Monday
September 3, 2018
His first day of classes doesn’t go the way he expected. His homeroom class seems to hate him with the kind of narrow-minded blindness only teenagers can without giving him a chance, and all his other English and AP English classes so far have been filled with spoiled rich brats who thought they knew everything better than he did. They expected perfect grades and wasn’t afraid to say so, looking at him and his mediocre clothes like he was dirt under the sole of their shoes.
Well, they will get one hell of a wakeup call, once Dmitri gets through their placement tests. And now his own homeroom class is waiting for him. If he had to guess, Dmitri would say they are beyond agitated by now, all of them ready to leave for the day and forget school even exists, at least until the next morning. He doesn’t need to be a genius to figure out that the kids at Edison Academy are used to getting away with everything and could care less about their teachers. Yes, most of them convey their arrogance through scathing yet overly polite words and derisive stares, unlike his own class, but it’s just as blatant as the curses and threats he received this morning.
Walking towards his classroom, he can’t help but sigh. He wants to say he’s more determined than ever to get the kids like him, but he can’t deny that he’s disappointed that his expectations were met with complete destruction. Still, he was never one for giving up. Not at the first obstacle, not at the second, not at the millionth. Challenges are part of life and they are there to make a person stronger. Dmitri has learned it a long time ago. Now it’s time his students learned it as well.
He notes the complete silence that’s awaiting him when he walks through the door with a wide, unassuming smile, but whatever the little shits seem to think, he’s not stupid. Their poker faces are pathetic, and even if they were angels, childish pranks are to be expected.
“Good afternoon, I hope you had a great day!” he greets them nevertheless, pushing on with a cheerfulness that pushes the students deeper into their belief that they got him figured out for good.
“Good afternoon,” they chorus with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
“I don’t know your names yet, but we have all year to get to know each other better,” Dmitri says, enjoying the slowly dimming satisfaction in the kids’ eyes. “Now, I came a bit more prepared than this morning. The syllabus is already on your tablets, please read it at home. It has my email address and phone number, you can reach me any time of the day.” After the day he had, he’s not surprised by the wolfish grins that appear on most students’ faces, the others had similar reactions. He grins right back, already plotting his revenge for the prank calls and spam emails he’s about to get. “My office hours are undecided as of yet, but Administration will update the schedule as soon as everything is set. Any questions?”
“Any more mafia advice?” the same boy who asked about hiding a body speaks up, his shrewd eyes full of cockiness.
Dmitri feels his amused smile morph into a cold, twisted facade of one and he meets the little upstart shit’s challenge head-on. “Think before you speak. You can never know when putting your foot in your mouth can become a literal thing.” He makes sure his tone is flat and he lifts a mocking brow, holding the boy’s gaze until it drops and the boy’s throat works over a heavy swallow. “Just kidding. Well, I’m sure things like that are said by actual mobsters, too, but I only have experience with fictional ones.”
He knows he’s playing a dangerous game, but he’s always been a sore loser and the mere idea of being defeated by a bunch of self-absorbed brats sets his teeth on edge. If he doesn’t get cute little kids who love to learn instantly, then the assholes across from him will just have to adapt and figure out that working with him instead of against him is in their best interest.
The kids roll their eyes and mutter under their breaths but don’t act out like they did during Homeroom period. It makes Dmitri suspicious of what’s coming but doesn’t show it. Instead, he picks up the stack of tests he put on his desk when he walked in and starts handing it out to the kids sitting in the first row.
“Now that the formalities are over, I prepared a cute little test for you to evaluate how much you forgot during summer break.” He chuckles at the collective groans. “I’m sure you’ll breeze through it, so you have 20 minutes. I’ll set up the board for our lesson while you’re working.”
He ignores the murmur that goes through the room and it turns out to be a mistake. Because when he turns the interactive board on, somehow the first thing that appears is a free porn site with a video already loaded.
The raucous laughter is instantaneous.
“Oh my God! Are you going to force us to watch porn with you?!” the tallest boy in the class asks, trying to sound scandalized and failing because he’s laughing so hard.
“Yeah, what are you some dirty pedo?”
“We should report this.”
“We totally should before he whips something even dirtier out.”
They laugh harder, the noise oppressive and mean. Dmitri’s fingers twitch with the need to grab one of his trusty knives and show the little bastards something really dirty, but he grits his teeth and pushes the desire aside. They are children who have been spoiled rotten and have no concept of compassion towards strangers. Maybe not even towards each other but the verdict is still out on that one. Nevertheless, punishing them for something so juvenile would only prove them right no matter how much Dmitri aches to teach them a lesson or two.
“Shouldn’t I be afraid that you all whip something dirty out?” he asks as he turns back to his still cackling class with comically widened eyes. “I still remember being sixteen and dealing with hair-trigger. It must be really uncomfortable for you, so if you need to go to the restroom to… relieve yourselves, feel free to ask.”
Silence.
Dmitri looks back at the stilled video, having half the mind to play it just to make the idiots squirm, but he doesn’t want to get into any more trouble than he already is with Principal Pratt. “No?” he asks instead, staring at his class and reveling in the shocked expressions they are sporting. “It must have been some weird virus then, I’ll talk to the Admin after class. You have fifteen minutes left to finish the test.”
“What if I don’t write shit on this? Huh? What are you going to do then?” a lithe, black-haired boy with a heavily freckled face asks, mocking.
“All of you get an automatic zero,” Dmitri replies cheerfully, drinking in the angry groans and mutters.
“That’s unfair!”
“Yeah, it wasn’t even my idea!”
“Shut up you moron!”
“Yeah, Carroll stop being a whiny bitch!”
“Shut up, Prescott, it’s all your fault! Yours and your stupid boyband’s!”
“Take it back, you asshole! We didn’t do a thin—”
“Thirteen minutes,” Dmitri cuts in, voice sharp and hard like a whip, causing the kids to quiet down and start writing as fast as possible.
For the fracture of a second, his gaze meets a set of guarded light green eyes in the back of the room and Dmitri doesn’t know what to make of the tightly set jaw and pursed lips. The boy oozes carefully constructed nonchalance as he twists his lips in a mockery of a smile and turns back to his paper but he cannot fool Dmitri. He could never afford to judge a book by its cover and he doesn’t intend to start now. So he makes a mental note about the boy before he focuses on the frozen porn video on the board and rolls his eyes at the cliche choice his students made.
Really? Teacher disciplines naughty student? He has half the mind to give all the idiots zero for their lack of imagination alone. And to think the little cretins paused the video mid-coitus with the younger actor clinging to the teacher’s desk with his ass pushed out…
Dmitri cocks his head to the side and squints at the image, his finger hovering over the power button on the remote controller. There is something familiar about the tattoo on the ‘teacher’s’ left hip. The intricate motive twisting and curling into a tribal symbol, so stark in its blackness against the man’s pale skin. Dmitri squints, trying to make out why it looks so familiar only to groan in mortification when he finally realizes where he has seen that design before.
Viktor Demetrikov.
Bree’s younger half-brother. Not that the brats knew that when they picked the video. Or Dmitri’s connection to Vulpine Studios no matter how loose it is. It doesn’t mean Dmitri’s first instinct isn’t covering his tracks without care of the collateral damage. His training demands him to start making contingency plans, but he tries to remind himself that he’s dealing with a bunch of ignorant teenagers, who only care about getting their way and causing grief to their teachers. They didn’t mean to expose him the way they almost did. And they have to move on and forget the incident happened. That’s the only solution.
With tightly pursed lips, Dmitri pushes the power button on the controller then puts the thing on his desk and checks his watch. “Time is up. Put your pens down and put the tests on my desk,” he says, his cheeks pulling tight around the widening of his lips. It’s not a smile and the students know it if the way they grit their teeth and obey is anything to go by.
Fools.
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