It was Bert McCracken's first day teaching at Bertfield High School. Considering the fact that he was literally named after the place, he felt as if he had that to say that he definitely deserved a place working there. However, in all honesty, he didn't have much else to say for himself at all. Really, he was just about the world's worst candidate for a teacher, but then again, Bertfield had never really had very high standards.
Brendon had given him a 'makeover' in order to properly disguise him as a qualified and responsible teacher, and not just a homeless man he'd bailed out of jail a week ago. Really, Brendon just had very professional methods when it came to hiring members of staff. He wasn't quite sure if he was much of a fan of the short bleached blonde hair, or if it was just how much of a shitty job Brendon had done with it, because he was a worse hairdresser than he was a teacher, and really, that was saying something.
Brendon had wanted him to start the very next day after he'd bailed him out, but Bert had eventually managed to convince him otherwise: arguing that he needed time to prepare, considering that he'd never taught anyone or anything before. Brendon had eventually given in, and Bert hadn't done any preparation at all, but he suspected that Brendon had guessed that much of him.
He'd spent the morning hiding away in the Geography classroom that was now his classroom - a whole room of students and things he was responsible for. He came to dread the moment when the first class of the day would start and he'd have to teach. He sat down at his desk at the front of the room and took a moment to award himself for being the world's least qualified teacher - it was that, but most certainly only that, which he had going for him.
He then took a moment to remember that he was being paid for this, and well, he just didn't quite know how to feel about that at all, because really getting paid for performing his job as badly as he was about to was pretty much crossing the line of fraud in his head. But then again, he had lived in the walls of a school for several years, and had spent that time, and many years before, as a drug dealer, so what was something that vaguely resembled fraud worth? Absolutely nothing.
He turned on the laptop he'd been provided with, finding very quickly that he wasn't at all sure how to work it, seeing as he'd been homeless for quite the time now, he hadn't actually properly used a laptop since Windows XP. He let out a sigh and opened his water bottle: finishing off the last of water instead of it, before producing a little bottle of vodka from his jacket pocket and filling the bottle up with that instead. It wasn't wrong and it wasn't illegal as long as no one noticed. That was how it worked, right? Right?
It was as Bert screwed the lid back onto his plastic bottle of really non-alcoholic 'water' that the bell rang, and the sound of students on the way to their next classes filled the corridors. He looked up at the ceiling and said a quick prayer to God before he downed some of his non-alcoholic water based drink and waited for his first class to arrive.
It wasn't until a minute or so later that Bert suddenly came to realise that he literally knew absolutely fucking nothing about Geography. Thinking on his feet, he pulled up trusty old Internet Explorer and did a cheeky google search for the wikipedia page on Geography. It was with his valuable and extensive research and planning that he felt much more comfortable and prepared to teach the lesson that followed.
Within two minutes, what Bert assumed to be the whole class had filled in: sitting down at their desks and looking at him like they couldn't figure out just what the fuck he was doing here, and honestly, Bert could relate - if they had any ideas, he really would be open to them. As one final student trailed into the class and sat down awkwardly on the edge of a desk, Bert came to accept that now was probably when he should start 'teaching'. He wondered if he should have brought up the WikiHow page for 'How to teach high school students' in the time he'd spent 'preparing', but it was just too late for that now, and he'd have to face the situation head on, even as severely unprepared as he was.
"Hello." He got up from his desk and stood in front of the class. He scanned over the room, catching sight of someone wearing a 'Twenty One Pilots' shirt in the back row and almost dying of cancer at the sight of it. This was going to be harder than he'd anticipated. "I'm B- Mr McCracken." He forced his lips into what was easily the world's most awkward smile. "And I'm your new Geography teacher."
"What happened to Mrs King?" Some kid from the back shouted - he looked like he really was quite a dickhead. Suddenly the realisation that he could give out detentions dawned upon Bert. He smiled. This was going to be more fun than he'd thought.
"Who's Mrs King?" He asked, grimacing at the notion that maybe Mrs King was someone he ought to know. Then again, Geography was something he ought to know, but he just didn't know shit about it.
"Our last teacher." Came the consensus of a few pupils at once. "Did she leave?"
"Oh the one that felt like the bomb threat was a danger to the school?" Bert smiled, suddenly getting what was going on. "She told Mr Urie that he had to up the school to have basic standards of health and safety or she'd quit. Long story short - I'm teaching you Geography now."
There was a little bit of whispering in response, and Bert just didn't know if he should tell them to shut up, because that was something teachers tended to do, but really, he just didn't know if he gave that much of a fuck.
"Do you have any questions?" He asked, before glancing awkwardly at his laptop and struggling to think of what to do next. He hoped to god that someone would send him off on some sort of irrelevant tangent, but no one did, and he sat there, mindlessly staring at the class, hoping that anyone would say something, even the scene kid with the 21P merch, who was sat there carving an 'Ø' into the table with a compass. He wondered if he should be doing something about that, but still, at least she wasn't stabbing anyone with it.
"Right..." He trailed off, inhaling deeply and taking a swig of his 'water', before turning back to the class, now resorting to looking around the classroom - at the displays, looking for really anything to talk about at all. "So... guys... mountains. What do we know about mountains?" He smirked - he'd figured it all out now. "Tell me something about mountains - you with the tragic bowl cut in the back."
"We're not even doing mountains." Tragic bowl cut kid rolled his eyes at him - he must have been forgetting that Bert was in charge here, and he could not give one single fuck what anyone thought. "We're doing tectonic plates and their effects on the ecosystems of third world countries-"
"Well, Mr Bowlcut." Bert knew he could not let this get him down - he could not let the children win. He had to succeed in at least convincing one person that he was actually a somewhat qualified Geography teacher. "You may have been doing technic plates and their effects on e-cigs in third world countries with Mrs King. But I'm not Mrs King. I'm Mr McCracken, and with me, you're doing mountains... and their effects on the things of third world countries. So suck on that."
It was at that point, in which someone actually clapped, that Bert knew he'd made it in life.
"And tell me a fact about mountains." He turned back to the bowl cut kid. "Come on, quickly, or I'm going to have to give you a detention for disrupting the lesson by being a cocky piece of shit."
The kid rolled his eyes, before finally coming to give him a fact about mountains. "Mountains are tall." Bert was proud to say that he already knew that one, but had been really hoping that someone would give him enough geographical knowledge to base the entirety of a lesson on.
"Very good!" He smiled at him, looking around the room, and finding his eyes landing on the scene kid, who was now carving what looked to be the words 'smol beans' into the desk. Honestly, he wanted to give her a detention for existing. "You." He gestured at her. "Tell me a fact about mountains."
"There is a mountain range in my left side brain." She told him, looking up to reveal some eyeliner wings that definitely were not on fleek.
"You what?" Bert looked at her, pretty sure that, although he wasn't the authority on anything to do with geography at all, there actually wasn't a mountain range in her fucking brain.
"You are surrounding all my surroundings, sounding down the mountain range of my left-side brain. You are surrounding all my surroundings, twisting the kaleidoscope behind both of my eyes." She recited, hand on heart, as if she was swearing allegiance to something.
"That was a lovely poem." Bert told her, taking another drink of 'water' as he noticed that she had snakebites. "Thank you."
"It's not a poem!" She stood up, yelling as if Bert had truly and deeply offended her, which judging from the way she was acting, he had. "Those are some of the lyrics to 'Hølding ønto Yøu' by twenty øne piløts. The søng that saved my life. The band that saved my life. Stay strøng, clique."
"I'm sorry but what language are you speaking right now?" Bert asked her, coming increasingly less aware of just what the fuck was going on, which admittedly, might have had quite a bit to do with all the 'water' he'd been drinking.
"The language of the few, the proud, and the emotional!" Another kid stood up from the other side of the room. This kid didn't quite look to be so obviously stood in their scene phase, but the more Bert looked, the more he saw the signs.
The first kid smiled, looking across the classroom with love. What was happening right now was definitely a scene rendition of Romeo and Juliet. And just before Bert decided that things couldn't possibly get anyone worse, the first kid opened her mouth and began to fucking yell. "Lean with it, rock with it! When we gonna stop with it, lyrics that mean nothing. we were gifted with thought. Is it time to move our feet to an introspective beat-"
Bert cut her off as banged his fist down on the desk. "No it's not. It's not time to move your feet to an inspective beet. It's time to learn some Geography. So." He smiled, "as I was saying. Anything more to say about mountains? You know what? I should be writing this on the board." He walked over to the whiteboard and simply wrote out 'mountains are tall' at the top in big bold letters.
"You." He turned to the second scene kid. "What do you have to say about mountains?"
"Sometimes they have snow on."
"Excellent!" Bert exclaimed, writing that down below 'mountains are tall'. "You know what? I think that is a really important fact so I want you all to write that down and highlight it in your books."
"It's not that important-"
"I'm sorry?" Bert glared across at the class. "Are you the teacher? I am a professional. I am qualified and I know exactly what I'm talking about. Mountains are important. I mean, if we didn't have mountains, we wouldn't have... mountain goats! Where would we be without mountain goats?"
"Exactly." Some kid sat at the front spoke up. "Where would we be without mountain goats?" Bert smiled: confident that he'd made an important connection with these pupils.
He took a moment to wonder however - where would they be without mountain goats?
-
Frank and Gerard had been doing an even worse job of acting heterosexual now that they'd come back from France, and were actually dating. This was all well and good, because realistically, it wasn't like there actually was a single person in the school who wasn't fully convinced that they'd fucking for much longer than a week.
Funnily enough, however, Megan Clifford was beginning to lose her faith in frerard. No one was at all sure why and how, considering that really, Frank and Gerard had only gotten more gay as time had went on, but Megan just seemed to have other things on her mind. As to what these other things were, though, no one was quite sure. Not even Ryan.
Ryan had literally spent the past seventy two hours high, not having slept for longer than five minutes at one point in an English lesson. This was why he didn't have a clue what Megan was on about, because she'd definitely made the point of telling him. Ryan did wonder if he'd gotten so high to forget the shit Megan wouldn't stop talking to him about, but he just couldn't tell anymore.
Ryan hadn't been very keen on going to any of his classes today, but Megan had managed to drag him along to art on the basis that technically he didn't actually take art, and therefore wasn't actually required to do shit. Not that he'd do much if he had to anyway. He wasn't sure why Megan so desperately required his presence in art, but he decided that he might as well be the kind and lovely best friend he was supposed to be for once.
The two ended up walking in a good fifteen minutes late because Ryan had insisted that he picked up some weed from his drug dealer on the way there. At first, Megan had been very uncertain about the whole thing, and really she'd found herself only growing more confused as it turned out that Ryan's drug dealer was literally sat inside a bush on the edge of the school field and refused to show their face. Megan had asked if he actually lived in that bush, which Ryan had told her was a ridiculous idea and that he obviously lived in the walls of the school instead. She'd thought that he was joking. He wasn't.
By the time that they'd actually made it to art, Mr Way had already started 'teaching' the lesson. Really, he was sat at the front drinking a cup of coffee while he texted Frank, but he'd put the effort into writing some vague instructions as to what they should be doing onto the whiteboard, so that already put him comfortably in the top five most competent teachers at the school.
"You're fifteen minutes late." He announced as they walked past his desk, doing his best to look like he gave a shit. Really, he didn't.
"Actually." Ryan shook his head, pulling out his phone to check the time. "I think you'll find that we are seventeen minutes and forty six seconds late." He shook his head in mock disbelief. "If you don't even know what time your lesson should have started then I really don't know why we should."
"So you're saying that you're late because you forgot to come to class." Mr Way glanced between the two of them in disbelief, but took a moment to remind himself that this really was not the most ridiculous thing that Ryan Ross had tried to convince him of.
"Yes!" Megan exclaimed, somewhat over enthusiastically. "I mean, I now have a lot going on in my head now that I've come to terms with my sixth sense and psychic powers, Mr Way. So it's really not my fault at all."
"Megan-" Gerard began, not even entirely sure what to say to that, because in what world did Megan Clifford have a sixth sense when she was convinced that her ex-boyfriend was the lead singer of the Smiths and also the Zodiac Killer?
"We were buying weed." Ryan interrupted him, deciding that honesty was a very important virtue that he had to respect. "Well, I was. Megan doesn't smoke weed, she just came with me for moral support and out of the kindness of heart because she's a really good friend and a nice person and all that kind of bullshit."
"Bullshit?" Megan's eyes widened: horrified.
"You were buying weed?" Mr Way found that suddenly he had even less of an idea as to what he was supposed to make of the situation.
"Yeah." Ryan nodded. "I have the weed to prove it." He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a plastic bag of weed: holding it up so Mr Way could see it, before putting it back into his pocket. "Told you we had a valid excuse."
As Gerard sat there, utterly at a loss for words, Ryan led Megan to over to their table, and once they had sat down and started to 'work', Gerard came to conclude that maybe he didn't care all that much at all. There was a world in which he should have confiscated that weed, but it was clear that it wasn't a world he was living in.
He continued to text Frank about what had just happened, and came to consider making himself another cup of coffee, because you know, that was a productive way to spend his time teaching. He never go to make that cup of coffee, however, as he spent a good twenty minutes sat there considering it, and wondering if he could possibly get one of his students to go and make him one, or if that was going too far.
Eventually, he was broken from wondering just who would be most likely to make him coffee without a fuss, as Megan fell off her chair and right off onto the floor with an uncomfortably loud bang.
"Has she fainted?" He asked, getting up and making his way across the classroom to where she was lying on the floor.
"No, her eyes are open and she's still blinking." Ryan stood up: looking between Megan and Mr Way in confusion, whilst the rest of the class got up and crowded around her.
"I'm having a vision." Megan sat up briefly to announce, before lying back down and closing her eyes this time.
Ryan raised his eyebrows, looking back across at Mr Way. "She's having a vision, apparently."
"Uhh..." Mr Way trailed off, finding himself suddenly very under qualified to deal with this situation. "What should I do?"
"Oh, it's fine." A girl reassured him. "She gets them a lot now. She goes all shaky and then announces to everyone 'I'm having a vision'."
"Oh." Mr Way nodded, coming to assume that maybe this was linked to the psychic powers bullshit she'd spewed at him earlier.
"Yeah, like once she had a vision that frerard isn't real, so now she's accepted that as true and she's on the search for a new OTP. Maybe she'll find one in this vision?" Another kid continued - something about their tone that was excessively condescending.
"So, when do you think she'll stop having a vision?" Mr Way asked, looking around at the clock on the classroom wall. "Because I mean, we've only got like ten minutes more of the lesson, and I've got a class in her next. I mean, she's more than welcome to have a vision in the corridor, or outside the fire door, but just not on that exact bit of floor. I mean, not to sound harsh or anything."
-
It was a whole six minutes until Megan woke up. It really was a difficult and emotionally tiring six minutes for everyone in that art classroom, as they found themselves wondering if this was just like what life would be like without Megan Clifford, which was of course, a horror that no one wanted to even begin to fathom.
"I had a vision." She announced once more, sitting up and opening her eyes. She made a point of making eye contact with at least six separate people as she repeated herself - she just didn't want to run the risk of anyone not knowing just what had happened.
"Are you alright?" Mr Way asked, leaning down to where Megan was still sat on the floor. "Can you get up or should I get the nurse?" He paused for a moment: thinking it over. "I think I should have got the nurse the moment you started having a vision-"
"Are you not even going to ask me what my vision was?" Megan seemed to explode in his face. Really, she just didn't like the idea of her visions and her psychic talents going unappreciated. "That's really disrespectful of you. It's near enough a hate crime, and I hope you know that."
"Megan, it's not a hate crime to ask if you need medical attention before asking what you saw in your 'vision'." Gerard rolled his eyes, deeming that if Megan was well enough to condemn him of a hate crime, then she was well enough to get up off the floor by herself.
"Well, I don't need attention-" Megan began: finding the disrespect to her psychic powers to be not only a hate crime but an act of bullying, and generally just something she wouldn't tolerate under any circumstances.
"That sounds fake but okay." Some kid muttered, turning back to their own artwork and going back to their table before Megan could verbally attack them for it.
Half of the students followed and went back to their desks - uninterested in the content of Megan's vision. Of the half that stayed, the majority were just there for the hell of it, or the excuse not to do anything for a while, as opposed to any actual belief or respect for Megan's 'powers', but Megan didn't need to know that.
"I don't need medical attention." Megan shook her head, getting back to her feet and sitting down at her table again. "But you guys need to listen to my vision."
"Do we?" Mr Way made a point out of sounding unimpressed, in the hopes that it would discourage her enough for him just to be able to go back to his desk and text Frank back, who had now obviously assumed the worst of him in the six minutes he'd spent standing awkwardly over Megan Clifford laid on the floor with her eyes closed, pretending to be unconscious, pretending to have a psychic vision.
"Yes. It's literally life or death." Megan assured everyone, closing her eyes for a moment as she relieved the truly tragic events that she had just experienced.
"That sounds fake but-"
"You can shut the fuck up." Ryan took charge, resuming his position as Megan's best friend, and closest and most trusted hoe. "Like your whole life isn't faker." He glared at the kid before proceeding to punch him right in the nose.
"I think he needs medical attention." Megan pointed across at the kid who was now having a rather violent nosebleed. "You should take him to the nurse." She smiled up at Mr Way.
"Let me guess..." Mr Way trailed off, wondering if he should say something to Ryan for just breaking some kid's nose right in front of him, but really he liked that kid much less than he liked Ryan Ross, and that was saying something. "That was what you saw in your vision?"
"No." Megan shook her head, looking at him as if he was an idiot. "I saw the school in destruction and flames. Everything was on fire. People were dying. You were dying, Mr Way. People were trying to escape but the fire blocked all the exits - it was a real tragedy. But I was stood outside of the school watching you all die."
"Oh wow." Ryan tried his best to convince Megan of the fact that not only did he 'believe her', but that he actually gave one single fuck. Neither of those things were true.
"We should really put a better fire safety plan into place to stop this from happening." Megan looked up at Mr Way, as if it was somehow up to him, and not to Mr Urie, who'd written 'stop, drop, and roll' as their fire safety plan, which wasn't bad, it just wasn't great either.
"No, what we should do is take... Sam... to the nurse." He gestured to the kid who was now attempting to stop his nosebleed, but had already bleed through the entirety of three tissues.
"My name's Darren." Nosebleed kid corrected him.
"Uhh... yeah. I was just joking, don't you know that?" Mr Way grimaced, looking frantically around, and finding that his gaze landed on Ryan. "Hey, Ryan, you should take... Darren to the nurse to say sorry for probably breaking his nose."
Ryan rolled his eyes, before dragging Darren and his broken nose out of the room. Mr Way was then left to deal with... Megan. He really would have liked to take Darren to the nurse himself, but he probably shouldn't leave Ryan and Megan together in a classroom without supervision.
"So... Megan, what do you want me to do about your vision?" Mr Way asked, looking around at the class in the hope that they might have any ideas.
"I want you to try and not die." Megan told him, letting out a sigh. "I don't want you and Frank to die in there together when it's not even real. I would have quite liked it before because it's quite romantic, but I don't anymore, because I know that frerard isn't real. That came to me in a vision, and I'm sorry for being so blind all this time. Don't die in the fire, Mr Way."
He nodded. "I'll try my best." He found that instead of trying not to die, he was trying not to laugh at the fact that now Megan was entirely convinced that frerard wasn't real. He had the slightest suspicion that maybe Megan's 'visions' weren't entirely accurate.
"I'll be alright though. I have Geography next and Mrs King never notices when I fall asleep in class-"
"No, Megan." There was a loud sigh as a girl gripped Megan's arm tightly. "Mrs King left. I had the new teacher this morning. Good luck."
"What happened to Mrs King?" Megan exclaimed: shocked and horrified at the fact that she might actually have to stay awake for the next hour.
"She left because of the bomb threat." Mr Way explained, taking a moment to wonder if he should have done the same. "Didn't feel like the school was a very safe environment."
"What do you mean-" Megan came to a stop, her eyes growing wide. "She knew. She knew about the fire. She knew. She knows what's coming and she's left. We all have to leave too." Just as she finished speaking, the bell rung to signal the end of the class.
"Yeah." Another kid added. "We all have to leave. We have to go to Geography."
Megan rolled her eyes. "Shut the fuck up, Paul. At least my face doesn't look like the result of a horse and a frog having a drunken one night stand, because you're the baby they regret having and abandoned in a bin the next morning."
Paul didn't quite know what to say to that.
"It's okay, Paul." A guy called Isaac came and patted Paul on the shoulder comfortingly. "I don't think you look like the abandoned baby from a drunken one night stand between a horse and a frog. I think you're beautiful the way you are."
Megan watched with wide eyes as Isaac and Paul looked into each other's eyes. Suddenly the world made sense, because fuck Frerard, Paulsaac was were it was at.
-
Bert reckoned he'd already done a pretty good day of teaching, and that maybe things were actually starting to get easier the more he went along. Well, either of that or he was just getting more drunk. Not that it mattered much anyway, it wasn't like the standards of teaching at Bertfield had ever been very high in the first place.
He'd had a free period before and had spent it selling weed to students from a bush on the playground, you know, instead of actually planning any lessons or any kind of educational activities. He didn't want to actually go into the staffroom either; he had the suspicions that some of the teachers might catch onto the truth about how he'd come to replace Mrs King, by you know, actually asking him anything about Geography.
Really, his first few hours teaching had most been an educational experience for him, as he'd read the entire first paragraph on the wikipedia pages on geography, mountains, and mountain goats. He'd come to feel an odd kind of deep emotional connection to mountain goats - the kind that he wasn't quite sure how to explain, but one that he was in no hurry to question.
He sat in his classroom, pulling up a slideshow of images which was literally just the first things that came up when you searched for 'geography'. Really, he was quite proud of it - there were some very unique transitions in there. It was probably the most effort he'd put into something that whole day, as really, selling weed to a few kids had been very effortless in comparison. This did make him wonder if he should just quit teaching after one day and go back to dealing drugs full time, but he doubted that Mr Urie would just let him stay there as the resident school drug dealer- wait, maybe he would. Bert would have to think about that one.
He had just finished refilling his water bottle with more vodka when the students made their way into the classroom. By now, the news about Mrs King had gotten around, and it had come accompanied by some news of the absolute trainwreck that was 'Mr McCracken's' teaching ability. He just hoped that this class was one that would appreciate his general incompetence and general hesitance to give much of a fuck about very much.
He could feel everyone's eyes on him as the students sat down at their desks, and at first, he attempted to lock eyes with each and every one: making a point out of glaring at them as they looked at him and whispered to their friends, but then he found his gaze falling over an all too familiar face coming through the classroom door.
the face of the girl who had been there as he'd gotten dragged out of the school by the bomb disposal unit; it was the girl who had argued to keep his owl. It was Megan Clifford.
He had this horrible sensation in the pit of his stomach: unable to chase away the worries that she'd recognise him and do something about that before he could stop her. He had only one thing to do, and that was distract her with the beautiful power and majestic nature of mountain goats.
"Right." He began, quickly going to his laptop and typing 'mountain goats' into google images. "Who is ready for a fun educational experience today, kids?" He turned back to the class, smiling awkwardly, and looking anywhere but the corner of the room where Megan was sat.
Funnily enough, the room remained silent.
"Well, that's good because it's really going to be neither fun nor educational." He let out a sigh that was sort of halfway to a laugh. Maybe one person laughed with him. Bert nodded across at that one person - his new favourite student. "Anyway, so we're going to learn about mountain goats." He turned on the projector and put a picture of a mountain goat onto the board, zooming in unnecessarily close to its face. "That's a mountain goat, if you didn't know, they're animals, and they live on mountains-"
Out of nowhere, Bert was cut off, which was partly something he was very grateful for, considering the fact that he had absolutely no idea just what the fuck he was actually on about and he reckoned that people could tell. However, once he realised who it was that had caused the very unnecessary commotion in his classroom, he grew very pale.
Megan Clifford stood up, not just where she had been sat, but she got onto the table, and pointed accusingly across the classroom at Mr McCracken, before proclaiming rather loudly to everyone in the room. "We have your owl!"
Bert pretty much shat himself. He stood frozen for a moment, arm halfway to pointing towards the mountain goat on the board, trying his best to come up with the least suspicious response as fast as he could. It didn't help that Bert was really quite drunk by now, with the amount of 'water' he'd drank.
"You what?" He looked at Megan, before glancing nervously around at the rest of the class, who for the most part, just really didn't know what the fuck to think, let alone say. "Can you please get off the table and back into your chair, I'm trying to give you some very important information about mountain goats."
"I'm trying to give you your owl back!" Megan refused to move, only growing more insistent. "We have your owl!" She turned around, looking frantically around the room for someone to back her up, but she encountered the rather unfortunate problem relating to the fact that no one actually gave that much of a fuck at all.
Bert took this as a good sign - one that the rest of the class he'd yet recognised him for the homeless drug dealer he really was, and decided that if he had that going for him, he could definitely save himself from this. "I'm sorry, but what are you talking about? I have never heard of an owl? What is an... 'owl'? An owle? I think you must be mistaken? Have you taken or purchased any drugs recently, such as weed, cannabis, marijuana, kush... you know what I mean? Perhaps from a man inside a bush on the playground?"
"You know about the bush dealer?" Some kid from the front row shouted, not realising how awkward the phrase 'bush dealer' sounded.
Bert nodded, thinking on his feet. "Yes, it's very concerning, isn't it? He tried to sell me crystal meth on my way to the toilet during my free period. You better stay away from him. I can't believe we have criminals like that on the beautiful Bertfield school campus."
"An owl!" Megan insisted, her face growing red. "They fly. They're birds. Nocturnal, with feathers and their heads like spin all the way round, and they have big eyes, and there are barn owls - who live in barns-"
"Oh..." Bert trailed off, wondering if what he was considering really was possible to pull off - it seemed unlikely, but what was the point in anything if you didn't believe in yourself and at least have a try. "I think you must mean howls. H O W L S. There's a 'h'. You must be very confused, there's no such thing as owls - howls are what you're thinking of. You seem very confused in general - are you sure you're not on any kind of drugs? Do you maybe want to go to the nurse?"
"What the absolute fuck is a howl?" Megan got off the table and made her way to the front of the classroom: very certain in her mind that this was Bert from the walls inside the school, owner of the school owl.
"A howl." Bert smiled, finally having a topic to teach about that he hadn't come up with after one quick glance at the displays around the classroom. "Is a bird." He turned to the whiteboard and drew what was easily the worst drawing of a howl anyone had ever seen. Technically, however, it was the first drawing of a howl they had ever seen, so by that logic, it was also the best. Goddamn, he really should have been teaching art not geography. "It looks like that."
"That's a fucking owl." Megan folded her arms across her chest, before turning to the whiteboard. "Let me draw you an owl." As her back was turned, Bert grabbed a piece of paper and quickly scribbled a note on it, holding it up to the class, who were a little taken aback by just what the fuck was happening.
The note read: 'Howls are real I promise please go along with it I will pay you in either money or drugs.'
Needless to say, Bert prided himself on his professionalism.
"Megan," A kid from the front row got her attention as Bert threw the note away into the bin. "Are you sure you're okay? Because I'm pretty sure that Mr McCracken's right - being a geography teacher and all that - he knows about nature and that shit."
Megan looked very confused as she glanced around the classroom, to find the majority of the class nodding. She turned to Bert, defeated, "but we have your owl...?"
"Look, Megan, you can't possibly have any owl, let alone mine, because owls just don't exist. So how could I possibly have had one? And how could you possibly have it?" He shook his head in concern, walking closer to Megan and sighing. "Megan, you really do look very pale." He turned back to the class. "Do I have a volunteer to take Megan to the nurse?"
As a kid leaded a rather confused looking Megan out of the room, Bert quickly grabbed his phone to send a text to Mr Urie.
'Urgent! We have to convince the whole schools that owls are not real and that they are called howls instead otherwise we are going to be exposed.'
Brendon's response was almost instant.
'Don't worry about it. It's good news really - I needed an idea for what to make tomorrow's assembly about anyway.'
And just like that, Bert McCracken had avoided his first major crisis as a geography teacher at Bertfield High School.
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was this worth the wait
I'm sorry i had other shit to do i have a life outside updating this fanfic fun fact for you all
vote and comment if u liked it !!! pls would appreciate