#and the only classes that did what i asked were the fifth and sixth graders

[callofdudes]

I would love to read your Headcanons about König’s childhood from your POV 👀

I've been thinking about this a lot, so I'll give it a go.

König's childhood headcanons!

König's childhood wasn't the most lavish. He had an older sibling who when he was eight was legal to move out. This was the start of König's social anxiety. He wasn't used to not having his sibling (male or female I'm not sure at this point). But König lost his only friend who moved out with their friends and moved across town.

König often tried to visit but couldn't understand why he wasn't allowed to visit after his parents found out said sibling wasn't making the best of decisions and didn't approve of their spouse. This discouraged König a lot in his younger years.

After his sibling moved out König started going to public school. He was previously homeschooled but with both parents working and no one at home to teach him in his online classes he was moved out into the world.

König had no prior experience with making friends. So for third grade he was in public and most of the kids already had lots of friends. Being the third grade most of the kids had been going since kindergarten and already had their groups. (And third graders are petty)

König was pretty much alienated because he was thrown into this big environment with no prior experience. Everyone knew everyone's else's names and had friends and groups and playground rules. Everyone knee their teachers. Everyone except König.

Through third to fifth grade König was the quiet kid who sat in the corner. He was afraid to join any after school groups in fear of not making friends.

Both of his parents worked so he'd get up on his own, make his own lunch and go to school. And when he left he'd come home to an empty house. He was used to being alone. He spent time in his room with nothing but his video games and soon his parents became to involved in work to spend time with him.

This increased his anxiety even more.

When König was eleven he found out why his parents were so caught up in work. They weren't getting along and working out a divorce over the last year.

König was devasted. When the divorce came into effect his parents stopped attempting to hide their new distain for each other and families took sides.

König developed severe anxiety over this time. Spending one week with his mother and one week with his father. They would openly bash each other in front of family and his aunt's and uncles would tell him things about his other parent that hurt him. He didn't know who to trust and who to love. Going to school like this closed him off. He couldn't handle juggling his family affairs and trying to make friends.

In sixth grade König had a huge growth spurt. He was already fairly tall at 5'7 but midway through he grew to be 5'10.

All the kids made fun of him. This lengthy, tall, sixth grader. They called him mountain boy and asked him what the weather was like. He has trouble playing dodgeball because he was so much bigger than the others. The person he'd been catching feelings for also mocked him.

This drove him into a hole of emotions.

Eventually he did make a friend. In seventh grade he became friends with a fellow student. His first friend in many years. He was kind to König and by the time seventh grade came König had leveled out to be 6'1.

The kids bullied him a lot, but his new friend invited him to basketball tryouts. And König was happy. He was nervous and embarrassed despite being a very athletic kid. He loved sports and activities. And despite how nervous he was, he made the team!! He was so incredibly happy. He spent the next two years like that.

He played on the basketball team and became close with a tight nit group of students. He played against other schools and was starting to feel free again. He distracted himself from the divorce with his new friends.

And then the custody battle was settled. His mother had fought for full custody of König and had won rather easily despite her being no better than his father.

She took the money and moved them to Germany to live with relatives. König was devasted.

He had to start an entirely new life for ninth grade. A new school, a new social system, nowhere to hide.

König was incredibly insecure about his height and when school started he stuck out like a sore thumb. He started wearing a mask to try and hide. Everyone knew his name but they couldn't see his face.

And then he met you. You were kind the moment you met him. You could tell he was shy and from the way he hid you could tell he wasn't wanting to be noticed. You'd introduced yourself and just slowly started to filter into his life.

König was nice. When you saw him sitting alone you went over to sit with him. He avoided eye contact and his leg bounced rapidly, knee gently hitting the table.

"Hey, I know I introduced myself earlier but I was wondering if I could sit with you?" König doesn't say anything and keep his head down. You keep your distance but are nice to him. König takes a while to warm up to you but when he does you two become the best of friends.

And it happened over Social class.

The two of you were paired up to write a report on military history. König had only gotten into the idea of the military in the last couple years but you were invested. König brought you over to his house for the project. Everything was good until his mother and her new boyfriend started to tease him about you coming over.

König was so embarrassed that he forgot about you and ran up to his room. You grabbed your back and came after him. "Hey, it's ok. Don't listen to that."

König and you worked on your war project and König learned so much. You taught him about more than WW1 and WW2. He was enraptured and that was when he finally clicked with you.

You started hanging out with him every day at lunch and going over to each other's houses. You expressed your thoughts on signing up for the military and König also pondered the thought.

Eventually his mother went off into her own world with her boyfriend. And König couldn't handle it. Her new boyfriend always scolded him for crying and his overly sensitive emotions. She would take his side when he yelled at König until he went numb.

König was no longer open to you and pushed every sorry feeling he had down to seem tough. He got another growth spurt and by 11th grade he was 6'6.

He started working out after school when he wasn't hanging out with you. His now stepfather encouraged him to work out and push his emotions away. It hurt you. To see the kid who could break down in front of you and tell you about what was happening best himself up when he felt like he was going to cry.

He started to hate himself.

He wore black face paint and a black medical mask to hide his face, no longer happy with it. He became so self conscious and stuck he didn't know what to do.

"König you know I'm here for you, whenever you need something you can come to me."

König spends a lot of his off school time at your house and often sleeps over. he'd rather stay up late in your room eating popcorn and playing videogames than dealing with family drama.

You made him feel safe and secure. You helped him escape from the dark world and he could be himself around you.

Your parents were nice and they welcomed him over and treated him like a son. They fed him breakfast in the morning and made both your lunches in the morning when he slept over on school nights.

König stuck to his word. He told his mother he was signing up and wouldn't be attending 12th grade. His family discouraged this move and it almost threw him off until you encouraged it. If he wanted to do it you'd be all there for him. So he enlisted and after training was enrolled.

When he was sixteen He'd decided he'd had enough. He couldn't live the way he was living. One day at school the two of you were talking when König brought up enlisting. "I want to join the military." "Oh? Once you get out of school I think you'd be great at that, when do you want to join?" "Next year, when I eligible." "Oh. Well that's cool."

A year later you enrolled and were also enlisted. You were lucky enough to join the same squadron as König where he was promoted to sergeant a year later. You almost didn't remember him considering his new name and the hood covering his face. He recognized you and came up to you. And you know the rest.

I hope you like it, I threw in some of the readers POV but it was majority outside, I hope you guys don't mind. Bye!!

[ailelie]

A kid tricked my nephew into making a sexual comment to a teacher and the teacher refused to believe that my nephew had zero idea what he'd said even though my poor nephew really is that innocent. (So utterly innocent he even googled it later and got lots of pictures he didn't want to see).

And this teacher decided to berate my nephew and call him a liar in front of a class of younger students who then immediately spread out and told everyone that my nephew had no idea what X was.

And that teacher got my nephew sent to the principal where he was reamed yet again and my poor nephew was crying because he'd had no idea. And it isn't enough that he's in trouble, being called a liar, and embarrassed, but he's also been betrayed by a classmate he'd blindly trusted.

And my sister managed to keep him from getting anything more than a warning, but even so. I now despise that nameless teacher.

And if I lived in my hometown and were engaged with my nephews' sports teams, I'd start striking up conversations with parents of fifth and sixth graders. I'd ask which school their kids attended and at some point I'd slip into the conversation, "Have you heard about Mr. X?"

And then I'd say something like, "I don't really know the full story, but watch out for him, okay? Apparently he's a bit of a bully. I don't want him hurting your kids like he hurt my nephew."

And, if they pushed, I'd reiterate, "I really don't know the whole story, but he humiliated my nephew in front of a younger class. Even knowing as little as I do, I'm surprised he still has a job."

And then I'd find the quickest exit from the conversation.

Or I'd eavesdrop a bit and then be like, "Oh, your kid is going to that middle school? Oh, awesome. My niephs go there. They love [some teacher] there. But," and then pause "be careful of Mr. X, yeah? He doesn't bully every kid, but when he does single a kid out? It really isn't pretty." And, if they pushed, I'd shrug and be like, "I only know what my niephs have told me. That middle school has a lot of great teachers. He's just not one of them."

And I wouldn't have that conversation all the time, but maybe one every month or so? And I'd ask about who the gossipmongers are and make sure I talk with them. And I'd keep an ear out for more stories or evidence to add to the rumor and would do my best to fold it in and keep it circulating until it is just common knowledge that you don't want your kids in Mr. X's class.

If I heard someone mention Mr. X in casual conversation, I'd drop into casual conversation and be like, "The bully?" As if that were his defining characteristic.

(And I could go a lot meaner. My dad suggested a motivation that'd be really low to add, but I could. Or I could lead someone else to adding it).

I'd never give too many details because then people start to justify behaviors and such. I'd state and insinuate.

But I live in another state. So there's nothing really I can do except plan out what I would do.

And, the thing is, if I'd seen my nephew crying, I would have done this. I really would have started a damn whisper campaign with the end goal of getting a teacher fired because he dared to make my nephew cry. And I'd never even see this teacher face-to-face. If I did, I'd play nice and then comment to others how I'd done so because I didn't want him to pick on my niephs again and can you believe a teacher would take shit like that out on a kid?

I am not a nice person.

Because while I can't do this, I texted my dad and told him he should.

[luminousvision]

Class

Rebecca was the perfect student. The one time she talked out of turn, without her hand up, everyone including the teacher was so surprised the entire second-grade class just skipped a beat and pretended it never happened. That was the closest it ever got—Rebecca was the only student to not have her card turned the whole year.

I could not stand this girl. I couldn’t beat her on tests, because she wouldn’t get anything wrong. I had just learned my first English a year before, so I didn’t put up much of a fight on spelling. Both of us got every math question correct, in class or on homework. But I had her on Reading Minutes, where I’d read five hours every weekend to her three. When we tallied our Reading Minutes at the end of the month, I’d make a point of looking at her across the classroom. She’d make a sour face and pretend she didn’t see me. 

I couldn’t behave better than her because she never talked. I was pretty sure I ran faster than she did, but I wasn’t fully sure because she spent recess playing jumprope and hopscotch instead. I didn’t play gross girl games.

I didn’t get a rematch until fifth grade. But that year, Rebecca didn’t say a single thing she didn’t have to, not to me. She spent all of her time trading whispers with her best friend with long shiny black hair and a cute nose. Once, when I managed an excuse to talk to her, the girl offered the unsolicited aside that Rebecca said I rambled a lot. I nodded blankly and went straight to the dictionary. The two girls watched me and giggled.

The next year, we ran a class play, a coming-of-age story about high school homecoming, set in the 60s so even the parents had to be explained the references. Rebecca auditioned for the part of an infatuated teenage boy who spent most of his stage time chasing a girl. And it turned out, Rebecca was basically ready for Broadway. I’d seen enough class plays to know. How the hell does a sixth grader know anything about love at all, let alone love from the perspective of the other gender? This bookish, quiet, nerdy girl wasn’t squeamish about any of it, not about romance, kissing, or playing a boy’s part. On performance night, she got the one standing ovation.

Soon it was June and our year-long assignment to read a million words came due. Rebecca and I led the class by a large margin. I read four million. Rebecca read seven. It’s fine. I didn’t always beat her. I kept looking over at her desk, expecting her eyes to meet mine, even for a second, just to shake hands after the game. But she never looked at me. With her brilliant green eyes and pale, soft cheeks, I was getting the feeling I’d never catch her anyway.

It was hard to believe she was normal. She had friends, tangled with everyone else in gym, and ate the same shitty cafeteria food. So even when I got the only perfect score on the algebra final, I couldn’t smile. What did it matter to beat her by three points? Rebecca turned in pristine work, knew the answer to every question, didn’t blush when our science teacher gave us the baby talk, handled her four letter words, held her own in every blacktop sport, and always kept her wavy brown hair neatly brushed. The rest of us picked our noses and slung mom jokes at each other.

Every Monday in P.E., we’d run a mile, a big lap around the school. I always ran my heart out. Still, every Monday, the same two kids would grow smaller and smaller until they’d disappear around the baseball diamond. They were already laughing in the locker rooms by the time I got to the finish line.

One fall day after school, Rebecca and I were sitting on opposite sides of a long metal bench out front waiting for our parents to pick us up. Everyone else had already gone home and we could hear only the wind scrape dry leaves across the concrete. I pointed at the announcement board on the yellowing grass in front of us. They’re running another school dance. Do you go to them, I asked. No, she said, she hadn’t thought about them much. We left a long pause. Well, it’s next week, I said. Want to try it? Rebecca started but froze mid-way, her mouth slightly ajar. She stared at me, eyebrows furrowed, until her mother called through an open car window. The girl picked up her backpack and left without a word.

That year, Rebecca was diagnosed with scoliosis, or had stomach issues, or otherwise couldn’t come to class. I saw her after school every now and then, exchanging giant stacks of papers with each teacher. Her desk in every class remained empty. Then we stopped seeing her. They said she was being home schooled. Good riddance.

My friends in high school had heavy glasses, thick accents, or some shocking prudishness. If they could sing, they couldn’t take a derivative. If they could take a derivative, they couldn’t shoot a basketball. If they could shoot a basketball, they weren’t pretty. And if they were pretty, they couldn’t do anything at all besides check their phones and giggle in packs down the hallway.

I started imagining things, unrealistic things, like girls with self-confidence. Every spark was a hint of genius until disproven by a stray comment a week later. Surely, somewhere around here, someone not being home-schooled would beat me up, head over heels. Okay, in college, there were a few who tickled my imagination. They never said anything they hadn’t thought about for a long time. They made me think.

They made me think for a long time on a grassy field in the middle of campus, surrounded by dozens of kids with superior grades, some reading books and others throwing frisbees. My eye caught on one perfect, puffy cloud with ripples that reminded me of someone’s hair I could not forget. And in that instant, I found myself right back at the beginning, playing the memories through one more time.

[cyazurai]

i know i need money, and i want money, and my work day was actually pretty nice

...

but i'm really hoping that having a 17 1/2 hour snow storm is going to prevent me having to work tomorrow too

[ghstandpucks]

Teacher Appreciation Part 3 ~ Nathan MacKinnon (4+1)

Here it is! Part 3 (and last) of Teacher Appreciation! I'm so thankful for all the comments and love, thank you to everyone who has read it! Let me know what you think of this part! Shout out to @cozynightscandle for asking about a part 3 and providing some inspo, as well as @avsfans95 for always letting me bounce ideas off of her!

Also, sixth grade is still considered elementary in my district, so I kept it that way for purposes of the story!

Summary: The four times Nate surprised your class, and the one time your class and Nate surprised you.

Warning: mentions of the pandemic (not the main focus, just touching on how teaching was during that time as I spent the beginning of my teaching career pretty much online)

Word Count: 4,634

Master List

Your first year of teaching sixth grade was actually more successful than you would have thought. It was a different type of bond you were able to build with your students. Instead of having to tie shoes and clean boo-boos, you became someone that your students would come talk to if they were too stressed. They told you their dreams and aspirations; all the while still relying on you to calm their fears when math became overwhelming. Long story short, you absolutely loved it. Yes, some were taller than you, and on more than one occasion Nate would lose you among your kiddos when he would come to help in your classroom. Still, you built connections that you didn’t think were possible after always working with the younger kids. Nate loved seeing how excited you were, and loved when you would come home and tell him all about what your kids did that day.

And yes, home was now with Nate. During a bad snow one evening, you were panicking about having to get back home so you could change just in case school wasn’t cancelled for the next day. Nate, off-handedly, suggested that it would be easier for you to just move in, since you were over all the time anyways; his office half taken over with craft supplies already. You agreed with a sarcastic laugh, thinking he was joking, but woke up to him clearing out space in his closet. During winter break, you officially moved in. Now it was your second year in sixth grade, and a handful of your kiddos from third grade when you first met Nate were back in your class. And if you thought third graders were intrusive, they just got worse, especially when they already knew you.

1

“Miss Y/L/N, could you not give us homework tonight? I have practice,” Steven asked right after the morning bell rang and you were checking over last nights homework.

“Steven, I already don’t give you much homework and you have time to usually start it in class. Use your time wisely kiddo,” you said, stamping his paper as he groaned.

“But Miss Y/L/N…”

“But nothing, do your work,” you responded, making a face at him that caused the young boy to huff out a laugh. You had only been in school for a month now, but have been having a great time with your kids. Today, the Avs would be on campus talking with the fifth graders as they do every year about the presidential fitness test. Last week when your students caught word that the hockey team would be there, half of them pleaded with you to get the team into your classroom. Little did they know that you had a different surprise planned for them. During recess, Nate ran into your classroom as you gathered your PE supplies. “Do they know yet?” he asked, giving you a quick kiss and taking the kickball from your hands.

“Not a clue,” you giggled as he retreated to his teammates and you went to get your kids from line. Leading your students into the gym as you had PE after recess, they all started to shout and jump around when they saw who was joining them. You waved as Nate came into view, accompanied by the entire Avs’ line up.

“Hi Teacher Dad!” Alexa squealed over the commotion, and you swore your face was beat red. She hadn’t used that term yet this year and to be frank, you had forgotten about it.

“Alexa,” you started as the guys laughed.

“Hi Alexa,” Nate called out, smiling at you with a look that told you not to get upset. Looking back at the girl, she sent you a sweet smile and you just shook your head with a laugh.

“You know better,” you said and she giggled. “Alright, ladies and gentleman gather around please! Today we will be continuing our game of….”

“Kickball basketball!” your kids yelled, running off to their teams and taking their positions. “Wait wait wait. Before we get started, would someone kindly explain the rules of kickball basketball to our newcomers,” you gestured towards the Avs who looked completely confused at your fusion of the two ballgames.

“So one team pitches the ball like in kickball and the other team has to kick it. Then they skip around the perimeter of the basketball court and have to make it back home before the other team can get the ball and shoot it through the hoop,” Justin explained.

“There are also no bases so you can’t stop. You aren’t safe anywhere unless you make it back home,” Kalel added.

“This is really a game now?” Andre asked you and you nodded.

“And it is our favorite. So I have my kids playing odds vs evens based on their class numbers. I think you all can split up that way too,” you said, gesturing for the guys to join their respective teams. Nate watched as you settled the argument about who the pitcher would be between three of your boys, not handing the ball over till they figured it out diplomatically.

“She wasn’t joking when she said her students were taller than her, was she?” Andre laughed from beside Nate as he chuckled along. You stood on the sideline, cheering and calling out foul balls for the duration of the game. The Avs took it easy with your kids, just laughing and having fun. Your kids were ecstatic, being able to call some of the guys their teammates; getting high fives and being cheered on by the pro athletes. You PE time was about to end within another five minutes as the teams switched sides after the evens got three outs on the odds. You saw Isaac hand Nate the ball to make him pitcher, smiling as Nate gently rolled the ball to Kiely. After she kicked it and almost made it around, Steven was up.

“Miss Y/L/N, will you kick?” he called out to you, and your class started to cheer. It was no secret that you played PE games with your kids from time to time. A chant of your name was started as you laughed and put your keys and walkie talkie off to the side.

“Teacher Mom vs Teacher Dad, yaaaasss,” Alexa cheered and you shook your head.

“Alexa,” you called and she smiled sheepishly.

“Sorry!” Nate laughed and turned his attention back to you. He rolled the ball slower than you knew he could, but that didn’t stop you from kicking it with all your might. Your kids (and the Avs) on your side were cheering loudly as you skipped around the perimeter laughing, coming back to home a second before Tyson got the ball in the net.

“Evens win!” you called out, then made your two teams shake hands with each other and collect the equipment as it was time to head back to class. As your class was saying goodbye to the Avs, Nate walked over and bumped his arm into you.

“You know I went easy on you right?” he asked, ever the competitor. You laughed and smiled sweetly at him.

“You know you shouldn’t have, right?” you shot back, laughing as he rolled his eyes. “I’ll see you back home. Love you,” you whispered.

“Love you,” he whispered back. You gathered your class and ushered them out of the gym and back to your classroom. The rest of the day went well as your class was floating on cloud nine from their interaction with the Avs.

2

One Thursday afternoon before Winter break, you came home with several bags of potatoes in hand. Opening your apartment door, you walked in on Mikko and Andre watching a basketball game with Nate; your boyfriend automatically getting up and taking a few bags from you. “What’s with all the potatoes?” Mikko asked.

“We’re mummifying them tomorrow in class,” you answered casually, walking off into the kitchen as Nate sat back down on the couch while Mikko and Andre looked entirely confused.

“Did what she just said not phase you at all?” Andre asked Nate and the center shrugged.

“I’ve been hearing about this project for like 3 months now,” he said casually. You walked back into the room and sat on the edge of the couch near Nate.

“Mummifying potatoes?” Mikko asked, looking slightly horrified.

“Yeah, we’re learning about ancient Egypt. We’re going to wrap the potatoes in foil and decorate them with plastic jewels like they were death masks,” you explained in an excited tone.

“How?” Andre asked, now completely more interested in what you were talking about than the game.

“I’m going to cut large slices of potatoes so ever student gets a handful. Then we’re going to pour baking soda and salt on them to dry it out like the Ancient Egyptians would dry a body. Then we are going to wrap it in tin foil like a sarcophagus and decorate. When we get back from winter break, we’ll ‘excavate’ them by unwrapping the potatoes and see how we did with drying it out, documenting changes and what we see like archaeologists,” you explained. Nate smiled up at you as Mikko and Andre tried to figure out if the project seemed cool or crazy. They settled on cool.

“Can we help?” Mikko asked and you laughed.

“Nate’s coming in tomorrow to help. The two of you can come with him if you want,” you said and the guys nodded.

The following day, Alexa answered the door when there was a knock as you were starting to explain to your class what they were going to do with their potatoes. “Teacher Dad! You’re here!” She said quietly as to not get in trouble by you. Nate chuckled, nodding as Mikko and Andre planned on chirping him later for how comfortable your class was with him if they were calling him teacher dad like it was no big deal. It was one thing when they were younger, but took on a different comfort level as they were older.

The guys helped you pass out the materials and made their own sarcophagi as you circled the classroom making sure your students were staying on task and not just goofy around. A few of your sports obsessed boys clung to the hockey players and copied their every move, decorating their sarcophagi to look similar. You laughed, passing by Nate’s and adding an extra jewel because you wanted to make it more sparkly. He narrowed his eyes at you, but let you keep adding jewels until you were content and circled the class again to see how your kids were coming along. Mikko and Andre snickered; only you would be allowed to touch anything of Nate’s and not have him explode on you.

“Mr. MacKinnon?” two of your girls came up to Nate with little giggles. He looked at them confused, but answered.

“Yes?”

“You and Miss Y/L/N are dating right? Like you’re here all the time. Ever since third grade,” Audrey asked in a hushed tone while Cierra continued to giggle. Nate flushed, not sure how to answer them.

“You must really like her. Like, marry her like her,” Cierra added as Nate cleared his throat and his teammates started to laugh. Before Nate could formulate a sentence though, you were calling for your class’s attention, letting them know it was time to put their ‘sarcophagi’ on the back counter and clean up for the day. As you circled the room again, you noticed Nate looking a bit red with the two forwards trying to hold in their laughter.

“You okay?” you asked him quietly.

“Fine,” he shot you a smile, and though you were skeptical, you returned to your class.

“Yeah Teacher Dad Mackinnon. When are you going to make her Teacher Mom MacKinnon?” Andre chirped quietly, muttering a sorry when you shot him a look having heard his voice, but not what he said. Truth be told, Nate had already thought about it and had plans for an off-season proposal.

3

Campus was quiet on a Thursday after school. You had made copies and stapled a few packets together, graded math tests, and prepared a social studies test for Friday. One task led to another and you kept walking around your room hanging up new student work. Sitting down, you started working on going through your students work from the week to check for understanding and participation. As you were stamping and writing comments, you heard your door being unlocked. Figuring it was the custodian, you kept on plugging away. “Hi Ms. Kay,” you said cheerfully, before looking up and jumping in shock. “What are you doing here?” Nate looked at you incredulously.

“Why are you still here? Y/N I thought something happened to you,” he walked over to you and pulled you up and into a hug. Was he worried about you?

“No, I was just getting some things done. How did you get in?” you asked as he let go of you.

“Ms. Kay gave me your room key when I ran into her in the parking lot. Why the hell are you still here? I tried to call you like ten times,” Nate said, obviously worried, but you still weren’t sure why.

“I have bad reception in my room, I’m sorry babe,” you said, grabbing his hand. “Why are you so worried. Is everything okay?”

“You don’t know what time it is, do you?” Nate asked you, laughing humorlessly.

“It’s only like 4:30,” you said, looking at him confused.

“Hun, no,” he said, showing you his watch. “It’s 7:30.”

“Oh my gosh Nate. I am so sorry! One thing led to another and I wasn’t paying attention and…” you rambled.

“Hey it’s okay,” Nate tilted your chin up with his forefinger. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, realizing you had worried him. Nate smiled softly at you, giving you a quick kiss before grabbing your backpack and keys.

“Let’s go home,” he tugged on your hand but looked back when you didn’t budge.

“Nate I have so much to do. I don’t know how I got behind this week but I need to get all their work together and sent home in their Friday folders,” you rushed out, starting to feel overwhelmed that you didn’t have all the time you thought you had.

“Then they can get them on Monday. You need to come home and get some rest,” Nate tried to reason patiently with you.

“Nate, they’re called Friday folders for a reason,” you said.

“And I’m sure if they get them late one week no one will riot,” he responded.

“You don’t know that.”

“I know your class adores you as their teacher. Now let’s go home and you can finish them tomorrow if you’re going to stress over it,” Nate started to pull you along.

“But…”

“Leave it.”

The next day you were running on pure caffeine and more thankful than usual that it was Friday. The unfortunate part, your schedule had no room for you to work on your Friday folders. Figuring you would skip lunch to get it done, you went about your day as usual. You were helping Noah with dividing fractions when there was a knock at your door. As you continued to help your student, Justin got up and answered. “Mr. MacKinnon!” he yelled and your head shot up.

“Justin, that is not an appropriate classroom tone,” you said as your class was all trying to get a better look at Nate. “Get back to work you guys. I’ll be right back Noah. Try number 12 by yourself,” you suggested, getting up and walking over to Nate. “Everything okay?”

“What do you want me to file?” he asked.

“What?” you asked, confused by his question.

“You were stressed yesterday about your Friday folders and they still look empty,” Nate gestured toward your hanging files on the wall with all the student’s folders in them. “I figured I would stop by to see if you needed help.”

“Are you my room mom for the day?” you laughed quietly and Nate nodded. Checking the time, you shook your head.

“You just got out of practice. I appreciate the help, but I’m sure your tired. Go home and rest,” you said, feeling guilty that you had worried him yesterday.

“I’m good. Where should I start?” he smiled.

“Please let him stay Miss Y/L/N. I love making my brother mad that Nathan MacKinnon spends time in our class instead of his,” Isaac said from behind you. Turning around, you laughed looking up at the tall sixth grader.

“Why are you up?” you asked.

“Oh! I need help on number 15,” he showed you his messy paper.

“We’ll go over everything right now. But did you flip the second fraction and then simplify?”

“No….”

“Ohhh, I would start there,” you smiled.

“Yes ma’am,” Isaac saluted you and went back to his desk. You laughed softly, shaking your head and turning back to Nate. “If you’re sure you want to stay, their work is all ready to be filed and it’s sitting on my desk. Thank you.” You smiled at Nate with a sigh of relief. He squeezed your arm reassuringly for a moment, then walked over to your desk to grab the stack he needed. “Alright my crazies, let’s go over our keep, change, flip.”

4

This wasn’t actually happening, was it? There’s no way this is real. These thoughts swirled in your head on a Friday in March. The school was closing for an extended spring break due to an outbreak. COVID-19 was closing your school. Nate’s season was just postponed, and now school. You went home in tears that day, not knowing what was going to happen next.

Over the next two weeks, you prepared Google Classrooms and work to do digitally as your school year was called. A month in a half online, then summer. Nate was getting agitated, not knowing what to expect with hockey and also worried for the both of you in the city. “I’m getting us a flight to Coal Harbor before they close the borders,” he mentioned one night during dinner.

“Nate, I can’t leave. What if I need to get back into my class? What if my kids need me?” you asked, your anxiety heightening.

“Then I’ll find a way to get you back here as quickly as possible. I just think we would be safer at home with more space, not an apartment in the middle of Denver,” he explained.

“I don’t have anything to teach there. At least here I have a white board, I can’t take that on a plane,” you rambled. Nate reached across the table and grabbed your hand.

“I already ordered you one for there. It’s being delivered tomorrow. You can turn one of the spare rooms into your classroom, or you can take my office and I can do things somewhere else. I just want to go back home, and I’m not comfortable leaving you here,” he said, wiping a tear off your cheek with the pad of his thumb. You weren’t sure if you were stress crying or worried crying at this point. He did have a point though, and you were online for the remainder of the school year. You nodded.

“Okay.”

~ ~ ~

Three weeks later you were laughing at a story one of your kids was telling you over Google Meet. You had to give it to your class, they were very resilient and working hard to finish the year off. Deciding that you wanted to do something fun for PE, you roped Nate into a low-key training session. You told your kids to come to class that morning in their favorite sports gear and be ready to move. Opening your meet, you appeared in your MacKinnon jersey. “Of course you have a MacKinnon jersey Miss Y/L/N,” Cierra said laughing. You looked at her shocked.

“Who else should I have?” you laughed with her.

“Crosby,” Kiely unmuted herself quickly.

“I heard that Kiely!” Nate yelled from somewhere in the hallway. Your kids started laughing and you smiled at them, thankful to have them all healthy and safe in front of you, even if it was through a screen.

“Okie dokie kiddies. I have something fun planned for us today. Are you all ready to meet our special guests?”

“We know Mr. MacKinnon is there Miss Y/L/N,” Steven unmuted himself and laughed.

“I said guests as in plural Steven. But if you don’t want to meet him, I guess I can just send him back home,” you shrugged, starting to turn around in your chair.

“No no no! Steven stop talking. Miss Y/L/N, who is it?” Noah called, practically bouncing out of his seat.

“Hey, be nice Noah. Alright ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. I would like you to meet your PE coaches for the day. Mr. MacKinnon you already know, but say hi!” your kids all unmuted themselves to say hello to Nate as he walked into the room. “Okay now, drumroll please! Your other PE coach, Mr. Crosby!” The screams of your kids had you pressing ‘mute all’ really quick. If only there was a mute all in real life. Sidney waved at your kids while Nate laughed as Kalel fell out of his chair in excitement. You saw parents running into the rooms of your students, all waving and excited themselves once they saw there was no danger.

After a 30 minute workout with Nate and Sid demonstrating and counting for the kids, you let them have time to talk with your class. They had been working so hard, you figured some time missed from learning to enjoy themselves in this hectic experience was needed. Friday was half day for you online, so after a math review and reading time, you said goodbye to your kids as they all started to log off. Waving till the last one left, you sunk back into your chair as you ended the call. Nate came into the room and placed a kiss on your forehead. “Thank you for doing that today,” you said, smiling at your boyfriend.

“Of course. I would do anything for you, you know that,” he said simply and you smiled. “I am mad at Kiely though. Why should you have a Crosby jersey?” Nate made a face and you giggled.

“She just wants what’s best for her teacher,” you teased him, leaning forward to give him a quick kiss and then standing up to head to the kitchen for a snack.

“Yeah sure,” Nate said, then comprehended what you just said. “Hey!” he ran after you, circling his arms around your waist while you laughed and tried to get away from him.

+1

It was the last day of school for the year, and you were watching a movie with your kids on Google Meet. After the meet you talked about the summer and what they hoped to do if they could. You had them also talk about what their favorite part of the year was and what they look forward to in Junior High. “You guys know that I will always be here for you. I know you will all be awesome seventh graders and I can’t wait to run into you all at the grocery store one day and have you all tell me about it,” you said, starting to get choked up with having to say goodbye to them after such an insane year.

“I’m gonna miss you Teacher Mom,” Alexa unmuted herself and you almost broke. Even though you would get after her when she would call Nate Teacher Dad, you loved being her Teacher Mom.

“You’re going to make me cry,” you said, tearing up and laughing as your kids all started to unmute themselves to tell you not to cry.

“Miss Y/L/N, can you call Mr. MacKinnon into the room please?” Kiely asked softly and you nodded, figuring she wanted to say goodbye to him too. You called for Nate, laughing at a joke one of your boys told you while he walked into the room. Seeing him through the camera, you turned around in shock.

“What’s all of this?” you said to all the little presents and cards Nate was holding and placing down on the desk beside your laptop.

“We all wanted to get you something, so my mom emailed Mr. MacKinnon to plan how to get it to you!” Isaac shouted.

“Email?” you asked Nate, not knowing they had his email.

“Instagram,” he whispered. Your actual room mom DMed Nate.

“You guys! This is too much! Thank you,” you gushed, looking at the outpour of love from your class. “You’re all the best and I love you guys,” you said, not helping the tears that came to your eyes.

“Love you Miss Y/L/N!” a few of your girls shouted while your boys just laughed.

“There is also one more thing,” Nate muttered to you, rubbing the back of his neck. “You guys ready?” he asked your class, and you could hear the nerves in his voice. Why was he nervous? Your kids all nodded, big smiles on most of their faces. “Okay, hold them up.” You watched the screen as your kids held up colorful posters with different sayings on them. Confused, you started to read them.

“Teacher Mom + Teacher Dad”

“Congratulations!”

“Mrs. MacKinnon’s Class!”

“Say yes!” … Kiely’s had a picture of a ring on it. Your jaw dropped as your heartbeat sped up.

“Turn around!” Alexa yelled through the speakers. Spinning in your chair, you came face to face with Nate kneeling in front of you, a beautiful ring in his hands.

“I had a whole speech planned out, but I’m forgetting it now,” he chuckled and you giggled with him, more tears filling your eyes. “I know this time has been crazy, and I didn’t plan on purposing to you during a pandemic, but I didn’t want to wait any longer. I love you Y/N Y/M/N Y/L/N. I’m thankful everyday that those kids brought you to the rink that day three years ago. I love having crafts all over my desk because you need more space, and I love being Teacher Dad; more than I thought I would. But most of all, I love the peace and steadiness you bring to my life, even if you’re running in circles yourself. I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?”

“Say yes!” shouts came from behind you on the computer screen. You smiled, nodding your head.

“Yes, of course,” you said, tears falling. Nate smiled at you and slipped the ring on your finger, standing up and bringing you into a hug. He wanted to kiss you, but knew you would get mad that it was in front of your class. Cheers erupted from the meet, and you turned to see not only your students but their parents also. Laughing, you showed your class your ring quickly.

“Yay Teacher Mom and Teacher Dad!” Alexa shouted and you couldn’t get mad at her this time. After they all calmed down and you said your final goodbyes, you ended the meet and found Nate laying on the couch. You lowered yourself on top of him and kissed him.

“How did you get them to do that?” you asked, referring to the signs.

“When Isaac’s mom messaged me, I brought it up. She coordinated it all with the other parents,” he said and you laughed.

“I love you,” you said, kissing him again, Nate wrapped his arms around you, holding you close.

“I love you too, future Mrs. MacKinnon.”

Tagged: @avsfans95 @capsvsducks @justjosty @tysojost @natxpat @evphemia @stlbluesbrat21 @fallinallincurls @joeyisourranger @kyratallent @drewseph93 @ayohockeycheck @tkbarzal @stormingroses @dreamandrow @handwrittenheros @brandonbagel @bakerclaire123 @miranda0102 @cherrylita @musiclove-12 @reallyawkwardbandlover

[thewidowsghost]

Daughter of the Sea - Chapter 1

So, I started this on my Wattpad, and if figured I'd just put it on here! Just tell me if you want me to add you to the taglist!

Percy's POV

My name is Percy Jackson.

I am twelve years old. I'm a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York, and my sister, (Y/n), taking online schooling at home.

Am I a troubled kid?

Yeah. You could say that.

I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan—twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.

I know—it sounds like torture. Most Yancy field trips were.

But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had hopes.

Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep.

I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in trouble.

See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course, I got expelled anyway. And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. And the time before that...Well, you get the idea.

On this trip, I was determined to be good.

All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.

Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled. He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.

Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwiches that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn't do anything back to her because I was already on probation. The headmaster had threatened me with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.

"I'm going to kill her," I mumble.

Grover tries to calm me down. "I'm okay. I like peanut butter -" He dodges another piece of Nancy's lunch.

"That's it." I start to get up, but Grover pulls me back to my seat.

"You're already on probation," he reminds me. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."

Mr. Brunner leads the museum tour.

He rides up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery.

It blows my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.

He gathers us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and starts telling us how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give me the evil eye.

Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown.

From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month.

One time, after she'd made me erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, I told Grover I didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. He looked at me, real serious, and said, "You're absolutely right."

Mr. Brunner keeps talking about Greek funeral art.

Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickers something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turn around and say, "Will you shut up?"

It comes out louder than I meant it to.

The whole group laughs. Mr. Brunner stops his story. "Mr. Jackson," he says, "did you have a comment?"

My face is totally red, I think. I answer, "No, sir."

Mr. Brunner points to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?"

I look at the carving, and feel a flush of relief, because I actually recognize it. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?"

"Yes," Mr. Brunner says, obviously not satisfied. "And he did this because..."

"Well..." I rack my brain to remember. (Y/n) would have known the answer. She was nuts for this kind of stuff. "Kronos was the king god, and —"

"God?" Mr. Brunner asks.

"Titan," I correct myself. "And...he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead. And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters—"

"Eeew!" says one of the girls behind me.

"—and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," I continue, "and the gods won."

Some snickers from the group.

Behind me, Nancy Bobofit mumbles to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids.'"

"And why, Mr. Jackson," Brunner says, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"

"Busted," Grover mutters.

"Shut up," Nancy hisses, her face even brighter red than her hair.

At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.

I think about his question, and shrug. "I don't know, sir."

"I see." Mr. Brunner looks disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"

The class drifts off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses.

Grover and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr. Jackson."

I knew that was coming.

I tell Grover to keep going; then I turn toward Mr. Brunner. "Sir?" Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go—intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything. "You must learn the answer to my question," Mr. Brunner tells me.

"About the Titans?"

'"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."

"Oh."

"What you learn from me," he says, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson."

I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armor and shouted: "What ho!" and challenged us, swordpoint against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever lived, and their mother, and what god they worshipped. But Mr. Brunner expected me to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made above a C– in my life. No—he didn't expect me to be as good; he expected me to be better. And I just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.

I mumble something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner takes one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.

He tells me to go outside and eat my lunch.

The class gathers on the front steps of the museum, where we can watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.

Overhead, a huge storm is brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figure maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York state had been weird since Christmas. We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.

Nobody else seems to notice, though. Some of the guys are pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit is trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Dodds isn't seeing a thing.

Grover and I sit on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from that school—the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.

"Detention?" Grover asked.

"Nah," I said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean—I'm not a genius, not like (Y/n). She seems to know everything."

Grover doesn't say anything for a while. Then, when I think he is going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, he asks, "Can I have your apple?"

I don't have much of an appetite, so I let him take it.

I watch the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and think about my mom's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sit. I hadn't seen her or my sister since Christmas. I want so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. Mom and (Y/n) would hug me and be glad to see me, but Mom would be disappointed, too. She'd send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I couldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me.

Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized café table.

I am about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appears in front of me with her ugly friends—I guess she'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists—and dumps her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap.

"Oops." She grins at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles are orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.

I try to stay cool. The school counselor had told me a million times, "Count to ten, get control of your temper." But I am so mad my mind went blank. A wave roars in my ears.

I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy is sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, "Percy pushed me!"

Mrs. Dodds materialized next to us.

Some of the kids were whispering: "Did you see—"

"—the water—"

"—like it grabbed her—"

I don't know what they were talking about. All I know is that I was in trouble again.

As soon as Mrs. Dodds is sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turns on me. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes as if I'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honey—"

"I know," I grumble. "A month erasing workbooks." That wasn't the right thing to say.

"Come with me," Mrs. Dodds says.

"Wait!" Grover yelps. "It was me. I pushed her."

I stare at him, stunned. I can't believe he was trying to cover for me. Mrs. Dodds scared Grover to death.

She glares at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.

"I don't think so, Mr. Underwood," she says.

"But—"

"You—will—stay—here."

Grover looks at me desperately.

"It's okay, man," I tell him. "Thanks for trying."

"Honey," Mrs. Dodds barks at me. "Now."

Nancy Bobofit smirks. I give her my deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare. Then I turn to face Mrs. Dodds, but she isn't there. She is standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.

How'd she get there so fast?

I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.

I wasn't so sure. I go after Mrs. Dodds.

Halfway up the steps, I glance back at Grover. He is looking pale, cutting his eyes between me and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr. Brunner is absorbed in his novel.

I look back up. Mrs. Dodds had disappeared again. She is now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.

Okay, I think. She's going to make me buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop.

But apparently, that wasn't the plan.

I follow her deeper into the museum. When I finally catch up to her, we are back in the Greek and Roman section.

Except for us, the gallery is empty.

Mrs. Dodds stands with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She is making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.

Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs. Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze as if she wanted to pulverize it...

"You've been giving us problems, honey," she says.

I do the safe thing. I reply, "Yes, ma'am."

She tugs on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?"

The look in her eyes is beyond mad. It was evil.

She's a teacher, I thought nervously. It's not like she's going to hurt me. I say, "I'll—I'll try harder, ma'am."

Thunder shakes the building.

"We are not fools, Percy Jackson," Mrs. Dodds said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain."

I didn't know what she's talking about.

All I can think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorm room. Or maybe they'd realized I got my essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.

"Well?" she demands.

"Ma'am, I don't..."

"Your time is up," she hisses.

Then the weirdest thing happens. Her eyes begin to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretch, turning into talons. Her jacket melts into large, leathery wings. She isn't human. She is a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me to ribbons.

Then things got even stranger.

Mr. Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheels his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand.

"What ho, Percy!" he shouts and tosses the pen through the air.

Mrs. Dodds lunges at me.

With a yelp, I dodge and feel talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatch the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hits my hand, it isn;t a pen anymore. It is a sword—Mr. Brunner's bronze sword, which he always uses on tournament day.

Mrs. Dodds spins towards me with a murderous look in her eyes.

My knees are jelly. My hands are shaking so bad I almost drop the sword.

She snarl, "Die, honey!" And she flies straight at me.

Absolute terror runs through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swing the sword.

The metal blade hits her shoulder and passes clean through her body as if she was made of water. Hisss!

Mrs. Dodds was a sandcastle in a power fan. She explodes into yellow powder, vaporizing on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes are still watching me.

I'm alone.

There is a ballpoint pen in my hand.

Mr. Brunner isn't there. Nobody is there but me.

My hands are still trembling. My lunch must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something.

Had I imagined the whole thing?

I walk back outside.

It had started to rain.

Grover is sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit is still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she sees me, she says, "I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your butt."

I answer, "Who?"

"Our teacher. Duh!"

I blink. We don't have a teacher named Mrs. Kerr. I ask Nancy what she is talking about.

She just rolls her eyes and turns away.

I ask Grover where Mrs. Dodds was.

"Who?" he asks, but he pauses first and he wouldn't look at me, so I figure he was messing with me.

"Not funny, man," I tell him. "This is serious."

Thunder booms overhead.

I see Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book as if he'd never moved.

I go over to him.

He looks up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr. Jackson."

I had Mr. Brunner his pen. I hadn't even realized I was still holding it.

"Sir," I ask, "where's Mrs. Dodds?"

He stares blankly at me, "Who?"

"The other chaperone. Mrs. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher."

He frowns and sits forward, looking mildly concerned. "Percy, there is no Mrs. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?"

Word Count: 3159 words

So yeah, this is the first chapter of this book.

Not much (Y/n) yet, but we'll get there.

Love y'all!              Kaitlynn ❤️😍

[randomoranges]

the majority of the first part of this fic is based on a real thing that happened to me and my students yesterday

i applaud their ease at which all of this happened.

The Kids are All Right

 “M Édouard, est-ce que tu veux jouer avec nous?”

 It’s Friday afternoon and the first nice day of the week. The weather has been miserable, but luckily, he didn’t have to deal with indoor recess this time around. The group finishes in English class and he’s quite honestly killing time before he can leave them with their English teacher. He could have planned something exciting and fun, or ploughed on with another lesson, but he’s exhausted and doesn’t want to fight them. They’ve been – more rambunctious than usual these past two weeks and he’s been snappier with them than usual. He wonders if it’s the new seating arrangement or the coming of spring, but he’s counting down the days to the end of the school year and murmuring it like a mantra to himself on various occasions throughout the day.

 Still. Moments like these bring the smallest of smiles to his face.

 He likes to watch the kids play during recess, when he’s not aimlessly walking, and daydreaming about any other job he could have taken that wouldn’t be so taxing. This afternoon is one of those occasions. Most of the boys are on one end of the playground, playing a rather intense game of soccer, while the majority of the girls have been playing some invented game with a jump rope. The others are spread around; some are playing pear ball, others are sitting in clusters, but it’s nice to see that all the kids are hanging out with another kid and that no one is alone.

 He figures he can play with the girls this time around.

 Every now and again, he plays with the kids – when they ask him to, obviously and it’s a free bonding moment with them. He’s played some intense soccer and basket ball games, has played every version of tag and other such games, has learned to be decent at pear ball and he’s even been known to play hopscotch and jump rope. The kids love it. He also loves it.

 He nods and his student excitedly yells out “M Édouard va jouer!” which is greeted by loud cheers by the other girls. He gets a quick run through of the game; the person in the middle makes the jump rope go round, the others are gathered in a circle around it and they need to jump when the rope gets close to them. If the rope touches them, they need to tell a truth about themselves. Easy enough, really. He’s encountered multiple versions of this same game over the years.

 He offers to be the spinner, since the student who’d been doing it before had been struggling with the rope and the kids are delighted to let him have a go about it.

 The girls show no mercy when one of them gets touched by the rope and the questions they ask are harmless in nature; do you have a crush on anyone, what’s the most embarrassing thing you ever did, which of your siblings is your favourite, and so on. He politely reminds them that they’re not obliged to answer a question if they feel uncomfortable, and overall, everyone seems to have fun.

 On the fifth or sixth turn, the rope stops at a different student and the other girls flock around her chanting “Vé-ri-té! Vé-ri-té!” He joins them in, clapping his hands to the rhythm of the words and finally she gets them to stop as she thinks up of a truth to tell them, or be placed at the mercy of the counsel of questions.

 Finally, she graces them all with her truth, as the others wait with baited breaths, “Chuis bi,” She says easy as all else and the rest of the girls roll their eyes, laugh, and groan, complaining about how they all already knew.

 He’s – surprised by this. By the ease of the way she’s said her truth, but also by how not a big deal it seemed to be. He wonders, briefly, if it has anything to do with the talk he’s had with them earlier that week – about gender and sexual identities and such. Still, he marvels at the situation and it takes him a moment to recover, thinking of his own childhood and how long it had taken him to come to terms with his own sexuality. The fear he’d had. The anxiety it had produced. (And the relief, afterwards, when his parents hadn’t booted him out of their home.)  

 “Merci de nous avoir partager ça,” He says, because even if his fifth graders might not understand the full scope of it, he still wants them to feel that he accepts them as they are. He reminds them that they don’t have to share everything with him – or the others, but that if they do, he appreciates it and that he is someone they can come to and trust.

 Then, within the same breath, before they can start the game again, another one of the girls admits to being bi as well. Again, the rest of the girls react much of the same way; they laugh, they say they already knew, and they move on and it flummoxes him. He thinks back to being eleven himself and never in his wildest dreams would he have felt such ease in admitting something.

 Edward briefly wonders if maybe, just maybe, it has to do with the fact that they are girls and not boys. He knows it’s not the best way to think about it, but he feels that girls might have it just a little bit easier – with each other and their friend circle, whereas the boys – especially his boys this year, are still very much immature and very centered on the idea of being a Real Man (whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.)

 Or maybe these students are just more open and more aware of themselves. It’s a better thought to have. He knows the discourse has changed, even if it isn’t perfect. There are now queer characters in media and literature that were very much absent in his day and age. Celebrities – young celebrities just a little older than his kids are using social media platforms to talk of their own experiences and doing their own coming outs and maybe that’s also helped make these terms less loaded.

 There has to be some good out of it, after all. It can’t all be about cyber bullying and fraud.

 Still, he makes it a point to remind them that they don’t have to “come out” to everyone just because and that it’s okay if they don’t want to tell people. They don’t own it to no one. They nod along and humour him and he wants to sit them down and tell them that no, he’s serious and that sometimes it’s not this easy. He should know. But – maybe it is this easy for them. Maybe it has become this easy for the new generation despite what he still hears on the news. Maybe, thanks to the new generation, different orientations will finally no longer be some big taboo and the world can be a better place.

 Maybe he’s still dreaming, but – it’s a nice hope to have. If anything, he can hope and appreciate that these two students seem to be very comfortable with themselves and for that, he’s happy. If they can have an easy ride of it, why the hell not.

 He leaves it at that and the game runs its course for a while longer, until recess comes to its end.

 “M Édouard, dites-nous une vérité!” One of the girls asks as they line up to go back inside. He laughs and stalls for a moment. Some part of him wants to share as well – tell them through his truth that they are not alone and that he’s gay. It would be easy, really, and he’d be an ally to them, or something – he’s not sure, but he likes that it’s not some convoluted over-thought process like most of all the other times he’s come out in his life. Thinking back to how casual the others were with their friends telling them, he figures they wouldn’t turn on him. They’d be surprised, probably, but – it’d be fine – he hopes.

 He opens his mouth to say it – to casually let them know that he’s gay, but then the words falter and die at the back of his throat; shrivel up as bile forms instead. He chokes over them and that same old fear creeps back in. He sighs, frustrated with himself. It’s not that the kids need to know, but part of him yearns to share and to show them that it’s okay to be like this – that they can lead successful lives while being themselves. Yet, even if these students would be okay with it, he fears they’d share the news and spread it – that it would then reach the ears of someone else, who would tell their parents, who would get upset, who would tell the school and ultimately, that he’d get fired and dragged through the mud.

 He doesn’t have the energy for that. Not now. And the fear ices his veins and suddenly, the pleasant mood from before is gone.

 The kids look at him, waiting for an answer.

 “Quand j’étais jeune, j’voulais être un astronaute.”

 It’s not a lie, but it feels like he’s just done them a great disservice. They don’t realise it and some other kid pipes up saying they too wanted to be an astronaut when they were seven, while another rattles off the name of a few astronauts they know. The moment passes, the kids move on to the next thing as they file back in and Edward breathes a little easier, even though the disappointment weighs him down. This could have been a great teaching moment and he’d let it slip through his fingers.

 He trickles in after them and tries not to over think it too much. After all, hadn’t he just reminded his students that they don’t have to tell other people about their sexual orientation if they didn’t want to? The same should apply to him, even if...

 Instead, he focuses on the fact that two of his students felt comfortable telling him, even if maybe they were only kidding and even if they went back on it at some later point. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that they didn’t feel the need to keep this truth about themselves hidden. That they felt zero shame and malaise sharing. That their friends welcomed them. If anything, it was refreshing to see. Hopeful at its fullest. It’s good to know that maybe the discourse has changed, after all and maybe, with time, he’ll come to terms with his own fears as well. He’s got to keep hope, if not for himself, but for them and maybe, with time, he can learn something from them along the way.

 (There will come a time, later, a few years down the road, during the last leg of his career. The context will be similar; recess, a Friday afternoon and the girls will be playing some other iteration of a truth game. They’ll ask him to play and he’ll agree, for a lack of something better to do and a never-ending need to bond with his kids in whichever way they want him to.

 It’ll be great fun. The kids will share truths about themselves that’ll range from heartfelt to funny and he’ll appreciate every single one of them. Eventually, as the kids are often known to do, they’ll turn on him and ask for a truth in return. Eventually, he’ll abdicate and confess to his own.

 “Je suis gai,” He’ll tell them, easy and simple as that, with a teasing grin to his face. They’ll roll his eyes at him, complaining all the while that they already know and that they want something new – a real truth. He’ll get them to settle and they’ll wait patiently, thirsting for a new truth about their teacher, “M Étienne et moi on est ensemble,” He’ll tell them next, laughing as they groan because it’s old news. They’ve known for ages – some since first grade. It’s the oldest news in the whole of the school. Hell, some have known since before since they had older siblings who brought the news home even before that.

 But Edward will laugh, pick up the game from where it left off and resume it. He’ll share the truth because it is one of his favourites. He’ll share it because, finally, after so long, he feels comfortable doing so. But mostly, he’ll share it for the kids. To let them know. To remind them, really, that it is okay to be this way and that even when they have doubts and even if it sometimes feels as though they have no one cheering for them, they’ll always have him.)

 FIN

[ravenbrenna09]

the magic of betrayal scene 1

because I couldn’t get my Hogwarts AU out of my head, here’s the first scene of chapter one in Jana’s ‘season’. hope you guys enjoy! also, I wanted to include Lucas VDH somehow in this scene but it didn’t end up working out.

Note: characters that are depicted in college in s3 (namely Sander, Senne, and Noor) have been knocked down a year. so, while they should be in their seventh year with Jana, Zoë, and co. being in their fifth year, I bumped them down to sixth years so I wouldn’t have to rush to fit all of the first three seasons in their fifth year before they graduate.

Note #2: parts of this might change with my watching (and likely rewatching) of s1 before I finish the rest of the chapter.

...

“Don’t put me in your story!” 

There was a grin that spread across Robbe’s face, his phone in his hand, but Jana reached out, her hand covering the lens of his phone. Now that classes were out, their Care of Magical Creatures had been particularly draining since they were in the Forbidden Forest today, all of their technology was finally working again, the magical ban lifted immediately as their class had ended, allowing for the use of their phones and other technologies that they might’ve had on them. 

Ten years ago, Hogwarts had never been able to have any sort of Muggle technology, it did something weird with any electrical products, but with the Muggle world constantly growing, and the invention of social media and every social media app, the Ministry of Magic had to face the fact that students, specifically Muggleborns and half-bloods raised in the Muggle world, couldn’t be whisked away to an untraceable school without questions being arisen. And, somehow, they made phones powered by magic now, allowing them for use in the halls of Hogwarts as long as students didn’t expose the magical world.

They were strict about that. 

There was an entire department in the Department of Mysteries dedicated to the understanding of new and advancing Muggle technology and punishing Muggleborns that broke the rules by sending the rulebreakers to Azkaban (or, at least, that’s what their Muggle Studies professor, Professor Elwood, liked to tell them to make sure that they followed the rules). 

Despite the grin that formed on Robbe’s face, he pouted, pushing back a strand of his brown hair that had fallen in front of his face, “Why not?” He shifted the robes on his shoulders, the Ravenclaw robes getting a little messed up, his phone still in his hands. 

On Jana’s other side, Jens spoke up, a light laugh in his voice. “You look really good on camera.” There was a laugh from Robbe as Jana turned towards Jens, a Gryffindor like her and her boyfriend, giving him a look because she knew what he meant. Jens was handsome, taller than both her and Robbe, and the deep crimson red looked good on him, accenting the color of his skin. Spotting her looking, Jens’ lips quirked up in an all-knowing smirk. 

“He’s spoken,” Robbe spoke, drawing Jana’s attention back to the cameraman. Robbe was one of the youngest in their year, barely two weeks from being in the next year, and he had always been particularly close to Jana. The Ravenclaw was smaller than her, the blue of his robes standing out with their red ones, and his hair was getting so long that it could’ve been pulled back in a ponytail… or braided. Putting his phone in his pocket, Robbe ran a hand through his hair, brushing his long hair back. “Why don’t you want to be in my story?”

“I just don’t want to give unknown creeps the ability to stare at me is all.”

Jens nodded his head. “You’ve got a point there.” He reached out, grabbing Jana’s hand, pulling her in the direction of a tree along the edge of the Black Lake. Glancing behind her, she spotted Robbe’s equally confused expression as he followed after their steps. Arriving at his intended destination, Jens sat down in the shaded grass beneath the tree, pulling Jana to sit down beside him. 

Robbe followed suit, crouching down on Jens’ other side. “What are we doing? Aren’t we going to dinner?”

“Not yet,” Jens spoke, chuckling. He pulled his bag into his lap, placing Jana’s hand on his thigh, and opened his bag. It was a dark abyss, filled with books and a small pouch, only big enough to hold a quill or two maybe, which he pushed open wider. He stuck his entire hand in the pouch, which opened wider without the seam breaking, and pulled out a bottle that was three times the pocket’s size. Jana could identify it without Robbe’s low whistle.

Butterbeer.

“Where did you get butterbeer?” she asked curiously. The first Hogsmeade week wasn’t until another two weeks, but her mouth watered at the thought of butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks. It would be a lot different now that she and Britt weren’t… Jens handed over a butterbeer to Robbe, who thanked him with a grin on his face, before her boyfriend turned towards her. 

“Do you want one?” 

Jana shook her head. “No, thank you though.” 

“You sure?” 

“Yeah,” Jana remarked. She curled her legs beneath her, turning towards Jens and smiling up at him. “I want to get a headstart on our Charms homework. I don’t know what type of grader and professor Victoire, I mean, Professor Weasley will be, but I remember that she was pretty strict as a Head Girl. I do not want to get on her bad side so early in the semester.” 

“Sounds like more reason to drink,” Jens remarked, shrugging his shoulder. Robbe nodded his head, agreeing with his best friend. There was the sound of laughter moving towards them and the group of them turned, spotting Moyo walking towards them with his friend, Aaron, by his side. 

Moyo Makadi was another fifth-year Gryffindor that Jens hung around with. During the summer, Jana had seen him once or twice, but never long enough to do more than be properly introduced. As a result, Jana didn’t get along with him all that well. Moyo and Jens seemed to click, sometimes acting like they were alone when they were together, which is why Jana always tended to gravitate towards Robbe, who was similarly outcasted. 

Aaron Jacobs, a Hufflepuff, was a follower, tagging along and having a good time. Jana hadn’t met Aaron, officially anyway, until the train ride to Hogwarts where he shook her hand and gave her an awkward hug. The two of them had been in classes since they were eleven, but they had been outside of the realm each of them resided in and so they never talked. Aaron seemed nice, always trying to keep up with the conversation, but he was a little awkward, saying the wrong things without meaning to. 

“You guys want a butterbeer?” Jens questioned. 

Moyo laughed, grinning from ear-to-ear. “Yes please!” 

“What about you, Aaron?”

“Yeah!”

As the two boys sitting down, Jens fished out another two bottles of butterbeer and Robbe shifted to the edge of the shade to give them more room. Jana smiled over at Robbe, who sent her a half-smile in response, a silent thought passing between them. Jana turned towards him, trying to pull him into a conversation about their Care of Magical Creatures class. 

As she did, she spotted a flash of blonde hair. A sense of dread washed over Jana’s shoulders, but she turned anyways, finding a group of girls heading back up from the castle over Moyo’s shoulder. At one of the edges was Britt Ingelbrecht, one of her best friends, with her blonde hair straightened beautifully and her Slytherin robes resting on her shoulders. The other girls were giggling, laughing with one another, and Britt was grinning, smiling with them. 

But, as if sensing Jana’s eyes, the girl turned, her brown eyes finding the group of them beneath the tree. Her face shifted and changed, shifting from laughter to an unreadable expression. Without blinking, Britt sent a glare in her direction that made Jana want to hide, or advert her gaze, but she didn’t. When the girls turned into the school, Britt sent them a glance over her shoulder before she turned around. 

Jens spotted the glance and Robbe breathed out, raising his eyebrows, “Drama.” 

“Dude!” Jens reached down, slapping Robbe on the back of his head, causing a sip of butterbeer to spill over their jeans. Both Moyo and Aaron were ripped into laughter. Robbe hissed, wiping his hand over his jeans, as Jens pulled out his wand to vanish the liquid on his own. Jens turned back to Jana, whispering to her, “You okay?” Jana nodded her head but they all knew that she wasn’t. Jens raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “You sure?”

“I’m going to get some food,” Jana spoke up, pushing herself up on her knees and straightened her bag on her shoulder. “I’ve just been starving all throughout Care of Magical Creatures and all I’ve been able to think about is those chicken sandwiches that the house-elves like to make. I’ll see you inside?” Jens nodded his head, tilting his head up with a raise of his eyebrows, and Jana smiled at him, leaning forward to press a kiss against his lips. 

Moyo whistled and Aaron laughed. 

Robbe remarked, “Kissing so soon after the class is going to ruin our reputation.”

“Of course, you would think that,” Moyo laughed, shaking his head like he thought it was funny.

“I’ll see you inside,” Jens promised, pressing another kiss against her lips before he grabbed her hand. As she stood up, he braced her, pushing upward on their joined hands. Jana nodded her head, smiling over at Aaron and Moyo, who both waved, and Robbe grinned up at her.

Turning away from them, Jana headed towards the castle, listening to the group of four immediately starting to chat about something that she turned out. Immediately after stepping in the Entrance Hall, she was swarmed by other students, who were trying to get into the Great Hall as well, all eagerly talking with their friends about food or classes. Jana ducked her head down, following the current to the Gryffindor table. 

Jana claimed a spot at the end, her back facing the wall, and she glanced around. With all these people around her, their friends swarming around them, laughing, Jana felt lonely without the boys, without Britt… Her eyes found her former friend, who sat on the other end of the Entrance Hall, talking excitedly with the other girls around her, and Jana quickly looked away before she was caught again.

Piling chicken sandwichs on her plate and beginning to pour herself a glass of pumpkin juice, Jana glanced down the table, spotting the groups and friends of the other Gryffindors. Nearly three groups of people away from her, Jana spotted a platinum-blonde haired girl with bright red lipstick, Zoë. The girl was another fifth year, the two of them shared the same dorm since their first year. But, the two of them had had never really spoken outside of “Good morning”s and “Did we have homework”s because Jana already had friends, just in other houses. 

But, Zoë was sitting alone by herself, a textbook propped up on the pitcher in front of her, and Jana wondered, briefly, why Zoë was sitting by herself too.

[crows-murder]

Theater nerd Bozer

I wanna make headcanons about MacGyver so I will.

Wilt Bozer was a smart kid. He was in all Pre-AP and AP classes in both middle and high school. Sure, he wasn’t Mac smart, but he was a studious kid who did his homework and was naturally gifted in math and science.

He was in fifth grade when he developed an interest for the performing arts after going to New York City during the summer and going to Broadway.

In sixth grade he chose theater as his elective (IDK how Mission City worked, so I based it off of my school sue me).

And he loved every minute of it (except that one time he got props crew).

He liked the acting enough, but much preferred operating behind the scenes (especially as costume or make-up crew)

He loved doing research on the time period and looking for costumes for the time period and assembling them, buying fabrics and sewing it together, or browsing through costume stores and antique shops. He loved styling wigs for some characters, or applying stage make-up to make the actors look older in some cases.

He loved readjusting the costumes during dress rehearsals, resizing, fixing the seams, adjusting parts, adding accessories to the outfit.

He also loved being in crew because his mom would always give him make-up tips and help him out with the sewing of the costumes and his dad would help him buy the needed fabrics. It was a type of family activity in its own way.

In 8th grade, Bozer got cast as the Beast in the production of Beauty and the Beast Jr. (it was his first and only lead role).

It was actually his first kiss.

His first kiss was Belle, and it took both of them a while to do it without blushing and burst into nervous giggles.

It also turned out that Belle (played by an 8th grader named Maggie) became his first girlfriend.

They lasted three months, but Bozer had liked dating her and she was nice enough that they stayed friends until graduation.

Mac, of course, was clueless when it came to theater. But that never deterred him. He came to every single one of Bozer’s rehearsals and every single performance (even that one time he had a bad case of the flu and got a lot of people sick afterwards).

Mac will be damned if he won’t be there to support his best (and only) friend.

Bozer’s second elective (that he got to choose in 8th grade), of course, was home ec (his dad was an amazing cook and Bozer wanted to be able to cook just like him, too).

Another reason (that he still adamantly denies to this day) is that he just wanted to bake his friend a birthday cake. He knew Mac’s history with his birthday-- hell, he’d been there two years ago when his old man left for good-- but he refused to not celebrate his friend’s birthday. He was stubborn that way (he blames Mac for that).

For the past two years, Bozer would drag Mac (literally) to the local bakery and buy two cupcakes with his limited allowance and ask for a candle and that was how they celebrated Mac’s birthday. This year, Bozer was going to change things up.

Of course, that year, Mac’s birthday fell on the opening night of their production, but Bozer refused not to bake the cake. His parents had tried to discourage him, but they finally gave up and let Bozer stay up late to finish his best friend’s cake (secretly they were proud of their son and knew how much Mac meant to him-- just as much as Josh had meant to him).

After the performance, Bozer turned down the celebratory waffles at IHOP (a tradition), since he could still go after the next two performances, and instead dragged Mac back to his house where Bozer and his parents had decided to set up a birthday dinner for him.

When Bozer came out of the kitchen with the cake (chocolate, Mac’s favorite, sloppily iced with purple buttercream icing and ‘happy birthday Mac!’ in shaky writing), Mac broke down, understanding what Bozer had done.

Bozer of course, starts freaking out thinking he did something wrong (he didn’t, Mac was just really touched).

They all enjoy the rest of the night and Mac’s twelfth birthday (he skipped two grades) is the best one he’s had since his dad left (Bozer hates James MacGyver a little more because of this).

So Bozer keeps doing theater and home ec all through high school, and joins the film club at the high shool and even the science club for Mac because the poor kid shows up to every rehearsal and performance and Bozer wants to thank him and his big heart.

He usually stayed in crew roles except for one or two minor roles and that time he got props crew in 10th grade 

He hasn’t hated a role as much as he had hated props crew. 

“These actors have NO RESPECT-- ZERO RESPECT-- FOR THEIR DUMB PROPS”

Mac can be heard laughing in the distance.

Bozer, of course, absolutely adored musicals. His favorite has been West Side Story since forever. He loves it as much as Jack loves his Bruce Willis movies, but Bozer’s obsession is more of a guilty pleasure.

Mac now HATES this musical.

For years, Bozer has made him suffer through the songs thousands of times and made him watch the movie at every single one of their sleepovers (Mac can actually recite the story by heart at this point).

Okay, he doesn’t really hate it.

He just tells Bozer that.

But when Bozer has a rough day at work, or just has an off day where he’s sick or just not feeling up to doing anything, Mac clears his schedule and it’s pizza and West Side Story because he knows it’ll cheer Bozer up immediately.

(It does)

All through middle school Bozer dreamt of creating costumes and doing make-up for Broadway musicals.

In high school, he got into making prosthetics more and more and wanted to make movies for a living (while still making the costumes of course).

Just

Bozer as a theater nerd who was also amazing at cooking (because Mac was never going to be)

It’s a thing okay?

Film school AND acting classes?

Passion’s gotta start somwhere.

And that somewhere is school.

[lifeisbooksandcats]

Since posting on tumblr feels like just screaming into the void; where maybe someone might throw a glance your way to see if maybe you’re both screaming about the same thing, but at the end of the day, no one is really paying attention to you..and I feel like that’s what makes me feel like I can post this. Because it’s not something I can say out loud, not really, not yet. Except to my fiancée because it’s something we’ve talking about for a while. This is going to be long, I’m certain of it, and it’s going to be rambley because I’ve been trying to put my thoughts into words and those words into coherent...anythings...and it just isn’t going to be in any sort of order. I’m not expecting anyone to read it and I’m hoping the read more button actually works on mobile. If not, then I’m sorry, you’ll be scrolling for a while.

I don’t know how valid people feel self-diagnosis is, but I honestly feel like I fall somewhere on the autism spectrum. And that’s something I’ve thought about myself since my first year of college. Someone in a communications class I was taking did a presentation on autism, and throughout the entire thing all I could think was how much everything resonated with me. So that’s, since the fall semester of 2009, this has been something I’ve quietly thought about myself and wondered and honestly just been pretty sure of. That’s 12 years this fall, and I still can’t bring myself to say it?? And I think it’s a good bit because I’ve been asked so many times throughout my life if I’m autistic - by family members, by friends, by a college roommate, by people living on the same floor as me at college - and it’s ALWAYS been (or at least felt like to me) in some sort of negative way. And I don’t want to apologize for being myself, but fuck it’s just hard sometimes???

When I walk into a room, especially one I’m not familiar with, my first instinct is to look for the exits and figure out how I can get out of there if it gets too loud/too hectic/too EVERYTHING and I start to panic. And if I’m in a situation where I can’t leave, I have this little clear stone that I play with in my hand, just something to focus on to help keep me just a little bit calmer. When that doesn’t work, it’s like my mind just...goes. I don’t know how to explain it; physically I’m still there, but mentally...even if I wanted to pay attention to something, I literally could not. It happens the most when there’s too many sounds/voices/conversations happening at once, they all blend together, I can’t understand anything and after a second it feel like it’s all just muffled and I’m not there anymore, I feel so disconnected from my body, like there’s someone else controlling my brain and I’m just there watching. It happened at the zoo just recently, when we went into one of the restaurants for lunch. I was already panicked because of the number of people inside without masks on. From the second we walked in, everything from the number of people inside, to the volume, to the lights being too bright (but looking back, I feel like they were probably an appropriate brightness? It just felt too bright with everything else going on), to the lack of masks, everything was too much. My fiancée and I stood in line with one of our friends, waiting to order our food, and I stood there rocking slightly on my ankles and fidgeting with that little stone, just trying so desperately to calm my internal panic and to not “check out” mentally and to just appear “normal”. I stood there waiting for our food, rocking on my ankles, running my thumb along my fingertips, listening to the conversations all around me merging into one unintelligible mess and on the inside, full on panicking while hoping that from the outside, no one could tell. I got our food, set it on the table, and stepped into the bathroom to wash my hands, the quiet welcoming me like nothing else. I closed my eyes and just stood there, breathing, letting the warm water run over my hands like some kind of magic balm bringing me back down. I opened my eyes again, a woman with a toddler smiled at me like she knew - which made me worry again because it’s not something I want people to know because I don’t want to be different, I don’t want anyone to look at me differently. But at the same time, I do. I want to be able to stand up for myself and say “I literally physically cannot go into this loud, crowded restaurant because I’m autistic and it is so auditorily overwhelming in there.” And maybe that wasn’t even what her smile meant. Because I literally never know how people are feeling and I try to figure it out but honestly 90% of the time it’s just guesswork.

But it’s not just that. It’s not just the panic that sets in when it’s too crowded and the sounds are too much. It’s the fact that as a kid, I was never “just” a fan of something I liked. I either didn’t care, or it was an all-consuming obsession that basically became a personality trait. I was a fan of Aaron Carter, but god forbid anyone ask me a question about his music or anything — because whether or not you were interested (and unless you flat out told me you were uninterested, I literally could not tell), I was going to info-dump everything onto you. I could tell you what time he was born, how many minutes were between him and his twin sister, which concerts his sister Leslie sang at (because she also had a small music career), at what point in his career he actually started singing live instead of lip syncing most of the time...

And speaking of info-dumping. If I couldn’t info dump to someone, I would write it. As a child - second, third, fourth grade...- I wrote essays upon essays on things I was interested in just because I could. Just everything I knew on the topic, thrown out into words either handwritten as a younger kid or typed as I got older. When I was in about fifth or sixth grade, when Harry Potter was HUGE and all my friends were also into Harry Potter, I couldn’t tell everything I knew to my friends because they already knew a lot of it...and so as a kid, maybe a fifth grader, I wrote a six (maybe seven?) page essay - single spaced - with everything I knew about the series/the author/everything. Before the last book came out, I filled an entire spiral bound notebook with my theories for how the series would end and WHY I thought what I thought.

My first NOW That’s What I Call Music CD was Now 14. I was in 7th grade and I could tell you exactly what order the songs were in. That was something I did to calm myself down back then; listing the songs on that album over and over and over again, always in the right order.

From about 7th grade until high school graduation, I brought and ate the exact same thing for lunch every single day. I said it was because I liked it, but I really didn’t. I didn’t like the Oscar Mayer precooked bacon that I would put on my BLT. I didn’t like the texture, half the time I couldn’t bring myself to eat it and picked it off my sandwich. But the thought of changing it??? That wasn’t even something I would have considered because somehow in my mind, changing it was worse than eating it. Make that one make sense.

I love routines and schedules and things staying the same, and get annoyingly stressed out when things/my schedule changes. One little change or one little thing out of the ordinary and it’s like I forget how to function for the day. Everything seems off. And I hate it. Because I KNOW that it shouldn’t matter, but it does. Half days and two hour delays at school growing up?? Those stressed the FUCK out of me because the order of the day would be different. I loved school and loved learning, but those days I felt physically ill over the thought of going to school. Field trip days were okay though because I knew they were coming and I had plenty of time to mentally prepare myself. I remember as a child asking my teachers (on multiple occasions) for the itinerary for a field trip so I could memorize it and know exactly what to expect and when for the day.

There are times that my fiancée will turn on the tv for “background noise” while she watches videos on her phone, and I wish I could describe what I mean when I tell her that there’s “too many sounds”. Because between the tv, her phone, the hum of the refrigerator in the other room, the neighbors, cars driving by, the cats playing, the ceiling fan...I don’t know how else to describe it other than exactly that — too many sounds. And it gets to be too much. So I have to put headphones in and listen to music to drown it all out and refocus.

I’ve only just recently been able to put a word to what I now know is poor executive function. As much as I loved school, I could NOT do assignments until the day they were due. I could start on something days before it was due, but I couldn’t work on it. I couldn’t focus on it. I couldn’t get myself to work on it. But the morning it was due??? I could whip up a paper that I knew would earn an A just hours before needing to turn it in. I prided myself on that ability, but looking back it was most definitely poor executive function. If I couldn’t finish something that morning, which was a rare occurrence, I would lie - I’d look “everywhere” for my assignment and “panic” because I “couldn’t find it” and because I was a good student, I got away with it. Every. Single. Time. Even with the hard-ass teachers who no one could get away with things on. And magically by the end of the day, I would swing back by that teacher’s classroom to give them my assignment that I had finally “found”.

I remember sitting on the kitchen floor of our apartment as a kid and tracing my fingers along the lines on the floor where the tiles met. I remember the pattern was brown/white/brown/white, but there was one spot on the floor that made me so irrationally frustrated because two tiles were swapped; instead of the same pattern as the rest of the floor, this one spot was brown/white/white/brown/brown/white. I remember pointing it out and my mom asking me why I had even paid any attention to that. I didn’t know why, I just did. I remember her telling me that it was stupid to let it bother me and to just let it go, but I couldn’t. I stopped mentioning it, but right up until we moved out of that apartment, I couldn’t even look at that spot on the floor without getting frustrated by it. There’s more than that. But that was one of the first things I thought of.

I’ve been watching a lot of Yo Samdy Sam’s videos on YouTube, and especially her videos “Autism symptoms in GIRLS” and “Could YOU be autistic? (and not know)” and I just... I feel that. Everything she says, I feel that. I watch them just thinking “that’s me. That’s me.” the entire time. She mentions sucking on her hair as a kid, and I did that CONSTANTLY. My hair was forever in my mouth. And now that I’m an adult, I don’t suck on my hair, but my sweatshirt strings are always in my mouth. Obviously there’s more than that, but that was one that hit me hard because I didn’t realize that wasn’t just something everyone did as a kid. I didn’t realize not everyone couldn’t stand still and always had to be fidgeting or moving slightly, whether it was rocking on my ankles, running my thumb over my other fingers, crossing and uncrossing my toes inside my shoes. I didn’t realize not everyone had the same shitty executive functioning skills as me.

And it’s like... I’m so sure that’s me. I’m so sure that I am autistic. I know it. But it’s like...is getting a diagnosis at this point in my life going to change anything? I mean no, probably not, other than giving me that validation that I crave. I would feel valid when the world is too much/too big/too loud. I would have a reason for feeling the way I do and doing the things I do. So much of my life would make sense. But. I don’t know. I’m afraid I’ll try to get a diagnosis and have someone, some doctor or therapist or psychologist or someone tell me that I’m not. And then what? Then what is everything I’ve felt throughout my life? That’s what I’m afraid of, really. Because if I’m so sure of this and then some professional says “no that’s not it”, then what?

[gl0wupdiaries]

Bitchy Vibes

Have you ever experienced taking a stroll at the mall, or getting a haircut at a salon, or even falling in line at a fitting room, and your eyes decide to land on a complete stranger and your mind immediately thinks “Wow, I wish I was her.” That may have been too specific of an example, but that’s a taste of what I often experience when I encounter confident, “feminine”, and “attractive” women. I have quoted the last two words because I still have no clue as to what constitutes the criteria for these terms. Admiring them from afar while my subconscious cheers the phrase “Work it, sister”, I knew I have a long way to go before getting on their level. I guess this stems from the fact that the women in my family never fail to remind me of my un-femininity every time I make a move, causing me to feel inferior to other women who are good at being women, whatever that means.

This feeling of inferiority has been with me since way back when. The minute I set foot at our community daycare, I have already managed to set a divide between the girls in my class and me. Not because I hated them, but because I have always felt inferior around them. Had my mother not been a gentle and charismatic woman, I’m sure the other teachers and parents would’ve already yelled at me for the troubles I’ve caused in class. 

I remember back in elementary school, girls in my class would exclude me out of their groups and pass on messages like “Don’t be friends with her.” As they took turns with the furry stuffed animals I was never allowed to play with because I wasn’t a “BFF”. I was never really bothered by that, what bothered me was the fact that I never really liked the way I looked and acted. I wanted to be as feminine as the girls in my class, I wanted to have long, thick and black hair, I wanted to act the way that they do, I wanted to smile like they smiled, the list goes on. 

And with those thoughts, girls secretly intimidated me. I would always have boys as my playmates, and dodged every moment I could with any conversation that requires exchanging words with the girls, because they made me feel unattractive and unfitting. I still feel the same way towards some girls until now, but I guess the difference now is that I’ve also met a handful of great friends—both boys and girls—so I don’t feel that much bothered anymore. But the feeling never goes away. Obviously as time went by I learned how to deal with my insecurities and found myself giving the “BFF” concept a chance; some friendships worked, but others turned out to be “bitchy”, as expected.

Speaking of bitchy, I remember countless incidents where I would get into a fight with another girl and how I used to hate it when they do the “bitchy vibes"—as I liked to call it—because I never really knew how to deal with it. The only way I knew how to fight was either to shout or silently pester them with my mischievous tactics, but I knew that never gave them the same intimidation they give me whenever they pull the bitchy vibes. 

Back in the fifth grade, where everything was a blur, I’ve decided to pull a bitchy vibe for once in my life; whether or not it was a success is a different story. One day, during our lunch break, while a girl and I were fighting over who gets the stack of pink sticky notes from a friend, which I really wanted, the girl decided to finesse her way into the pink sticky note owner’s heart—which was another girl—and promised that she’d write the owner’s details on the pink tab of her slam book, which used to be our bible back then. The owner was sold, of course. I couldn’t believe it. I was nothing but nice to the owner, and despite her numerous cat fights with the other girl, she still chose her crummy slam book over me. I was so tired of being the least favorite friend amongst the girls, all because I wasn’t girly enough, and I was definitely tired of losing to the girlfriend-bubblegum-pop-with-charms-and-sprinkles agreements that I could never seem to pull off. I knew I had to do something.

I let the other girl have her pink sticky note winning moment for the rest of our lunch break; as she did, I was already gathering the strength to do what I was planning to do in a few hours. Minutes before our last period ended, as I tried to transfer all my negative energy to my kneadable eraser and each ticking second of the clock giving me an adrenaline rush, I braced myself for dismissal. 

After what seemed like an eternity—we were finally dismissed, and everyone in my class did their usual after-school routines: bringing out their Pokémon cards, playing Chinese garter, battling with pogs and slammers, etc. I, on the other hand, had other things planned for myself. I slowly approached “the girl” and pulled out the world’s fakest smile. I greeted her with a high-pitched “Hey!”—which stunned her, by the way—and asked if I could have half of the stack of sticky notes (being the petty child that I was) as my way of compromising. My plan was that if she said yes, then I won’t bother her anymore because the sense of being left out would be gone and I’ve asserted myself. Obviously, she said no to the idea.

The reason being, was that I had to be a part of “their group”, and follow their rules to get perks like that. We were five girls in class, and there were four of them in “the group”, you do the math. This naturally enraged me because I have been nothing but nice to them; it was just unfair. Offended and furious, I only had this to say to the girl—still maintaining my high-pitched voice: “Oh it’s okay, I understand! I guess I just can’t be bitchy enough to be a part of your group.” I quickly walked away and took my bags, I wanted to savor what I had just done, I felt so invincible; I knew if I waited for a response I wouldn’t be able to maintain the bitchy vibe I just pulled, and so I fashionably left class.

The next day, I was called to the principal’s office for saying a profanity, and being the mischievous child that I was, I pulled out the “I didn’t know what it meant” card. But I knew what it meant. I heard a sixth grader say it once and found out what it meant through an MSN conversation. A few weeks later, it slipped my mouth then and there in front of the girls in my class, and I can’t really say I regret it.

I haven’t pulled a bitchy vibe since.

[fictionalboysarejustbetter]

Friendships from Afar

Distance creates a barrier of trust. There are no worries. There is always a safety net to fall back on that protects from hurt or pain. Beginning in second grade, my personal goal had always been to find a singular, perfect friend who lives far away. We could talk openly with each other, and I would have the ability to be myself. The plan is that years later, I would meet this person in the weirdest of circumstances, and we would be best friends forever. It’s even better if this friend is a guy, so then we can both fall in love and get married to live happily ever after.

In second grade, the entire class received school pen pals, and while my fourth-grade pen pal was not ideal, I knew I loved this “secret” letter writing system where I am just Rebecca, nothing more or less. Moving into fifth grade, Mrs. Smith found me a pen pal from China. Through our teachers, we would send each other letters back and forth until the school year was over. From this moment onward, I was hooked; pen pals didn’t care what I looked like or how shy I was or how involved my mother was with the school, I could just be me, and they only knew the information I told them. Without asking for help, I scavenged through the internet, trying to collect pen pals as if they were Webkinz. I was convinced this perfect friend could only be found on pen pal websites that look like they were made by my fellow fifth graders.

Starting in sixth grade, I would spend night after night stalking the profiles of random teenagers on Students of the World, a supposedly “safe” pen pal website for kids. Gender? Who cares. Age? About 10-16. Likes? Reading, of course. Language? English please. I would then press search and sift through hundreds of profiles, finding the perfect candidates to be my best friend. This process was extremely predictable, including:

The teenage boys “looking” for a relationship:

Nathaniel, Age 14, UK

HOBBIES:

Photo

Trips

Cinema, Television

Sports

Reading

Painting, Drawing, Art

Hi! Are you looking for a cool guy to write to? Send me a nice message otherwise you’ll miss something priceless. 

I can speak:

English, French

The liars that claimed they like everything and speak every language:

Janhvi, Age 16, USA

HOBBIES:

Photo

Trips

Clothes

Cinema, Television

Sports

Sciences

Music

Reading

Animals, Nature

Cooking

Collections

Painting, Drawing, Art

Hello !!👩I'm Janhvi .I like to travel.I have traveled in to many countries .Such as india , sri lanka, china, france and more.I like make new friends.message me soon guys.👭👫OUR LIFE IS CHANGE , BUT FRIENDSHIP NEVER BE CHANGE.

I can speak:

English French German Italian Spanish Arabic Chinese Japanese Korean

The students making a profile for class:

Chaya, Age 13, USA

HOBBIES:

Clothes

Cinema, Television

Music

Reading

Animals, Nature

I am looking for a penpal for our school project. I would like to find some in Atlanta, Georgia.

I can speak:

English

I would scroll through these profiles so constantly that I rarely found new profiles. I was judging every profile based off of the person’s name, biography, age, likes, languages, everything. Most people without a profile picture wouldn’t receive an email from me. I tried to avoid messaging anyone from the United States unless they sounded like a major fangirl or fanboy over the books I liked. I automatically favored anyone from Europe, especially if they had an interesting name. But regardless if anyone from anywhere sent me a message first, I would respond back at least once.

Shortly after the search began, I received a message from a girl named Julia from Australia. She and I were the same age, we both needed a friend, and we both liked reading, animals, music, and clothes. Quickly, my life began to revolve around the fourteen hours that always stood between Australia and the United States. Throughout sixth and seventh grade, we would be constantly messaging on the messaging app “kik,” confiding everything deep and useless to each other like best friends do:

Becca says:

Hey, how are you?

Julia says:

Everyones well... Mum and dad start the long drive to melbourne this weekend so everythings kinda topsy turvy :p

How is your family and pets? Im sorry for my rudeness that i didnt ask earlier

Nearlytime for school?

Becca says:

Lol that is fine! I get to school around 8, so normally ill drop off right before, lol i try to remember to tell you but i tend to forget. Theyre good though. Willie and Apricot are happy my grandma left :-P mom and dad are helping me with my ancestry project and exploding of happiness because I got a position in that volleyball club and my sister has been working and spending money :-P her favorite thing to do

Julia says:

Ahh the christmas spirit... Lol is there anyone in the house who loves your grandmother?

Becca says:

Lol we love her because shes family, but no one loves her when shes here if you know what i mean.

What’s up?

For two years, the conversations would continue for hours, as we both wait anxiously for the “ding” on our tablets, indicating a new message. Julia’s father was a firefighter who fought the nasty bushfires that haunted their country. I interviewed him as my hero for my final paper and presentation in my eighth grade English class. I interviewed him through email after our initial plans to Skype were sidetracked by the active wildfires, and I so proudly presented the information about him that you would have thought he was my father.

One day, Julia told me about her divorced parents. Then, she told me about the twins her mom just gave birth to. Then, she explained that she actually has a twin brother and no younger siblings at all. Then, she became an aunt to twin nephews. Then, her house burned down, and she had to move across the country. Then, her parents just moved across town. The stories continued and continued only within months of each other, not adding up in any way, shape, or form. With hope still in my heart, I sent her all three books of The Hunger Games trilogy since she really wanted to read them, but two months later, the books came back in the mail as undeliverable. The address did not exist.

Unable to admit defeat or accept the idea that my best friend might not be real despite all of the evidence, I started to panic. What if she is catfishing me? I’ve seen that show before, and I even gave “her” my address. Whoever this person is could easily come to my house and kidnap me...maybe I should tell my mom and warn the police. But maybe, she just has a really hard life, and she compulsively lies to make herself feel better? Maybe, she just really wants attention, and that’s why none of her stories are adding up. Besides it could still be her, she may just be scared. She could have just lied and is younger than she said and is trying to sound cool to impress me.

With these panicked thoughts raging through my body like wildfire, I blocked her from kik and began to ignore her emails. I forced myself to just disappear, so then I would have nothing to worry about. I cannot trust that Julia is really Julia, so I will just watch “her” occasional emails come in, analyzing from afar who “she” may be. I’ll search for her on Google and Facebook and Instagram and Students of the World and anywhere else I can look. The emails would keep coming for years and years, but they never held much content to them, and I’m still left to question who “Julia” is.

My Julia investigation was stalled for now, and the void of not having a constant penpal to talk to quickly came back. Therefore, my search to find the perfect best friend needed to be expedited since Julia was certainly not cut out for the position. I continued to search Students of the World with my new smartphone every chance I had. In between games at volleyball competitions, Hope and I could be found by the nearest outlet on my phone, scouring the website for the perfect answers within someone’s profile. We would send out messages together to the nerdy fangirls and fanboys around our age. Every day during the bus ride home from school, Jenna and I looked through the website on our phones, judging everyone’s biographies and pictures. Jenna created a profile too, and we would have three-way Skype sessions with Sylvia from France until the two of them became too close and stopped inviting me to Skype with them.

Finally in April of ninth grade, I received a promising email from a 16-year-old boy from France:

To: fictionalboysarejustbetter@gmail.com From: coolfrenchboy@gmail.com

My name is Kristopher and Im from France !

I watched a few days ago Divergent and it made me want to read the books !

I see you like tv shows and video games as I do !

I am not fluent in English but I can talk to you !

If you want I can learn you French ! :)

Typically, I would spend about twenty minutes every day responding to emails from random penpals on my way home from school, but within the first three or so emails to a person, one of us would just stop responding. In regard to Kris, I generally liked video games, but I wasn’t obsessed with them, and I had a weird taste in TV, so we probably couldn’t talk about that much. But Divergent by Veronica Roth was my all-time favorite book. As soon as I read that word in the email, I knew I would be responding until he stopped responding to me. It had always been my goal to fall in love with a fanboy, especially one with the same taste in books and movies as me, so I immediately responded with:

To: coolfrenchboy@gmail.com From: fictionalboysarejustbetter@gmail.com

Hi Kristopher!

What part of France are you from? I live near Pittsburgh, PA, USA.

Yes, definitely read the books! They are amazing! I find myself gravitating towards video games and shows more than sports! :P

I don't know much of French as I take Spanish in school, but I'd love to learn some and help you with English as well!

Rebecca

He emailed me back within minutes, and we emailed for most of the evening, talking about books and food and the differences between the United States and France. That night though, my phone battery had died, and it was only for a few hours. After plugging it in, I found five unread messages from him, making sure I was okay.

To: fictionalboysarejustbetter@gmail.com From: coolfrenchboy@gmail.com

Lol it works ! :) Good courage to go back to school ! :)

To: fictionalboysarejustbetter@gmail.com From: coolfrenchboy@gmail.com

Hey sweetie 😆

To: fictionalboysarejustbetter@gmail.com From: coolfrenchboy@gmail.com

How are you Miss ?

To: fictionalboysarejustbetter@gmail.com From: coolfrenchboy@gmail.com

Do You use words like ain't or gonna ? 😆

To: fictionalboysarejustbetter@gmail.com From: coolfrenchboy@gmail.com

Are you OK ?

As soon as I read these messages, my heart fluttered a little. This was just the beginning of our constant messaging and talking. I happily responded to him, and within days, Kris was my perfect, new best friend. The random space he left between the last word and the punctuation of a sentence would drive me insane, but I didn’t have the heart to explain the process to him. We talked so consistently that it would probably be considered unhealthy, discussing pets, family, being the youngest child, aspirations, atheism, languages, food, books, video games, and everything else under the sun. I was stuck to my phone all day, and every time I picked it up, I waited in anticipation for a notification with his name and the random spaces between his words and the punctuation.

The six-hour time difference between the two of us meant nothing, with him staying up late and me getting up early. Between classes, we would sneak each other messages about how our days were going. My week-long field trip to San Antonio, Texas was spent either messaging him or scouting out an outlet to plug my phone into so that I could talk to him. The more access I had to Kris, the further I distanced myself from my friends and family. When my phone would die or I wouldn’t have reception, I would look around, annoyed by whoever the people around me were. Kris was the perfect friend I always wanted; he was my best friend, and I was his. Neither of us needed anyone else, and hopefully, all of our talking and flirting would lead to love which would lead to marriage.

The summer before tenth grade came, and Kris seemed to be growing distant. Supposedly, he was travelling all summer, and he would rarely have access to wifi. I counted down the days until he would be back home, and after one measly conversation, he disappeared again. I sent message after message, finally receiving a response about his brother pushing him in the pool and his phone being in his pocket at the time, so it was destroyed. The summer seemed to be surrounded by disappointment, but hopefully when we went back to school, our relationship would continue to be as strong as it was before.

Tenth grade began, and Kris was still busy all the time. Apparently if he kept up his hard work, he would be valedictorian. Since I couldn’t spend lunch chatting with him anymore, I bragged that I was basically dating this amazing French guy who is valedictorian at his school. Until October hit, and then I would receive the dreadful message that he has a girlfriend. Ironically, this only made our conversation stronger than it had ever been, and he even picked out my new haircut, sending me endless compliments on it. The next day, he sent another message, explaining that his girlfriend didn’t want us talking anymore so it would probably be best if we just stopped. I was bad at listening to these directions, following this conversation up with many, many new messages in attempts to strike a conversation with him again. These messages earned me a nice block from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat.

My only method of contact would now be email, so night after night instead of stalking Students of the World for new pen pals, I would send Kris emails. I now began to understand that feeling that I caused upon Julia, who may or may not have been Julia. Throughout October and November, I received a few responses that sounded like an automatic email reply, but one email in mid-November stood out, as it was one of the last ones I would receive from him.

To: thisismyname@gmail.com From: thisiscoolfrenchboysnewemail@gmail.com

Hello Becca,

I did act stupid and didn’t answer your messages at all. When I emailed you first, I never thought our friendship would get that strong !

Guess what, there used to be a time I was really in love with you, but I haven’t dared say so … The one biggest reason was the 6000 km that stand between us ! You were the one I loved talking to ! So I talked to you and you never waited to answer and neither did I.

I don’t know, something went wrong, time changed, I’m sorry I haven’t answered you for long, this is all my bad. I wish I could go back to past to fix this.

This message will never ever be able to patch things up, but it (I hope ) will tell you that I never forgot you .

My mother would tell me time and time again that any type of relationship separated by physical distance would never work. I had never believed her, but after receiving this email, I understood. Why had I ever believed that the perfect friendship would be through time differences of at least five hours? These relationships do not automatically create a barrier of trust, often making it even harder to trust. There are always going to be worries about who that person is and what their intentions are. There is no safety net to keep you from being hurt or feeling pain. Once there is a roadblock within your barrier of communication, you cannot simply get it back after running into each other at Walmart or flashing them a fake smile as you pass them in the hallway at school. As soon as one person blocks the other or the number of unread emails increases substantially over months, that person is gone forever.

[b0rtney]

Why I Do What I Do: 1. A Human Being with a Place of Birth

You can’t know where you’re going without knowing where you’re from, so today I’ll talk a little bit about where I’m from, and why I do what I do. This first part is about where I’m from as a human being.

I was born and raised in a nice little suburb of Missouri, about twenty minutes from downtown St. Louis. 

For kindergarten, I went to a nice Henry school and attended a nice Baptist church on Sundays, and maybe one other day of the week if I’m remembering that right. These were the kinds of places that would make any moderate person’s skin crawl. My older sister would scream and pout when my parents wrestled her into a church dress, but it would be a scandal if she tried wearing pants– that kind of place. My parents got divorced when I was six or seven, and that kind of thing had every person in that church turning their backs on my family, the fact that my mom soon began working to support me and my siblings was, I’m sure, the talk of the congregation for a little while– that kind of place. 

After my parents got divorced, I switched to another nice Henry school, and I moved to new houses: one for each parent. That nice Henry school didn’t work out for long. My mom couldn’t stand Henryity in almost any form anymore. And the tuition was too expensive for an electrician with a declining business and a brand-new real estate agent in 2007. So, public schools. My dad was zoned for a school with the best public schools around, so we used his address. Kehrs Mill Elementary was where I went starting in second grade, and where my brother went starting in Kindergarten. My sister started sixth grade at Crestview Middle. 

I went about half the year friendless in second grade, and then I met Fernanda. She was the only Hispanic girl in the whole school (there was one Philipino boy, two Chinese girls, an Indian girl, a Middle Eastern boy, and everyone else was African American or Caucasian). She, kind of literally, yanked me by the arm and dragged me into friendship, and I’d never been happier. We played Warrior cats (yes, based on the books, don’t look at me like that every school had some kids that did it… although I think the part where we lapped water out of the sink and hissed at her mom was a little weird). We made up a version of “Cowboys and Indians” where we would be two Chieftesses with inexplicable numbers of children and no husbands, facing moral dilemmas like what to do with prisoners of war when they won’t hear of peace– while our brothers (my one and her two) tried to shoot at us with Nerf guns. 

At this point, if you had asked me what I wanted to do with my life, I would have told you what I considered an impossible joke: I wanted to marry a woman, run an orphanage, adopt a bunch of teenagers and babies, and drive a van big enough to fit everyone in it when we went grocery shopping together. 

In third grade I took a long test in the school’s brand-new computer lab and I scored so well that they took me, once a week, on Wednesdays, to a different campus with other kids that scored really well on that test and we learned about lazers and climate change and cloning and other things for “gifted” kids. But otherwise, third grade passed in much the same way as second grade, but nothing exists without complications and so there came along a boy named Henry. He was new to school and he had what could have been called a cool haircut, for 2009, and Fernanda loved him. I didn’t. But she did, so I thought it was normal to like a boy, so I said I liked him too. And then he said he liked me better than her because she was weird and I kicked him in the shin and said something mean that I don’t remember anymore. But Fernanda didn’t like that, and she didn’t like me. So at the beginning of fourth grade she told me she wasn’t going to be my friend this year so that she could try being friends with someone else. 

So, I was alone again in fourth grade, for a minute. But by this time my real estate-mom had moved us to house number three (four, maybe?) since the divorce: a condo with blue carpets and mostly old people living there. This was where I met Branch, a kid from my class who visited his grandma in the condo directly above us. Branch and I each had a little brother, and by now my sister had taken to locking herself in her room and not talking to anyone, so Branch and me and our little brothers played “Hup-hups,” a war game where there were two sides, each with a commander and an infantryman who would respond to commands like “stay,” “go,” “attack,” and “attention.” It was pretty fun, so Branch told his friends at school about it, and they all wanted to join my faction, and this went on like a domino effect until I was running an army comprised of something like 30-50 fourth-grade boys, depending on the day, at recess. I don’t think I realized how weird that was at the time. We mostly just screwed around until another boy formed an oppositional army, calling themselves the Arachnids, because that was just about the biggest word you could know in fourth grade, and they started guerilla warfare. They would just straight-up attack us and try to hurt us. I would scream at the boys following me to run away, because I never wanted anyone to get hurt, but then the oppositional army leader had his arm around my throat and I was choking so I couldn’t yell very loud, and all the boys on my side just went to town attacking the Arachnids back. Somehow, none of the recess monitors– these were two grouchy old women who would always yell at me and Fernanda for trying to climb the trees– ever saw this, or stopped it. The violence continued until people got tired of it, and by the end of the year I was alone again.

Fifth grade was when the depression I’d had since I can remember really kicked it up a notch. It should be noted that I had no idea what depression was. I thought it was normal to just not want to get out of bed in the morning, to want to die all the time, to dig needles into your skin and try to make yourself bleed because at least then you have control over something. By then my mom had moved to house number five, within walking distance from the school, so my brother and I would walk together every morning. I made one new friend, named John, and he talked me out of suicide not once but twice, once by yelling at me over the phone and once by just existing, which is very impressive for a fifth grader, if I’m honest, but also I think I’ll always feel a little horrible for putting that pressure on him. I convinced myself that I loved him, at the time. 

You may be noticing a pattern with me and boys, but we’re not quite there yet. 

Of course, between fifth and sixth grade my family picked up and moved across the country from Missouri to Southern California.

I spent sixth grade and most of seventh grade friendless, and met a few friends in eighth grade– two of those friends are still with me to this day. In eighth grade I met a girl named Chloe, who had three pregnancy scares in a year and who convinced me to make out with her in a pillow fort in the room I shared with my sister while my sister was out with her boyfriend– and that was the first kiss I ever had and it felt like liquid lightning in my veins. But in eighth grade I also listened to my Republican parents on the matter of gay rights– of course, I barely knew what gay was, I just knew it was something you called people you didn’t like because that’s all that a Missouri elementary school teaches you about it– and so I thought gay people were a little gross, and I was a little gross for liking it when I kissed a girl, and I buried that part of me. In eighth grade I also met the boy who would be the first one I would date: Chris. I dated him from the middle of freshman year to the end of sophomore year in high school. We went on a few awkward dates, we held hands even though his were sweaty and we couldn’t get the timing right, we kissed even though it felt about as exciting as eating plain bread– not exactly bad, just not exciting or fun. 

Now the pattern might seem more clear. It certainly became very clear to me. 

I didn’t like boys. I like girls. I’ve liked girls since forever, and no amount of shame or repression was going to “fix” me because I. Wasn’t. Broken. I was depressed and I was anxiety-ridden and I was introverted maybe a little too much, but being homosexual was never an issue. 

I broke up with my boyfriend. I came out to my friends, then my siblings, then my parents, then everyone else. I had a girlfriend, and she lost interest, so I broke it off. I had another girlfriend, but I had never been interested, so I broke it off. Then I put dating aside. 

I continued to get straight As in school, take all the AP classes, run three clubs, rank nationally for field hockey goalies, help a friend of mine transition from straight girl to gay girl to nonbinary kid to straight boy, and accumulate a solid group of five friends. 

Then I got rejected from every college I applied to because of a clerical error I didn’t know about until a year later (after appeals were already a lost cause), so I got a job, I went to a community college, tried to go for a business degree and hated it, switched to a creative writing degree, and now here we are! With my applications submitted and one acceptance in the bag (thank you, University of Iowa!), now I want to focus on my writing and try to get published next.

Now that you know where I’m from, you know at least a little of what I care about. I deal a lot with mental health, so does my writing. My sexuality was a major unknown for me for a large portion of my life, so I include that a lot in the hopes that I can help someone else not be so lost with that. My hometown had very little racial diversity, so I want to represent more diversity in my writing. 

But I don’t want to get ahead of myself: in the coming posts, I’ll show you what I’ve written and read, so you can have a better idea of where I’m coming from as a writer, now that you know where I’m coming from as a person. 

[thenovelist101]

Wandered

Chapter Six

To spare time, let’s address the main components to this heist: A rampage of bumbling fifth graders, racial slurs, milk, a bell, soldiers, and a devastatingly euphoric acquirement.

Let’s start with the basics, the actual plan. It was lousy, because when two poor girls who have never broken the law try to create a smart plan, it’ll almost never work.

“Can we please not do this?” Lavender said in a whisper. They were sitting on two barrels near a wooden barn. The two assumed they had a few minutes before they get kicked out. “No, I want to.” “Mirai, I’m dark. I’m going to go to jail.” “I’ll go with you.” “Do you not know how The Punishers work? They pardon these types of things for people like you.” Trust me Lavender, they would never pardon people like me. Mirai thought. She smiled. “It’ll be fun...” “Crazy.” “Look! All you have to do is ask a bunch of questions to the mister and I take some stuff and dash out. Simple.”

Lavender scrunched her nose and thought for a moment. “That is kinda simple.” she admitted. Mirai nodded.

“Don’t you want to fight back? I know your brother got arrested, and you want to do something. This will help!” “In what way? Stealing isn’t going to get my brother out of jail.” “We’ll... order a cell next to him if we get caught?” “You really don’t know how to talk Mirai.” She frowned. Mirai was really bad at empathizing, or talking in a way didn’t personally attack someone.

A woman with a wooden stick came out of the shed. “What the hell are you two doing? Out of here! OUT!” The two jumped off the barrels and scrammed off into the streets again.

Natalie started sobbing into Lavender’s chest. She rubbed her back gently until she calmed down. Natalie was starving. Lavender looked at Mirai. “Fine, get milk. That ONLY.” Mirai made a smile that resembled the one Vincent made when he was sly. “Yes ma’am.”

————————

It started earlier with a boy, that was doing deliveries of newspapers in the morning. He was simply walking around town telling people to buy the paper, and heard the conversation quite distinctly. The he went up to tell his other newsboy friends, who told their sibling as well as their classmates, and those people told everyone else who didn’t know in the school. It spread like wildfire.

What was so interesting about this was no one ever openly said they would steal like that, and it felt like a peaceful protest of an imaginary revolution. The children were obsessed with that idea.

The original boy that heard was a sixth year, and the time he overheard where the two girls were going to steal didn’t match up with his class’s free period.

Now evidently, the fifth years had their free period the exact time afternoon started.

“Alright class, free time begins-“ Before the teacher could say he was finished, everyone shut their books and started putting on their coats to go outside. A specific boy, was most amped about the purge. Finally some people who understood what it was like to live in the world of thievery.

“We need to go. C’mon!” He slapped the back of a boy’s head, the person in question who was sleeping. “What… yeah, yeah, whatever Chris.” Chris had hair that went up in spikes, and a shabby brown coat that looked like it was stolen off from a homeless man’s back. Everyone was already leaving for this unplanned event and Chris didn’t want to be tardy.

“Okay, okay we’re coming.” said another boy with long hair. “C’mon Corny.” Corny was busy on his desk fiddling with the glass on his desk, his mind wandering somewhere else. “I’ll sit this one out. Why would I want to see people steal? It sounds a little messed up.” Corny’s blue eyes eyed Chris. He frowned. “Are you okay?” The boy with long hair asked Corny. He placed a hand on his shoulder. “Yeah, I just want to stay here. Go and tell me anything special when you come back.” He said. Chris frowned. “Fine, your loss.” The three left.

The children were all scattered about near the store the newsboy overheard the two girls talked about. At first glance it may have looked normal, but once you start thinking outside the box you realize there’s kids behind crate boxes, girls pretending to talk to each to each other near the horse stalls, and children pretending to read newspapers near the benches next to the store. Chris was right near the front of the store, the two behind him looking bored. “Everyone’s waiting. Do you know where they are?” “Yes, and slap Shane awake.” The long haired boy nudged the sleeping boy. “What… did they take anything yet?” “No! Look!”

A dark skinned and light skinned girl came into the scene, one looking more different than the other. The dark haired one had a baby in her arms. “Alright, I may need to judge your viewings. How do you know?” The long haired boy asked. “Well first off it’s a duo. Duo’s are good. Second off you see the white girl nudging that other girl’s arm… ah now she’s going inside. We’re about to witness the stall.” Chris looked curiously like everyone else.

“Excuse me?” Lavender asked. “What is it?” A man, that didn’t look friendly,looked at her with pissed eyes. “Where is the nearest way to the bathroom?” “...what?” “Why?” “Cause, um, you smell bad.” Some kids tried to hold in their guffaws.

“What?!” “Y-yeah, I-I mean no! I didn’t mean that, sorry.” The children started to burst out laughing. The girl asked more and more questions as the man got more infuriated.

Lavender began to realize how much a lamb to the slaughter she was, but her voice kept raising on like the mans.

Chris frowned. “I feel this is redundant.” The long haired boy said. “Well, it is funny.” Shane said wiping his eyes. “No, that other girl should’ve done the job of stalking.” “Why?” The long haired boy asked. Chris turned to look at him. “Blacks have no personal space.”

Then, when the man was fed up he started cursing a bunch of racial slurs at her, which made everyone quiet. “WHY IN THE NAME OF A WHORE DID THEY THINK TO REPRODUCE BARAARIC ANIMALS.”

Even the people who came in and out quickly shuffled by, not wanting to get caught in the kerfuffle. The air was stiff, and everything smelled of salt and soot. Lavender said nothing but clenched onto Natalie. “We should go…” Shane said. “No.” Chris stated. Then, the man struck Lavender on the face, which stumbled her and the baby onto the floor.

———————————

Mirai went in casually, standing up high, hands behind her back. She’s been there before, and knew who worked there. The man outside, a butcher in the back who also tends the stocks, a woman who checks out the money.

She went to the back, where the glasses of milk were stored. This is so easy. Mirai thought. She put it under her white dress, and could feel the numbness in her skin when the cold pressed onto it.

She turned around to exit when a soldier came in, his mustache white with rosy cheeks. Mirai’s eyes widened and turned the other way and hid behind a shelf of flour.

Her heart pacened, hoping the soldier didn’t see her. She wasn’t exactly all goody goody with the government.

After a few seconds she stood up and hit her head on the shelf over head. She didn’t yell in agony, but a bag of flour fell down on her head. It made a hard thud on her head. He head was throbbing with pain. Dust was everywhere. As she inhaled the fumes it dried in her throat. Flour was drenched in her throat and caused her to choke cough. The odds were never in her favor.

She could feel the step of the soldier’s boots tapping onto the floor. “Hey, who’s there?” He called. In a state of panic, she swooped down and went through the door only employees were allowed in.

Mirai shut it behind her and caught her breath against the door. She took the milk out of her dress and carried it with one arm. She looked around. She had to be careful.

There was an open doorway on the side that led to where people ordered meat, and she really didn’t want to be cooked along with them.

On one side was stocked produce, and on the other dead animals that were stripped from their skins were in stings, some looking clean, some looking bloody. It smelled of metal and glass.

Mirai grimaced and refrained from looking to the dead side. She looked to the shelves of stocked food and saw jars of raspberry jam. She smiled. Lavender likes those.

They were on the top shelf, and she pushed herself up a little, feeling at ease once the air settled in with her. She grabbed the most nicest looking one and smiled to herself. Everything was going more or less perfectly. Everything was fine. Until the ringing of a bell.

The Butcher rang his order bell to signal his next customer. “Your pork’s skinned.” He said. “Oh thank you, quite the show going on with the black girl. I swear children get stupider and stupider each day. I heard her brother got arrested a week ago.” “Well you don’t say.”

Mirai froze. No longer holding onto the edge of the shelf, she was in midair. Her hands shook violently, not knowing what to do. That bell meant it was time to get hurt, time to get locked in the closet, time to cut herself. She didn’t know what to do, she felt paralyzed in the moment. All those times Vincent wasn’t home…

When she was on the floor, and was caught in her trance of what to do. The marmalade jar slipped onto the floor. The glass shattered and it’s contents splattered about onto the floor. The ringing of the bell faded with the clashing of the jar. Mirai’s heart almost stopped. “Who’s there?!” The Butcher yelled walking to the doorway. Mirai looked to the door and tried to go out, but it was locked. How?!

The Butcher walked in and saw the jar on the floor, shattered in pieces. He cursed under his breath, and started picking up the mess. While he was cleaning he felt a shift in the air. He thought it was the glass shaking, but he stopped and listened for a few seconds.

It was like a simple movement made inaudible.

The silence was then broken. “Excuse me, I need to pay!” The woman called from the doorway. “Yeah, yeah I’m coming.” He said walking out the doorway with some broken pieces of glass.

Up on the ceiling, Mirai laid her back onto the wooden board, her hair in tangles and face red.

Mirai was wonderstruck that he didn’t hear her heavy breathing, or anything at all. She was stuck on the ceiling, holding onto the milk for dear life. Only one thing struck across her mind from the Butcher’s conversation. Lavender!

Using her magic she banged the door open and ran out with the milk jar—and a new jar of marmalade— in her hand. “Hey!” The Butcher yelled, the soldier ran after her.

Oh no, no, no. This soldier and Butcher chased her through the store. She tipped over a chair that caused the Butcher to trip on.

—————————-

Let’s resume to what happened with Lavender. “This isn’t right…” Shane said. “Idiotic, just pure idiocy.” Chris muttered. “Chris, that’s not very nice...Chris, Chris!” The long haired boy tried to grab him but he leisurely walked in between the man and Lavender.

Chris shoved him to the ground and whirled around to help Lavender get up. He grabbed the baby first. The child had a small gash on her cheek. When he adjust her into his arm Chris used his free hand to help her up. “You’re real bad at stalling.” “Yeah no hell about it.” She muttered, taking his hand.

Once she steadied herself the man started screaming. “Get out of the way boy.” He spat. “No, the king of thieves code states that if one partner goes down the other one has too.”

Lavender looked at him like he had three heads, while he also had her sister. “You’ve got some nerve to be standing with a black girl.” The man spat. “I frankly don’t care.” “What the hell are they teaching you in school now?! That everything is peaches and cream when it comes to equality.”

Now all the kids were filled with some sort of feeling inside them.

“Well, they’re teaching us to stay away from weirdos like you.” The boy got slapped in the face. Chris stuck up his middle finger in response. Shane sniggered. “That’s our Chris Brown.” “Yeah…”

Before anything else was about to go down the front door slammed open and a white girl covered in flour grabbed Lavender's arm. “We kinda need to leave!” Mirai said.

Lavender was about to run but the man yanked her arm. It hurt like hell. She was the rope in a tug of war.

“EVERYONE ATTACK!” called a boy. Suddenly the children started coming in like some sort of flash mob and unleashed themselves to the man.

Chris took a step back from it and held the baby—who was crying, in his hands. Mirai started to laugh on the spot because how weirdly times it was. Lavender tapped on his shoulder hastily. “Hey, my sister.” “Oh right.” He gave Natalie to her. “Next time, let your white friend do the talking. No point in bringing a bad name to the skin. Don’t show weakness. Plan your questions too.”

Lavender rolled her eyes. “I didn’t ask for a lecture on stealing, but alright.” Chris smiled. “Yeah.” “My name’s Lavender.” “Chris.” “...last name?” “I like it when people call me by my first name.” “Oh, alright.” She said. “One more thing, run like hell.” Before Lavender could respond Mirai grabbed her arm and started sprinting out. “WILL DO!” Mirai yelled back in response.

The soldier was behind them, and she could hear more soldiers following after them. “Who’s that boy?” “I don’t know Mirai, just remind me to kill you.” “STOP THERE!” Someone yelled.

The two girls jumped over a wheelbarrow and ran past a carriage. The horse neighed and went berserk in response.

Natalie was bobbing her head up and down. “Well you’re going to have to wait in line.” Mirai said. They took a right and stopped at a dead end.

Mirai felt as if she were to snap. There was a wall. A dead end. “Where are they?” someone called. “I think they went this way.” “Nice knowing you, Mirai.” Lavender said. “No.” Mirai’s adrenaline was pumping through, her keen and stubbornness wasn’t going to end yet.

She squeezed her arm and felt something churn inside her stomach. She could no longer hear anything. It felt like she was in the middle of emptiness, but there was something there. There was noise. Horses. No, their hooves.

Mirai opened her eyes saw herself at the horse’s stable. Lavender was sitting on a pile of hay with Natalie sleeping on her arms, staying motionless.

The jars felt weak in her arms. “That was a nice… fever dream.” Mirai said before dropping to her knees abruptly.

“Mirai!” Lavender bent down and knelt next to her. She nudged her arm. “Mirai, get up.”

Mirai listened and sat up on the floor. “I feel awfully flushed.” She said. “ No doubt about it. I don’t know how we got here. It’s a miracle gifted by God.” Lavender mumbled.

Mirai blinked a few times. “Yeah… oh no.” She stood up. “No, no, this is bad.” She put her hands on her head. She did this. Mirai started pacing up and down the hallway, the horses watched.

“Well I don’t know what you’re doing but we got milk, is THIS what you screwed us up on?!” Lav held up the jam jar. Mirai nodded.

“Obviously.” “Calm down also, I don’t know how we got here, it’s really creepy and weird, but we’re here.” “It’s because of me.” Mirai whispered. Lavender looked at her. “What?” “I did this.” Lavender laughed. “Okay Sherlock. Hey did you know I make the weather happen as well?”

Natalie chugged down the milk like no tomorrow.

Mirai felt exhausted. For once, she felt her magic being drained. And she hardly used it. “Lav, I actually did that. I’m not joking.” Lavender scrunched her nose. “Okay then…”

Our of frustration she went by the doorway. “Watch.” She said. The door stalls for the horses swung open, each one making a cracking thud sound as it hit the pole. Then she slammed all of them closed again, all without even touching the wood.

Lavender froze, staring at Mirai and then at the horses that were going crazy through the witchcraft.

“I was going to say it’s just the wind but….” Lav’s voice trailed off.

Mirai back was slumped and she sat down on the hay. “I don’t think anyone’s here, so this is it.”

She explained everything excluding the beatings, she didn’t want anyone to know about the injuries. They were an embarrassment. “Well, it makes sense”. “What?!” “Yeah. You’re so thick headed. For one don’t pretend I don’t notice the Guards watching us, specifically you for a long while. Also you’re very timid doing certain things like you’re going to piss your pants or something.”

Mirai scratched her head. “I guess…” “I’m glad you told me. Our breaking the law was a success, thank the lord.” “Haha, yeah…”

Mirai smiled. It felt good to tell someone else why she wasn’t normal. She wanted to be normal, because then she could be pretty and maybe her parents would like her. Then she and Vincent could act like normal siblings who fight all the time. However, that wasn’t her life.

Something told Mirai to go home. It was probably because of Vincent. “I should go. See you later.” Mirai said weakly.

She turned around and started to walk out before Lavender said, “Teleportation.” Mirai quirked a brow. “What?”

“Teleportation. That’s the power you attained.” Mirai smiled. “I guess.”

Although this power was something that made Mirai very uneasy, life was actually starting to go her way (a little) for once, and she liked it. Mirai savored the feeling the best she could, though all she wanted to do was sleep.

Vincent ran home and slammed opened the door, the letter crumpled in his hand.

Mirai put on a smile and walked for the next twenty minutes from home. She was starving, tired, and restless.

She passed a poor old homeless woman and waved, she waved back. She took a left through a curved bridge and saw their big, bold, and grand house. She fumbled with door before opening.

This girl could hear her mother laughing her ugly terrible laugh. She could smell her father’s smoke from his cigars.

She walked into the foyer and saw Vincent, and her face lit up. Then she saw her parents in front of him sitting on the dining table, and her head sank.

“I can’t believe it Rowan! You actually did it-“ “Wait to go son! That’ll show those lords how smart and ambitious my son is.” “What’s going on…” Mirai said softly.

“You’ll have to pack now! Six months is a long time.”

Mirai’s heart raced. Six months?! What? “What’s going on?!” She yelled. Everyone turned to her. She saw Vincent’s enigmatic smile and the cold stares of her parents.

“Where’s Vincent going?” “That‘s Merger to you.” The servant spat behind her. The servant started working assigned from the government, she helped with Mirai’s chores but mainly she made sure. Mirai didn’t do anything magical all day.

“He’s leaving next week to Collins!” Father cried happily. Mirai’s has dropped. “Collins!? But that’s-“ “Six thousand nine hundred and eighty miles from here!” Mother said gleefully. The two laughed while Vincent told them to stop.

Mirai’s heart dropped to her stomach. She felt like she was going to throw up. She stared up at him straight in the eye, her eyes already watering. “Mirai…” he started to say.

Vincent then realized why this wasn’t going to work.

[abominablepencil]

I wanna yell all this into the void real quick if it’s cool with y’all

My school “career” really sucked. I probably blocked out a few of the events but I’m gonna write down what I can recall. Not all of these will be bad, by the way, just stories. If you don’t wanna read a bunch of school stories then that’s fine I just wanna share this. If you have similar stories I’d love to read em though!

Let’s start in elementary school.

- There was a boy I liked in kindergarten, but he didn’t like me back. We were both in the am class at the start of the year but for some reason he kept switching between am and pm so I of course asked my mom to swap me as well to match. This went on for maybe a month if I had to guess, switching weekly, before my mom said no more. We wound up being in different classes but ah well.

- The class was making gingerbread men for Christmas but they had to bake while we were out at recess, when we got back they were gone! The teachers put on an act about not knowing where they’d gone before leading us on a scavenger hunt around the school, finally ending at the principals office. He pretended to be surprised we made them and apologized for apparently eating all of them. We each made at least one and we were a class of 20-30 so I have no idea what actually happened to those or why but it was still fun!

- During class one day I fell asleep at my desk and when I woke up everyone was doing tests, mine was sitting next to me. I don’t recall the specifics but I recall casually saying “I’m gay”, feeling embarrassed, and then starting my test without anyone noticing. I meant in the definition “happy” and not “homosexual” though because I was maybe six and knew of nothing more relationship wise than what I saw in Aladdin and the Aristocats.

Switch to the second elementary school

- We had a bunch of classes in the portables and there was a loose board along the side of the wooden deck between them. I found it amazingly amusing to just hide under there and look for treasure! The faculty didn’t, however, and they had to bolt it shut so I’d stop breaking in and crawling around under the classrooms. I found Pokémon cards and foreign coins down there!

- I caused so much trouble at school the principal decided maybe letting me bring a toy would make me behave. She let me bring one small stuffed animal to school each day and play with it in the covered area at recess. This wasn’t really monitored, however, and my teacher was new so I got around it by bringing a marionette. If the class behaved I got to do a puppet show before recess, where I’d make the marionette sing phineas and ferb songs while dancing on a table.

- There was a boy who constantly picked on me but had a soft spot for girls crying. Whenever I was stressed out I’d hide in the tiny space between the top of the CPUs and the table the monitors sat on. He’d try and lure me out by being rude but when I started crying he’d apologize and leave me alone. This worked out well for me, it was really comfy in my hiding spot.

- As prior mentioned my teacher was new and didn’t know how to handle the class yet, and I was a troublemaker. She tried moving me to a private table to do spelling tests but I made forts out of math textbooks and folders. She then tried having me do spelling tests on the computers in Microsoft word. That program has spellcheck, guess who never failed a spelling test!

- During state testing to see where everyone was knowledge wise in fourth grade I tested at an eighth grade level. The teachers took note of that. The next year they decided I wasn’t being challenged enough so they let me decide if I wanted to learn basic algebra with my class or join the sixth graders in an advanced algebra class. I accepted the offer and took the entire class period to play with my marionette instead of learning the weird ways to do math that made no sense to me at all. Eventually that teacher decided I wasn’t paying enough attention and swapped me back to my regular class but that wasn’t till after they’d already learned the basics, meaning I was started in an advanced class and then dumped into the middle of the regular one. Algebra makes absolutely no sense to me to this day and I obstinately refuse to use PEMDAS.

- One day I was particularly upset for no particular reason that I can recall so I hid under the table as per usual until lunch time came. The teacher demanded I come out and go to lunch with the class but I refused and demanded to stay under the table alone because I just couldn’t bear to be seen. That of course didn’t fly because she couldn’t legally leave a child alone in the classroom, nor send the others to lunch unsupervised. This lead to one of many occurrences where a specific sixth grade teacher and whichever other male teacher was available dragging me to the nurses office for time out. The first hooking his arms under my armpits and putting them over the lower half of my face, the second holding my feet. It was always that first teacher because he was used to me gnawing on his arms the entire ten minute walk. This particular time I was instead taken to the teachers lounge because I was kicking and screaming and throwing a tantrum. They called another truant officer to help while they contacted a family member to come get me. I was held captive in that room for 30-60 minutes, either restrained to a teacher in a chair or pinned to the floor by the officer so I wouldn’t run. The entire time I screamed as loud as I could and, while pinned down, yelled that my arms and legs were numb. They didn’t release me till they got my grampa there and then they drove me to his retirement home. I never went back to that school. I went to therapy though, they had dogs and talked about club penguin with me.

And now my third elementary school

- Right before WASL testing started in fifth grade I switched schools. When I was finally processed into a class they were in the middle of the testing so I had to just sit around and make it up during remedial testing. During one day of that, while all ten or so of us were sitting in the computer lab doing the test, I noticed a balloon sitting behind a CPU near me. Instead of ignoring it I chose to try and grab it. The teacher got mad at that and told me to do the testing so I tried but quickly got distracted again. I think at this point she went to get the principal or something so I took my chance to bolt from the room! I ran to the bathroom and hid. The teacher found me quickly and demanded I get out of the bathroom, but I refused. She threatened to get the janitor to come take the stall door off it’s hinges so she could get me cause I wouldn’t unlock it but still I sat defiant. So she left. I waited a minute or so after her footsteps stopped and creeped out, guess who was behind the bathroom door! She tried to grab me but I ducked and ran down the stairs, out the cafeteria doors, to the playground, around to the front parking lot, and down the street to my grandmas house. They grabbed a truancy officer and came into my grandmas backyard to try and coax me out and back to school. I refused to until all the teachers were back in their cars and it was just the officer. Big trouble came my way that day, and it all started with a half deflated balloon!

- At this school if you misbehaved you went in one of the time out closets. They weren’t that bad. Just two cubbies without doors in the office, each had a desk, chair, and a motivational poster. I spent a lot of time in them. It was nice and quiet in there.

- My second fifth grade teacher didn’t like when kids farted during class. She always said it was a distraction and that if you had to do so then ask to use the restroom and do so in there. However if you asked to use the restroom she’d ask why you didn’t go at recess and told you to hold it till the next one.

- Did you know that different schools teach drastically different curriculums? Cause I didn’t till I switched mid-year. I went from being taught algebra to being taught about “Big One” and basic multiplication. In fifth grade. It really wasn’t that useful and only lead to confusion.

This is getting really long so I’ll do middle school in a new post!

[artificialqueens]

Red Delicious ch. 2 - Dela/Jinkx - Emerald

In which Dela seeks help for one of her student and gets a little more than she bargained for.

A/N: This one was both easy and difficult to write. As a preschool/kindergarden teacher myself, I wanted to make it as accurate as possible to what it actually is dealing with children that age. Thank you to the anon from a few days ago for giving me the little bit of motivation I was missing to keep writing it, i’m glad other people than me enjoy it too, it warms my heart to read that.

“MISS DELAAAAAAA,” the shrill voice cut through the noisy classroom chatter easily for the fifth or sixth time already since coming back from lunch break. The teacher worked very hard at hiding the exasperated sigh menacing to spill from her lips as she turned to the source of the commotion. In the play house area, three of her pupils seemed to have attracted everyone’s attention. Standing taller than most of her fellow first grader, Eureka was waving her arms to try to get the teacher’s attention to the small blonde on the floor and the other one standing over her. “Miss Dela!” she yelled again. “Aquaria pushed Blair! I saw it! She needs to get an angry sticker, Miss Dela!” The loud cries attracted the entire classroom’s attention, a handful of children leaving whatever they were doing to come find out what was causing this commotion.

Not one for public displays but suddenly thrust in the limelight, poor little Blair on the ground was fighting very hard not to cry until the teacher swooped in. “Alright everybody goes back to what they were doing, this is not your problem to fix” she ushered all the children away as she extended a caring hand to the small girl on the floor. It was easy to see that the child was putting on a brave face, her voice shaky as she kept repeating she was fine, but the moment she was asked what happened, Blair went silent, her eyes glued down to the floor. “Blair, treasure, if you want my help. I need to know what happened,” Dela asked softly. But the girl wouldn’t budge. The teacher looked up to Aquaria, who had adopted a similar pose, quiet as a mouse.

There was a strange heaviness in the air, one that the teacher hadn’t encountered often in her years on the job. Children that age tended to forget their woes quickly, fights disappearing as quickly as they started. The energy surrounding the girls though seemed charged with something she couldn’t quite figure out. “I’m not angry at you, Aquaria,” she offered with a sympathetic hand on the blonde’s shoulder, “I just want whoever did it to make it right by Blair. Just to make sure she’s okay. Did you see it happen? Do you know who did it?” Her questions were met by a puzzling wall of silence still. To Dela’s knowledge, in 95% of the cases, an innocent child would vehemently defend him or herself. So Aquaria’s silence spoke great amounts, but the teacher still wanted a confession or at least an account of the events because she knew it was so easy to shatter a child’s trust and didn’t want to accuse any of her students of anything without proof. She sighed lightly. “Alright, well if either of you want to talk about it, i am ready to listen when you’re ready,” the teacher offered gently.

It was unlike her to give up on such a matter, Dela believed that providing a safe environment for her student started by showing them that they wouldn’t be vilified for their actions but rather take responsibilities and make it better. But she also didn’t believe in pushing them to the point of discomfort. So for now, it would be dropped, but not forgotten.

**

Standing by the door, the teacher’s arm was getting tired from waving at every children as they walked off one by one with their parents. Despite the early dismissal, they all seemed to have a lot to share with the various adults waiting for them and it did warm Dela’s heart. It proved she did something right. As she turned around to go back in, her shin caught on something unexpected. Aquaria was sitting, cross-legged, by her feet, all ready with nowhere to go. “What are you still doing here, treasure? Who’s picking you up today, mom?” The teacher asked. She tried to keep her voice light and sweet, but the hint of concern was hard to miss for the more trained ear than that of a 5 year old. Aquaria just shrugged. “No one,” she piped up, apparently unphased by it. Dela looked at the time. Whoever was in charge of this child was much too late for her taste. “Come on then, treasure,” she urged brightly, holding her hand out to the child who gladly took it, “I know someone who can help us out.”

With over an hour left of school for the older children, the corridors were much quieter than they had been previously with hordes of kindergarteners bouncing off the walls. The child didn’t seem to mind, walking quietly next to her teacher. On her own, Aquari seemed like such a quiet, docile little thing that it was difficult for Dela to believe it could be the same child supposed to be a monster, but there definitely was something under there. “Alright, Aquaria, I am going to go ask a few questions to another teacher. Check out what’s happening.” she crouched down to the little girl’s level to explain what was happening. “Can you go get the book I let you being home and sit by your locker? I will be right back, treasure.” The girl nodded and obeyed to the letter.

Jinkx’s class was extremely loud and animated when Dela pushed the door opened. Children were spreaded all over in groups, pouring over massive pieces of papers, actively arguing and jotting things down. At her desk, heels propped right up on the furniture, the redhead was in the middle of a book Dela strongly suspected to be 50 Shades hidden under a different jacket (she somehow doubt Jinkx would actually be reading a Stephen Hawking biography) when she spotted the intruder But Jinkx didn’t move to invite her in or force her out for that matter. She stayed put and quirked a perfectly drawn brow up at Dela who assumed it was her cue to approach.

Thinking of the little girl waiting, the brunette figured she didn’t have time to be intimidated by the other. She confidently strode up to Jinkx. “Hi, can I borrow Brianna for a second?” In what was an obviously deliberate attempt at being dramatic, Jinkx slowly closed her book, looked around the classroom, then to Dela, then to the classroom again, landing on the loud blonde in the corner, and back to Dela before finally giving her answer. “No. She’s busy,” the teacher answered seriously, “may I interest you in my humble help instead. Not like I’m doing anything worth shit right now.” For a moment, the dark haired woman was taken aback. It was difficult to understand if Jinkx was joking or being an asshole. Despite everything, Dela wasn’t too proud to admit when she needed help. “Her sister is still here, no one came to pick her up at early dismissal. I wanted to know who was supposed to be there,” she explained.

She almost regretted asking the moment she was done talking. Jinkx’s gaze was fixated on her and the redheaded teacher’s expression was almost impossible to read. Was she laughing at her or pitying her or maybe she was still hungover and didn’t understand a word that was said. Out of the blue, she suddenly reacted, eyes still staring right back at Dela. “Cracker! Come over here!” she called out. Almost immediately, the blonde swayed to the front of the class. “What’s up, miss M?” Brianna asked brightly. Only then did Jinkx finally acknowledge someone other than her colleague, turning her attention to the 12-year-old. “Are you guys with Sharon this week?” The child nodded and was almost immediately dismissed. As if that answer alone was supposed to mean anything to Dela who was still as confused as before. Jinkx waited for a few moments to see if the other teacher would understand and sighed when she obviously didn’t. “Sharon works late, they’re supposed to go home alone. Aquaria should have a key in her backpack. Left side pocket, that’s where they always put it.” The explanation made sense but Dela had barely listened, her brain getting stuck at the very beginning. “Excuse me? You mean to say that I should allow a 5 year old child to leave on her own? That doesn’t sound like responsible parenting!”

Something in Jinkx’s expression changed in an instant, suddenly her eyes were darker, harder, she was squinting ever so lightly. “Out,” her tone was stern and cutting, shaking Dela for a moment. “You and I, we’re gonna have a chat outside, sweetie.” She was already up before Dela could even answer and the brunette had no choice but to follow, fearing the consequences if she was to retort.

“Who the fuck do you think you are,” the moment the door slammed shut, Jinkx had Dela against the wall -literally- with a menacing finger pressed hard against the other woman’s sternum, “judging a parent without knowing them? I have known Sharon for years. She is a hard working mother who does the most she can. She not perfect, but news flash, sweet cheeks, no one is. Not even you.” The last words were spat with such force it was hard not to understand all the contempt behind it. Both women stood for a moment, face to face, waiting for the other to make a move in any direction. Dela definitely saw where she went wrong and was considering apologizing but words were failing her as she stared into the angry and hurt green eyes. She didn’t dare open her mouth and risk digging her hole bigger. Finally taking a step back, Jinkx actually broke the tense silence she created. “I’ll send Brianna to pick her up after class, if you can watch the kid during that time, if it makes you more comfortable for them to walk together,” the redhead suggested, her tone still hinting at the remnants of her previous upset. Still not sure she should be talking, Dela simply nodded vigorously and watched the other woman disappear back into the classroom, left with more questions than answers as she retreated back to her own door.