Words came out of Mrs. Diener’s mouth, distantly tinged with things Freya ought to know about social studies. There was no room in her head for them. She was having a miniature meltdown at her desk. Pressure built behind her eyes like her mind was about to boil over. In her pocket, the Starball seared with activity.
Freya squirmed in her seat to get the orb away from her skin. It worked overtime on whatever the hell it did all day. Not talking to her, not explaining itself, and not making her one with her beloved. Nothing worth selling her mother for.
She couldn’t keep the turmoil bottled, and Mrs. Diener noticed her expression and stopped to ask if she was all right. Freya hurriedly tried to pull an excuse from the bits of lesson that had leaked through her internal monologue.
“I just feel so bad for them, it’s awful,” Freya said, and Mrs. Diener gave her an understanding look.
Freya had lucked out. When she pieced together what was happening, she realized the lesson was about the Bhopal disaster, where methyl isocyanate leaked from an unsafe Union Carbide plant, killing thousands. Mrs. Diener resumed her lesson, and Freya paid more attention, relieved she hadn’t gotten caught daydreaming.
“There was a single journalist trying to sound the alarm. His name was Rajkumar Keswani, and people called him The Voice in the Wilderness for Bhopal. Many called him a Cassandra. What does it mean to call someone that? The ancient Greeks had a legend of a woman named Cassandra, who was given the gift to see the future, but cursed that no one would believe her warnings.
“Keswani investigated the dangerous conditions at the plant and published a series of articles about it, but no action was taken. One of them was entitled Wake up people of Bhopal, you are on the edge of a volcano.”
Freya’s phone hummed in her pocket, but she ignored it, fixated on Mrs. Diener.
“After the catastrophe, Keswani was lauded as a hero and showered with awards. In an acceptance speech, he said it was perhaps the first time the award had been given for a spectacular journalistic failure. He said, ‘Had I succeeded at my task, no one would have taken note.’ More than half a million people would suffer from long-term effects of the disaster such as blindness, breathing problems, stillbirths, and horrific birth defects.
“To this day, the site is still contaminated and tainting water around it, yet countless people live in the slum surrounding the plant. There’s a high school just like Grayson at the corner of the lot, less than a thousand feet from where the gas was released.”
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A murmur spread through the class as the last point struck home. Mrs. Diener always did a good job of wrapping her lessons into something they could relate to. Freya’s hand was in her pocket, feeling the Starball blazing against her palm and a cold emptiness in her stomach.
The day was finally over, everyone packing up, and she sat there trying to put it all together. Mrs. Diener passed by Freya and squeezed her shoulder.
“Take as long as you need, Freya. It’s tough to feel so much,” she said. Freya lowered her eyes and packed up her things. What she felt now was like an imposter. She was no journalist, not even a Cassandra. She was only Freya, the girl who’d sold the world.
Mrs. Diener stared. Freya needed to come up with something to say to break the silence.
“I know the Cassandra myth. Is the Voice in the Wilderness a part of it?” Freya asked.
“No, it’s a biblical idiom, from the book of Isaiah. It’s funny, teaching Cassandra is fine, but Isaiah is taboo. Let me see if I still have it,” Mrs. Diener said, putting two fingers on her chin as she searched her memory. There was a light in her eyes as she found what she looked for.
“The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” Her head rose high as she invoked the scripture.
“Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”
In the silence that followed, Freya saw a flicker of uncertainty in Mrs. Diener’s face. She was afraid she’d crossed a line. The presence that had grown so large as she recited abated with a crooked smile, as if it was all just a joke.
“Wow, that’s impressive. Do you know the whole thing?” Freya said, trying to break up the tension with a compliment.
“No! But there are a few I had to memorize in Catholic school. That was thirty years ago, but it’s all still locked up here,” she said, tapping the side of her head with the same two fingers. “Just don’t ask me what I had for breakfast.” She smiled, and Freya forced a smile back as she departed.
In the hall, she remembered her phone had buzzed, and she checked it. It was Dan saying he’d pick her up in half an hour.
Why not now? she wondered. A thousand awful reasons why swirled in her mind. She texted back:
Then she went to the bench on the passageway to the arts building with the dead overhead light and did exactly that. The dance studio was empty. Radomir wasn’t allowed to teach his class anymore.