Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Maxwell and Lisa

Days passed. School continued. Students attended their classes, work was assigned, entire forests were destroyed by the amount of paperwork created. All the gears of school turned smoothly. Well, smoothly-ish. As smooth as one could expect from a school where the number of bathrooms changed daily and you could never be sure which floor your upcoming class would be on.

The Wooden Girl slammed her book shut on the table and screamed quietly as she violently ruffled her hair. Salmacis looked up from her lunch, surprised at the sudden action.

“Are you okay?” Salmacis said.

“Who assigns an essay in the first month of school?” Wooden said. “Every other teacher is doing easy stuff! We’re still writing poems about summer break in Lowe’s class!”

“I’m sure Ms. I-330 has a good reason for all the work,” Salmacis said in the conciliatory tones of someone who had already finished their essay. Seeing that wasn’t cheering up her friend, Salmacis changed the subject. “What about theater? Have you started anything in that yet?”

This failed to have a cheering effect. “No. I’m starting to wonder why I should even show up to class. What about you? Aren’t you in an elective?”

Salmacis looked down and muttered something.

“What?”

“…Swim team.”

“I didn’t know you were on the swim team!” Wooden thought for a moment. “I didn’t even know we had a swim team. Is it run by Coach Ferris?”

“No, it’s a club sport. Student run.”

“You should have told me! How good are you?”

A blush started to rise on Salmacis’s face, and she mumbled again.

“What did you say?”

“… I can’t swim.”

Wooden’s mind went blank as she tried to think of a response. Finally, she said, “But why are you on the swim team then?”

Salmacis’s face had become furiously red. “Everyone else in my family swims. My sisters say I have to do it as well.”

“Do you want to swim?”

“Not really….”

“Then you should tell them! You shouldn’t have to be on the club if you don’t want to be there!”

Salmacis quickly shook her head.

“Come on it, can’t be that hard!”

“Yes. It can.” Her tone silenced any reply. The rest of the lunch period was passed in quiet between them.

***

As always, the Cold Boy went to the library after finishing his lunch. Vision’s study group was there as usual. Every day, Cold imagined joining the group. He’d dream of Vision coming over to him and inviting him over, and he would make friends with everyone there…. But it never happened.

Today Cold was taking a break from reading, and was at one of the library computers. Surfing the web during lunch break may not have been the most productive thing to do, but it passed the time. He was looking through his third random Wikipedia article, when a new window appeared on his screen.

>Hello!

Cold stared at the window. He’d never seen the computers do this before. There was a place at the bottom of the window to enter text, so he began to type.

>Hi
>What’s your name?
>The Cold Boy. How are you doing this?
>I installed a chat program on all the school computers.
>You can install things on these computers?
>If you know how to get around the blocks.

The Cold Boy hadn’t even considered something like that was possible.

>Are you a student here?
>I go to Empty City High School.
>What’s your name?
>Call me Maxwell.
>Do you want to be my friend, Cold Boy?


***

The Rake strutted down the hallway, shoving aside a path for himself. He smiled as some of the shadows jumped out of his way. His reputation had spread through the school quickly.

But as he got closer to his class, his confident stride became shorter, and his shoulders slumped. By the time he reached his history class, he was shuffling along the floor and slouching as much as he could. He tried to avoid looking at Ms. I-330’s desk as he silently found his desk in the back of the class.

The bell rang, and Ms. I-330 began handing back papers. The Rake kept his eyes firmly locked on his desk, until she put a paper down in front of him. There was quite a lot of red ink on that paper.

“This is not an acceptable level of work, Rake.” She said.

His first reaction was to growl an insult back at her to show her just how much he cared about the schoolwork. But the moment he looked up at her, with her scarred face and lips peeled back in what was equal parts a smile and a snarl, the bravado faded away.

“Sorry….”

“Sorry…?”

“Sorry, ma’am.”

“And you’ll do better next time?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“That’s a good boy.” Ms. I-330 walked back to the front of the class as the Rake glared at everyone around him, silently letting them know they were dead if they uttered one word about this.

Ms. I-330 had begun to teach her lesson when she was interrupted by an impatient voice over the intercom. “Excuse me, Ms. I-330? We have an intern waiting for you in the front office.”

This news seemed to come as a shock to I-330. “Oh, shi-” She looked at the students, and quickly changed to, “darn. That was today? Alright kids, I’ll be back in a few minutes. Have to pick up whoever they’re making me babysit for the semester. If things aren’t in perfect order when I get back, I swear I will light all of you on fire.” That got a few chuckles; the students knew she wasn’t serious. They were pretty sure she wasn’t serious, at least. Probably. Hopefully. She wouldn’t actually do that, would she?

An unspoken agreement to remain on their best behavior was quickly reached by the class.

***

The number of butterflies that were flying around in Lisa Well’s stomach seemed to be doubling every second. What if her cooperating teacher didn’t like her? What if the students were hard to control? What if she wasn’t able to make any good lesson plans? How were you supposed to make lesson plans anyways? Oh god she was going to do a terrible job and they would kick her out and she would never become a teacher and….

The man with the brown ponytail next to her noticed her nervousness and smiled encouragingly. She tried to smile back, but it came out as more of a cringe. “Don’t worry.” He said. “Ms. I-330 is always bad at dates. She’ll be here soon.”

Lisa nodded, still worrying as much as before. “Thank you for staying here while I wait, Mr. Omega.”

“No problem. It’s not like I’m busy; hardly anyone visits the guidance counselor at the start of the year.”

Just then, the door flew open and I-330 walked inside. “Alright, alright.” She said. “Show me the kid so we can get… this… over….” She trailed into silence as hers and Lisa’s eyes met.

“Ms. I-330, thi is Lisa Wells from Empty City University. She’ll be doing her observational internship with us for this year. We’ve assigned her to work with you, so….” Omega stopped as he realized neither was paying attention to him. From the moment they had seen each other, Lisa and I-330 were in their own shared world, filled with pink bubbles, singing birds, and a smooth jazz sax solo.

Discerning the meaning behind her expression, Omega pulled I-330 to the side of the room and spoke to her.

“Ms. I-330, I feel I should remind you of our staff’s code of professionalism. While Ms. Wells may be 23, she is still a student, and you are her superior. The relationship between the two of you should reflect this… are you listening?”

“Mmhm, yeah.” I-330 said, trying to turn her head back to look at Lisa.

Omega grabbed her face and made her look at him. “Do. Not. Sleep. With. The. Intern.”

“But what if….”

“No.” He let go of her. “I don’t want to waste any more of your teaching time, so you can take her back to your room now.” He thought about what he’d said. “Back to your classroom.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I-330 put her arm over Lisa’s shoulder. “So you want to be a teacher huh? That’s cool. I was just thinking that I could use someone to help me carry my stuff.”

Mr. Omega watched as the two walked out of the office. There was going to be a lot of messy chaos coming from this internship….

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