Dr. Benjamin Linus
*Beep Beep Beep* The warning bell rang, just as I found my first class. Latin. I, unlike most of my peers, enjoyed the Latin language. From the looks on the faces of my new classmates in Mr. Burke's class, no one at this school liked it either. "Excuse me, Mr. Burke?" I asked.
"Yes," he replied as he turned to face me.
"I'm Joan Schwenk, your new student. Where would you like me to sit?"
"Why don't you pick a seat back there," he gestured to a patch of empty seats near the back of the room.
My new classmates stared at me as I walked among their rows to get to the back. I chose a seat as close to the front as I could get, but that was still only the second-to-last row. In my first day of Latin, I learned that I was a couple units ahead of this class, so Latin would be a breeze for now, I thought. Now, my next class; European History – 306 – Linus, my schedule read.
It took me nearly the entire break to find out which building the room was located in, but I ran into the room just as the bell rang. Luckily for me, the teacher was fairly engrossed in writing something on the board. I approached him. "Mr. Linus?" He turned and smiled.
"What can I do for you?" he said in a genuine, happy voice, smiling. I couldn't help but smile back, almost blushing.
"I'm Joan Schwenk, your new student. Where should I sit?"
"Well, I'm afraid I only had one space to put you," he pointed to a desk that looked old and out of place next to the small, new desks that was in the back of the room.
I nodded and smiled, but the look of disappointment in having such poor spot must have been apparent, because he caught my shoulder as I turned to sit down at my seat and whispered in my ear. "We'll have a new seating chart in a few weeks, I'll get you a good spot," he winked and smiled. "Wait here for a moment," he added.
He finished up writing on the board then turned around and grasped my shoulder. "Class, this is Joan, she's new here, please be nice to her, don't shun her, etc." he said, joking, but only received a reaction from one girl in the front of the room. I walked to my seat and tried to get a feel for how the class was run. I enjoyed it, and noticed that the only one who readily participated was the girl who smiled at his joke earlier.
When the bell rang, I gathered my notebooks quickly so I could avoid being late to my next class. I read my schedule as I walked out of the room, but this proved to be a bad decision because I found myself tripping over someone's backpack. It was the girl who smiled earlier; I recognized her voice as she exclaimed, "Oh my god! I'm so sorry! Let me help you."
I looked up at her as I regained my footing. She was beautiful, had the most gorgeous dark-ish golden skin, and the sweetest apologetic smile. Suddenly I remembered that it was my turn to speak to her. "It's okay, after all, it was an accident," I said.
"I guess, but I'm so sorry," she replied. Then she grabbed my schedule and started to hand it to me. "Latin, cool. I take Latin too."
"Really? You think it's cool? I thought it was the only one who liked it. Does anyone else?"
She shook her head, "No, I think we're the only ones. Dr. Linus enjoys it too, though."
"Really?" I asked, referring to his speaking Latin. Then I added, "Dr. Linus, I called him Mr. Linus."
"Oh, he doesn't mind too much. He's a pretty cool teacher. My name is Alex, by the way, nice to meet you."
"Nice to meet you, too, my name is Joan."
"Yeah, I kind of remembered from the beginning of class."
"Yeah. That's right. I almost forgot."
Alex and I were like minded, especially in that we both thought Dr. Linus was cool. I soon came to realize that when it came to history, Alex and Dr. Linus almost never disagreed. They seemed to share a strange bond, and no matter how many times I raised my hand, no matter how good I did on a test, no matter what clever insight I gave during a discussion, I couldn't seem to discover what their little "club" was all about. So, in a truly sexist manner, I almost grew jealous of Alex. She was beautiful, a tad smarter than me, and a year older than me. It was horrible, but I found myself trying to better her, and almost compete with her for the attention of Dr. Linus. One day, at conferences, I planned to make an impression on him, a good one anyway.
Normally, a junior probably wouldn't go to parent-teacher conferences unless they were suffering from bad grades. My grades were all fine, but I figured that since it was my first year here, I should make sure all my teachers meet my mom. I'm usually the person who makes those types of decisions in my household. My dad died a year ago, and my mom started drinking to cope. It was pretty bad for a while after she left her job, but I guess she saw how it was affecting me. So she tried to clean herself up, and moved us away from our small, Montana home to an even smaller home outside of L.A. She still drinks, but she rarely gets black out drunk or go out to get wasted. She's usually subtle when it comes to drinking, now. It's not good still, but it's better than me going to bed hungry and alone every night, while she was black out drunk at the local bar where everyone knew about our situation.
When I got home, though, the day before conferences, she was fairly sober and agreed to meet me afterschool just off campus the next day. Eighteen hours later, I'm in front of the school scanning the adjacent parking lot for my mom. To my horror, I saw her stumble out of our station wagon, drunk. I ran over to her. "Mom let's go home," I said.
Before she had a chance to yell that she was fine, I turned and heard the voice of my biology teacher. "Joan! You're here for conferences, aren't you?"
I froze. "Yes we are!" my mom answered. Somehow hearing my mom slurring her words in front of my teacher and my school jerked me out of my shock.
"We'll meet you inside, Mr. Artz!" he waved and continued into the school. I then turned to my mom. "Okay, we're going to go inside, I'll introduce you to my teachers, and then we'll leave," her eyes were wandering, "Mom. Do you understand me?"
She looked at me as if I was crazy. "Of course I do."