Morgaine Scither slid her pointer finger around the smooth surface of her notebook in a rhythmic motion and stared out the window at the snow covered football field. A chill breeze sent waves of loose snow over it and wafted cool air into the stuffy classroom. She breathed in deeply and held it in her lungs as it swirled her dark curls around her face. The air left her lungs as a sigh and she leaned backwards. Her eyes caught sight of the clock on the opposite wall and Morgaine wrinkled her nose. Only 2:13, leaving a full thirty minutes left of school and AP History.
She flipped open her notebook and shifted her body so she faced the front of room. Gayle was scribbling on the board, his handwriting as awful as ever, the "e's" and "a's" like "o's" and Morgaine squinted at it. Unable to decipher the scrawls she elbowed her best friend, Tristyn Pinckney, in the stomach.
"Ow!" she whispered and dropped her pen on the desk, shooting Morgaine a dirty look through a sheet of gold hair. Her blue eyes glowed fiercely and Morgaine recoiled slightly.
"What does that say?" she gestured toward the board and Gayle, who had taken his usual hunched over stance and was talking loudly.
"Does it really matter?"
Morgaine considered this. "No, I guess not."
She watched Gayle closely, her scrutiny hard. He was tall, with scruffy brown hair and black eyes. His muscle had become slightly soft; the six years since his last football game had taken their toll. But his face was still the face of a teenager's, a naivety in his smile and eyes that made him blend in with the students perfectly.
"So, is it fair that the oven makers are blamed for the Holocaust?" Gayle looked around the room. "Was it their faults their ovens were used for destroying the bodies of the Jews?"
Clive Sutton didn't even raise his hand before he answered, "Of course it was! They knew what the ovens were used for and they shouldn't have sold them to the Nazis."
"Yeah, they knew!" Morgaine had retaliated with mouth before her mind, forcing her brain to race to find some way of backing up her brash tongue. "If they didn't sell the ovens to the Nazis, the Nazis would've just killed them and taken the ovens."
Gayle favored her with a quick grin and then turned to Clive, "Damn, you just got taken out by a girl!" He balled up a piece of paper and chucked it, hitting Clive squarely in the forehead. The class burst into laughter.
He walked across the room and fiddled with the television, and then the Playstation 2 dvd controls. The Band of Brothers title screen came on and with some more fiddling he brought up an episode.
"Alright, savages, quiet down," Gayle waited for the class to become quiet, and then un-paused the system.
They watched the EZ Company find the concentration camp, and try to liberate the prisoners. After fifteen minutes Gayle stopped it and waited for reactions. No one spoke.
"Mr. Gayle," Emma Wilhelm piped up sweetly. Morgaine stuck her finger down her throat and pretended to gag, causing Tristyn to giggle. Gayle shot her a look that was, surprisingly, amused and not angry.
"Mr. Gayle, when's the rough draft due?"
"Monday," he paused. "Everyone's coming to the Wake-A-Thon, right?"
There was a chorus of answers, and then the bell rang. Tristyn and Morgaine walked out together, with their friend Adrian.
"Stupid Wake-A-Thon," he said, "Staying at school all night just for charity. What a waste of time."
"It's not a waste of time. We get to play Manhunt and video games," Morgaine poked Adrian in the stomach. He jumped and cracked a smile.
"My only problem is that it's the night before the Saturday play practice," Tristyn flipped her long hair over her shoulder. "I hope we don't fall asleep there."
Morgaine frowned, "Me too."

..That was sooooo Banta...