Safety At His Command

The Assignment

Of course his push had only been met with push-back. Students that will remain nameless because even this year he hadn’t cared enough to learn their names had decided to pick apart what he had said, leading him only to snap at them too.

“Proverbial stage?” one of them asked.

“Don’t you mean hypothetical?” another snorted.

“I know what I said. If you don’t know what the word means there’s a line of dictionaries at the back of the room. Take your pick. They’re all printed with the same meaning.”

“Oh-o!” another laughed in response. “Billiam came to fight.”

“I came to class, asshole,” Will replied sharply. “This is always what’s waiting for me here. I just usually ignore it.”

William shot a glance at his father, then shook his head as he made his way to his desk to sit down.

“Where’s your bag?” Mr. Saunders pressed, but William didn’t satisfy that with an answer.

The man knew he never carried one. He only came to class with a pencil and stole loose pieces of paper from the front of the room in whichever class he wound up making it to. Sure he had a pocket full of folded paper, but even with his schedule on a day he gave a damn about going, that could really only accumulate maybe four pieces. It really didn’t justify having a full notebook or bag to tote around with him.

Instead, Mr. Saunders looked down at the ground in what the rest of the class could only assume was disgust before nodding at himself and pulling up his own notes for the day.

As unsettling as the gesture was to them, it resonated deeply within William, regardless of his lax demeanor. That little look from his father was one of many in his repertoire. It meant “buckle up, kid,” with a dash of, “you’ll regret that.”

William happened to glance to the right to check on Malorie’s attention and if he still had it. He saw the way she happened to look around the room and then settle back on him the moment he did but he can't for the life of him figure out what that look meant. Was she interested? Did he blow it? Did he read her all wrong?

Absently, he could hear his father reintroducing the reading they had just finished last week as he caught her gaze. It held him unlike anything he’d ever felt before, making him greedy for it. He watched as what he thought was blush crept over her pale cheeks, then a hint of fear flashed through her eyes, striking him in the heart as her eyes flicked up towards their teacher who lifted his brow at the connection.

Was the fear he felt from her real? Or was it just that moment?

William inhaled loudly then exhaled even louder as he turned to see his father patronizing him.

“Did you want to share that with the class too? Because you did…”

“I’m pretty certain this is not part of your job,” William grumbled. “Why don’t you skip to the part where you give us the assignment and be done with it?”

Whispers scattered around him as Mr. Saunders bit his cheek to control what came out next. It was his go to move so to speak. He used it enough that most of the kids knew just how to mimic the action and could not wait to see what the man would say in retaliation.

This time the retaliation was in the form of an assignment, William noted as his father clutched their book in his hands. 

“Ah, your assignment…” Mr. Saunders agreed. “Your assignment,” his father repeated, slapping the book against his other hand as if it were a warning. It was more like he was telling them not to be mad at him as his hand was forced by someone in the room when he spoke.

William knew…

They all knew…

And yet they waited for the verdict, eager to give William hell for it.

“Your assignment will need to correlate with any of our last few books regarding time travel,” he said. “Your requirements were originally to balance the three and give references based on psychological analyses of discrepancies throughout each work and how time travel overall had been the source of the character’s downfalls, but given our predicament here with a certain student…” he began, “I’m thinking of changing it into a thesis paper pertaining to just how time travel would work to your individual lives, so you could say, have a better chance to make better choices and see what the outcome could be if you had versus what you’ve done and the kind of mistakes you’ve made along your current path.”

A thesis paper is sixty to seventy pages, he groaned inwardly while the entire student body within his classroom had rebelled by other means, none of which had gone noticed by dear old Dad, William noticed at first.

Second he saw the way his father smirked and carried on about how he was in favor of this new turn of events and walked back to his desk to start typing out his expectations for the impromptu paper when, Malorie of all people, spoke up.

“What is it you’re actually after, Mr. Saunders?” she asked inquisitively.

The frown that marked her brow had been concerning and yet he waited to see what it was she planned on challenging his father with.

“I think it’s high time we find out more about one another. We will be in this classroom for the next five months and I’ve done nothing about getting to know any of you it seems,” he replied sardonically.

“Ah, that's the thing though. My personal life is not on the table to be discussed with my teacher, who by law, mind you, has to report anything I write, draw, or otherwise note orally or the like to the authorities if he or she deems it as a problem, me as the student, or minor, is facing in an otherwise different setting than school,” she rushed out as if she practiced it.

Did she?

And what did she mean that he would report her?

Was she in trouble elsewhere?

Questions began racing through his mind making it hard to hear his father’s response. All he cared about was befriending her, getting to know her, hell--yes he wanted more from her but at this stage of the game, sitting next to her would have been enough.

“Ms. Carr,” Mr. Saunders replied, clearing his voice before speaking up. “Your inquiries are valid and I wouldn’t expect you to put explicit personal detail in your paper, but please note that if you are in trouble as you have offered up in your response just now, I would strongly suggest you seek the aid you require.”

His hand worked a pen against a post-it note on his desk while she stared him down.

“You’re going to report me anyway, aren't you?” she asked despite the chatter in the room.

Brian’s form sat up close to her to pull her back to him despite the desk that separated them. His hand laid heavily on her shoulder as he whispered to her. It was intimate the way he dipped his head there, then challenged Mr. Saunders with his mug.

“That’ll be enough, Mr. Zimmerman,” his father reprimanded the boy, but Brian didn’t sit back.

Whatever he had to say, he didn’t say it out loud and to them all. Malorie nodded slightly and added, “Well, I suppose you can mark me down for seventy pages worth of lies and my psychological analysis of them all,” she snarked back, adding, “I hope you all are smart enough to do the same.”

“Nah, Lorie,” Brian said, his deep voice took over the room as he smiled at the crowd just behind William knowingly. “They’ll just be bitching about the color of their car not being the right shade of, ‘I begged my Daddy for this,’ throughout their paper,” he snorted. “At least yours will be interesting…”

Again the mention of her life outside of school had him reeling and furthermore, how the hell did Brian know any of it?