The bell rang shortly after he seated himself in the Chemistry Lab and the woman teacher walked in and wrote "Dr. Trudeau" on the board and started into her pre semester grading criteria and syllabus. Brandon paid half attention, and half looked around the room for anyone he had met. He saw a few kids he had played games with the day before, but couldn't remember any names. He hadn't noticed his head wandering until a chalkboard eraser came flying his way and hit off the desk in front of him.
"Eyes front, this is chemistry, not art. Wandering eyes put you in the hospital in here. I expect you to pay attention or just don't show up and feel free to fail."
She had his attention now. She continued on with her lecture and started them on a simple experiment. What should have been a simple mixture turning a few cool colors ended in a puff of smoke for him as he put in too much of a powder. After class, his teacher took him aside and said that she hoped he would be more careful in the future, today it was just a smoke cloud, next class could be a burn if he wasn't careful and it wasn't her job to stop him from learning important life lessons about safety.
Brandon left the class and headed for his locker. From a few spaces over, he heard a knocking and someone said "Is anyone out there?" from inside it.
"Yeah how'd you get in there? Hey whats the combination to this?"
"Someone stuffed me in. New locker so I don't really know the combination yet, its too dark in here even if I had the paper I wrote it on. Just go upstairs to the office, they'll have all the combinations."
Brandon ran upstairs to the office and saw Dr. Kowalski behind the desk.
"Dr. Kowalski, I need your help, some kid is locked in a locker downstairs."
"What number is it? I'll get the combination. Do you know who did it?"
"2 lockers down from mine, 278 I think. The guy inside didn't say who did it."
Pete found the combination sheet in the file cabinet and went down with Brandon only to find no one in the locker in question.
"Brandon, so far I have no reason to believe you would lie to me, especially on your first day, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you were telling the truth. I know your file, you aren't the type to call false alarms. If you find out what happened, come tell me. There is nothing wrong with people getting what is coming to them as long as you do it the right way. Your next class should be starting soon, so you better be on your way."
Brandon had little to say. He knew he was telling the truth, luckily Dr. Kowalski seemed to believe him. But he noticed that even the headmaster knew that the direction of the school had taken a turn for the worse. He headed for his next class, English, right around the corner.
His English teacher was...intimidating. In big sloppy letters the mountain of a man wrote "Russell Northrop". As he spoke it seemed like he had a speech impediment of some kind, and that English was not really his thing.
"Just call me Russell," he said slowly. "I'm here to teach you guys to read and write good. Better than me. Petey says I'm what happens when you don't read or write good, so you need to learn. Better to learn from someone who knows what it's like to have problems with English than from someone who acts like you're not good at it. I want all of you to be good at it. We're gonna read my favorite book first. It's about a guy like me who wasn't so smart, but at least he got smart for a while."
He passed out the books, Flowers For Algernon.
"You guys read at whatever pace you want. It's a short book and not too hard. We're gonna talk about each chapter so you'll want to read at least one each night, but you can read more I guess. I don't need you guys here to read, so you can stay here if you want, or you can go somewhere else and read your books. I'll be up here if you need me."
The goliath sat at his desk in a steel chair specially bought clearly to hold someone with the muscle mass of a gorilla. Brandon and several other students left the classroom, but unlike most of the students who just put their books in their lockers and left the school building, he took his book with him and sat outside in back of the school on the steps near the fountain.
Shortly after, he heard a call over the public address system.
"Brandon Grinder to the office, Brandon Grinder to the office."
What? He hadn't done anything wrong. He was just sitting here actually doing his class work. Better to get it over with than to make himself look guilty. He picked up his bag, put his book in it, and headed back to the headmaster's office.
As he came to the top of the stairs, Dr. Kowalski waved him to come back into his office.
"What is this about, sir? I didn't do anything wrong. Mr. Northrop told us we didn't have to stay in class to do our work."
"It's about the locker incident earlier. The student, who I won't name for his well being, says that you're the one who put him in there."
"Are you kidding me? I'm the one who tried to help him. Why is he blaming me?"
"Don't worry, Mr. Grinder, I'm still on your side for now. There is no reason you would be the one to report someone being put in a locker if you're the one who did it. I think he is covering up for someone, but I have no idea why someone would protect an attacker."
"He's probably just trying to keep his nose clean."
"This isn't the way to do it. And we know how you students use the phrase. If he were keeping it clean, he would have stayed quiet about the whole thing. He wouldn't tell on the person who did it, or blame someone else who might retaliate. It doesn't make sense. But I'm sure you understand that this is twice today you've caught my attention. Try not to make a habit out of it. You're dismissed. Keep your nose clean but keep your ears open. I would say someone has it out for you."