This choice: Start with a faculty member • Go Back...Chapter #20Student Teachers by: Seuzz   "When are you going to see Chelsea?" you ask Marc.
"After school. She hangs out in the gym, doesn't she? I was going to go look for her then."
"What about?"
Marc glances around. The hallway is crowded with people squeezing past, but he doesn't lower his voice when he answers. "Cheerleader stuff."
"Oh, Marc!"
"What's wrong?"
"Talk to me before you talk to Chelsea!"
"Okay," he says, but he sounds dubious. "When can you—?"
"Tonight. Call me."
"I want to talk to her—!"
"Is it really a rush? What's it about, specifically?"
He grimaces. "Okay, I'll call you tonight, around— Fuck!"
"What's wrong?"
"This is Friday, I got a date! I'm going out with Hannah!"
You smirk at him in a way that makes him blush, and poke him in his hard, taut stomach. "That's gotta be more fun than talking to me about Chelsea."
"That's why I wanna get it over with!"
"You can't talk to Chelsea until you talk to me, or you're going to make whatever it is worse. So call me this weekend."
He writhes in place. "I'm gonna be doing stuff all this weekend, probably! Oh, Jesus!"
A voice sounds behind him—"Marc!"—and he squawks and wheels as his sister, Eva, materializes at his side. "Are you bothering Kim?" she demands.
"No! I'm going! I guess I'll see you and Jess after school after all." He shoots you a beady-eyed glance, then dives into the coagulated hallway.
You follow Eva into the room, where you share AP English IV. "Did you just save him from doing something stupid?" she asks you in a suspicion-laden voice.
"I saved him from doing something," you reply, "but I don't know if it was stupid."
* * * * *
You certainly saved Marc from one stupid choice—putting himself in line to being immediately replaced by a doppelganger. But that's only because you suspect you can and will replace him later. For now you've got more strategic choices to make, and by the time the final bell has rung, you have made them.
You need a secure place on campus, but as you consider it, you decide you really only need a place where you can copy and replace students, and that doesn't have to be the loft. Any classroom would work. And so would the office of an administrator.
And a teacher or administrator could simply order your victim to report to that classroom or office, where you could quietly deal with them. And an adult—someone with an income—could be tapped for immediate expenses while you lay out plans for a more lucrative revenue stream.
Kim normally spends her afternoons finishing up her homework in the office conference room, but after your talk with Mr. Staufford, you find yourself shying away from it, lest you get caught by him again and have to revive that talk about drug dealing. You don't like the thought of having to continue it.
Then (mentally, not literally) you slap your forehead and exclaim, "Dur!" You should replace Mr. Staufford with a doppelganger!
The thought's appeal isn't in the way it would spare you that conversation, though you'd be able to find out why he wants to have it, and with Kim of all people. Rather, Mr. Staufford is the most appealing of the administrators for your use. Of the four higher-ups—the principal, Mr. Sagansky, and the assistant principals—Mr. Staufford is the one real disciplinarian. He's the one always calling students out of class, the one cracking the whip in the hallways, and the one (you've heard) who is most impatient with Mr. Saganksy's weak-wristed way of running the school. Mr. Saganksy dresses like a tall and rangy cowboy, but he flinches from actually doing anything that would bring discipline back to the school. But Mr. Staufford (as Ms. Goretsky once told Kim) has the "lean and hungry look" of a man with ambitions to lead.
(As for Garson Dow and Barbara Meek: Mr. Dow is an elderly man on his way to retirement, while Ms. Meek makes Mr. Saganksy look like a cross between Stalin and Attila the Hun. If she were running the school, there could be blood running down the corridors and she'd only chirp, "Hey, can someone get me some paper towels to blot that up with?")
Maybe because of your talk with Marc, but you find yourself winding your way to the gym. The basketball team is practicing on one court, but you veer for the other court instead. (Westside was built during a spasm of concern about teen health, and the gym has not only a weight room on the mezzanine in the middle of the building, but two full-size workout courts on either side. You take a seat on some of the bleachers to do some thinking.
You start by trying to run down a list of teachers in your mind, but you are quickly distracted by activity down on the court. There's some boys playing basketball, and thanks to Kim's extensive knowledge of the school you recognize them as members of the JV basketball squad. Younger members, too, sophomores probably. This wouldn't interest you, but you are drawn to the coach who is working with them. You can't quite place his name ... Oh yeah, it's Bruno. Bruno Something. No! Something Bruno.
He's a young guy, just out of college. He's an assistant coach, actually, which is probably why he's showing a lot of enthusiasm. In fact, now that you think of it, you remember hearing from some of the guys like Laurent Delacroix how much he liked to hang out and play ball (of various kinds) with the more promising players in the P. E. classes he taught, even on his own time after school, like now. You remember some glassy-eyed grins being exchanged by the girls when some of the guys talked about this, but the boys were all insistent that it was only because Nathan—
That's it! Nathan Bruno!
—was just a big kid himself who was a serious competitor back when he was in high school. There was nothing creepy about it!
It doesn't look creepy now down below, even when Coach Bruno stops directing from the sides, and dives in with a grin to steal the ball and score a basket himself before returning to the sideline.
You take out your phone, open up a note-taking app, and type in Nathan Bruno's name. Then you add Mr. Staufford's, and Coach Gellman's, because Marc is captain of the soccer team and Coach Gellman coaches them. Then, because you've already replaced Chelsea with a doppelganger, you add Coach Tesla's name, even though she's a drunken old bag with a face like a frog and has as little to do with the cheerleader squad as possible.
But all these (save Mr. Staufford) are coaches, and seem mostly confined to the gym. Maybe you should be looking inside the school proper, at a real teacher.
After a few minutes you decide on:  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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