Le Fantome de F-20
By EsmeraldaCarewDaae
(Who has way too much time on her hands and not
enough patience!)
Claimer: Angie: based on my
friend Angie. Sassy: based on my friend
Sassy. John: based on kid named John in
my class….get the picture?? All of
these characters are based on people I know, therefore they don't really belong
to me, but no one else uses them, so if you want to use them (why would you
want to do that?!) you can ask me.
Disclaimer: I don't
own, however, the Phantom of the Opera
or any of the characters. Not yet
anyway…::snicker::
It was Monday, a beautiful spring day beginning outside
the cloudy Plexiglas window, scratched, beaten, and worn by 40 or so years
worth of high school students. It was
Day 1, so first block was the 1st period class. That meant Mrs. Rubera's French 3 CP class
was congregating in Room F 22, deep in the bowels of the F-wing of Haverhill
High School. Samantha (Sasmoe) Seavey's
head banged against the desk she was sitting at as she groaned loudly.
"I hate school!!" she said, her face still against the
desk.
"First period hasn't even started yet! Stop complaining." Angela (Angie) Morton said.
She sat on the desk in front of Sasmoe in dark blue jeans with silver
threads woven into them. In her ears
perched large gold hoops. She also wore
a black t-shirt with bright red lettering that said "I'm not shy...I'm just
observing my prey" on it. On her feet
were unnecessary platform sneakers made of blue canvas. Angie was 5'8" without the shoes. Her thin, curly, light brown hair was pulled
up in a ponytail which stuck out of the top of her head because her hair was
barely chin length when it was curly.
"Where's Mrs. Rubera?"
"I don't care."
Sasmoe said against the desk.
She had a well-founded aversion to Mrs. Rubera. Mrs. Rubera seemed to like getting Sassy in
trouble. Sassy wore a pair of black
bell-bottom pants, black velour ankle boots and a stretchy shirt with the words
"Bad Monkey" printed on it. She sat up
finally, her shiny, straight light brown hair with hints of red and blonde fell
back just past her shoulders as she sat up, narrowing her round, light brown
eyes at Angie. Angie looked at her,
widening her own dark-brown eyes, then finally squeaked loudly in mock fear and
hid her face behind her hands.
"The evil eye!
The evil eye!" She said, muffled
behind her hands. Sasmoe's face relaxed
as she smiled, albeit evilly. Just as
the bell rang, a third girl walked in the door and took the seat next to
Sasmoe.
"Hey Ang, hey Sassy," she breathed. She dropped her bulky black shoulder bag on
the floor, pulling her hair, which was waist-length, almost curly, and the same
color as Sasmoe's (though less shiny) off her shoulders.
"Hey Jams," Angie said, moving off to her seat on the
other side of the room.
"Hello," Sassy said.
Jamie (Christine) Taker pulled her dark blue velvet cardigan up over her
shoulders and over her light blue-green tank top. She wore a knee-length madras-plaid skirt of airy cotton in blues
and aquas, embroidered with blue and hemmed with a frill. She wore sandals with an inch platform that
were made to look as if they were woven with straw, with white rosettes stuck
to the straps across her toes. Her
large, round bluegreen eyes swept across the room. An anxious expression furrowed her forehead into worry lines.
"Where's Madame Rubera?" she asked Sassy. Sassy groaned.
"You ask me as if I care." Jamie (who was only called Christine sometimes) gave her a look
as if to say 'Well...! I care!' Around her, kids threw spitballs, paper airplanes, and talked
loudly.
"Does anyone know where Mrs. Rubera is?" called
Kristin. She was sitting in the
teacher's swivel chair in the aisle between rows of seats, next to her friend
Marissa. Together, they had a knack for
getting Mrs. Rubera off the subject of French.
"Who cares?" John,
who sat in the back, called to Kristin.
"The more time without her, the better!" John was a troublemaker who constantly got on Mrs. Rubera's bad
side. Unlike Sassy, Mrs. Rubera had a
reason to dislike this particular student.
He was constantly being sent out of class, amid gales of laughter
nonetheless, and was suspended often also.
It was a running joke in their class that his full name happened to
sound like the French expression for "I've had it up to here!": Je n'ai mar!
"Jamie, Jamie, Jamie!" a voice called from the back of
the room. Jamie turned to see who it
was; it was Chris (Spike) Rogers. "Sam,
Sam, Sam!" He called. Sassy turned to face him too. Spike made a motion for them to come and sit
in front of him. Sassy just rolled her
eyes and turned away. Jamie shook her
head fervently.
"No, a teacher's going to come in her any minute and
they'll catch me out of my seat and then I'll get in trouble," she said in a
childlike voice. Jamie was a goody two
shoes who never liked being in trouble.
She never did anything that ever put her in any situation that would get
her in trouble. As she said this, she
didn't notice the hush that had fallen over her classmates.
"Tu as raison,
Mademoiselle." Jamie turned slowly
to the front of the classroom and almost fainted from embarrassment. A crimson blush slowly crept up her cheeks
as she looked at the teacher standing in front of her. She had never seen him around the school
before. That wasn't saying much,
because Haverhill was such a large school they had to employ full-time
substitute teachers. He was very tall,
probably around 6'4", and wore a black trench coat over a white button-down
linen shirt and black Dockers. Perched
on his olive-black head of hair was a black fedora. What was most remarkable about him was that he was wearing a
black mask that covered most of his face, except for a little around his mouth
and chin. His skin was extremely pale,
and bright amber eyes seemed to glow from behind that mask. He had large, elegant hands and was rather
thin. He held the entire class in his
thrall, Mrs. Rubera's normally rambunctious, noisy class.
"Pardonez-moi,"
Jamie whispered, bringing her hand to her face to try to calm her bright red
flush.
"Ce ne rien,"
the new teacher replied. He regarded at
her at length before going on. "Classe!
Fait attention! Je suis votre
nouvelle professeur de francais."
He said, turning and facing the rest of the class.
"What?" John
said, snapping the hold the new teacher had on the class. "Speak English for God's sake!"
"Garcon, you
should understand at least that much of French," the new teacher said, a French
accent apparent on the English words, though slightly clipped with
annoyance. This drew blank looks from
most of the class, except Sassy and Jamie.
Sassy coughed lightly to draw Jamie's attention to her. Once Jamie looked at her, Sassy raised her
eyebrows. Jamie raised her eyebrows at
Sassy also, then turned to John.
"He said 'Class, pay attention. I am your new French teacher.'" Jamie said softly.
"Tres bien,
mademoiselle," the new teacher said, with a hint of surprise in his
flawless French. He regarded her again,
briefly as Sassy turned to John herself.
"If you didn't understand that either, that meant 'Very good, miss.'" Sassy remarked sarcastically. She turned back to the front of the room,
the smarter half of the class giggling.
The new teacher cocked his head to the side at her, and Sassy mirrored
his movement. Jamie giggled behind her
hand. Spike chuckled. Angie just shook her head.
"Very good, young lady...though I don't like that tone of
voice," the new teacher said. Sassy
snorted. Angie could read her mind from
across the room: 'Too bad!'
"Since this seems to be a rather French-impaired
class...I shall conduct this first class in English," the new teacher said in
his languorous accent. "I am your new
French teacher. My name is Monsieur
Tharen. I expect that we will be
speaking French during two thirds of the class time, shortly."
"What happened to Mrs. Rubera?" Marissa asked.
"She had a nervous breakdown," Monsieur Tharen said
matter-of-factly. "She's in an... Institution right now."
"Yes!" Kristin
said, "We finally sent her to the crazy
bin!" She turned to Marissa. "Bomb Squad!" she cheered, high-fiving
her. Monsieur Tharen turned to her, and
the class could almost sense his temper rising.
"Mademoiselle,
please return to your regular seat and replace that chair to the teacher's desk
at once," he demanded sternly.
"But Mr. Tharen, Mrs. Rubera always lets me—" Kristin
began whining.
"Je suis Madame
Rubera?" M. Tharen inquired
quietly.
Again, blank looks and silence. Sassy and Jamie sighed.
"Am I Mrs. Rubera?" they translated, in stereo (where available).
"I beg your pardon.
Continuing, I am not Mme. Rubera, therefore I will not conduct my class
in the same way she did. That is the
first point we must get straight. I
insist on complete respect from all of you."
M. Tharen said. "Now Kristin, we
will wait for you to replace the chair." Kristin blushed and rolled the chair back to the desk. "Thank you." M. Tharen said as Kristin sat in the front row. "Now, who can tell me what this class is
on?"
"Drugs," replied John, automatically. Giggles from the back of the room. The front half of the room expected M.
Tharen to send him to the office.
Instead, he said "Besides that. What are you working on right now?" Most of the class looked at each other vacantly. What were
they working on?, they seemed to ask each other.
Jamie raised her hand tentatively. "We're reading Cyrano de Bergerac," she
said, barely above a whisper.
"Ah," Monsieur Tharen said, sitting on Mrs. Rubera's
desk, next to the computer. "Savinien
Cyrano de Bergerac. How far have you
gotten?"
"The first sentence," Sasmoe supplied.
M. Tharen's air was quizzical. "How long have you been working on this?"
"Almost a week," Spike said.
"What exactly have you been doing for the past week?"
M. Tharen asked them. Kristin
laughed.
"Mrs. Rubera is the easiest teacher to distract. She told us stories about her cat, Frisky,
who ate cigarettes..." she said.
"Yeah, and her 'hearing aid'," Amy, another sophomore,
said from the back of the room, next to John.
"Do you have any pets, Mr. Tharen?" Marissa asked sweetly.
"Or hearing aids?"
Kristin laughed.
"You will find I am not quite so easy to distract," M.
Tharen said, something that was almost a smile curving his lips. "I am sorry to say that I have nothing that
you would find of interest to tell you," he said, looking acutely at
Jamie. She drew a deep breath in,
slowly, hoping he would move those burning eyes from her.
"You can tell us why you're wearing a mask," Angie
said. This was not like her, as she
hardly ever spoke up in class at all, never to say something quite so
bold.
M.
Tharen flinched slightly at this, though he hadn't broken Jamie's gaze
yet. He closed his eyes and slowly said
"No."
"Oh,
come on, it can't be that bad." Marissa
said. "Why don't you just take it
off?" M. Tharen's muscles tensed up visibly,
his shoulders hunching up a little.
"No,
now please..."
"Come
on! Take it off!"
"Yeah,
Mr. Tharen, take the mask off!"
The
entire class started egging him on, pleading with him to take his mask off, but
this time it was Jamie and Sassy who fell silent. They looked at his apparent growing rage, and then at each
other. Sassy nodded.
"Guys,
quit it!" she yelled. No one was
listening.
"Come
on guys, leave him alone, it's his first day!"
Jamie pleaded.
Andre,
one of John and Amy's friends, who was always getting in fights with Kristin,
turned to her and Sassy, taunting "Teacher's pet."
Jamie
blushed red and Sassy hissed "Shut up Andre."
"Ce SUFFIT!" M. Tharen roared, standing up.
"Taisez-vous! Voulez-vous savoir?" he asked,
enraged. The vacant looks were altered
by fear this time. "Voulez-vous savoir?" he repeated. "Ah, I've forgotten. You don't understand French," he spat. He walked around to face the chalkboard
behind the desk, apparently calming down.
"Mademoiselle who is wearing
the blue velvet, please do not translate," he said, still facing the
chalkboard, his voice barely audible, yet courteous.
"Oui, monseiur," Jamie said quietly. Sassy, ever the one to be literal, opened
her mouth to translate his outburst herself.
"Vous aussi, mademoiselle who is wearing the 'Bad Monkey' shirt," M. Tharen
said. He turned around and began to
speak in cold, even tones. "You will
all read the first scene of Cyrano de Bergerac tonight for homework." The class began to protest. "Tomorrow I expect to be able to have a few
of you act it out for us, using your books, of course, and be able to discuss
it intelligently," he paused "In French."
The class moaned as the bell rang.
In one motion, everyone in class bolted for the doorway except for
Jamie, Angie, and Sassy, all of whom were incredibly slow. As Jen, another sophomore, bolted for the
doorway, she knocked the books off Jamie's desk and onto the floor. Jamie groaned as her sheet music from chorus
fanned out on the dirty tiled floor.
She walked around her desk and bent over to pick it up, practically
bumping heads with M. Tharen, who was stopping to help her. She looked up at him.
"Thank
you," she said.
He
looked down at the songs in his hand. "Birdland, 42nd Street, I Am But A
Small Voice, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Soon It's Gonna Rain," he
read off the title of each piece of music.
"All I Ask of You, too," she said,
displaying the sheet music in her hands.
He looked at her and smiled.
"You're
in chorus then?" he asked rhetorically.
"Which one?"
"Concert
Choir," Sassy piped up, naming the second highest chorus. "We both are," she continued as they looked
up at her. Angie joined them, standing
to the left of Jamie's desk. Jamie and
M. Tharen stood up, and M. Tharen gave Jamie her music back.
As
Jamie loaded up her backpack, M. Tharen asked "Are you auditioning for Chamber
Chorus this year?", naming the highest chorus.
"Yes,"
Sassy and Jamie said simoultaneously.
"How do you know about Chamber?" Sassy asked, curious.
"I've
talked to Mr. Gori," he said, identifying their choral instructor. Jamie finished loading her bag and heaved it
on one of her shoulders.
"Um,
Mr. Tharen, I'm really sorry about what I said," Angie began. "I just thought it might be an interesting
story..."
"It
is," he said, quietly. "Perhaps some
day I'll tell it." He looked at
them.
"I'm
Angie," Angie said by way of introduction.
"Sam,"
Sassy said.
"My
name is Jamie," Jamie said, offering her hand.
He started, then glanced at it for a second before hesitantly shaking
it, then snatching back his hand quickly, as if he thought she would hit
him.
"Pleased
to meet you, mademoiselles." He looked over all three of them, pausing to
glance back at Jamie. "You must sing
something for me some time," he said, directing this at Sassy and Jamie.
"We'll learn something in French," Sassy laughed.
A hint of amusement crept into his voice. "I'll have to correct your pronounciation
then," he retorted.
"Feel free," Jamie volunteered.
"C'mon guys, we better get to class," Angie said. She headed for the doorway, Sassy following
her, and Jamie dragging her feet behind Sassy.
"Au revoir,
Monsieur Tharen," Jamie called as she was yanked out of the room.
M. Tharen watched the three girls disappear into the mass
of students crowding down the hallway.
"Au revoir, ma petite," he
whispered. Somehow, he felt that period
one was going to be his favorite class...
