sga_flashfic | Fic: Esthesia by Nilahasi

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Title: Esthesia
Author: Nilahasi
Rating/Genre: PG, gen
Length: 1361 words
Challenge: school
Summary: John is in high school, and his English class starts reading Anna Karenina.
A/N: Not my first fic, but my first in this fandom--and I am so incredibly nervous about posting this it's not even funny.

It wasn’t that John Sheppard hated fifth period; it was just that it came at an unfortunate time, right after lunch, which meant sated and sleepy; and that fifth period meant English which meant musty, dog-eared books and a very distracting breeze that blew in through the open window next to his seat and warm, sunny light scattered across his desk.

So when John sauntered into room 124 and said, “I hate fifth period,” what he really meant was ‘I want a nap.’

But then there was the bell, and the slam of the door as a couple of giggling girls darted inside–and Mr. Jones was dropping a piece of chalk into the blackboard tray, and wiping his hands, saying, “Today we’re going to be talking about the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy and his book Anna Karenina.”

The collective groan from the class was impressive but Mr. Jones raised his hands defensively, shushing them. “We were going to do War and Peace, but it would take too much time–we’re already going to have to spend a month on Anna Karenina, and it’s going to be rough as it is.”

Mr. Jones walked over to his desk, reaching into a large crate of battered books, and began handing them to students. “Leo Tolstoy,” he began, “was born August 28th, 1828...”

Just then the boy in front of John, Peter something-or-other, passed back a copy of the book and John hefted it in his hand, shaking his head at the book’s width. He spent the rest of the period counting the sentences in the book.

When the bell finally rang for the end of class, amid the clamor of notebooks slamming shut and backpacks zipping, Mr. Jones was still talking. “You take care of these books,” he was saying, and then he raised his voice, barring the exit with one hand on the doorknob. “Hey, listen–listen to me!” he shouted over the din. After a minimal amount of quieting, he continued. “Some of you aren’t doing so hot in this class, and we’ve only got a couple months of school left.”

The room quieted more and everyone stopped moving, and for a moment it was as though theirs was the only stationary point in the school, with their silence set against the backdrop of catcalls and footsteps parading down the hallway.

Mr. Jones’s eyes were moving over the whole class, and then he stopped, looking straight at John. “So if you need to pull your grade up, now’s the time to do it. I want to see some effort out of you guys these next few weeks. I am personally challenging you to read this book.”

And then with a flourish Mr. Jones threw open the door, calling out, “Go to your next classes, don’t be late, and make sure you at least read to page fifty before tomorrow!”

‘Shit,’ John thought.

***

That first week of Anna Karenina, John thought, was completely and totally unfair.

It was the first night that did John in. Fifty pages didn’t sound too bad–the kind of thing you could skim over in, say, third period history class. Only skimming apparently didn’t work with Tolstoy, and excuses didn’t seem to be cutting it with Mr. Jones anymore.

“John, what is the name of Anna’s husband?” Mr. Jones had said.

John’s “Luke Skywalker” was apparently neither the correct answer nor a witty remark, judging from the look on his teacher’s face–as though he’d been sucking a lemon.

So John really did make an effort that night to read those first fifty pages, plus the next forty that had been assigned–and that meant ninety pages in one night, and there was no way he could do that after chemistry and math homework, and so the next day when Mr. Jones asked John the names of Anna’s children, John couldn’t remember.

And the questions didn’t stop. Every day John had to deflect questions about Anna’s family or her husband’s family or John’s feelings about Anna’s feelings until at the end of the week, John figured he’d pretty much had enough and barricaded himself in his bedroom for the entire weekend, catching himself up on what had to be, in his opinion, the densest book in the history of the world.

So on the next Monday when Mr. Jones asked John his feelings about the book, John told him, in no uncertain terms, how he felt about Anna and Vronsky and what he termed “the stupidest affair ever,” and while Mr. Jones didn’t necessarily agree with anything John had to say, the look on his face was priceless as John said, “and really? That whole pregnancy thing is like a line straight out of a soap opera.”

The second week still sucked. John knew, though, the dangers of slipping on the daily required reading, and so he found himself actually doing his homework on a regular basis. He continued answering the questions Mr. Jones asked him and a couple of the ones that other people couldn’t answer. But really, he didn’t care where the book was going and was still working on a rise-to-meet-the-challenge kind of deal until at the end of class on Friday Mr. Jones looked straight at John and said, “Poor Vronsky. We’ll talk about his attempted su–well, we’ll talk about it next week, when we get to it. I don’t want to ruin the surprise for you.”

The third week, John picked up the gauntlet and ran with it. He’d finished the entire week’s requirement by Wednesday and, much to his surprise, found himself actually starting to care about the stupid fat book that had begun to consume his life. He stopped, though, before starting the last week’s assignments, because somehow it didn’t seem right to finish the book while the rest of the class was still quibbling about Anna and Vronsky’s honeymoon. John sat in the back of class, graphing hyperbolas and parabolas on the back of his hand in fading blue ink.

John finished the rest of the book the final week on Monday night, and when Anna threw herself in front of the train John didn’t blink and didn’t stop, because there were still nineteen chapters left and he’d be damned if he was going to mourn the loss of some fictional character before he’d even finished the book.

His eyes kept straying, though. Every few pages he’d flip back and relive Anna jumping in front of the train again. It was the little things, he thought, that he couldn’t wrap his mind around–she’d bought a ticket and then killed herself. He kept seeing the candle Tolstoy wrote about and the wax sputtering as it flickered and died.

Suddenly John was angry–at Tolstoy, for creating Anna and forcing her to be unhappy and writing her out of life. He was angry at Mr. Jones for assigning the book. Angry at the time and energy he’d expended–for what? Death?

But he was in awe a little bit, too, that words could have this kind of effect on him–the kinds of feelings he usually reserved for bending glass in the flame of a bunsen burner or exploring the mathematical concepts behind fractals.

On Tuesday John sat at the front of his row and answered Mr. Jones’s question, and then actually volunteered a comment about the book, unprovoked–it was the ticket that bothered John, the ticket she’d bought to somewhere, and she could have used it and left but didn’t. What happened to the conductor, and the people watching, and the people who would have ridden with her?

John thought that the thing that bothered him most was that someone should have been able to help her–although he didn’t know if he could do it himself–but he didn’t volunteer that information.

On Wednesday John had moved back to the back of the class, basking in the sunshine; but now he was thinking about gravity and force, and how maybe if the train was going fast enough, Anna might not have felt anything. John actually started to like the train better than the living, breathing characters in the book, because at least the train did what it was supposed to, releasing Anna’s soul like steam.