/lit/ - Literature

There was an unwritten rule in class 3B of Hindersmith High School, which was that no one spoke to Mathilda Sorenson. Some thin, scattered clouds aside, the sky was clear that day and Hindersmith was covered in snow. The Breadthwater, just by the school, had frozen so that the first students were crossing it on their way to the city's bus terminus on the other side. Mathilda thought it was like something from one of her stories, with the ice and all. She was having her last class of the day, advanced mathematics. They had just finished vectors and were going to make a head start with the space geometry before the ball rang. The teacher picked up one of the large blackboard rulers and the class mimicked him, the sound of everyone simultaneously getting their rulers sounding like a gush of wind through the branches of a fully flowering tree. Jeremy Akermann shortly finished drawing what was on the blackboard and looked out the window, catching the sight of an older man with a hat and in a large raincoat passing while carrying bags from a nearby, expensive clothing shop. Emily Dixon was worrying about the pregnancy test she had picked up at the apothecary the same morning, still in its box at the bottom of her backpack, while Caroline Jane Honeyfield, dirty spectacles on her nose, still couldn't find her ruler. And no one spoke to Mathilda Sorenson.