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“Just because someone is influential doesn’t mean they were necessarily more perceptive or intelligent than everybody else. Look at our society right now. How many influencers do we have? Would you trust their opinions on the Prometheus myth?”
She looks up, finally meeting my gaze. Her eyes are cold, and there’s a slight frown on her face, perceptible because of two tiny furrows between her eyebrows.
“You’re really comparing Byron to an influencer?” she asks.
“That’s essentially what he was. We only remember him the way we do because he was the equivalent of a rock star in his day and age. Just because everybody wanted to sleep with him doesn’t make him a savant.”
“What makesyouone, then?” Theodora says. “Since you know the Prometheus myth so well?”
“I never said I knew it well. I just don’t necessarily agree with the interpretation that to Prometheus, death would have been a victory.”
“That’s because you’re a fourteen-year-old boy. The idea of infinity doesn’t register in your mind, let alone the idea of an infinity spent being tortured.”
I sit back in my chair, narrowing my eyes at her. Part of me is amused by her austerity. Part of me is annoyed that she’s reduced the complexity of my existence and personhood to merely being a “fourteen-year-old boy”.
“The idea of eternity doesn’t register in my mind because of my young age and lack of experience—how does it register in yours, then?” I smile at her and tilt my eyes. “What kind of creature are you, Theodora, that you look my age but have lived so much longer than I have?”
She stiffens in her chair, but her voice is carefully measured when she speaks.
“That’s not what I’m saying. And the brain’s ability to understand certain concepts doesn’t necessarily have to do with age—that was just a simplification. What I was trying to say is that I think there is a stage of consciousness where one can conceive why death might be a victory and a stage of consciousness where one is not yet ready to see death as anything but punishment or tragedy.”
“Ah—so what you are saying is that you are more evolved than I am, and, therefore, able to understand this poem in a way I cannot?” I let out a low laugh.
Theodora’s face is set like stone, hard and unamused. The furrows between her eyebrows multiply as her frown deepens.
“Why are you laughing? I wasn’t trying to say something funny—and you certainly didn’t.”
“No, no, you’re right. I didn’t say anything funny—and neither did you. What I find funny is how it only took you a couple of years spent in Spearcrest to become a snob.”
“A snob?” Her voice goes high with surprise. “I’m not a snob at all. How am I a snob?”
“Well, for one, you’ve gone from advocating for the merits of children’s books to passing judgement on my lack of perception and maturity due to the fact I’m nothing more than an insignificant fourteen-year-old.”
“I never said you were insignificant,” she says. Her tone is almost as stiff as her posture is. Her hand curls around her pen, knuckles white.
“You’re correct about that—I’m not.” I smile at her because I mean that sincerely. I’m not insignificant—I have never been nor will ever be. Especially not to her.
Theodora can pretend I am the shadows she treads on the ground, or she can pretend I’m the wall she passes by without seeing, but she cannot pretend I’m insignificant.
She glares at me as if I’ve just doused her with cold water. “All this just to get me to say something nice about you?”
“If that’s you being nice, Theodora, I’d hate for you to insult me.”
We stare at one another. Her eyes drop to the easy smile on my mouth. She’s unsettled and annoyed, and I’m not, and that counts for something.
Especially since she just accused me of being intellectually incapable of comprehending the poem we’re studying.
“If it only took me a couple of years to become a snob, then how long is it going to take you to learn how to have an intellectual debate without resorting to petty arguments?”
“I wasn’t being petty, although I would like to point out you made the choice to begin our intellectual argument—as you call it—by asserting that I’m too young and immature to comprehend the concepts explored in the poem.”
Her lips move, the lip gloss on them catching the light like the glimmering surface of a river, forming a tiny pout.
Then, as suddenly as an unexpected ray of sunshine falling through stormy rain clouds, her face smoothes itself out. The furrows between her eyebrows vanish—gone is the frown, the tiny pout. Like erasing the scribbles on a page, her face becomes a blank mask with an insincere pencil smile forming on her lips.
“I apologise,” she says finally, “if I offended you.”
“You didn’t offend me,” I reply with an affable smile. “You couldn’t if you tried.”
