Cracks in Anchors

mythe enseignant à chaud

Fucking Mondays. Everybody hates them. It doesn’t matter who you are or how much you like school or how much you just love to wake up at unreasonable hours of the morning. Mondays were literal hell on earth days; days when the devil decided he’d take a field trip to the other side of the earth and see if he liked it or not. And he must not have - thank god - or maybe every day of the week could have been Mondays.

And the thing I hated even more than Mondays were people. I know it sounds horrible and I know it sounds antisocial, but to me it made perfect sense. Wouldn’t you want to stay away from things you hated, things that made you feel like shit? Things that pretended they were your bffs then spun around and talked shit about you, things that you learned to not trust and give up on.

Which I did a long while ago.

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Dark hair hung lazily against my pale skin as I marched my way into seventh period French class. French class cul aspiré. As I scanned my eyes over the masses of adolescents condensing around corners and near lockers, I let a sigh breeze past my agape lips and wished I had a cigarette on me. But smoking was bad, as most everyone told me when they caught me right before the bell rang outside the outer cafeteria doors, and the school would have my ass anyway.

I didn’t make trouble, most teachers liked me well enough and never spoke harshly to me. I sometimes thought they liked to be nice because they knew I was a loser. I sat with no one at lunch and those last few minutes of class when the teachers let you talk amongst friends I sat there awkwardly doodling on my binder. I always noticed the shade of pity that filled their faces when they saw me walking down the hallways alone and sitting by myself in study halls. Their gazes cast downward and the ends of their lips faltered downwards for a nanosecond. Sometimes I wanted to walk up to them and tell them they didn’t have to feel bad - the only person I needed was me, myself, and I.

Oh, and mom and dad, and even Hellene. Hellene was the only thing I hadn’t given up on, but maybe that’s because 1) she’d never talked shit about me and 2) never made me feel like shit. Instead she was the only person besides my parents, who were obliged to the day I was conceived, who made me feel better when I felt like shit. She made me laugh and brought out the best in me. When I was with her I didn’t need to inhale toxins to get through and didn’t need to pretend to be someone I wasn’t. Because I was the real me when around Hellene; I talked a lot and laughed at everything and acted foolishly. But it was just Hellene.

When I sat down in the middle of the small classroom I noticed an empty teachers’ desk and more empty cabinets. They were all bare and thrown open- all six of them. I pondered why she left them open when the mass of kids who made up the class flooded through the doorway. Soon they were all seated and the few girls who tried to be friendly with me whispered small hellos as I let a small smile press back. Folders were tossed between kids and last nights homework stuffed into hands that forgot to do it, too busy with Call Of Duty and gossip to remember.

The scrawl of pencil to paper and harsh voices filled the room as I put my head atop my folded hands to block it all out.

How I wished I had a cigarette.

But then the door opened, about a minute after the bell rang and the kids hooting that we were “free birds”, and a man who stood at about my height sauntered in with a certain stride I couldn’t understand. As he walked eyes trained on him, mostly the girls who giggled to their friends about the mystery man. When he tossed his briefcase onto the rolling chair behind his desk and went to grab a stack of folders, he fully turned to face the class.

The air thickened and hung like clothes out to dry. Mouths were hung agape and hands stopped copying and minds stopped working. Because he, whoever he was, was breathtakingly beautiful - literally. Brown tasseled hair bounced atop his head and doe eyes scanned over our faces. He couldn’t have been older than us, and I noticed by the structure of his bones that he must have been a non-American. And I was right, for when he spoke a British accent floated into my ears then out again.

“’Ello, I’m Harry Styles, your new French teacher since Madame Clinton seemed to retire early.” He motioned to the open file cabinets and chuckled as he flipped open the manila folders.

He began to read off names and I stared at the blackboard in oblivion. What was going on? Was having a hot teacher possible, was it an actuality rather than a myth? Did it actually happen to some kids, kids who were lucky enough to be blessed with a little sweetness in their bitter cup of coffee?

“Sullivan Cartridge?”

It must have been true.
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