Monday
September 3, 2018
Rhys groans when a heavy weight lands on his back and a godforsaken screeching noise nearly busts his eardrums. He shrugs his shoulders and turns his head to the side to glare at his assailant, his gaze meeting with the dark brown glittering of Thommy Prescott’s eyes and wide grin.
“You’re heavy,” he deadpans, making Thommy’s grin spread even further if possible. Rhys tries to glare harder, but Thommy just laughs and ruffles his hair before he finally gets off Rhys back.
“You heard?” Thommy asks, all excitement and little attention to his surroundings. “We’re getting new teachers. Some freshies were already babbling about two young bombshells, so I hope we’ll be the lucky ones to get one of them for homeroom.”
The two of them are one of the few non-dorm living students who don’t take a car to school. The long line of flashy cars always seemed tacky to Rhys and he hated waiting in line for his turn to finally get out in front of the school’s entrance just to show off his family’s influence and money. It was pathetic when he was twelve, just starting Edison, and it seems even more pitiful now that he is nearly seventeen. So, he has been walking the small distance between his condo and the school ever since he was fifteen and officially entered senior high school. Thommy just chose to follow his example after he refused the offer of a ride when Thommy mistakenly thought there was something wrong with their car—as if the Martinez family didn’t have several of them he could use if he wanted. Their group of friends laughed at first, teasing Rhys about slumming it up with the dorm-kids, but it became old news pretty fast and now, nearly two years later, no one really noticed or cared anymore.
Looking up at Thommy’s excited face, Rhys bites back a fond smile. He doesn’t know much about the new teachers, but he would bet that the principal would never assign their group a young woman as their homeroom teacher. Correction, the principal would never assign a young woman as any kind of teacher to the entire senior academy student body. Still, he doesn’t share his thoughts with his friend. He needs something that will make the day at least marginally interesting if predictable. Not that he really cares, but he’s fed up with being constantly bored yet unable to escape.
“What do you think, Rhys?” Thommy asks with a huge smile. “Who will tag the new teach first?”
Tag.
He wanted to sneer at the distasteful tradition that was established when the first female teacher was hired at the academy. It involved the students pulling no stops to put their tag on the new teacher by seducing her and showing evidence of bedding her. It was demeaning yet never explicitly banned besides firing the teacher every time the game was won by someone. The only attempt at putting a stop to the sick tradition was made by the current principal who hasn’t hired a female faculty member under fifty since her appointment much to the students’ disappointment.
“Do your best and you could do the honors,” he says instead of voicing his real thoughts. He knows it would only take a few well-aimed words to make all his friends forget about participating in the game, but Rhys never cared enough about teachers to prevent any prank his classmates pulled. “But let’s not ignore the off-chance that we get some old hag or a guy.”
“Oh, yeah! You always think of everything!” Thommy exclaims with a laugh just as they walk through the automatic glass doors and instantly get mobbed by the rest of their group.
“Who’s excited to get some fresh meat?” James croons, wrapping himself over Thommy’s shoulder even though he has to rise onto his tiptoes to reach them. He winks at Rhys with a saucy smirk.
“I’m sure you’re dying to get to play the bad student, Hudson,” Mark retorts snidely, adjusting his thick black glasses. “That pathetic virginity of yours must be burning a hole into your pants.”
“You’re mistaking me for yourself, Goodman. I hear that fiance of yours has your balls in a jar on her bedside table,” James snaps back, his smile turning nasty.
“Leave Laura out of this!”
“Why? Can’t take some hard truths?”
“Guys!” Ryley cuts in, his deep voice commanding attention. “It’s our first day back, can we not start it with bloodshed?”
“But he started it!” James whined. “Rhys, tell him!”
“Whatever.” Rhys shrugs. “Didn’t you want to be first to the classroom?”
“Oh yeah! I want a first row seat!” Thommy says with a dreamy sigh.
“Yeah, what the giant says,” James hums and gets off Thommy’s back. “I grilled some of the freshies and they said that the woman they saw was a real looker. Legs a mile high, tight little—”
“What about the new guy?” Rhys asks, quietly steering the conversation away from the gutter James has been steadily falling into.
“He’s some snot-nosed nerd. At least that’s what two sophomores who took the elevator said. You think we should welcome him accordingly?” Mark’s smirk is downright devious, the cogs already turning behind his thick lenses.
Rhys hums noncommittally but the seed is already planted. He places his hand on the scanner and the gate lets him through easily. While he waits for the others he checks his school-assigned tablet for the second time that morning to make sure he got the classroom right. Room 17 in Edison Wing.
It’s the English classroom.
Rhys knows that they had a problem finding a replacement after Mulligan was fired. The temp Peterson told them that he’s not staying during their last class and handed in his resignation on the last day of term, but Administration hasn’t updated the faculty list yet, so it’s been impossible to guess who their new homeroom teacher will be. Which must have been Pratt’s intention all along, holding up the suspense and preventing the students from creating too much havoc because they would all want to get into the new female teachers’ good graces.
What a nasty old hag. Nasty but brilliant old hag.
Rhys hides a smile in his chin as they get into the elevator and he pushes the button for the third floor. The others are still plotting, trying to figure out what prank to pull that wouldn’t get them behind in the game if it was actually one of the female teachers they got assigned. Which is the reason they don’t notice which room they are headed for until they walk right into the mids of a circus.
“Wait a second.” Thommy stops and backs right out the door to check the plate next to it. “The English room? I thought we made sure that creeper got booted!”
“Thommy boy, English is still a mandatory class for four years,” James quips, patting Thommy’s shoulder when he steps next to him. “With a little luck, the new English teach is one of the bombshells the freshies were gushing about.”
Rhys heads to his desk in the back corner of the room, easily avoiding collision with a bunch of their classmates, who start hitting each other with their books, fighting over the front row seats. He really doesn’t see the appeal in crowding around the teacher, begging for attention. He drops his bag next to his seat and sinks into the stuffed chair he’s seen as his for the past two years. Lowering his head onto his forearm on the top of the table and does his best to ignore the cacophony around him, slowly slipping into the welcome familiarity of daylight haze that has been his companion through his entire school career.
He vaguely notices the sudden silence that befalls the room when the bell sounds and a moment later the door opens but doesn’t bother to raise his head. It’s not like the new teacher holds the slightest interest to him whether they are male or female. When the first groans of disappointment reach his ears, Rhys opens one of his eyes to see what kind of old geezer got the short end of the stick to be saddled with their useless bunch and gets the first surprise of the day when he sees a young boy that looks barely a few years older than them.
Rhys blinks slowly but he isn’t dreaming. The man standing in front of the interactive board is young, barely in his twenties, with thick-rimmed glasses and a knitted vest—the epitome of useless. Rhys doesn’t give him a week before he runs. The thought makes him sneer in derision and he lets himself sink back into his boredom-induced lethargy.
Only to be snapped to attention by a sharp whistling sound. “Now that I have your attention,” the teacher says with a wide smile, ignoring the hostile air in the classroom, “my name is Dmitri Armand and I’m going to be—”
“Shut the hell up!” Thommy snaps, his voice deepened into a growl. “No one gives a fuck who you are.”
“Yeah, right!” Mark adds with his usual arrogance. “Just give us our passing marks like every other idiot at this useless ‘academy’.”
Rhys expects the guy to get outraged like most newbies do when they get the official welcome from the student body. He waits for the indignant protests and even threats about taking them to the principal. It doesn’t come. Instead, the guy smiles wider and perches himself on the corner of his desk, raising one of his brows.
“Ah, but that’s something you have to work for, I’m afraid,” he replies, perfectly calm and cheerful, earning snarled threats and curses. Someone even lobs an eraser at his head but he just catches it mid-flight and puts it down next to him, still grinning like a total idiot. “Now that we cleared that up. Any other questions? I’m here to help you with anything you need.”
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