Mr. Hemmings |l.h.|

chapter 1

I can't help but roll my eyes. If my new co-workers are going to continue to talk about me behind my back, I might as well turn in my resignation now. My coffee is now done, so I quickly grab the cup and leave the room without saying goodbye to my rude co-workers.

I walk down the wall until I reach my classroom. I shut the door behind myself and take a deep breath. The school day is about to start in ten minutes. Hopefully, everything goes smoothly, not that there is much to do on the first day of school. I have been preparing my lesson plans for over a month now. I think everything should go perfectly and according to plan.

I set down my briefcase on my large desk to take out the notebooks and supplies I've packed. I place everything neatly on my desk and wipe off the dust that seemed to have collected over the weekend. After I spent all last week cleaning and setting up my classroom, I'm not surprised that there is already dust settling in after two days. What else should I expect from a 30-year-old building?

I take a quick sip of my piping hot coffee and sit down in my comfy leather chair. I check my watch. Only eight minutes left.

I grab my planner and open it to the current week. My eyes start moving quickly as I skim over the plans for this week. Each day has a long list of different activities and reminders from both my personal life and for my new job, but mostly for my job. I must say, I am obsessed with being organized, and even more so with planning every minute of my life. I take every Saturday and write out the plans for the upcoming week, and I must say it's one of the highlights of my weekend. Planning never gets old.

In my peripheral vision, I see a small sticky note on my desktop computer. I lean over to read it. Ah, it's my login to view my class rolls and attendance tracker. I quickly log in and begin scanning over the roll for my first period class. I quickly whisper the names under my breath. I print out the roll so that I can have a hard copy. Then I give the roll one more look over and land on one person's name. Cassi Bell. Hm, strange. The only other person I know with the last name Bell is Matthew Bell. And you guessed it - he was the leader of the friend group who bullied me. Is it possible that they are related?

My curiosity gets the best of me. I pull up the school's database and type in her name. Her name pops up with her records, grades, attendance, and other information including her immediate family. My suspicions were correct, Cassi is Matthew's younger sister. Hope to God she is nowhere near as obnoxious as him. I open her records to see if they'll give me any indication of the type of student that she is. This girl was held back. There's no information as to when or why she was held back. Now I'm even more curious.

Without trying to snoop, although I already am, I check Cassi's age. Nineteen. A little too old to be a student, I think to myself. Being nineteen does not mean that you are too old to be a student, as for myself, I was considered to be too young to be a student. I did enter my senior year at the ripe age of seventeen.

I close out of all my tabs, then open a slide show that I created for the first day of school. Its title, not too creative, is Welcome to English 12. I chuckled to myself as I look at the hilarious meme I pasted onto the first slide. I know that this should win the students over. They love memes these days! At least I hope so... but there is no time to overthink.

I pull up his sleeve to check my watch. Three minutes until the first day. Butterflies begin to erupt in my stomach. I couldn't be more prepared for today, however, with each moment that passes I become more anxious. I don't want the students to assume that I will be a cringey teacher for being so young and attempting to be hip or funny. At the same time, I don't want to appear too strict and boring. I would like to be the best teacher that I can be and share my knowledge with my students.