Disclaimer: If you recognize it, I don't not, not own it.
Personal Disclaimer: Any similarities between these characters and real people and events are intentional, but should not be taken as any indication of my mental state. The fact that my life inspired a hostage story is purely coincidental.
Time: Mid to late 1980s.
Setting: Ronald Reagan High School. Senior Year.
Genre: Action/Adventure, Crime, Friendship, Romance
Warning: "I only speak two languages: English and bad English."—Corbin Dallas, The Fifth Element. Consider yourself warned, foul language ahead.
Summary: It all started because of history. When their high school class is taken hostage, Matt makes the foolish choice of trying to reason with the HT. Emily's just there to save all their butts.
A/N: In honor of the one year anniversary since my first posting here on fanfiction, I have decided to finally release this story from my graveyard (AKA my computer's harddrive.) Just a few things to keep in mind: this is set before cell phones, it is AU, and the story is eight chapters long (if I decide to post the epilogue and I may not.) I've kept the characters mostly cannon with a few liberties that I don't think are too far-fetched. As I started writing, I noticed some striking similarities between this story and a very popular 1980s television show. In honor of that show, I decided to name one of my characters after one of its main characters. Kudos to the person who can guess the character and show. I will reveal it in the last chapter.
This chapter is pretty short. Rest assured they will get longer.
Because of History
Chapter 1
"So again, the four main causes of the Great Depression were overproduction, speculation, poor political leadership, and…."
Here Emily tuned out. She had always considered herself a fan of history, but she had to admit that her enthusiasm was fast waning in Mrs. Sherwood's class.
Mrs. Sherwood was, frankly put, boring. Her lectures were long, prone to tangents, and exceedingly repetitive. By the end of each class, at least half of the students were asleep.
Not that that Mrs. Sherwood seemed to notice. She just went right along lecturing, seemingly oblivious to the snores all around her. The only indication that she even knew her students existed was her weekly quizzes. Her weekly quizzes were practically legalized torture. Even Emily, who had always done well in history before, had trouble passing the quizzes. Mostly this was because the questions tended to be too vague and the answers too specific. It was a hard balance that Mrs. Sherwood had yet to master.
Honestly, it was starting to get on Emily's nerves. Why would a teacher who obviously didn't know how to teach be teaching? She should just do them all a favor and retire.
The only thing Emily had to thank for her relatively good grade was her history class back at her old school. She'd transferred to Reagan High late in the year, and her history class there had already made it to the Vietnam War. Mrs. Sherwood was still stuck on the Great Depression, despite the fact that school would be out in a matter of days. They'd already taken their semester exams and it was only by grace of God (and a giant curve) that Emily had scraped by with an A. Other classes were just goofing off, but Mrs. Sherwood was determined to finish the curriculum even if it was too late for the test. What for was anyone's guess.
Emily looked up at the sound of the door opening. A boy entered.
His hair was light brown and his clothes were baggy and worn. She thought she might have a class with him or at least have seen him in the halls before, but with a school the size of Reagan High, it was very easy to get lost in the crowd.
Still, you'd think she'd remember those eyes. They were a pale, cerulean blue framed with girlishly long black eyelashes. They would have been beautiful if not for the strange, nearly undetectable glint behind them. In the second that his gaze had met hers before it focused on Mrs. Sherwood, she could have sworn she saw a flash of an emotion she'd hoped never to see again.
Mrs. Sherwood didn't seem to have noticed when he came in and jumped when he spoke, interrupting the flow of her lecture. "Mrs. Sherwood, we need to talk," he said, not bothering to keep his voice low so the rest of the class couldn't hear. Everybody looked up.
Mrs. Sherwood blinked before responding. "Well as you can see, I'm in the middle of a class right now. Could you come back in say," she looked at her watch, "an hour, after school?"
"No! We have to talk now. You screwed me over and now you have to fix it."
"I'm sorry Mr. Hanson, but you're just going to have to come back later."
"I can't come back later!" he shouted.
"Again, I'm sorry, but I just can't focus on you and my class at the same time. You'll have to wait."
Emily could tell Mrs. Sherwood had said the wrong thing the moment the words left her mouth.
The boy, Hanson, tensed up and his eyes flashed again, this time with recognizable anger. "Why don't you focus on this then?" He reached into his baggy shorts and pulled something out.
A collective gasp went around the room and more than a few people started to whimper.
"Oh damn," Emily whispered.
In the boy's hand was a shiny pistol and the business end was pointed directly at Mrs. Sherwood's nose. One thing was sure: this history class had just become a lot less boring.
