The Rules of Engagement (Mercer #2)

RoE Chapter Three

Today could be the day I die.

It was somehow always the first thought that popped into my head whenever I walked into my fourth period English class.  And right after that one came the next:  If these little bastards even blinked at me wrong, I’d fail them all on the spot.

Of course, over half of the class was failing already, so that threat didn’t really carry around as much weight as I would have liked.  And admittedly, I’d rather punch someone, but that would inevitably lead to getting fired, and I wasn’t quite ready to go that route yet.

The three people who actually paid attention in my class sat up a little straighter when I entered, and waited with rapt focus as I tossed my black backpack under my heavy duty wooden desk and perched myself on the side of it, roll book in hand.

Without even looking, I knew where the TLF boys were sitting, in the far left corner, the two CBK members sitting opposite them.  Near the middle of the room on the right were the Virus Boys, opposite them were the three from a relatively new gang I wasn’t familiar with, and the lone Widow who sat up front was absent, thank God.

You would’ve thought that being vastly outnumbered would be great incentive to keep your mouth shut.  Nope, not in this case.  It was the one little Widow who was forever antagonising the rest of the hoodlums, calling them names, throwing things at them.  Personally I thought he was suicidal, but after mentioning it to Sal during my second week teaching, he’d said the boy was actually trying to keep them all off his back.  Apparently pissing people off went a long way in saving one’s skin.  Sal had assured me that if the kid did nothing to stand up for himself and kept his head down in class, he’d only be inviting them to have a go at him.

That was some ass backwards logic in my opinion, but hey, who was I to argue with gang politics.  I may have been sort of adopted against my will by the biggest gang in Chicago, if not America itself, but that didn’t mean I was anywhere near close to understanding their motives.

“Morning everyone,” I said, forcing a smile to my face.  Naturally I got no response.  Undeterred, I opened the roll book.  “Right, business as usual.  Answer if you’re present.”

There was a beat of silence after my statement, and for one tiny nanosecond a flare of hope invaded my chest.  Maybe today they wouldn’t -

“Yo, Miss Mercer, when are you gonna introduce us to your girlfriend?”

I had to resist the urge to curse out loud.  Every day for the past three weeks I’d been here this class had made it their mission in life to taunt me, to harass me, to ridicule me with the end game being that I would be reduced to tears and run screaming from the room, never to return.  I’d even overheard that they were taking bets on how much longer I would last, and that they were surprised by how stubborn I was proving.

Well, they hadn’t seen anything yet.  I refused to be intimidated by a bunch of acne ridden, gangster wannabes.  They would never beat me.  And the questions about my so-called girlfriend were just laughable.  The school’s dress code for teachers was pretty lax - as long as you didn’t wear anything vulgar or offensive, it was perfectly okay.  Hence the reason I only ever wore black jeans, black combat boots, black long sleeved turtlenecks, and a fitted black jacket.

In the world of teenagers, this dress sense screamed “lesbian”.  I wasn’t quite sure how, but after the first day of lesbian comments, I’d taken a good look at the other female staff members, and some of it had made sense.  Even in winter the majority of women teachers wore skirts, low heels, feminie blouses, wore makeup and primped their hair.  

I stuck religiously to my jeans and military boots combo, didn’t even own a chap stick, and my hair was always doing the same thing - staying ramrod straight and tucked behind my ears.