Daphne was curled on the window ledge in her bedroom, staring at her reflection superimposed over the faraway view of the glasslands. She tapped her pen to the edge of her notebook. “Are you writing?” Judas said. He sat on the floor beside the window, staring at a blank page of his own. “We’re supposed to have three pages about the two gods by tomorrow, and I was kind of counting on your genius to inspire me.” “Really, Judas. We go through this every year. We’ve read the material dozens of times by now. What they want is to see how our ‘own unique perspectives have changed.’” “They want us to regurgitate the text so that they can be sure we aren’t getting any wild ideas, you mean.” “Don’t be such a cynic,” Daphne said. But when she looked at her paper, the only line she had written was a direct quote from her text. The music stopped abruptly, and then the silence was broken by a crash of piano keys, and then another.
