Britain Evangeline Pursley announced her presence by arriving late to the first day of my father’s class, The Ethics of War. The door slammed shut behind her, with her poise like a sail that caused everyone to stare.

Her voice came defiant, as she told him, “Sorry, big building, small minds and a lot of people who think they own the hallways.”

My father didn’t appreciate tardiness, and really wouldn’t from her if he knew why she were here, but he didn’t know and wanted to keep his reputation as the “cool professor.” He told her it was alright, “Take a seat right here up front beside my daughter.”

A wave of eyebrow lifted her face. “No problem Dr. Orrico.”

She didn’t care about their eyes. Looked right at me though, first time since I’d broken up with her after seven months together. He expected things of me, and that included a husband and kids. She never believed he was that homophobic, and we about it a lot and eventually I blocked her on everything. Changed my phone number, my hangouts, made myself a mole — impossible to track down.

One thing was always certain, though. I was always where my father told me to be.  Brittain knew this just as she knew I’d be here because I was my father’s lapdog, and attended the classes he taught, even if it wasn’t necessary. 

The chair next to me was the only vacant one in the room, at a table situated up front, because I was a spectator and servant, not an actual student. Britain contorted her body around the tight packed chairs. When she sat down next to me, the last three months bubbled straight out of my mind.

She sat in her chair and put her backpack on her lap. No move to unpack her supplies, because we both know she had no intention of studying.

“Hey,” she said.

I nodded a curt hello.

Eventually she took a hint and took a notebook out of her backpack. As she closed her bag, flap revealed two rainbow buttons, one declaring her a “lavender menace,” and the other reading, “in dog years, I’m gay.” She put it away before my dad could see it, but not before I did.

My dad cleared his throat and tried to reclaim his classroom time. 

“Well, Miss…”

“Pursley.”

“Miss Pursley, why don’t you introduce yourself?”

She crossed one leg over her knee. “Like, my name and stuffs?”

“Yes,” dad said. “Well, you can start there.”

She rattled through the basics, her name and where she was from, her still undecided major along with her dabbling into studio arts. “I’m from Virginia, unfortunately,” she said. “And I came to this school to watch my hopes and dreams bubble down the proverbial drain.”

Dad didn’t look up from his checklist. “Well, Virginia does that to a person. Accept it now or never.”

She turned to me and gave a wink that meant ‘I think I choose never.’

He moved on to the lesson, but I wasn’t listening anymore. I couldn’t stop staring at Brittain. She looked so different, but somehow the same. There were a few extra pounds on her ribcage, but it made her fuller, more soft. She wore black lipstick and made earrings out of paper clips, wore combat boots and fishnets with rippings. The necklace I’d bought her was still around her neck, but with a new chain, like it’d been snapped in a rage then reassembled.

I hadn’t paid attention in sometime, and my dad threw a paper airplane at the pair of us. Britain fumbled but caught it a few centimeters from the floor while joking,  “That was a pritz effort, Dr. Orrico.”

A soft buzz of laughter settled over the class like warm water. Dad waved his hand and commanded the room’s attention. “Where were we? Oh yes. War.” He looked from person to person. “What is war?”

No one answered at first, as he expected. Even he didn’t have the slightest clue as to where this class was going. It vaguely filled a general education requirement for history and anthropology majors, but the syllabus was a mess. I trusted my dad, through. He often knew the right things to do.

“Conflict,” someone shot up lamely.

“Alright,” dad said. “That’s vague, but it’s a start.”

Britain stuck her pen in the air like it were a finger. “You want dictionary definitions or personal interpretations. Like I could explain verbally, but I could also prepare a dance.”

The same timmer of laughter returned. For some reason, my dad was tickled. “However you feel is right. There are no wrong answers in this room.”

“Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of, like, grades?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.” Dad nodded. “Thank you for questioning authority.”

My dad may have been amused, but I was not with Britain joking around when we’re supposed to be learning. She leaned back in her chair and her thigh brushed mine before saying, “The extreme corner of the shit stain of humanity; people killing and fighting each other over arbitrary things like land or money.”

She winked at me when she said that, clearly trying to impress. I hated it. She couldn’t be a jokester and a flirt and brilliant all at the same time. Dad liked her definition, and decided to roll with it. “War has existed as long as societies have but when we talk about the — as Ms. Pursley so eloquently put it — ‘shit stains of humanity,’ we discuss history, military, but not necessarily ethics. That’s what this course is about; the murky gray area of conflict in human kind.”

Dad put on his professor voice, and went into a serious lecture but I heard Britain “pssh” beside me. “This is some boring ass shit.”

I turned to her abruptly. “Then why are you here?”

We both knew why, and the tilt of her head gave that away, even as she said, “I need the credit, Merina.”  I looked her in the eye — those blur of grey and blue eyes — and watched the bright hurricanes churn on pupil horizons. Whatever she hypothesized…it wasn’t happening now.

Then she reached out and pushed back my hair while my father wrote on the chalkboard.

Oh, fuck.

I still loved her.

I could not be in love with her.

She pushed back just in time for dad to turn back to the class. He turned to the two of us and asked whoever would answer, “When do you think a war ends?”

Before I could answer, Brittain snort-laughed. “Do wars ever really end, Dr. Orrico?”

He folded his hands over his beer belly and asked her to elaborate.

“War is symbolic,” she said. “Conflict is just the need for super powers to stroke their dicks.” She gave me a sideways glance. “They say someone’s gotta win, but sometimes no one does. A cease fire doesn’t end a conflict, it just ends the discussion.”

My muscles were tense as salt but I still spoke up. “People still die. Do you think of that, Britain? Of the other people who had to die for your little discussion? No. All you ever think of is yourself.”

The whole class looked at us peculiarly now, even the stoners sitting way in the back. My mouth hovered between silence and words until Britain picked up the slack for me. “Agree to disagree, but aren’t we here to dispute ethics? The war doesn’t end just because some white men with treaties say so.”

Dad amused her. “An example would be?”

“Look at World War II, which ended in the forties but gay people were kept in the camps well into the sixties.”

His spine was switch stiff as he straightened his tie. His cheeks waxed a deep pink, but he couldn’t bring himself to say anything to that. Britain kept going on about the conditions in Russia, the Westboro Baptist Church. This wasn’t a class to her anymore, it was an experiment in how conscious she could make everyone in the room. While dad rolled his eyes, scoffed, and made rye comments I was painfully aware of the rainbow “safe space” sticker on his office door. It meant little to nothing. This was confirmed when he cut her off, “Alright, this is a discussion on actual war, not homosexuality. Let’s try to keep on task, is that alright?”

Britain was thwarted. Clearly, she hadn’t expected this. Crossing her arms, she recovered quickly. “But we were discussing what makes an actual war? Isn’t it up to interpretation?”

He continued with class like he hadn’t heard her, and she proceeded to stay mad for the latter half of the hour. She tapped her foot with a vengeance, bit her tongue in the places she wanted to set it free. She was the first one out of the room when class was over, but I knew she was waiting for me.

We were pinned behind the fat blue door when she told me, “Your hair is different.”

I tried to say thanks.

“It doesn’t really suit you, but that’s none of my business.”

My fingers touched the crimson ends that stood apart from my tame, obsidian locks. I thanked her for the compliment. “My dad did it for me, actually.”

She pointed to the podium. “The man up there in a polo shirt and Cavaliers tie?”

“He’s….” I let myself trail off instead of defending him as a good guy. She would never believe me anyways, and his safe space sticker was there, making me doubt if it was even true.

Instead, I shifted to my mad face. “What are you doing here, Britain?”

I expected many answers.  Invade. Divide and conquer. Something like that. She just said, “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

I hadn’t counted on that, but even the smile on her face treaded softly. She tried to brush my hair back again and I stopped her. What if my father saw?

“He’s talking to a student.”

“He’s ten feet away.”

“Merina, come on.”

I shoved her back, lightly, and toyed with the ends of my hair. “I don’t do that anymore. IT doesn’t really suit me, you know?”

She wasn’t angry. She was sad, and I tried not to think of how many times she wore that expression before. It was always in her room, and I’d be stuck on her pretty face and the way her brown skin glowed under the influence of the faerie lights.  To me, she was so infinite. She held all the secrets of the universe on being happy and clever and living for herself–

Dad came out of the room then and asked, “Everything alright out here?”

If there wasn’t distance between us before, Brittain put it there now. “Merina and I haven’t seen each other in a while and we were just catching up.”

He put his hands in his pockets. “You two know each other?”

She lied for me. “Friends of friends.” With that, she turned on her heel and left. Her bag was left open and a few loose papers scattered, and once she was gone, dad motioned for me to pick up the litter.

“I don’t want you running with people like that,” he said.

I asked why, and he gave me a look that said ‘you know’ and I thought, ‘Oh dad, if only, if only you knew.’

He closed the door behind him while I went about cleaning up her mess. Among the pages was the crumpled up airplane dad threw at us, which I now saw was a discarded copy of his syllabus.

For a minute, I thought of going after her. The moment concluded, and I threw her papers in the trash and decided for myself that she’d won this round.

– Anastasia Jill