Monday, January 14
I'm so excited for my new semester...if it ever starts, that is. My dad is taking foreeeeever to get ready so we can leave to go back to school.
"Step on it, daddy. I'm already late to meet up with the rest of the girls before class. If we're much later, I'm going to be late for my first class." Sybella lamented.
"I'm driving as fast as I can, Sybella!" Dracula replied. "The Drac-Mobile is getting up there in age. It requires a delicate touch!"
"If you would have just let me drive myself, we wouldn't have been late." Sybella informed. "How many times do you need to check your fangs in the mirror before you leave?"
"I had to make sure I looked good for my shift at the costume shop!" Dracula explained. "Besides, if you vould have driven, I vouldn't have been able to drive to my job! I am the owner of the place, after all."
"I know, daddy. Just try to drive a little faster. I don't want to make a bad impression on my teacher on my first day." Sybella explained.
"I'm not driving over the speed limit, young lady!' Dracula asserted.
"Oh daddy. What happened to the days where you'd be driving fast cars in your races?" Sybella teased.
"I never actually drove in the races! I just commented on them! You know that, my baby bat." Dracula affectionately replied to Sybella's jest.
"Okay…" Sybella rolled her eyes. "I guess we're just about there."
"I hope you have an amazing first day at school." Dracula prepared to say goodbye. "You'll do great, my little neck-biter."
"Thanks, daddy. I'll miss you." Sybella smiled, as the Drac-Mobile pulled up to the Grimwood's parking lot. Dracula drove up to the sidewalk closest to the front entrance of Grimwood's to allow Sybella to walk directly into the building without getting too cold. Despite the fact that it had been warmer than normal this past fall, January had been incredibly cold, with temperatures dipping below freezing.
"Bye!" Sybella waved as she opened her car door and ran into the building.
"That's my girl." Sybella could overhear her father say as she made a beeline for the building.
Luckily for Sybella, she was just barely able to escape being late for her first class, Economics. It was in a familiar room, #88, which she'd had numerous classes in over the years.
The vampiress burst into the room and quickly found a seat next to her friend Phantasma, with only a minute to spare.
"Hey." Sybella panted. She was out of breath from the sprinting she'd done to make it to class on time.
"I was wondering what happened to you!" Phantasma exclaimed. "I was worried you weren't going to make it!"
"My dad took forever to get ready this morning." Sybella rolled her eyes.
Before Phanty could respond, the teacher began speaking. This particular teacher was one she'd already had: Mr. Jaffe, who had taught her history her first semester of sophomore year.
"Hello everyone! Good to see so many familiar faces in this class." Mr. Jaffe began. "This is Economics class, where we will learn about the economic system and structure of our government. To start, we're going to do a little activity to get you in an economic mindset. Most of you will be moving out of your parents' house in the next few years, and you'll have to come up with a budget, whether you're going to attend college or work a job after you graduate from Grimwood's. I'd like you each to come up with a mock budget for how you're going to allocate your money to pay for each of the expenses you may have."
What an interesting assignment, Sybella thought. She hadn't even begun to think about how she was going to afford things when she went off to college. It's possible her daddy would help pay for some things, but she'd like to have to start taking on some expenses on her own.
"What are you putting down as things you'll need to budget for?" Sybella asked.
"Umm...food, college tuition, housing, textbooks, toiletries, makeup…" Phanty listed.
"Yeah, all that stuff for me too. Plus clothes." Sybella said. "How much does all that stuff cost?"
"Well, if I got a meal plan at college, maybe like $200 a month or so. Add on $1,000 a month for housing, maybe $500 for textbooks, $50 for toiletries and $50 for makeup." Phantasma thought out.
"Clothes are probably like $50 a month. Jeez, that gets me worried just thinking about how much all this stuff is going to cost." Sybella thought.
"Well, I'm going to have to save some money for my 'free the zoo animals' initiative." George, a male werewolf, said. George had been one of Isaiah's friends in Sybella's Creative Writing class.
"That's a gallant initiative, George. Some animals aren't treated as well as they could be in zoos." Mr. Jaffe commented.
"I don't care about that." George corrected. "I want to pay some people to open all the cages at the zoo and see what happens! That lion was eying up the zebra across from its cage pretty hard when I was last there. I imagine it's because they want to kiss!"
"How's it coming, Jonathan?" Mr. Jaffe moved on to the next student.
"Pretty good. I'm budgeting $2 for a new pair of shoes." Jonathan responded.
"Why do you think $2 for a new pair of shoes is enough? Shoes are far more expensive than that." Mr. Jaffe said.
"Not the kind I wear. All you really need is to buy two loaves of bread." Jonathan informed.
"That's so sad!" a female vampire exclaimed.
"It is indeed sad, Tamera." Mr. Jaffe agreed. "You need to get yourself better shoes than bread bags!"
"Oh, I don't use the bags. I just wear the bread. See?" Jonathan said, pointing down at his feet, which were currently in two loaves of french bread with holes in the middle for his feet. "It's called being environmentally friendly. By wearing these, I save all that rubber that could get dumped in the ocean."
"You don't have to be a clown to be an environmentalist." the female vampire, apparently named Tamera, rolled her eyes.
"But you do have to be an environmentalist to be a clown!" a teenage male clown said in a silly high-pitched voice, as he juggled an empty container of tofu and and a plastic tupperware marked "goat cheese," before tossing them in the recycling.
"What's that clown doing here again?" Sybella asked. "Aren't you the same one that showed up at my Sweet Sixteen last year? Surely you've found Fool School by now."
"He's my boyfriend." Tamera explained. "Or should I say, ex-boyfriend. What are you doing here, Chuck?"
"I'm here because ending a relationship is no laughing matter." the clown said seriously. "Was all our time together just a gag?"
The clown started tearing up, as he pulled a colorful handkerchief from inside his sleeve to wipe his nose, which was connected to dozens of other handkerchiefs.
"Am I just a joke to you?" the clown asked, honking his rubber nose as he said it. "Don't answer that."
"Get out!" Tamera shouted. "I'm trying to do a class assignment, Chuck."
"Okay. I'll just have to get over you then. Chuckles the Clown shall persevere!" he said, honking his nose and retreating from the room in an awkward way, due to the overly large shoes he was wearing.
"Well, that was the oddest start to a first day I've had." Mr. Jaffe shook his head. "Let me know if you all need any help figuring out what something might cost on your budgets."
Sybella didn't particularly need any help, or at least not any help in a way that Mr. Jaffe could assist with. Though she knew she didn't have to worry about it quite yet, the thought of having to fully support herself was scary. This class was sure to be an interesting learning experience for her.
Sybella came into her second and final class for the day, Sociology. According to the schedule she had received last semester, this was the only course in which she had an instructor she had never taken a class with before.
The vampiress was one of the first students to come into class, meaning that she basically had the pick of pretty much any seat she wanted. She chose a seat in the second row, second closest to the window.
Sybella prepared her materials for the class, taking out a notebook and a pencil. As she was doing this, another student caught her eye. The student was a witch with one side of her blonde hair completely shaved off, whilst the other side and the top of her head still had long blonde hair. The witch wore a t-shirt that said Bad Omens, with a picture of a man with his eyes bleeding.
Wow, how intense. Sybella thought. She'd try to avoid pissing that witch off at any cost. She kept about her business, taking out a folder. However, it turns out the edgy-looking witch came to sit in the seat right next to Sybella!
Oh boy, that could be a challenge. the vampiress thought.
To the vampiress's surprise, the witch looked directly at Sybella and chirped "Hi!"
Why would the witch want to talk to her? Moreover, why would she be so cheerful and chirpy when her appearance looked like she was about to harm someone at any moment?
"Umm...hi." Sybella replied in a shy tone. "I'm Sybella."
"Nice to meet you. I'm Kenzie." the witch smiled. "I'm pretty excited for this class!"
What a bizarre individual. Sybella didn't really know what to think of her conflicting appearance and behavior. Before she had time to process it more, the teacher began to speak.
"Greetings, students. I am Ms. Cohn." the teacher said. The instructor appeared to be a much older witch with gray hair. "This is Sociology class, where we will study how society works from a structural, interactional, and individual level. There will be no shenanigans, messing around, or dilly dallying in my class."
"Is it okay if I eat this Dilly Bar while I dilly dally with some dollies?" Daniel asked. Sybella could never forget about Daniel...the student who greeted her nearly every day in Psychology with "psych!" jokes.
"Young man, that will be quite enough!" Ms. Cohn scolded. "The first thing we will discuss is stereotypes. Perhaps you have talked about them in another class, but it is important that we are all on the same page to move forward in this particular course. Would any of you students be willing to share about a stereotype that's been projected on you?"
The edgy-looking witch, Kenzie, raised her hand.
"Yes?" Ms. Cohn inquired.
"People always think I'm mean, scary and a burnout because of my appearance." Kenzie explained. "In fact, I'm great at school and always get all A's. I love talking to people. The only reason I shaved my head is because I want to go against the stereotype that women have to look pretty all the time, as well as challenge people's preconceptions of me. Just because I have a side shave and listen to rock music doesn't make me a dumb burnout. It's just who I am."
"Excellent example, Kenzie." Ms. Cohn complimented.
Sybella was somewhat in awe of Kenzie's inspiring comment. She'd totally misjudged Kenzie based on her appearance at first, but she seemed like a pretty cool, unique girl. Sybella had a feeling this was going to be a great class.
Next stop on Sybella's daily responsibility train was Yearbook! The vampire was warmly greeted by her three teammates upon entering the room.
"'Sup, fam." Savana acknowledged.
"Oh good, we're all here." Miss Lillard observed. "So you all did an excellent job last semester taking pictures, doing the class polls, and interviewing staff and instructors. Now, it's time to compile all your hard work into the finished product of our school yearbook. But before you do that, I have one more task for each of you. I would like you each to pick one student, any student, to interview for the yearbook."
"I know who I'm gonna interview." Sam asserted. "The coolest bro in this school."
"You can't interview yourself, Sam." Sami scolded.
"Damn." Sam swore, as she went to her workstation to pull up her interview questions. Upon turning on her computer, she revealed that she had changed the computer background.
"Your background is just a picture of you?" Sami teased.
"Yeah, why wouldn't it be? Gotta inspire myself by my own coolness." Sam said in a chill voice.
"It's not even a picture with anyone else in it! It's just a picture of you! That's kinda weird…" Savana laughed.
Sybella chuckled, but her mind was preoccupied on the person she was going to interview. She wanted to ask Kenzie from Sociology class for an interview. Surely she'd have some interesting responses.
Tuesday, January 15
Yesterday was one of the best first days I've ever had. I can't wait to see what my last two classes are like today, and potentially interview Kenzie! She's so cool!
It was a cold day today, so Sybella put on a gray cardigan and some warm sweatpants before heading down to breakfast.
"Good morning! You look nice today, Sybella!" Tanis chirped.
"Thanks! You do too!" Sybella smiled. Well, Tanis wore the same thing every day: bandages, but the vampiress couldn't not reciprocate the sentiment.
"How were all your classes yesterday?" Tanis inquired as the duo walked downstairs to breakfast.
Sybella had almost forgotten she hadn't seen the other ghouls besides Phantasma at all yesterday. She'd had such a busy day that she'd skipped lunch, and had dinner with her yearbook crew. "They were really good! How about yours?"
"So much fun!" Tanis exclaimed. "I'm super happy all five of us have a class together today!"
Oh, right. All of them had Film Studies together this morning. Sybella didn't immediately respond, as she saw Kenzie walking towards the breakfast area. The vampiress wanted to make sure to ask the witch for an interview while she had the chance.
"Just a minute, Tanis." Sybella shuffled over to Kenzie.
"Oh, hi again!" Kenzie chirped.
"Hi! I'm on the Yearbook team, and I was wondering if you'd be willing to do a short interview with me before class?" Sybella inquired.
"Oh, that's really cool! Sure!" Kenzie agreed.
"Awesome." Sybella quickly took a notebook and pencil out from her backpack so she could write down the witch's answers. "What's your favorite part about Grimwood's?"
"All the people here are so accepting, not like at my last school. Like I said in our class yesterday, a lot of people thought I was, like, scary or intimidating, so I didn't really have a ton of close friendships there." Kenzie revealed. "I think everyone is pretty unique here at Grimwood's, which you don't get at a lot of schools. Everyone has their own thing they bring to the school. That's why Grimwood's is so special."
Oh, Kenzie must be a freshman. Sybella realized.
"Grimwood's is a great place. I'm sure you'll love it here. I've been here since I was 5, so I know a thing or two about the place." Sybella said.
"Oh cool! You must be one of those five students I've heard about that were here before the school got remodeled." Kenzie smiled. "What are your other questions?"
Sybella looked at her question list, but Kenzie had honestly answered the few she had in her first response.
"You actually did such a good job, that you answered them all in one shot." Sybella giggled playfully. "Thanks for doing the interview! I'll see you tomorrow."
"Oh okay! See you tomorrow!" Kenzie smiled, as she picked up a chocolate muffin from a platter on the table and walked to her next class.
"Who was that?" Tanis inquired.
Oh, just the coolest girl I've ever met. Sybella wanted to say.
But she didn't. Instead, she replied: "Just a girl from my class."
"She seems pretty cool." Tanis observed.
"Yeah. She is." Sybella smiled.
The vampiress arrived at class with Tanis to see her other three friends already there.
"Hey, you guys weren't at breakfast!" Tanis pointed out.
"We were!" Elsa said. "Just not at the same time as you were, apparently."
"Oh yeah." Tanis blushed. "I guess we were a little late."
"And I guess we were a little early." Winnie laughed. "We must have just missed each other."
"Whassup, my monsters?" Sidney greeted, as she came into the room.
"You're in this class?" Sybella said in surprise. "Wow, we have like a class together nearly every semester."
Sybella sat down next to Sidney. Sybella's other three friends did the same, with the exception of Phanty, who sat next to her boyfriend Isaiah.
"It's almost like someone's designing our schedules so that we always have a class together. You know, like a writer or something." Sidney broke the fourth wall.
"Alright, this is Film Studies!" a familiar voice said. It was Coach Micucci! "In this class, we're gonna watch films and then you're gonna write a short reflection analyzin' each movie we watch."
"Coach Micucci?" Winnie exclaimed. "What are you doing teaching this class?"
"Yeah, first Gym and Health, then Driver's Education, and now Film Studies?" Elsa questioned.
"I just teach wherever I'm needed." Coach Micucci shrugged. "Next year, I'll probably be teachin'...I don't know...lunch. Now, the Ghoul Board says the first film ya gotta watch is...ugh...Anne of Green Gables?! This is gonna be Hell."
As Coach Micucci popped the film in the VCR in the classroom, Sybella sat back and prepared to take notes on the movie.
The movie was quite less than entertaining for the vampiress. On screen, two characters named Anne and Josephine were sipping tea in rocking chairs on the porch. A sipping noise could be heard as Anne drank the tea from her cup.
"Is the twiggelsberry tea acceptable, Anne?" Josephine inquired.
There was no answer for a moment, as Anne took another long sip of her tea.
"Quite, yes." Anne replied.
Josephine then took a long sip of her tea.
"Good." Josephine replied, as Anne took another lengthy sip and both characters sat in silence, rocking back and forth in their chairs.
"Oh for the love of god, they've been sippin' tea for 20 minutes now!" Coach Micucci shouted. "That's it, screw the Ghoul Board. We're watchin' The Lorax."
The film sounded familiar to Sybella, but she couldn't remember any details about it.
"I think I remember that film. Kind of." Sybella shared.
"Yeah, me too. You might even say it sounds a little film-iliar." Phanty replied, to which she got several groans in response.
"I love The Lorax! Especially the Once-ler. By the way, who do you ship him with?" Sidney inquired of the five ghouls.
"What do you mean, ship?" Isaiah said in response, as Phanty stroked his arm affectionately. "The Once-ler is all alone. That's like a main plot point, dude."
"Well, some other fans and I like to ship him with a different version of himself. I personally ship Sporty Once-ler with Goth Girl Once-ler. There's something oddly charming about Sporty's competitiveness with Gothy's edginess." Sidney admitted.
"This is a thing?" Tanis asked in horror. "I've never heard of this."
"Well, then I've gotta contact Sneed-Thneedler. The meme drops tonight." Sidney's tone intensified.
"What's a meme?" Elsa asked.
"And how are you going to contact someone? Phones don't exist in this universe." Sybella broke the fourth wall.
"But social media does...for some reason." Sidney replied. "Besides, it's unimportant. Let's just watch the movie."
Sybella loved Sidney, but she could be weird sometimes.
Sybella had enjoyed The Lorax, but now it was time for her final class. This particular class was the one she had been looking forward to the most: Human Studies II! The vampire princess loved how insightful and informative the first Human Studies class was, and given this class was also taught by Mrs. Griffin again, it was sure to be a good class.
Upon entering the room, Sybella felt all the feels when she saw tons of familiar faces: Alexis, Sarah, Charlie, Jessica and Harry! It was the same group of students that Sybella knew the best from the original Human Studies class. This was going to be amazing.
"Sybella! Isn't this cool we're all back together?" Alexis said, as she sat next to her fellow vampiress.
"Yeah. This is pretty special." Sybella smiled.
"Hello class." Mrs. Griffin greeted. "It's so nice to see all of your faces again. Since this is an upper-level class, it's much smaller. You six are the only students. However, I do want to stress that this will be a much harder course since it is upper-level."
Sybella didn't mind. She loved this stuff.
"Now, I know us monsters often think of humans in a bad light. That they're stupid, mean, and even evil. However, I want you to push that stereotype to the side, and then forget about it." Mrs. Griffin requested. "Humans are more than stereotypes. There are many humans out there that are great people, who are perhaps just uneducated about monster culture and lore. In this class, I'm going to challenge you to think past these stereotypes and combat your negative perceptions on humans. This doesn't mean you can't be critical of how humans act, but you must realize that not all humans are walking stereotypes. Just like monsters aren't."
"I am!" Harry exclaimed, as he adjusted his obnoxiously pointy wizard hat, pulled his wand out of his shoe, held up a book titled "Spooky Spells" and poured a handful of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans into his mouth.
"Well, most of us anyway." Mrs. Griffin chuckled.
Sybella loved when classes overlapped, and albeit unintentionally, she'd learned an important lesson these last two days, mainly thanks to Kenzie. Just because someone had a certain interest or looked a certain way didn't mean that this was the only thing they were. It was easy to pigeon-hole someone as being a certain person based on their appearance, but Kenzie provided a perfect example for the vampiress as to why it was harmful to do so.
The vampire princess was also excited that this life lesson tied into her Human Studies class. Maybe through combatting her own internal biases, Sybella could help make the world a little bit of a better place.
Author's note:
This chapter is very near and dear to my heart. My friends have heard this story a million times, because I love to tell it, but Kenzie is actually a real person and the entire storyline around her (besides the yearbook interview) is something that actually happened to me in a Sociology class during my junior year (of college though, not high school). Real-life Kenzie had a side shave, and wore a band t-shirt (though not the Bad Omens) that had someone with their eyes bleeding, on the first day I met her. Sounds like a pretty scary person, right? Basically Sybella's thoughts surrounding Kenzie's appearance were my own thoughts at first. In fact, she turned out to be like the nicest person ever, and just randomly said hi to me the first day of class and we got to talking quite a bit. The part about her revealing why she chose to challenge people's conceptions of her by adopting an edgy appearance was a bit condensed, in the sense that it happened later in the semester in real-life, but nonetheless, I just think it's such an inspiring story that someone would choose to look all edgy like that and be into heavy metal, yet be a huge teddy bear in real life. It just goes to show you can't judge someone just by their appearance or interests based on stereotypes which may not be true. Even years later, I still can't get enough of that story and think it's such a powerful lesson that I had to include it in Fangs.
Also, the jokes about the Once-ler fandom is totally a real thing. There is apparently a real group of people online that ship the Once-ler with made-up versions of himself (i.e. Sporty Once-ler, Goth Girl Once-ler, etc.), as per a YouTube video I saw recently. All the people in this fandom call themselves Dr. Seuss-esque usernames, such as Sneed-Thneedler. Good for the people in that fandom for bonding over a shared interest, but it is indeed quite quirky and out there lol. Just thought it made a fun reference and addition to this chapter.
And now, it's time once again for...reference time! *insert sounds of crowd going wild here lol*
- Dracula owning a costume shop is a reference to the fact that he owned one in "A Halloween Hassle at Dracula's Castle," the Halloween special from The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries.
- As per tradition, all the teachers at Grimwood's are named after the voice actors who voice the Scooby gang. This chapter gives us our final unused voice actor name! Ms. Cohn references Mindy Cohn, who voiced Velma from 2002-2015. This means that you have now met every single teacher at Grimwood's, and no new ones will be introduced from this point on in the fanfic. In hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have burned through all the live-action actors so quickly in chapter 20, with the joke where General Prinze Junior was holding auditions for a substitute haha.
- Kenzie wearing a Bad Omens t-shirt is a reference to the band of the same name that appears in Scooby-Doo and the Legend of the Vampire.
- Daniel's comment about "dillying dallying with some dollies" is a reference to the Dilly Dally Dolly Toy Factory from The Scooby-Doo Show episode "The No-Face Zombie Chase Case."
- Harry's book Spooky Spells is a reference to the book that the Phantom Racer had in another The Scooby-Doo Show episode, "The Spooky Case of the Grand Prix Race."
- Also, Harry eating Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans is a reference to Harry Potter. It's already been established in a previous chapter that Harry is a reference to Harry Potter himself.
So happy to get to share this story with you through this chapter and I hope it's as impactful to you as it was to me.