Author's note: I needed a break from angsty S3 fics (plus, I've still got the Peril of Proximity sequel on my plate), so I wrote a genre I never thought I'd write: high school teacher/student fic. As always, I don't post incomplete stories, so this one is in the books. I haven't broken down chapters yet, but I think there will be 12.
Alex Vause didn't have the best high school experience. Her teachers were mostly spinsters who lacked originality and conformed to textbook curriculum; they did nothing to motivate her academically. She supplemented her learning by reading books like The Physics of Wall Street and How the World Is Made: The Story of Creation According to Sacred Geometry. By the time she graduated from high school, she'd read all 100 books on Time Magazine's list of the Best English Novels of All Time, in addition to another 100 that appealed to her.
Alex rarely completed homework in high school, and she didn't study for tests. She read most of the assigned chapters in any given textbook, but she derived little pleasure from the words written by old, white, American men who'd given up teaching in exchange for seeing their names in print. She loathed her standard public school education, and she vowed to go to a college where she'd be challenged, and where most of the students walked to the beat to their own drum.
Although Diane Vause didn't make enough money to send her daughter to college debt free, she took out the maximum loans that the government allowed to see that her daughter had a decent education. Alex allowed her mother to contribute to her college tuition for her first year, but she promised that by her second year at the University of California, Berkeley, her mother wouldn't have to pay a dime.
Her freshman work study job in the library was step one—she made herself invaluable to the 75-year-old librarian and worked more than her allotted 20 hours per week without pay. The next year, Alex was hired to work full-time in the library; therefore qualifying for a steep tuition discount. That, along with her sizeable scholarship, made UC Berkeley almost free. She tried tutoring students to earn money, but Alex found that she had little patience for kids with no appreciation for the Great Books. After a brief and frustrating semester in the tutoring center, she picked up a second job at a bakery to cover the remaining costs.
Graduating in three years wasn't easy, but Alex figured that she could save $30,000 if she pushed through, taking six classes per semester. (She also had 60 AP credits to her name, which meant that technically, she entered Berkeley as a sophomore.) Her only regret was that she couldn't pick up a double major, so she settled for a Bachelor of Arts in Literature with a minor in Philosophy.
At the ripe age of 22, Alex left sunny California and moved back to her hometown in a Manhattan suburb. She was accepted to Columbia University to study English and Comparative Literature and was awarded a merit scholarship for the two-year program. Trouble was, she still had to come up with $10,000 to make a Master's degree possible.
Alex had been home for a month, and the part-time job she'd taken teaching English to Chinese kids was already driving her mad.
"This fucking sucks," she said, tossing her paycheck onto the kitchen counter. "It's $200 less than I made working at the library at school."
Diane flipped an over easy egg onto a plate. "At least you have a job, hon."
"Yeah," Alex said sarcastically as she sat on a barstool with a huff. "Teaching rich, Asian eight-year-olds how to write compound-complex sentences so they can get into Harvard in ten years."
Diane buttered a piece of wheat toast and put it on the same plate with the egg, passing it to her daughter. "What if I told you there was a way that you could make $15,000 this fall?"
Alex chuckled as she poked her fork into the yoke. "I'd think you were lying."
"I'm serious." She sat next to her daughter. "I know teaching isn't your thing but…"
"Stop right there, mom," Alex interrupted. "You know how much I despise teaching."
"What if it was teaching good, smart kids?" Diane took a sip of orange juice.
"If they're smart, why do they need a teacher?" She countered.
"Just hear me out." Her mother turned to face her. "One of the senior English teachers is out on medical leave, and they're scrambling to find a long term substitute who can start in two weeks. The pay is $15,000 plus benefits and housing for one semester."
Four years ago, Diane had joined the kitchen staff at The Gateway School, a private boarding school in Purchase, and never looked back. Although she didn't collect tips, her pay was decent and the benefits were outstanding. For the first time in her life, Diane didn't have to scrape by to pay the bills, plus she was living in a two bedroom house owned by one of the faculty members and paid $500 a month in rent.
Alex knew how much her mom loved her job, which was one reason why she felt comfortable leaving home and going to college 3,000 miles away. She had spent her entire childhood in poverty, so to see her mother shop at Macy's instead of the Salvation Army Thrift Store and buy a new sofa, instead of the second-hand one she'd purchased 20 years ago at Goodwill, made her smile. It also helped that Diane had two free meals a day as part of her benefits package at the school.
"They'd never hire me," the brunette said, dipping her toast into the runny yoke. "I don't have teaching credentials, and I'm 22 years old."
"You don't need credentials to teach at a private school, hon," her mother explained. "Besides, they could use someone younger in the high school. 'Change is the spice of life.' Isn't that what they say?"
"Variety." Alex couldn't help but smile. "Variety is the spice of life."
"See, there you go, smarty pants!" Diane playfully slapped her shoulder. "You could teach them shit like that."
Alex stood and kissed her mom on the top of the head. "I will consider it, but it still sounds painful."
She rinsed her plate, took a quick shower and headed out the door with something to chew on; after all, she needed money if she wanted to start her Master's program in the fall. Perhaps this was a surefire way to make that happen.
If there was one thing Alex hated, it was explaining multifaceted things to stupid people who didn't seem to give a shit. She also sure as hell didn't like teenagers. Yet there she stood, in the front of a high school classroom on a warm September morning.
She'd arrived at the prep school two hours early with her mom, who had to be at school by 6 a.m. to start prepping breakfast for the boarding school kids. Alex had only been to Gateway one other time, and that was one week prior when she'd had an interview and a campus tour. (They were desperate to hire someone, since the substitute they'd originally offered the job to decided at the last minute to teach full time somewhere else.)
The school looked nothing like her dilapidated public school that reeked of moldy Sloppy Joes. Gateway was composed of two, three-story red-bricked buildings that housed classrooms and offices; one limestone dormitory that housed students; and 10 homes that lined the 30 acre property for faculty members who chose to live on campus.
Alex had been offered the opportunity to live in one of the faculty houses since the person for whom she was substituting had to move back to Michigan for the semester. She was hesitant about agreeing to live on campus because of the freedom she'd become accustomed to in college and even living with her mom over the summer. In the end, she decided that it was economically advantageous to take the Headmaster up on his offer, and she planned to move in that weekend once she made it abundantly clear that she would come and go as she pleased and had no responsibility for the students who lived in the dorm.
The energy around the school on the first day was palpable. On the one hand, Alex wanted to roll her eyes at the bubbly teens who sported tans and bragged about their summer vacation in the Hamptons. On the other, the students seemed far more mature and ready to learn than the derelicts who attended her old school.
As students poured into her classroom, which was arranged seminar style, she began writing parts of the syllabus on the Smartboard along with her full name. (She had no input into the syllabus; the curriculum had already been laid out by the former teacher.) After the bell rang, except for a bit of rustling, the students were silent. Alex recalled back in the day, a bell ringing certainly didn't deter chatter from her high school classmates. Back then, it took ten minutes for the class to quiet down, which meant the teacher only had 30 minutes of classroom instruction.
"Good morning," she began with a forced smile. "My name is Ms. Vause, and I'm subbing for Mrs. Rankin while she's out this semester." That was the first time she'd said her formal name aloud, and she cringed at the sound of it.
She heard a few students snicker, but ignored them. Alex swore she wouldn't be like her own high school teachers, so she tried something different.
"Before we review the syllabus, you get to ask me two questions—anything you want to know. If the questions are appropriate, you'll get to ask two questions every day this semester." She leaned against the front of her desk, crossing her legs at the ankles. "If they're inappropriate, the questions end there and then."
Some students smiled and whispered to the person next to them, and others looked confused.
"My suggestion is to collaborate before someone asks something stupid and you lose your privilege." She pushed herself off the desk and walked around the oval shaped cluster of desks. "You're going to do a lot of collaboration this semester, because that's a big part of what happens in college." She paused by the row of windows. "You have five minutes to come up with your first two questions."
She watched one group of girls immediately gather in the far corner of the room to strategize, and one group of boys who were clearly more into ogling her than coming up with questions.
Alex knew that men and women alike found her attractive—she hadn't paid much mind to it growing up—but she tried to tame her usual look of educated rocker chic by wearing a knee-length black skirt and a blue silk blouse that covered her tattoos. She'd purchased a pair of black, one inch heels that were already giving her blisters, but they were more appropriate than her three inch patent leather pumps that she normally wore.
A blonde girl in the middle of the circle caught her eye. She was tall, thin and tan, but she wasn't the model type like a few of the other girls in the room. She had on white linen shorts and a pink tanktop. Her hair looked like she'd tried to curl it, but the curls were already falling by 8:10 a.m.
"I have a question," the blonde girl began. "But before I ask, I want to ensure that a clarifying question doesn't count as one of our two questions."
Alex smiled. "Good for you, because it would have."
A few kids looked surprised.
"Time's up," she said, walking towards the front of the room. "Who's first?"
One of the boys raised his hand high in the air. "How old are you?"
His friend hit him on the arm and giggled. The girls in the room chastised him for wasting a question.
"Twenty-two," she replied. "Next."
The blonde raised her hand for the second time. "Why did you take this job?"
"I'm going to answer that question directly, but without background. If you wanted background information, you should have thought about asking a more complex question." Alex smirked. "I need money to pay for grad school."
She allowed the students to chat amongst themselves after hearing both of her answers, but noticed that the blonde girl didn't participate in the conversations. She pulled out a notebook and looked up at Alex with the hint of a smile.
"Ok, let's get to the syllabus."
As the students exited the room after class, the blonde stayed behind and only stood when everyone else had departed.
"One of the reasons people laughed at you is because we call our teachers by their first names," the blonde said as she approached the teacher's desk.
Alex tapped her pencil on a textbook. "One of the reasons?" she asked with a smirk. "What's another?"
"You make them uncomfortable," she announced without expression.
"Really?" Alex asked incredulously as she leaned back in her chair. "How so?"
"You're young and attractive." She adjusted her backpack over her shoulder. "That can intimidate people."
The brunette arched an eyebrow. "Does that intimidate you?"
"No." She paused in the doorway before turning and adding with a smug smile, "Alex."
Before the blonde could walk completely out of the room, she called after her. "What's your name?"
She gave the older woman a wide, toothy grin. "You'll figure it out."
After the girl exited, Alex dove into the attendance sheet to try to figure out who she was. She didn't seem like a Caitlin or a Madison (there were two of each.) She'd have to wait until tomorrow to know for certain.