Pictures From the Past

“Right, so, you’re telling me that you think The Hulk could beat The Terminator?” Zachary Baker asked, a scowl on his face as he leaned against his desk, staring at one of his students very, very menacingly.

The student, Jared, smirked and nodded. “Yup.” Was all he said, his laid back posture challenging Zack to say something against his opinion.

Pursing his lips (in a very non-feminine way, according to him. He’d defended it before.), Zack took a deep breath and loosened his tie a bit, narrowing his eyes at Jared in a way that said ‘this is not over’.

He rounded his desk and sat down before taking a pen and tapping it rhythmically against his desk. His eyes, however, remained focused on the classroom. Some of the kids were talking quietly, as they had finished their worksheets, and others were still writing away. There was one girl, though, who had a large, bulky looking camera, and was fiddling with it instead of doing some other useless thing.

“You.” Zack pointed to her. The girl didn’t look up, but the rest of the class did. “You, with the camera,” he called again. She looked up at him, head tilted. “What do you think?”

“Terminator would get Hulk smashed,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. Zack’s face worked itself into one of mock-horror as he gasped dramatically, throwing his hands up and making his body shake.

“What is this world coming to?!” he screamed. Not too loud, though, since he was, in fact, in a school. The students giggled at his ridiculous behavior. After a moment, Zack composed himself and straightened out his shirt, sitting up in his seat properly and looking at all of his students. “Alright, back to work.”

While the students worked, many of them finishing their papers, Zack pretended to occupy himself, fiddling with many of the papers and files scattered about his desk. In reality, though, he was admiring the way the girl had said her opinion so nonchalantly; so unafraid to go against him like the other girls he taught.

The sad truth was, Zack Baker was the ‘fun’ teacher to the male students, and the ‘hot’ teacher to the females. They found him completely hilarious (or at least pretended to) and adorable. All he wanted was to be himself and it was like a fucking death sentence. All of the girls always agreed with him and tried to catch his attention, which may have worked on someone younger and more inexperienced, but not with him. He knew better.

He saw through their masks. But that girl, he couldn’t remember the name to save his life, she’d just done it. Without so much as a second thought. Like she didn’t care. That amused the living hell out of him, to be completely honest.

Looking up at the clock, Zack sighed happily. After a moment of absolute peace and quiet, which he couldn’t stand, he stood from his chair and threw his arms in the air, a grin spread across his lips when he saw that all of his students had finished and were now staring at him, except one, of course.

“Bring forth your papers, young grasshoppers!” he yelled, still waving his arms around like a maniac. This is why the kids loved Zachary Baker. He was absolutely insane. Or, at least, that’s what he led them to believe.

When rounding the desk to collect the papers from the one student who’d volunteered to gather them, Zack hit his hip against the corner of his desk, and ended up letting slip a very loud, very resounding, “Fuck.”

This roused a grin from the girl. This is where the fascination began.

And by fascination, we’re actually talking about hell and torture and stupidity.

The bell rang, releasing the massive stampede that was Zack’s English class. The girl was always the last to leave, never in as much of a hurry to leave the school as the other kids.

Kids, Zack thought bitterly, that makes me feel old as hell.

While she carefully packed her things into her bag, Zack slowly wandered over to her desk, his arms crossed over his chest as he watched her. She was short, which was cute, considering Zack stood about five-ten, maybe five-eleven. He towered over her, and as cute as he thought it was, it was creepy and wrong and weird how attractive he thought she was.

She had dark hair, but the lighting in the classroom was weird, so it made it look lighter than it actually was, and blunt-cut bangs. It suited her well, actually. The bangs weren’t long or anything, so it didn’t make her look like Cousin It or something. From what he could remember, most of the time, she had her hair in a ponytail or hidden beneath some sort of cap, which he’d always tell her to take off. He kind of wanted to see it down, just to see if it looked as good in reality as it did in his head.

“Uh, Mister Baker?” she asked him, making him jump slightly.

He muttered a few, not-so-quiet curses before turning to her again and smiling politely. “Yes?” he drug out the word, making him sound like he was some kind of psycho from a cheesy slasher flick.

The girl, whose name he still couldn’t fucking remember, shifted uncomfortably and began fiddling with the cross around her neck. “Why are you staring at me like that? Was it because of the whole Terminator versus Hulk thing? ‘Cause I really, really don’t think you should be mad about it, they’re fictional characters and…” her voice was small and scared, and she trailed off, looking down at her shoes.

Zack began giggling. She seriously thought she was in trouble, when Zack really only thought she was adorable. Which was wrong. Really, really, really all kinds of fucking wrong. He wasn’t, like, sexually attracted to her or anything. He just thought she was cute. Adults think kids are cute all the time, right? But not that kind of cute.

It wasn’t terrible, though, because he wouldn’t do anything just because he thought she was cute. He could just talk to her and stuff, and get to know her as a person. Maybe she would be his favorite student or something, because he’d always kind of wanted one of those.

“I was wondering what your name was. You’re really quiet and I can’t remember for the life of me,” Zack chuckled, shaking his head.

The girl’s hands dropped from her necklace and she slumped, not because she was sad, but because she was relaxing again. “It’s Analeigh,” she said with her cute, tiny voice. She was definitely the shy type, which was Zack’s type, which also happened to really fucking suck.

“Ana,” Zack mumbled, toying with the way her name sounded coming from his mouth. He liked it. “Right, so, get your stuff and get the hell out. I have shit to do,” he teased, waving her off. Ana smiled lightly and waved at him, slinging her backpack over her shoulder (it nearly hit Zack in the face) and quickly leaving the room.

Once she was gone, Zack sat on top of her desk. He leaned back, pressing his palms against the smooth, cold surface. He didn’t know why he’d sat on the desk, since he actually did have shit to do, but he had fun for a few minutes, listening to the many voices and sounds overlapping each other as students hurried through the halls.

After a while, he finally came to his senses, hopped off the desk, grabbed his things from his own desk, and ran out of the room. Many kids yelled at him, giving him random high-fives and patting him on the back as he walked through the halls. Eventually, he got out of the jungle that was Huntington High, and into his car.

Zack was relieved when he got home. He immediately took off his tie and, in place of the plastic-y, transparent retainers in his lip and septum, he put metal rings. He also liked wearing fuzzy slippers and pajamas, because he was a girl. Not really, but still. What a freak.

He was sitting on his couch, worrying about how absolutely creepy he was, when his phone rang. With a grunt, he got up and trudged into the kitchen. When he picked the phone up off of the receiver, he was met with the oh-so-wonderfully-pleasant voice of one of his best friends, Brian Haner Junior.

“Hey,” he drug out the word. It made him sound like The Fonz from Happy Days. “What’d I tell you? You come home from work and you’re supposed to call me, Zack! I need to know how your day went and if you found someone you love more than me!” Brian cried in a mockingly high pitched voice. Zack rolled his eyes.

“Kiss my pasty white ass, Haner.” He heard the door open and close, then quickly hung up on his friend and rushed to the door, sweeping the small girl into his arms and hugging the life out of her.

“Dad!” His ten-year-old daughter, Hailey, whined.

There was a back story behind Hailey’s existence – well, of course there’s a fucking back story, everyone has a reason for being alive. The point is, Zack fucked some chick at a party when he was seventeen, she got knocked up, and he took responsibility and decided to take care of the kid, because he definitely couldn’t trust that bitch with his baby. Now he had Hailey, his little angel who he loved more than anything in the world. Of course, at first, things were rough. His parents threw a huge fit, but they eventually ended up helping him learn how to take care of a baby.

In his opinion, he turned out to be a pretty damn good dad.

“I missed you so much,” Zack said, each word in between a kiss to Hailey’s forehead.

“I was at school, Dad, not in France.” Hailey was ten, going on twenty-seven. Zack was proud to say she got her attitude from him. Not that it was all that good, but since when had a good attitude gotten anyone anywhere in life?

“I know, but you’re my kid. I’m obligated to love the crap outta you until you turn eighteen and I kick you out.” He grinned when she rolled her eyes at him and squirmed out of his death-grip.

“Can I have ice cream?” she asked as she dropped her backpack in the middle of the hallway and turned into the kitchen.

“No, we’re going to Matt’s house for some kinda barbeque. He’ll probably have some ice cream, though. He spoils you,” Zack mumbled, following after her and unthinkingly cleaning up the mess she left behind. He was so used to it by then that it was second nature to him.

Hailey looked a lot like him – thank God. Dark hair, green eyes, full lips. She got her mother’s nose, though, which was really, really good. It was somewhat thin and slightly upturned. She looked kind of like a pixie, which made Zack think of Alice from Twilight, which also made him gag. His daughter was adorable, not some sparkly vampire.

“He does. That’s why he’s my favorite uncle.” Hailey was looking at something outside of the window above the sink. Curious, Zack remained silent – something he didn’t do very often – and peeked out the window as well.

There she was, in all of her obnoxiously adorable glory, Ana. She was wearing some kind of weird uniform and walking down the street. He recognized that uniform, mostly because he couldn’t cook very well, as the one from the pizza place not too far from his house. She worked there, apparently, but Zack couldn’t remember ever seeing her working there.

“Who’s that?” Hailey asked. Zack’s head snapped toward her and he raised a brow.

“How do you know that I know her?” he questioned, crossing his arms.

“‘Cause you were doing that thing where you zone out.” She pulled her shoulder up into a shrug before letting them drop. Zack looked at her incredulously.

“What thing? I don’t do any kind of thing. You’re crazy, I’m gonna make you see a therapist or something to figure out what’s causing these hallucinations.” With that, Zack walked out of the kitchen, leaving his poor daughter completely and utterly confused, and kind of pissed off.

After shaking herself out of her daze, Hailey ran out of the room to find her father taking his slippers off and putting on some of his sneakers by the front door. He was still only wearing his plain black pajama pants and nothing else, so he put on his leather jacket.

“I’m going out for a few minutes, I’ll be right back. Go do your homework, I’ll be back before you’re finished and then I can check it for you,” He said in a hurry, rushing over to kiss Hailey’s forehead before dashing out the door.

“Yeah, you’re going to talk to that girl that you know.” With that, Hailey stomped her way upstairs and into her room, muttering about how she wasn’t crazy and didn’t need a therapist the whole way there.

Outside, Zack was wondering why the hell he’d decided to follow Ana. It was like he wasn’t already weird enough or something, so he wanted to add stalking to his list. Why the fuck not?

They’d almost reached the pizza place when Ana quietly asked, “Mister Baker, is there something you need?” without even turning around to look at him.

Zack froze, but then continued walking anyway, at an even faster pace so that he could catch up and walk beside her. “Um…yes. No. Kinda…” he trailed off, then shrugged. “You walked past my house and I was curious, so I came out here to figure out where you were going.” Because that didn’t make him sound like a total creep.

“Oh, well…um…I’m going to work, obviously,” Ana said, motioning to her attire. She was wearing a black apron, a red shirt, and a visor with ‘Ronnie’s Pizza’ written on it in cursive lettering and a small slice of pizza, the restaurant’s logo.

“I go there all the time. Never seen ya’. You just starting?” Zack asked, his eyes wandering to her hands. She was playing with that little cross on her necklace again. He wondered if she was really religious or something. She seemed to like that thing a lot, so it was only natural to assume.

“Yeah, my parents own it. I asked if I could work there instead of doing stuff around the house for allowance.” Ana shrugged, and Zack pushed his lips off to the side.

“You want to work?” He asked, scrunching his nose up. Ana was definitely a weird one if she wanted to have a job. In Zack’s opinion, working sucked. Of course he liked his job, though, because he liked teaching and he liked the majority of his students, but still. If he had the option to lounge around all day doing absolutely nothing, he would’ve picked that over teaching.

“Yeah, what’s so bad about it?” She asked, raising a brow. They’d reached Ronnie’s Pizza by now, and they were standing outside of the small, brick building. People were going in and coming out, so they’d lowered their voices a considerable amount. It probably made Zack seem like some sort of dealer or something, and he totally wasn’t, but whatever.

“It’s work. You have to deal with other people and do actual work. You could’ve just stayed home and, like, done the dishes or something,” Zack scoffed, crossing his arms. Ana giggled.

“I don’t like feeling useless. If I stayed at home all day, I’d go insane. Chores are easy; I like a challenge,” She said, a small smile on her lips as she shrugged her shoulders.

All Zack could think was, ‘what the fuck?’

“But don’t you have friends and stuff to go out with? Like, go party, go hang out, be a stupid teenager!” Zack was a stupid teenager at heart, honestly, since when he was seventeen, he kind of lost his ability to do stupid shit. He had a kid to worry about and take care of all the time. She didn’t have a kid, as far as he knew. She could go do whatever she wanted to do, but instead, she wanted to work.

“Uh, I have a few friends. They all work, too, so…” Ana trailed off, shrugging again. She was still fidgeting with the cross necklace.

“Are you religious?” Zack finally asked. He couldn’t help it. Every time he’d spoken to her, she started playing with the damn necklace. It wasn’t wrong of him to wonder about it, right? Like, people asked him why he was so insane all the time, and he didn’t get offended. So, it only made sense (at least in Zack’s head) that he could ask about her religion without her getting offended. Not that people got offended when asked if they were religious. Well, most of the time, at least.

“Nope. Why?” Ana’s brow furrowed. Zack just smiled and pointed to her hands. When Ana looked down, her face went beet red and, even though she tried to hide it, Zack giggled. “My grandma gave this to me. She’s this, like, devout Christian and she got it for me on Christmas when I was nine. I don’t really ever take it off, y’know, except when I’m showering and stuff. But it makes me feel closer to her, even though she lives on the other side of the country.”

“Oh,” was all Zack said. He didn’t know what else to say. “Uh, where does she live?” he asked. Lame question, but it’d work for a minute to keep to conversation going.

“New York. Listen, I gotta go. I’ll uh…see you in school, I guess. Later, Mister B.,” she called, pushing the door to the pizza place open and walking inside.

“Call me Zack…” he mumbled, but she didn’t hear him because the door had already shut. He never told his students to call him by his first name, mostly because he felt weird if they did, but she was…she was cute. Right. Cute. Of course he still thought she was cute.