I know some people said this idea wasn't really their cup of tea, but it may not be what you've already assumed.
Let me know what you think in the reviews.
Enjoy!
At the age of 23, Alex Vause, having been through university, finds herself edging closer to entering the profession she had been tailoring her life in the education system towards. Having studied at Smith College on a scholarship, the brunette gained her degree in English Literature, followed by her Masters, and is now in the process of training to become a teacher. After 3 months of starting her teacher training at Smith, the brunette is set to embark on her first of two spells of placement work, whereby she'll initially observe the classroom setting for 2 weeks, before returning to College to apply everything she's learned to the state of her set classes. Her second spell will begin around a month later, except this time taking a more hands-on approach in taking over with the teaching.
Sitting down in a small wooden chair, the brunette observes her surroundings; on her right is a bookshelf, boring reads, she thinks to herself as her eyes scan the book's spines; to her left is a wall painted a pastel shade of yellow with a picture, of which she assumes is an old painting of the building she's currently sitting in, and before she gets the time to scan in further detail, a door in front of her opens.
"Alex Vause?" a middle-aged man asks in question.
"Yes!" the brunette confirms eagerly, standing up and lifting her hand to shake the outstretched one of the male headteacher standing in front of her.
"Joe Caputo," the man introduces himself while smiling before turning his body to the side. "Come in, come in."
The brunette, dressed in a black pair of trousers and white blouse, follows the man into his office, sitting down on a small leather chair opposite his desk as instructed.
"It seems like you've had quite the impressive education, Alex," the man says as he sits down, holding up a paper copy of the brunette's résumé.
"I've worked hard for the opportunities I've made available for myself, Mr Caputo."
"Please, call me Joe," the man corrects, using his right hand to briefly scratch his beard. "I just wanted to call you in here, Alex, so I can run through a few things with you. I'll pass you over to your department when we're all done here."
Although eager to get into teaching, the brunette has never liked meetings; having finished talking to Joe about her expectations, Alex is given a tour of the school's compound by a member of staff before being taken to the English block to meet with her department head – the man who interviewed her for the placement in the first place.
Walking through a set of double doors, up a set of stairs, followed by another set of doors, the brunette walks along the corridor to find the office of her first point of contact during her short stay, David Brady, Head of English.
He's an older man – perhaps nearing retirement age, the brunette ponders – and, judging by the other two occasions she has met with the man, he is always well-dressed, yet extremely boring. His voice, low and rough, gives off a monotone echo, something that – if she were a student in his class – would have sent the brunette to sleep.
"David?" Alex asks while giving a gentle knock on his open office door.
"Ah, Alex, just in time," he greets, standing to deliver a handshake. "I've set the class you'll be looking in on tomorrow some reading to make some notes on for an essay later in the week. I'll give you a copy of the text if you want to keep up to speed," he adds, handing over a copy of a large, stapled paper booklet.
Romeo and Juliet, its cover reads, to which Alex has to stop herself from rolling her eyes at the clichéd romantic play the class is studying. It's one she's for sure familiar with – she studied it herself when comparing texts for her thesis in College; being at the top of her class meant she was ahead of the game while others struggled. Maybe I might be of some help.
The following day, it's 8:55am and Alex is sitting at the back of an AP English class full of Junior Year high school students. She took a peak at the reading she was given, quickly deciding it wasn't necessary to re-read something she herself wouldn't be teaching nor writing an essay on.
Mr Brady kicks off the lesson, briefly introducing the brunette as 'Miss Vause' who will be 'observing progress' at the start of the lesson, before his monologue is disrupted by the door flying open.
In walks a young blonde carrying a box full of, what Alex can only imagine is, books, placing it down on the floor at the front of the room while the teacher thanks her. Alex, from her seated position at the back observes the blonde whose shoulder-length hair is tied into a ponytail, matched with a light pink jumper and light navy jeans. The blonde starts to walk towards her seat, to which she lands on the table at the back of the room – one of which is the closest to where Alex is sitting. There's an empty seat next to her unlike all the other rows of pairs sitting next to each other, but the brunette soon figures out that one person from the class is absent as Mr Brady verbally points out from the front of the room while scanning the rows of desks.
The classing system at Litchfield High is organised by ability when students get older throughout the school; the current class, which Alex learns is the second highest of the two AP English classes, is the one she has been assigned to observe and later teach upon her return from College. The students, she identifies, vary in levels of understanding, and as she listens to Mr Brady ask a series of questions about a specific piece of text, the brunette keeps her head down with a pen on her paper as she takes notes on his methods of eliciting responses from students.
"What possible motifs can we get from this extract?" he asks as he stands by the whiteboard, ready to write down some of the students' ideas.
A period of silence fills the room before he then chooses a student; Alex is surprisingly impressed by what she hears, causing her to pull her eyes away from her paper to look up and listen with her full attention.
"The contrasting use of metaphorical language about light highlights the forbidden nature of their relationship. The dark isn't necessarily portrayed as an evil thing, but it relates to the idea of their love is hidden, which is shown from the description of the moon in a positive way, yet personifying it by saying it's 'envious'."
"Excellent, Piper," Mr Brady says before turning to synthesise the answer onto the whiteboard while verbally summarising the point to the class.
Alex, still looking up, is stunned by the student's answer; the young blonde sitting in front of her, who she now learns is called Piper, clearly has an advanced understanding of not only the text, but the terminology needed to highlight the key pragmatic features of a text.
Intrigued by the young girl's answer, the brunette turns the page of her notebook, writing 'Motifs' at the top, underlining it, before writing her own summary – slightly more advanced compared to the one on the board – of the blonde's perceptive point.
While the students are set a task to complete in their pairs, Alex notices the blonde in front of her working on her own being that the seat next to her is unoccupied. Curious as to what new ideas she's applying to the text, the brunette gets up from her chair, putting down her notepad, and moves to sit in the one next to the young blonde.
"So, how're you getting on over here, Piper?" she asks, putting her elbow on the desk.
The blonde, turning her head to the right, seems momentarily stunned by the presence next to her, yet quickly recovers as she gives off a toothy smile and goes into great depth about her annotations and the reasons behind them. The brunette quickly discovers that the young woman before her is most definitely talented when it comes to analysing literature, and finds it difficult to not use this time to study her features as the blonde flickers between maintaining eye contact and looking down at her paper to check her notes.
There's a mature aura about her; her ideas are spoken about with great levels of clarity, yet Alex finds herself zoning out, instead fixating on the young woman rather than what she is saying. Her profile, Alex admits to herself, is just as impressive as her intellect; with a chiselled jawline, perfect rows of whitened teeth, perfectly sculpted eyebrows and alluring dimples, the brunette finds herself transfixed. The brunette, however, is ripped away from her thoughts at the sound of the blonde chuckling, causing her to focus back on what the younger woman is saying, and as she does so, she can't help but smile at the tinge of red covering the younger girl's face, something that causes Piper to turn back towards her paper as she stutters over her current explanation. Their following conversation flows well with sophisticated levels of intellect – something Alex would never expect in response from a high school student.
When she goes to turn her page, the blonde knocks her pen off the table, which happens to land by Alex's feet. Leaning down, the brunette hands the pen back to the blonde, smiling not only at the blonde's muttered apology, but – worrying – at their brief hand connection. At hearing an 'okay everyone' being announced from the front by her colleague, Alex takes the pen from where Piper had placed it on the desk and leans over towards the piece of paper in front of the blonde. Using the pen, the brunette underlines a specific, unannotated phrase;
"What is this really trying to tell you?" she asks cryptically before getting up and moving back to her original seat.
As the brunette looks up, she sees the young blonde's head turned in her direction with a look of confusion on her face. Her eyebrows are frowning downwards, and her blue, oceanic eyes look as though they're pleading for more information. The brunette crosses her legs over, placing her notepad back on her lap before smirking at the young woman, raising an eyebrow in challenge.
Each row is asked to share one of their points to the class one at a time, and when it's Piper's turn, Alex shuffles forward in her chair, eager to know what she's going to say.
"Um I looked at the phrase 'Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill'," the blonde begins, sounding slightly hesitant, almost as though still in thought. "It's ironic in the sense that it's saying that giving someone mercy will result in violence. In this case, giving mercy to murderers won't stop them from murdering again, which foreshadows the fact that two people lose their lives needlessly because of who they love."
Alex, still leaning forwards, is beyond amazed with the blonde's answer. It had taken her several attempts to even grasp an understanding of that quotation in such detail when she was studying the play from her memory, and Piper had mastered its nuances in the space of about 5 minutes.
"Extremely perceptive, Piper. I've never thought of it in that way," Mr Brady says with a stunned expression at the front of the room. "Very impressive. Well done."
With the few remaining minutes of the hour the lesson has been running for, the students are given instructions for an essay due for their next lesson in two days' time, and when the bell goes, they stand up, packing away their things to go to their next class.
"So, how did I do?" Piper asks the brunette as she tries to fix the second strap of her rucksack onto her shoulder.
"Better than I could have done. It took me a long time to get my head around that one," Alex replies honestly. "Great work, Piper."
"Thank you," the blonde replies through a shy smile, ducking her head slightly while starting to walk backwards towards the door. "It's nice to be challenged in this class for once."
"I know the feeling, kid," Alex says before putting her own bag across her body, following the blonde out the door while waving a goodbye to her colleague as she heads to her temporary office. "See you soon," she concludes through a smile as the two reach the doorway, turning left before the blonde gets a chance to reply.
Although she technically isn't yet a qualified teacher, the brunette can't help but think she may have interacted with the blonde in an unprofessional manner. Sure, she wants to help students, but it's clear that Piper doesn't belong in her current class or need any help. Deciding to not let herself get too caught up in Piper as a person instead of helping the younger girl with content, the brunette tells herself to be careful, knowing that she can't be seen as getting too involved with only one student in particular.
"Piper – can you do me a favour and grab the box of books from my office?" is the first thing Piper hears when she enters her English classroom.
English is her favourite subject by far; a lot of her free time is either spent writing about topics she's passionate about, or reading books – both fiction and non-fiction. Her parents don't seem to understand their daughter's passion for literature, yet they don't particularly seem to understand her as a person at the same time. With straight A grades, the blonde needs to keep up her progress for the remainder of the year as well as throughout her Senior year, being that she hopes to go to College to study Literature.
Piper's morning hadn't been too stressful; she was driven to school by her best friend, Polly, arrived on time, registered, walked to collect a box of books, and now, as she re-enters her classroom, having put the box of retrieved books down, she walks over to her desk.
The blonde immediately spots the woman at the back, yet keeps her gaze elsewhere. She is – without explanation – intimidated by the woman sitting at the back's presence, and when she listens to her teacher explain that 'Miss Vause' will be observing, she squirms in her seat. The feeling of being watched when you're working isn't a sensation the blonde is comfortable with, but as the lesson begins to delve into the extract of text she had spent all of 10 minutes annotating at home, the observer behind her was at the back of her mind.
As class continues and it's announced that the next task will be in pairs, Piper rolls her eyes. The person who normally sits next to her, Sarah, never comes to class, making these sorts of tasks really fucking annoying. Mr Brady is a very experienced teacher – a fact he loves to disclose, however, he frowns upon conversation that's off topic, meaning every lesson, you have to sit in your designated pair, not turning around or working in larger groups. It sucks considering literature should be something that you discuss in larger groups, yet being that her understanding and interpretations of texts are often different from her classmates, working on her own suits Piper's interests.
With her head turned down towards her paper, Piper sees a shadow appear in her peripheral vision, followed by a husky voice: "So, how're you getting on over here, Piper?"
Turning her head to the side, Piper is faced by the woman who had initially intimidated her just from sitting at the back; the woman she had successfully managed to block out for the last 25 minutes. Fuck, she thinks before letting out a toothy smile along with a reply.
"I'm doing great, thanks, Miss Vause. I read ahead and made most of my notes on this scene already, so I don't really have anything new to add."
"Well tell me something new then, Miss…" the brunette says with a pause, waiting for the gap to be filled.
"Chapman."
"Miss Chapman. Share with the crowd."
Maybe she isn't that bad, the blonde thinks to herself, liking the fact that someone is encouraging her to share her ideas as well as wanting to listen to them.
When talking about her notes and the reasons why she came up with them, the blonde notices the brunette's fixed gaze, perhaps she's just listening intently, yet continues.
"The third point I noted down was about the description of the setting being a metaphor for…" she pauses, not knowing whether the woman next to her is listening, waiting for her to add something. "I'm guessing Romeo and Juliet isn't really your kind of thing to read," Piper digresses, knowing she isn't being listened to. "Miss Vause?" she tries one final time, only to laugh at the woman's lack of response.
Although a part of her felt slightly uncomfortable under the gaze, another felt appreciated under it. Her black frames and eyebrows, although more plucked than her own, fit her face shape; her green eyes, which happen to be staring into the blonde's soul, radiate perceptiveness; her teeth, although hidden by her lips… are… hidden by her lips, is she wearing lip-gloss?, the blonde thinks to herself before completely dismissing her thoughts, returning them to the task at hand.
The fact that her mind even went there while the brunette is staring at her makes the blonde's cheeks flush a shade of red, now feeling embarrassed under the woman's gaze.
"So, tell me what you think about Shakespeare's intentions," the brunette comments, changing the chain of their discussion, but not the topic.
Feeling more at ease with the raven-haired woman, Piper enjoys their conversation about the play – something she rarely gets to experience when in school.
"Sorry, about that," Piper says as she looks down at the pen by the other woman's feet she had accidentally knocked off the table when turning her page.
Without meaning to, the blonde's eyes follow the brunette's body, falling on the buttons of her white shirt, and given the angle of her arm reaching for the pen, she gets a glimpse of her white laced bra – something that makes Piper immediately scald herself, darting her eyes elsewhere. It gets worse when she hands the pen back; although the brunette seems unbothered by their hand contact, the blonde feels as though she's dying in a bubble of internal embarrassment, being that she's never felt so affected by another person's presence.
In hearing Mr Brady attempt to gain the class' attention, the blonde places her pen onto the table, happy that the situation between herself and the older woman won't reach a stage of awkwardness.
Feeling a hand – followed by a body – lean over her, the blonde has to clench her jaw. The quick manoeuvre from the woman next to her allows her perfume to be wafted into the air, and the husky, yet light, feminine smell fills her nose. Despite her physical reaction, the blonde watches the pen glide along the page to the only section of the text she hadn't annotated, the quotation: 'Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill'.
"What is this really trying to tell you?" the voice of her counterpart asks for the final time before she retreats to her seat.
Whipping her head around, the blonde looks for an explanation – a prompt even – from the older woman. At seeing an eyebrow raise, Piper turns back to her desk to wrack her brains around something that she had chosen to avoid when at home.
When it came to her turn to share her answer, the blonde was indecisive. She wanted, so desperately, to not make a fool of herself in front of someone who clearly had great literary understanding of the current text, however, in thinking: no one else will probably care, to herself, she decides to throw herself in the deep end.
Although Mr Brady stated he was impressed, it wasn't his opinion Piper wanted. She wanted to turn around and ask about how she did, but didn't want to come across as being annoying. Waiting another 5 minutes until the ends of class, having to listen to instructions about an essay, was making the blonde more and more impatient, especially knowing that the answer to her question was right behind her.
When the bell did go, as planned, Piper slowly started to pack her bag, before turning around while trying to fix it onto her shoulder.
"So, how did I do?"
"Better than I could have done. It took me a long time to get my head around that one. Great work, Piper," the older woman replies through a sincere smile.
Hearing her name coming out of the brunette's mouth causes a shy smile to envelope across Piper's face as she mutters her thanks. "It's nice to be challenged in this class for once," she adds, having never been given an additional challenging question throughout the months of being in this class. She begins to move away from the older woman, afraid that her sudden shyness is obvious.
"I know the feeling, kid."
Piper – again – has to clench her jaw as her attempt to escape the older woman was unsuccessful; they start to walk alongside one another towards the door.
She doesn't get the chance to reply to 'Miss Vause' when she departs, yet finds herself wondering why, instead of 'observing' the class' progress, she spent more time conversing about the implications and meanings of a play.
Walking to her next class, the blonde ponders her thoughts. While trying to categorise the more… confusing ones into another part of her brain, she tells herself she'll look into their meanings another time, not entirely sure when – if ever – an appropriate opportunity will unveil itself.