A/N: Yup, another update. Quickly approaching a 3 day, 12 hour each marathon of work so it will probably be sometime next week when I update again. Possibly sooner. Here's chapter four for now, though. Ever wonder which sibling Maggie took after? Judge for yourself!
Chapter Four: Worlds Apart
Bart stood solidly against the never-ending crush of bodies flowing down the hallway. More than a few students threw dirty looks, gestures and words as they moved around him. Not that Bart noticed, he was staring at one of the nearby classrooms. More particularly at one with a bright orange sign in it's oblong window.
It read, 'A.L.P.- For higher education, look no further!' Bart had to suppress a belly laugh at the corny greeting.
"Where is she?" he wondered out loud. "She couldn't be that upset, could she?"
Bart peeked into the A.L.P. classroom just to be sure Lisa wasn't hiding. A sinking feeling formed in the pit of his stomach, it wasn't like her to be so fast out of her classroom. He turned back sharply to see his old friend, Milhouse Van Houten, standing right behind him.
"Woah! You gotta stop doing that, Milly."
"Hey... I told you not to call me that anymore! My mom's been looking at me funny again." Milhouse looked uncomfortable with the stares he was getting from the students passing them by. "Uhh... so, what'cha doin, Bart?"
"Looking for Lisa," he answered, regretting it almost immediately as an all too familiar look came into his old friend's eyes.
"Is she in there?" Milhouse asked hopefully, though perhaps a little too loudly for Bart's comfort. He winced, well aware of Milhouse's attraction to his sister.
"Cut it out man, jeez. Seriously," Bart said irritably, his hackles raised by the uneasiness he couldn't quite put his finger on.
"What? What'd I do?" Milhouse complained before trailing off, "Just asking... sheesh..."
Overhead the intercom kicked on with a loud, static-filled hiss.
"Attention, please. Bort Simpstone please report to the main office. Eh? Excuse me, Bart Simpson, to the main office. You know where," came the voice of the kindly old lady that made the morning announcements. Bart had never bothered to learn her name. Aparantly the feeling was mutual, but it still irritated him. 'She calls me up there how many times a year? Get it right!'
"Already?" Milhouse mused as he fiddled with his red, horn-rimmed, coke bottle glasses. He smirked as Bart hunched his shoulders.
"I'unno," Bart shrugged. He hadn't had time to do anything yet, it was only a few hours into the school year after all. "You don't think they're still mad about that pig in the heating duct, do you?"
Milhouse chortled but shook his head emphatically.
"I heard they blamed that on Nelson! It took three weeks to find it and he nearly got expelled. Instead they made him spend most of his summer volunteering to help clean the school. I'm gonna be careful in all the bathrooms until I figure out if he's been in there or not."
Bart smiled weakly and nodded, that uneasy feeling returned in full.
"Well, I'd better go face the music." With a shrug, he quickly broke away through the thinning crowd, hoping Milhouse hadn't thought to follow him. Even ten years of friendship wasn't worth the damage to his reputation if he was seen going everywhere with that walking faux pas. 'Damn it, Lisa!' Bart cursed his sister as the unnatural words passed through his head.
Having trodden this path often over the past two years, Bart made his way to the office in no time. As he rounded the corner he spotted an unlikely figure standing rigidly by one of the office's large, panoramic windows. The tall man's expression was even grimmer than usual.
"What the hell is Skinner doing here?" Bart wondered. 'This day just keeps getting wierder and wierder.'
*******
"Have fun, little dudette!" Otto, the school bus driver, wheezed as he pulled up in front of Springfield Elementary. "Give 'em one for Otto!"
He gave Maggie a vacant grin and thumbs up. Maggie rolled her eyes and laughed at the strange man as she passed him to jump down to the pavement outside of the bus. She looked up at the school and wondered if this year would go as smoothly as her first. She'd met alot of new people and was eager to find out how their summers were since most of them went away on vacation and couldn't play with her. Instead, she'd been reduced to playing practical jokes on the Flanders brothers that lived next door. All it took was a high-powered flashlight, some glitter taken from a small jar she found in the medicine cabinet at home and a megaphone borrowed from Bart to have them screaming about 'Doomsday' and running up the road. That one stuck out in her head because she'd actually been congratulated on it by Bart after returning his megaphone.
Some students, eager to be off the bus, jostled Maggie and shook the nostalgia from her head. She looked up at the building again, this time spotting Sarah chatting with a boy she knew from class last year up near the entrance.
"Hey, Sarah!" Maggie called out, running fast to greet her best friend. "Hey, Stew. You guys have a good summer?"
Sarah looked at Maggie for a few seconds as if she didn't remember her, but when realization hit she squealed childishly and ran over to hug her tightly.
"Hey, Maggie," Stew remarked, rather coldly."Yeah, we just got back from Rhode Island last week. Not that it concerns you."
He turned and quickly disappeared inside, but not before flashing a menancing look back over his shoulder at the girls.
"What's his problem?" Maggie wondered out loud, intending the question to be rhetorical.
"Who?" Sarah asked, not catching her inflection.
"That boy, Stew. Why's he always such a stick in the mud?" she answered. Sarah giggled shrilly.
"I think he likes you!" She took a step back, enjoying the sight of Maggie blush. A rare occurance.
"He does not! Take that back!" Maggie playfully swatted her friend on the shoulder. "C'mon, school's about to start!"
She let the worries of the previous day melt away as she fell into the joyful bliss of being around other eight-year-olds. Lisa seemed fine this morning, no need to fret about it like an old maid. Together she and Sarah rushed through the doors, nearly knocking over Willie, the groundskeeper, in the process as he tried to keep the children milling about from destroying his entire summer's worth of hard work.
"Ach! Wee'uns! You'd better not let Willie catch you messin up his halls or he'll get the hoose!" He soon gave up, though, and fell into a defeated posture.
"Sorry, Willie!" Maggie cried from down the hall.
Sarah got to the door of their new classroom first and casually tossed 'Rotten egg!' over her shoulder with a grin.
"Whatever!" Maggie darted around her friend and into the room before she could react.
"Hey! No fair!" Sarah giggled again as she settled into a seat adjacent to her. Looking around, Maggie saw alot of familiar faces, including that boy from outside, Stew, who seemed to be glancing in every direction but hers. Maggie then turned her attention to the front of the room, spotting her new teacher.
'Ms. Hoover', proclaimed the rectangular plaque on the desk.
"My sister had her, I think..." she whispered to Sarah, though the girl didn't appear to be listening anymore. Maggie continued to study the woman, giving up on her friend's short attention span. So this was the person who was expected to impart a year's worth of knowledge on them? Maggie wasn't impressed and the thought crossed her head, 'She looks like a broken toy!'
Constantly abused over the years, Ms. Hoover sat slumped haphazardly in her seat. Dark circles under her bloodshot eyes betrayed a long-term drinking problem which was only highlighted by the large, angry blue veins that ran the length of her too-thin neck. The tips of her sharply clawed, brownish-yellow fingers were a permanent hallmark of the years of chain-smoking she'd endured. Overall the effect was distrubing to Maggie, who worried that the slightest push would send the woman over the edge of sanity.
Finally the secondary bell rang and drew Maggie from her dark observations. The noise level in the room didn't diminish until Ms. Hoover got up and put on a practiced smile. 'Not a good sign.' Maggie thought.
"Good morning, class," she said with a note of sarcasm only Maggie seemed to catch. "Let's get started, shall we? First, roll call. Who isn't here?"
A few students waved their hands enthusiastically and the whole class snickered. Ms. Hoover ignored them, focusing instead on her seating chart.
"Says twenty-three... okay, twenty three. Good enough," she muttered.
As the day got underway, Maggie began suspecting that she wasn't going to be very happy with this new teacher. Every subject blended together under her monotonic instruction. Nearly two hours later Maggie had lost interest, along with the rest of her class, in what was being taught. 'This is ridiculous! I could do it better than this!' she privately boasted.
Up front, Ms. Hoover was writing a few basic math problems on the dry-erase board that Maggie hoped sincerely were a joke. Instead, Ms. Hoover turned and fixed an uninterested gaze on the class.
"Any volunteers?" she asked and predictably nobody wanted to so she pointed absently at Maggie. "How about you?"
Maggie looked at the board and her gut instinct was to refuse. This was pointless and, having solved all the problems the moment Ms. Hoover was done writing them, Maggie was finding it extremely difficult to humor the woman. But some part of her, still upset about the night before, interfered and she heaved a deep sigh. She got up and heard a faint "Go Maggie!" from Sarah as she passed up to the front of the room. Feeling all the eyes in the room on her back, Maggie grabbed a red marker and quickly wrote out the answers.
"Very good!" Ms. Hoover's eyes focused for what seemed the first time all day and she stared down at the girl.
"You would be..." she flicked her eyes to the seating chart which was no help. No one was seated properly, though one name stood out. "Maggie Simpson? Lisa's little sister, right?"
Maggie bristled, the discontented part of her psyche latched onto that comment.
"So what if I am? I have a brother too, you know." She didn't break eye contact.
"First thing you'll need to learn in my room, young lady, is that we don't mention him in this class."
"Why?" Maggie's grip on the marker tightened.
Ms. Hoover disregarded her question and swooped in for a closer look.
"Yes, I see it now. You look just like her!" Ms. Hoover's eyes glinted at the thought of her former prized pupil. "Oh, thank god you turned out like her and not the other one."
Her condescending tone dug into Maggie like nails on a chalkboard.
"So what if I answered a few stupid questions? These were easy! Even Bart wouldn't have a problem solving these. Why don't you give me a real challenge?" she said coolly, trying to quell her rising temper.
"Okay..." Ms. Hoover grabbed an eraser and wiped the board clean. "If you really are like your sister you won't have any trouble with... this!"
In a flash she scribbled out a few lines. The class gasped at the complexity of the question.
"Karen is twice as old as Lori. Three years from now, the sum of their ages will be 42. How old is Karen?" Ms. Hoover read out while pointing at the board.
"Easy." Maggie glared back. "Karen is 24."
"Superb. Looks like we have another genius." Ms. Hoover smiled and erased the question. Maggie held up a hand.
"Again, this time make it hard." the class 'ooh'd' and turned their attention back to Ms. Hoover.
"What? That wasn't... enough? Why don't you take your seat? There'll be plenty of time to prove yourself just like Lisa did."
Maggie stamped her foot on the ground.
"Why? Or are you afraid to actually challenge your students?"
"What do you mean?" Ms. Hoover finally broke eye contact, glancing around the room, where more and more eyes were turning to fix upon her. The students sensed something was wrong as Maggie began to lose control.
"What I mean is; why are you wasting our time like this? This is the same stuff they forced down our throats last year! I hoped this would be more interesting but I can see I was wrong."
"Your sister..." Ms. Hoover tried to regain control of the argument but only succeeded in riling Maggie further. Her panicked mind reacted instinctively, 'Uh-oh. Another independant thinker. Should I trip the alarm?'
"I'm... not... HER!" Maggie shouted as loud as she could, startling everyone in the classroom.
"That is enough, young lady!" Ms. Hoover took a step forward, gathering what little courage she had left. "There is no yelling in the classroom. Take your seat this instant!"
"I know why you're angry." Maggie's eyes narrowed dangerously and she, in turn, took a step towards her quickly crumbling teacher. "You hate this just as much as I do."
"What are you saying?" the shaking woman paled, fearing the answer.
"I'm saying you're a wreck, Ms. Hoover. You've failed us, you've failed the profession of teaching and, most of all, you've failed yourself. You're just a tired old drunk who's lost her passion for the job she pretended to enjoy years ago." she completed her slow walk up to her teacher, aware of the nearly two dozen pairs of eyes boring into her. "I've had enough of this. I'll be back when they put a real teacher in here. Don't know about you, ma'am, but I can't fake it as well as you can.
Leaving a scene of total shock in her wake, Maggie slammed the marker back into it's tray and stormed from the classroom.
"You can't speak to me like that you little bi... GO TO THE PRINCIPAL'S OFFICE!" Ms. Hoover, having recovered slightly, screamed after her, more out of spite than any real conviction.
Maggie paused and looked back over her shoulder with a frown.
"Funny, I think I just did," she remarked, as sweet as sugar, then continued down the deserted corridor. As for where she was headed, Maggie didn't have to be told to go to the principal's office. She'd already decided that for herself.
When her temper cooled, a twinge of regret entered Maggie's mind. 'Perhaps that was a bit much for the first day. Even Bart waited until the second week to throw a tantrum.' she reflected. But as she approached the door to Principal Skinner's office, Ms. Hoover's condescending tone and remarks echoed through her head. 'No. I'm not backing down on this!' Steeling her resolve, Maggie pushed open the door and found the stern disciplinarian sitting at his obsessively tidy desk.
As Maggie entered, Seymour Skinner hung up his phone and noticed her standing right in front of hiim.
"That was fast. Very good."
"What was fast?" Maggie was thrown not only by the remark, but its lack of context.
"There will be time for questions soon enough, I'm afraid. Gather your belongings; I need to bring you to the High School as quickly as possible. Your parents will meet us there."
"What's going on? Tell me!" Maggie slammed her hand on his desk, sending several pencils (which Skinner seemed to have great difficulty ignoring) rolling off the edge. He appeared confused for a moment before a hint of sadness cracked his usually indifferent facade.
"You don't know? Dear lord... I just told Ms. Hoover... she didn't...?" Seymour sighed, letting the thought drop off. "I'm sorry I have to be the one to tell you this, Maggie, but your sister, Lisa, never made it to school this morning. No one knows what happened."
A/N: Till next week. Please R/R if you've enjoyed the story so far! (and sorry if this seems too dramatic, it's going to get darker before all is said and done)