Not Where, But When

Chapter 2: Please!

    There was a pause before Cynthia began speaking, "Okay, before anything goes into personal territory..."

    "Wilson, what did Ms. Tina say to you on Saturday?" freshman Emily Tam asked, opening her lunch box.

    "She told me that I needed to stop goofing off and be serious," Wilson Tram said with a certain degree of embarrassment. Wilson came to GPA looking for a job, we couldn't find a suitable job for him for a while. After a lot of thinking, we eventually teamed him up with Catherine Xia to work at the front desk and deal with incoming customers and extra discipline if needed. Wilson usually handles the 'dealing with incoming customers' and Catherine usually handles the 'extra discipline.' Even the kids don't take Wilson seriously all the time. Catherine and Wilson surprisingly make a pretty good team. "I was only making a joke during a water break!"

    "She just wants everyone in their best condition for that performance coming up," Luke said in an attempt to comfort our dear Wilson. "But, that joke was sort of funny."

    "Thank you," Wilson said with a lot of emphasis on his two words, as if he were making an important point.

    "That performance isn't for a while," Catherine reminded.

    "The end of next month, and we're in the middle of August," Cynthia said more for herself than anyone else.

    "You know how Master Li had us start stretching in our competition pants?" Wilson started again. He continued without a peep from us. "Well I wore my silk pants over my regular Martial Arts Uniform pants. I took it off in the back corner – the silks, that is – and Ms. Tina told me to change in the bathroom. I had my other pants on underneath!" There was such incredulity in his voice, that it could've convinced me that Ms. Tina's reasonable reaction were completely unreasonable.

    "You were also changing one, in the middle of the room, two, with that face, and three, it doesn't matter whether you had pants on underneath your silks; you were changing your pants in the middle of the room," Ryan Tang pointed out, taking a bite into his sandwich. Ryan Tang became another Martial Arts instructor. Hilariously, he became one reluctantly, preferring to teach piano instead. We, the GPA founders, employed Kylie Tran before so she became GPA's piano teacher, and another martial arts instructor was needed at the time.

    "What face?" Wilson asked, half challengingly.

    "The stripper face," Kylie said flatly.

    "That was just my face," Wilson said semi-offended. "I was also discreetly in the back corner!"

    "'Discretely,'" Ryan repeated, setting his yogurt down for air quotes.

    Wilson opened his mouth to argue, but Cynthia cut him off before anything could escape his mouth. "Back corner and discretely or not, you should've changed in the bathroom."
    "But Tian Tian had just bombed the bathroom," Wilson defended.

    "Oh," we all chorused in some sort of understanding. After Tian Tian would use the bathroom, it would stink for a while after. Febreze couldn't even counter the stench bomb! That really sucked for all of us, since the stench would travel next doors to the girls' bathroom too.

    "Hey, did you guys hear that Ms. Sunny quit?" Emily commented. There were blank looks directed at Emily. "I guess not..."

    Right! Now I remember this day! This was the Monday after Ms. Sunny announced that she was quitting and then we got that other teacher who turned out to – "I heard it from Faith," Justin said finally (and lazily for that matter. It's typical Justin fashion). "She told me while we were stretching."