Just a Little Bit of Scribbling

Editor's Note: This is just the beginning of a something that I've been working on. I wanted a little bit of feedback before I began the project whole-heartedly. It's really not too much to go on, I know, but just give it a read. 

Mary Bridges, Private Eye, leaned against the doorframe, not drawing any attention. Her over-sized sunglasses obscured the upper half of her face, the up-turned collar of her beige trench coat the bottom.  She scrutinized each face that hurried by her, waiting to see which would be the first to try to move past into the empty room behind her. So far, no one had even glanced in her direction. With a frustrated sigh, she removed her shades and passed a hand over her eyes. While she was being discreet, she was hardly invisible!

She replaced her spectacles on her nose, brushing her bangs out of her eyes. Even though there were still three minutes to the tardy bell, she'd expected these AP Lit students to be punctual. The English teacher leaned further back against the open door, hardly noticeable in her brown and cream checked skirt, taupe sweater and sensible shoes. Life as Mary Bridges, Private Eye was far more glamorous and rewarding than her own pleasant but often tedious and thankless existence in the public school system. Sometimes she felt like the world was spinning past and she was running after it. As hard as she tried to flag it down, it continued hurtling through space, like a taxi driver passing her by because he thinks that maybe she can't tip as well as some other potential customer.

How does he know? she wondered. How does he know that I won't give him the best tip of his career? That was the problem with watching the world spin past: she never got the chance to show it why she was worth the stopping.

The constant stream of students had begun to thin by this point, which is why the sudden ruckus at the far end of the hall pulled Mary Bridges out of her spinning, hurtling thoughts and into reality. Leaning around the corner, she noticed several students waiting outside. A tall, strange looking boy was crouched on the ground, frantically shoving papers and notebooks back into his backpack which, apparently, had split down the side, vomiting forth the untidy mess to begin with. A few of the students who had been lucky enough to enter the building before the fiasco, stood around uncertainly before shrugging and making their way towards her classroom.

 Ah. she thought. These must be my students. Moving out into the hallway, she smiled at them, a smile which was returned with either blank stares or the aversion of eyes. Her mouth thinning in disapproval, Mary filed this into the back of her mind and strode to the double-paned glass doors to deal with the more immediate problem. She wished momentarily that she were wearing shapely leather boots or at least some shoe which made a more impressive sound than the apologetic squeaking of her own comfortable pair.

The ungainly boy with a mop of badly bleached hair had finally gathered all of his things. Mary spared a moment to question how his backpack had possibly ripped already and, perhaps more inexplicably, how he had accumulated so many papers on the first day of school. Disheveled and flustered, the paper-hoarder mumbled an apology, an unfortunate lisp apparent underneath the embarrassed gruffness, and shuffled quickly in the direction of the classroom. Somewhat thrown by the entire spectacle, Mary stood silent for a second too long and was consequently hit by the flood of remaining students who had been crowded outside the door. She had been planning on graciously opening the door wide and welcoming them into the hallway and also an exciting year of literature and writing. As was so often the case for Mary, her grand plans were swept away by the tide of life and she was left rather bedraggled and confused as to why there was sea water in her shoes.

Heaving a well-deserved sigh, she made her way back to the classroom, following at a safe distance from the new and vaguely frightening group of students. Mary was always a little frightened of the students that were shuffled into her classroom, although she had hoped this year would be better, finally having been given the AP class rather than stuck with Freshman and Sophomore English. She liked to call those mainstream English classes "Words for Cavemen." It's not that Mary honestly thought the students in those classes shared all of the characteristics of our early ancestors, she just could not help but notice the lack of anything representing interest, sentience or even life in the vacant stares of those "regular" students.

Determined not to let the masses see her unnerved, Mary Bridges brushed her bangs out of her face, straightened her stylish shades and strode into the classroom, asserting in her overall demeanor exactly how much authority she wielded over these young souls. The door closed with a resounding bang and the children were quiet, afraid of what would happen next.

Mary wondered if the bell had finally rung, as she could hear nothing over the din of twenty to thirty exuberant voices, discussing everything from the hideously unchanged cafeteria fare to the summer's last and, from the sound of it, wildest party. In all of the excitement and clamor, Mary noticed a quiet girl sitting near the back of the room, staring silently at her hands and looking very pale next to all of the Floridian end of summer tans; she noticed a dark-haired boy sitting in the corner desk, drawing on his fingernails and looking far too somber for anyone of that age; she noticed a brilliantly blonde head of hair bobbing up and down as the owner scribbled furiously on a sheet of lined paper, her neat handwriting spilling out of the pink pen she was gripping and onto the greedy white page. The sight of these three quiet children dissolved the bubbling, toxic high school hubbub around her and reminded her why she had decided to be a teacher in the first place. Imbued with new courage, Mary took her place behind her customized podium, standing on the surreptitious step she'd added to giver her an extra few inches of impressive height.

A firm believer in the practice of never shouting in the classroom, Mary simply stood there, very quiet and very still until, noticing her odd behavior, the students began to look up, falling into a remorseful silence. The tardy bell tolled at long last and Mary smiled out at the upturned faces before launching into her welcome speech and accompanying PowerPoint.