UNABLE.


This is awkward.

Lateness isn't the cause—it's the sincere promise Daniel Fenton made the day prior to never be late again. It was sincere because he wished it could be honest, and it was made at all because he hadn't known what else to say to English teacher Vice Principal William Charles Lancer when the guy launched into yet another scathing lecture. It seems as if Lancer is slowly but surely giving up, and that's scary, because this is the guy who gives school-spirit pep-talks in the auditorium on a random whim. It comes naturally to him. How can he be Vice Principal if he's not a motivational sort of person?

Well, they aren't random whims. Casper High is not a large school and it is easy to see when it is running low on morale. So, whenever this happens, Lancer does his best to raise that general attitude circulating the student body. Sometimes it works, Danny's witnessed it, even felt it a couple instances. The rest were shrugged off and eye-rolled away, ignored as a typical staff-member trying way too hard, as per usual.

Lancer says nothing. This isn't elementary school, where a teacher's disappointment is one of the single most cutting things a kid can experience. Disappointment runs rampant in high-school in numerous ways, and broken promises are common perpetrators. Danny sits in his average seat, in the middle-back, not sure what he was expecting. He's being stared at by some, he knows. The socially-inept boy who stands there silently twitching and looking strange, a far cry from the approachable friendly freshman he was just a year before. One who showed up to class on time, wasn't ever absent, and knew what the teacher talked about. He doesn't seem to know what he's talking about half the time anymore.

And to think, it all started with an accident. Sometimes Danny thinks of it in terms of a car-accident, the wounds inflicted forever leaving the front-seat passenger disabled and crippled for the rest of their lives in some way or another. Oh, boo-hoo, at least he still has his legs. His life is not that bad. He is a whiny teenager. He…

He wishes he could keep his promises like he could once upon a time, like a paraplegic wishes that they still had feeling in their lower-body.