Student Teacher

Chapter 1

It was the usual first day of school at Brixton Prep; the kids were a combination of wound up, apprehensive about the new teachers and classes and annoyed about summer vacation being over. There was too much foot shuffling, too much fumbling around in backpacks for pens and notebooks and too much talking. Stragglers wandered into the classrooms late as they found their bearings, announcements over the intercom were either unheard or ignored and the bells weren’t working right. On top of that the area was caught in a late summer heatwave and the classrooms were over ninety degrees, with the windows open and not enough fans to go around because the AC was out again.

“Sit down, please. Everyone take their seats.” She was a new teacher, maybe twenty-four or so, young and pretty with a good figure, natural blonde hair and good clothes; the kind every school seems to have one of. You know the kind—young, pretty and a total bitch, the kind who never smile. “Sit down.”

The students, maybe eighteen or twenty fifteen and sixteen year olds in shorts and tees or skimpy tops and short skirts, took another minute to settle then sat there, looking her over while they waited for her to start.

“This is US History 1. If you’re supposed to be somewhere else, please go there now (no one moved). My name is Miss Posner. Not Carolyn. Not Mrs. Posner. Not Ms Posner; Miss Posner. I expect you to be here and in your seats when the bell rings, if you have a legitimate reason to be late or excused early, I expect you have a note to that effect. You will sit in the seats I assign you to and you will keep these seats all year. Your assignments—homework, papers, projects, will be assigned in plenty of time for you to have them completed so you may assume that every day something is late will cost you a full grade. Miss more than two homework assignments for a marking period and your grade drops a full letter. I expect everything to be handed in typed and spell-checked. I do not accept hand written work other than in class tests. You are responsible for your books being covered and kept in good condition. If you have something to add to a discussion, you will exercise the courtesy of raising your hand and waiting to be acknowledged. Are there any questions?”

She delivered the speech without seeming to pause for breath, crack a smile or avert her eyes from student after student. It was impressive in its way. There were no questions.

“Good. Now, one row at a time, beginning with the row closest to the windows, please come up to my desk and sign out your textbook.”

A tall jock looking boy on the opposite side of the room stood up. “You want us to go first?” He was a smart-ass.

“Sit down.”

“But I need a book, Miss Posner.”

“Name?”

“Mine?” There were a couple of titters from the class. She tried to stare him down but failed. “Pete Weston.”

“Sit down, Mr. Weston, wait your turn.”

“But, Miss Posner, I need a book.” He was smirking and laughing at her and she hated him now and for the rest of the year and for all time.

“Sit down.”

He walked up to the desk, picked up a book from the pile and started to sign his name on the list next to the book’s number. She took the book out of his hand and replaced it back on the pile. “Report to the Vice Principal.”

“But I was just getting a book. Honest. Like you wanted, Miss Posner. I want to get started on it—I hear chapter one’s killer!”

She was about to order him out again when another kid, a dark haired boy in the second row spoke, the tone of his voice demanding he be listened to. “Knock it off, Pete, and sit down.”

“Fuck off.”

“Sit down and stop being an ass.”

To everyone’s surprise, Pete reluctantly and almost meekly did as he was told by his classmate. It had to be the authority in his voice and his attitude—no nonsense and unimpressed by the class joker. The dark haired boy just sat there mildly studying her, waiting for her to get on with things. She found his stare a little disconcerting and made an effort to ignore him as she got on with the business of starting the year’s work. The other students exchanged looks with friends as Pete backed down. This was going to be a long year if they didn’t get this one to lighten up. Of course there was always the possibility of more entertainment between Pete and Grayson to look forward to.

Without acknowledging her helper and with her cheeks red, Caroline handed out the books without any further incident but made a mental note of the name of the dark haired kid on her seating chart; she’d look him up later.

The truth was that behind her demeanor, Carolyn Posner was terrified. This was her first job and she knew she was lucky to get it. She’d just gotten her teaching certificate a few months ago, had applied to three dozen school districts and been turned down by almost all of them. All right, even she had to admit that she was a little picky but she wasn’t about to go to some dirt poor podunk school in the deep south or some disgusting inner city one. The suburbs were okay, but she’d have to find some apartment or something or commute and that was a pain, so when Brixton offered her a place close enough to her friend Emily’s place that she could rent the spare bedroom, she jumped at it. It was a private school in a rich town which meant spoiled rich kids and interfering pain in the ass parents, but it also mean a clean workplace offset by lower pay than a public system. Luckily she could make due as long as Mom and Dad kept sending her five hundred or a thousand a month to supplement her ridiculous paycheck. Come to think of it, she’d ask for the full thousand; shouldn’t be a problem and it would make life a lot more pleasant.

“Don’t let the kids know they’ve got you rattled—they smell fear.” The ancient math teacher gently squeezed her arm in the teacher’s lounge after the fourth class period. “You’ll be fine, dear.”

Carolyn smiled her thanks, as she wished the old biddy would mind her own business. “Oh, they’re not that bad. I think we’ll all just get along fine; we just have to get to know one another.”

The other teacher gave her a mild look as the new young thing turned to her lesson plan and her seating charts—she’d learn soon enough.

The bell rang for her next class too soon but she took a few minutes at the end of the day to stop in at the office to look up the dark haired kid, the one with the very blue eyes who was dressed better than the rest. Oh, it wasn’t obvious and he was wearing the same kind of things the other kids all wore, but somehow they just looked better on him, as if someone had put them together for him, made sure they were cleaned and pressed. He came from money, that was apparent but even in a place like Brixton where millionaires were a dime a dozen, he had that extra polish.

Richard John Grayson; that was the name in her register. Grayson—didn’t ring any bells, but then there were lots and lots of rich lawyers or doctors or brokers she wouldn’t have heard of. Grayson; she’d make a point of finding out about his family.

Reading his file she found he was honor roll, which wasn’t a surprise and he lived with a guardian instead if parents so there was some kind of story there. She checked the parental contact info line on Richard’s enrollment form. Parent or Guardian: Bruce Wayne. Address: 1 Brixton Lane. Emergency contact: Alfred Pennyworth, whoever he was. No matter, some flunky, probably.

Bruce Wayne? Of course; he was the orphan Wayne took in a few years ago that garnered all that publicity, and she was probably one of the very few people who didn’t believe the rumors about the two of them living together in that huge place up on the hill. Carolyn’s old neighbor, Heather Dixon had dated Wayne a few years ago and claimed that if the guy was gay or bi, he was the best damn actor on the planet and she had the first hand knowledge to back it up.

But back to the kid—smart, good looking, serious, major money behind him and clearly not one of the troublemakers in the class; at least not yet. He could be interesting.

The rest of the week was a breaking in period for everyone. The older students and the teachers who’d been there for a few years settled in easily with the newcomers following soon enough. Carolyn quickly got a reputation as a hard-assed teacher who would send you to detention as soon as look at you and heaven forefend if you had to take a trip to the bathroom or something. She was equally disliked by both students and her co-workers who found her stuck up, arrogant and unfriendly in a faculty which prided itself on its professional but easy going nature. She tended to stay by herself, eating her lunch at her desk in the history office and declined to sponsor any of the school clubs or activities, something that was—as the principal pointed out—part of her job. She shrugged and suggested that she might be willing to look after the chess club so long as it didn’t let its weekly meetings run past four PM. When she tried to enforce this during the first meeting she attended, she hit a wall of indignation from the club members.

“But we’re only half through the game.”

“Save it till next week then.”

“That’s stupid.”

She gave the complainer a hard look. “Tough.” That was her last week as advisor to the chess club after the principal fielded the angry phone calls from three irate patents the next day.

Carolyn was learning to hate her job, covering her dislike with a veneer of distain.

She found herself looking forward to third period History 1, the one Grayson was in, though she’d found everyone called him ‘Dick’. Fine, that was just fine. He was the standout student in the class, in the entire history program, in fact, and he seemed to do it without effort. His homework was always in on time, always well done, His tests were always A’s. He was never late, she’d never caught him unprepared for an answer when she called on him and when there was an open discussion about something he could be counted on to have original insights and interesting observations. Somehow he managed this without annoying the other students and without seeming to be conceited or superior.

He shone.

He was also a beauty, well built under his clothing, unfailingly polite and had a killer smile and charm.

 

* * *
 

About a month after school started Carolyn went out with one of Heather’s brothers. The meal was inedible, the movie—to be generous—sucked and the man was repulsive, assuming that the evening would end with the two of them in bed. Claiming a sick headache and not caring if the jerk believed her or not, she left him standing on the doorstep, door closed and locked in his face, outside light switched off before he could get his car out of the driveway.

That night was the first she woke embarrassed to realize that she’d been dreaming about a sixteen-year-old student.

TBC

 

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