My debate class is literally the bane of my existence. It's not that the class is bad at all but that the students are just so aggressive, and being the daughter of Nia Krovopuskov, was an innate pacifist. A simple opinionated question could send my classmates into an active frenzy that carries on long after the bell has rung to dismiss us. The debates are good, don't get me wrong, just last week we had to argue from both sides on how the Chicago Seven's Trial was handled accordingly and improperly. I was the adjudicator, which was the best position for my nerves. Today however, I just have this odd feeling that something won't be able to be contained in the confines of this room.

Ms. Nickels is a fairly young woman, she just graduated from Spellman five years ago making her around thirty-two. She's one of those teacher's that's always smiling until it's time to get down to business and then she's like a different person, but not in a bad way. Ms. Nickels is a big advocate of higher education, and she constantly reminds us that it's never too late to get that higher education. In fact at least twice a month she makes us debate on different reasons to get a higher education and how it benefits us. Even though most of us are juniors with a handful of sophomores she dedicates at least six weeks out of the semester to finding out our interest and supplying us with career paths that best fits us.

Right now the classroom is pretty mellow, students are still trying to allow their breakfast to digest and are talking amongst themselves with a noise level even Laki would approve of. Ms. Nickels usually runs a little behind on Thursdays, due to a meeting between the cluster of Elective Arts teachers and usually doesn't come in until twenty minutes into class. These days are my favorite because it gives me time to work on my math homework for my next class, which I was borderline failing.

"Okay guys, I apologize for my tardiness." Ms. Nickels voice waves in from the hallways, carrying like a song until she steps into the classroom with a smile. "I know that today is typically a chill day, but since you guys were testing all week and missed this class I'd like us to get back into the swing of things." She sits her bags down behind her desk before walking to the back of the room where the podiums and white board reside. The classroom is silent as she uncaps a marker and begins writing the topic for today. "Today's topic, which might be a tad controversial in today's society: are mixed children considered black or white?"

The tension in a room is often described as being so thick that a knife couldn't cut through it, but that's not how I would describe the atmosphere now. Now it just feels like all the air's been sucked out of the room and I'm slowly suffocating. The looks being exchanged back and forth throughout the classroom vary between, "I can't wait to put my two cents in," and "no, anything but this." Ms. Nickels is the only person who doesn't look at all worried about the outcome of this debate, she merely only hops onto the counter and takes her seat, waiting for us to begin.

Before we can split up into groups and draw sides Ms. Nickels raises her hand, halting our conversations. "No teams, I just want to hear your personal opinions." She must hear the snide remark Alex makes about the topic because her lip tightens in a line and she narrows her eyes at him. "I need you all to remember that this is a safe place where you may be opinionated on your own accords, but being opinionated and being disrespectful do not coincide with one another. At any point where I feel you have crossed the line of disrespectful you will receive a citation, and there will be no debate about that. Do I make myself clear?"

We respond in unison, not wanting to invoke neither a citation nor Ms. Nickels' wrath. With a nod of her head she watches as hands shoot up and picks out who gets to go first.

Naiomi is the first one to go up and she does so with a timid gait that keeps her focused on her feet before she gets to the security of the podium. Once there she takes a deep breath before starting. "Mixed children are fairly new, to an extent, before America was colonized and every other colonized content there was no such things as mixed, therefore there was no name for it. Children of multiple races were not notified as being mixed until the term mulatto was declared as a derogatory term." She takes a break to glance back at Ms. Nickels to make sure she wasn't venturing too far from the topic, and once she got a subtle nod she turned back to us to continue on. "Mulatto was used to refer to the children slave masters fathered with their slaves, and at that time mulattos or mixed children were purely classified as black, because white people did not want to soil their own blood lines. These situations set the precedent and it's because of them that we still classify mixed children as Black. Thank you."

We're required to clap after each statement so that no one feels that their classmates chooses the victor. Ms. Nickels is the only person who doesn't clap, and she unlike my mom has the perfect restraint to not express what she's thinking on her face. Three more people go up, each of them using history to solidify why mixed children were considered black, until Dasia is called up.

Dasia is the only other mixed kid in this class and she's soft spoken in general until she gets behind a podium, then and only then is when she becomes a pit-bull. Dasia is the person we unanimously voted to be team captain and she has been since her sophomore year. Once she gets up to the podium she pushes up her glasses and begins tapping her nails against the podium's surface.

"First I would like to denounce the term mixed it, like mulatto, has recently been classified as a derogatory statement. The politically correct term is biracial, and to stipulate whether biracial children are considered black or white depends on their skin tone and how they're raised." Her eyes scour the crowd and land on me before she continues. "Biracial children come in a multitude of shades, I happen to be on the more bronzed side of the biracial skin tone, and others can border the line of an almost Caucasian like skin tone." She doesn't outwardly call me out but she implies it enough to get some of my classmates to look at me. "Society automatically divides you into race classes the moment their eye drifts over you, and that does not exclude biracial children. The term white-passing was used to classify biracial children during a time of segregation because people realized that it was perfectly possible to misidentify biracial children as white just because of their lack of obvious melanin. That's still the situation today, people talk about the other races to biracial kids because they can't automatically distinguish if the person is light skinned, biracial, or just white, which means that we can not decide where to put biracial kids in a race bracket. There is no correct answer to this topic, because not only do biracial kids seem almost impossible to classify but even at times different people like to be placed in a different bracket based on category."

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When I get up to to podium I turn to Ms. Nickels first, "can I speak from my own experience since this isn't a formal debate?" She raises her eyebrows but nods for me to go ahead. "I personally don't like being classified as black." My classmates gasp, but I knew that was coming long before I got up. "But I don't like being classified as white either, and that is nothing against the two races but my personal preference." I try to ignore the heated glares coming my way and instead twist the chain of my bracelet around. "My mom is African-American, and my dad is European, Russian and Greek to be exact, therefore I'm not just biracial but multiracial. Since I was a kid my parents never made me choose a race to classify as because what was the point? I knew who I was, I knew my family history, and I was secure in it. I wasn't introduced to picking a race until I moved here, and that's nothing against you guys it's just that we were raised with different mindsets and that's not wrong." Some of their faces soften at that and I can feel my heart stop beating so loud. "I don't choose to classify as either white or black because I don't want to choose. If I classify as one or the other it means I'm dignifying one of the races as being better than the others and that's not something I want to do because it's not fair. To choose means I have to choose between my parents, which one is better, and it's not fair to the people that raised me to decide which one of them was better."

The bell rings before I can officially say I'm done but that doesn't stop me from rushing to get my things and head into the hall.

"Hey, Kuro, wait up!"

Another thing I detested was having to shorten my name so that it was easier to pronounce. Krovopuskov just didn't roll off of everyone's tongue so for the best Mom shortened it when we moved here. Reggie pulls up beside me, too late to catch the groan I let out because of the thirty seconds shaved off my walk to my next class. I like Reggie, I do, we had three out of eight classes together and he occasionally offered his help when I was struggling with my calculus homework.

"Hey, Reggie."

He gives me a short nod before licking his lips and placing his hand on my back, right behind my left shoulder. "Listen, I just wanted to applaud you for not choosing sides."

I don't usually speak up front during the debates unless it's a requirement which meant I had a tad bit of social anxiety. It meant slot for someone to compliment something I had trouble with convincing myself to do and a smile breaks out on my face. "Thanks I-."

"I mean it doesn't matter that your white father is halfway across the country living the lavish lifestyle, and your black mom is working to support four kids by herself." His tone is even but it carries an air of deception to it the second we cross the threshold into Math. "But hey, no reason to make the white man feel inferior in anyway right?"

My smile falls and a pit settles in my stomach at his words. "You don't know us, my parents or my family. Please don't make assumptions about what is or what is not going on."

He nods slowly before sidestepping me and entering the classroom. "I may not know him personally but no one needs to when he has no shame in broadcasting his affair while being married and having a child." He takes pride in the way my face falls because a smile slowly creeps out across his face. "You didn't know? God, your parents had probably one of the most notable open relationships in the world when they first got married, well your Pops did. They say it was over every magazine and blog sites in the Western United States. I'm not at all surprised your Mom got the hell out of dodge, just that it took her sixteen years."

There's a dull throbbing sensation behind my eye and I hastily blink in a lame attempt to get it to subside. "How, why would-."

"Because your dad, your father with a white savior complex did it all for appearances but couldn't give up his own desires." His smile falls and for a moment he actually seems remorseful with the information he's giving me. "Arnesia, the only thing he cared about was his own happiness."

The throbbing gets worse and the pain spreads behind my other eye as well. It's sharper now, like a continuous jab and my notebook falls to the ground with a soft thud as my hands reach up to cradle my head.

"He's doing this intentionally?"

"Nia, you can't stop this!"

"The hell I can't, that's my kid in there!"

"Iphigenia-."

"No! I refuse to suffer any longer at his hands because Dallas Krovopuskov only cares about what he wants."

The distorted memory only makes things worse and my brain starts to feel like its too big for my skull, throbbing erratically and bringing forth tears. My eyes snap shut trying to bring at least a little bit of sensory comfort but it's still too much. I can still hear the chatter in the hallway, still sense Reggie standing over me, and I can even hear my math teacher making his way over to me with questions of concern.

"Arnesia? Reggie, what happened?" Mr. Laine's hand lands on my shoulder and I involuntarily cry at the jolt of pain that courses through me until he snatches his hand back. "Someone hit the intercom!"

It's chaos, pure chaos as I finally try to peel my eyes open. The kids in the classroom are whispering to each other with wide eyes, Reggie is furiously jamming his finger against the intercom button, and Mr. Lain is practically hyperventilating as his eyes scan over every inch of me with knitted brows. The voice over the intercom is staticky so I can't make out much of what's being said. The bell chooses the exact moment the intercom shuts off to ring and it's almost surreal the way everything falls into place.

The pain stops, almost as instinctively it appeared it just disappeared. The world quietens and everything just stills for a moment, just an air of welcomed peace. My fingers gently unclasp my head and I gently rub them against my temple, soothing what no longer hurts. My gums ache slightly and I chalk it up to how I was clenching my jaw to try but fail at not making any noise to attract unwanted attention. When I convince myself to bring my hands away from my head and back down to my sides I sway slightly before looking down.

I could've sworn I paired my ripped jeans with my chucks, white chucks that were much too dirty to be considered white. But I must be wrong, because I'm starring at my pink chucks, though they're spotted with white, non-white, splotches.

"Arnesia-."

"My chucks," I start just as the haze begins to descend once more. "They were white and now they're pink." I take a deep breath before I shakily lift my hand to my mouth. It's sticky and when I pull it away the pads of my fingers are coated in a dark crimson liquid that could pass for black in the right light. The room begins to sway and my eyes sweep my surroundings before they focus on Reggie, tucked into the corner with wide eyes. "You should call my mom, not Dallas Krovopuskov," I advise before I fall back into the darkness.