about the trapdoor spider, on the mountain?"
He looked confused. "No?"
I said, "It goes like this: the spider made his home, in a mountain like a clay pot. Empty inside. He was safe there, from everything, and whatever came his way, he'd snatch up and eat. The rains never flooded his hole, because the mountain was too tall. But one day, an earthquake shattered the base, and a lake poured up inside it. The spider drowned."
He frowned. "That doesn't make any sense."
Admittedly, it really didn't. I'd made it up on the spot, and it sounded more like a real estate issue. "It means," I tried to say, "...that isolating yourself as a lone predator won't save you from unexpected disasters! And nobody will want to help you."
He shook his head, disgusted by my attempt. "That's so stupid. Why not say something like: 'it takes all kinds to play a tune, or every note would sound the same'."
I groaned. "They wouldn't care if it was. They'd play it all day anyway, and pretend it was top of the charts. Even if everybody hated it. How about..."
We thought for a moment. I looked down at my science exam... at all the questions I'd gotten wrong. "If life is a test, then nobody has all the answers. Better to study with a buddy than kill anyone who says you're wrong." Wait, that got kind of dark at the end.
He threw up his hands, and leaned back in his chair. "They'd just torture the answers out of people, or bribe the teacher. Or replace them, with someone who licks boots. There's just no winning with an inhumanity of fascist dictators. No amount of appeal will change their minds, because they're mindless killers. You either stop them, or they stop you. For good."
Damn. He was right, bleak as that was. I said, "Yeah, I guess so. No sense of humor, so what good does a joke do them anyway? Nor any wisdom for someone without a soul to lighten up."
We got quiet, after that. Realizing our clever words had no power over the ceaseless gears of brutality and psychotica that were turning a half a world away... but only a half of one. Some of them were turning right here at home, and we had no more power to stop them here than we did over there. Not unless someone gave you a helmet and a gun... and they sure as hell weren't gonna point you at themselves. Russell decided to shake it off, and he took my exam to look at my mistakes.

An hour or two later, I passed that test. But our conversation lingered, like a sour note in my ear. We were too young to be conscripted, by our nation's laws. Thank God for it. But if war were declared... our fathers would be gone from home. Off to fight in our country's name, to shed blood and shells for our freedom. That meant there'd be no one here to work, to keep us in lit rooms with heated furnaces, fridges enduring with just enough food. Nobody talks about the women and children who went homeless without their husbands around, in the last Great War. They weren't killed by bullets or bombs; they were killed by indifference, and the cold. And their names never so much as scratched a stone. We were only citizens, all of us, if the government felt like saying so. Even if we were born here. At least, the Canadian parliament felt like saying so, far more often than the Americans down south. As far as they were concerned, the Aboriginals had cut them off in traffic to be here, thousands of years in advance. And much like the Nazis towards all of their European neighbors, they're still pretty sore about it.