Chapter 4: A Rough Day

Anne knew she had a big day ahead of her the minute she woke up. Her tasks were to overcome the condescending Pringle clan, make a good impression on the naysayers, and to teach her students language and literature. After eating breakfast and getting ready, she went out the door to begin her year long quest.

She arrived early at KLC because she knew arriving late on her first day at work would not make the best impression. Anne got settled in her classroom and planned the day's assignments. As she wrote the lessons on the board, she heard a stern voice behind her.

"Remember what I told you yesterday," warned Ms. Brooke.

Anne turned around, seeing Katherine's grim look before walking away.

Oh boy, thought Anne. This is going to be a long day...

One by one the girls entered the classroom. Most of the girls were Pringles, led by their "leader" Jen Pringle. She was the worst one out of all of them; she was known to be a teacher's pet to her teachers that had close connections with her parents and would be an absolute pain-in-the-butt to those teachers that weren't Pringles. Her track record was a mile long, yet because of her parents' huge financial backing of the school, school officials chose not to do anything with her. Her tactics began even before class was in session. Jen's first target of the day was Emmeline Harris, a girl who she considered to be "degrading the value of Kingsport."

"Hey, four eyes!" yelled Jen. "Get a life, will ya? You're so not with the in-crowd."

Emmeline looked over at Jen to see her giving her a bogus smile like Paris Hilton's and flicking her off. She looked in the different direction.

"Sucka!" snickered Jen.

"Attention, class!" commanded Anne.

The class stopped and turned around.

"Thank you. I am Miss Shirley, your new English teacher, and I will be with you for the rest of the year."

Jen took this as an opportunity to begin throwing spitballs at Anne.

"Excuse me!" yelled Anne.

Jen looked all innocent.

"Don't look all innocent. I saw you throwing those spitballs," Anne said. "What's your name?"

"Jen Pringle," she stated.

"Please stop throwing them, Jen."

"I will."

"Thank you."

A smirk appeared on Jen's face. She had other tricks up her sleeve to scare off this Miss Shirley.

"As I was saying," Anne continued, "our goal for this year is to improve our writing skills and to get a better understanding on literature...please remove those headphones, Jen!"

The class looked at Jen, seeing that she had Eminem on her iPod at full blast.

"What?" Jen asked

"Remove those headphones from your ears at once," Anne requested.

"Okay," Jen stated dully.

"And if I see that iPod out one more time during class, I will confiscate it. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Very well then."

Anne had a weird feeling in her gut. She knew she hadn't seen the last of Jen Pringle's antics.

"Now class, I would like for you all to write one page on what you did over the summer. This way I can get to know you all a bit better, and I can see where you are at in your writing."

The girls got to writing, and Anne sat at her desk. She reached in to grab a pen only to be frightened with what she discovered.

"Ahhhhhhhhh!" screamed Anne. She flung out the snake that had been in her desk towards her students. They were frightened as well except for Jen; she was the one to place the serpent when Anne wasn't looking. She was sitting in the back laughing.

"Jen Pringle! Take this snake out of this classroom at once!' Anne commanded.

"Okay," Jen said as she picked up the reptile. "Are you ready to take a trip, little buddy?"

Anne shook her head. Please let this day be over with!

"Continue on with your writing, girls."

"Everybody look out!" Jen shouted as she entered the room again. She put firecrackers in the trash can and watched them ignite.

Everyone ran to the back corner of the classroom as the firecrackers went off. The smoke detectors went off and signaled the fire alarm. Evacuation of the building was mandatory.

"Miss Shirley, what is going on here?" demanded Ms. Brooke.

"Jen Pringle has been giving me trouble all day," Anne explained. "She put firecrackers in the trash can, but before that she put a snake in my desk!"

"I would like to have a word with you tomorrow morning in my office before school starts."

Anne sighed. She didn't even have a chance to begin teaching yet, and now she was going to be fired? Nothing made sense to her now.

School officials panicked at the news of the evacuation and decided to close the school for the rest of the day. Floods of calls came in, demanding to know what happened and requesting that Anne resign from the school. Anne was aware of all this, but she wasn't going to give up without a fight. How dare they demand that she quit after she barely had a chance of showing them what she could do? It wasn't fair. Just because one girl wanted to ruin her class didn't exactly mean that the others were just like her. Even if they did hate her, they didn't say it out loud, and that had to mean something.

Anne decided to get in her car and to drive around town to clear her mind but was surprised to see the same little red Corvette that she had seen the day before parked next to her.

"Anne!" Jack called.

"Jack?" she asked. "What are you doing here?"

"I was driving around town and ended up here."

"How'd you find me? I mean, you do know that this is a private all girls high school and not a place to pick up chicks, right?"

"Yeah."

"Because if anyone saw you here with one of these girls, you could be arrested for being with a minor."

"I'm not here to see them. I came here to see you."

"What do you want?"

"To get to know you better."

"Well, you know I work here now. That's a start."

"Yeah."

"Anyway, I gotta go, Jack. I have to make lesson plans for tomorrow. I'll see you later."

Anne got in her car and sped off. Jack had a smirk on his face. You haven't seen the last of me, Anne Shirley.

How did he find me? Anne thought. He never told me how, and that's bothering me!

After passing by a couple blocks, she decided to go into a book store to pick out a novel to help pass time. As soon as she went in, she heard murmurs all around her talking about the firecrackers incident. Here we go again...

"How dare they allow such despicable behavior?" asked one man.

"Dad, it wasn't Miss Shirley's fault," replied the man's daughter. "Jen Pringle was being a pain to her all day. She didn't even allow her to teach her class since she was being so rude."

"That's not any excuse though."

Anne looked in an aisle only to see Emmeline Harris and her father discussing the day's events.

"Miss Shirley!" called Emmeline.

"Hello," Anne answered politely.

"I want to say that I thought you handled the situation well despite everything. Jen Pringle...she's never been nice to anyone unless she wants something. She makes fun of me all the time."

"Oh. Well..."

"This is my father, Morgan Harris."

"How do you do, sir?" Anne greeted.

"Not very well since I've heard what happened today," Morgan replied. "How could you let such a thing happen?"

"Dad!" yelled Emmeline.

"You stay out of this!" he commanded.

"I can't believe KLC would tolerate this," Morgan continued, "letting an unqualified person just waltz right in and take over-"

"Excuse me, Sir, but you've only heard one side of the story," Anne began. "It is not my fault that this town has serious issues with outsiders. How dare you judge me because of where I come from? Have you no common sense? I'm sorry that the action of one girl determined others' opinions of me, but if you expect me to resign of this one incident, think again!"

She stormed out of that book store and went back in her car.

"Great, Dad," Emmeline said sadly. "Now look at what you've done."

"That Miss Shirley is something else," Morgan said.

Anne leaned her head back on her seat. Now what? What am I going to do? Just quit and go home? I can't do that. I just barely got settled in here. After much thought, she decided it was time to get a bite to eat and to think less. She settled on a nice little pizza place at a corner and decided to eat there. When she entered, she heard someone calling her name.

"Anne!"

She looked to her right and saw Roy. He went up to her from his booth.

"Roy? What are you doing here?" she asked.

"Just grabbing a bite to eat," he responded. "Are you hungry? There's a pizza all ready at my booth."

"Okay."

She went over and helped herself to a hot slice of pizza.

"You don't look too well, Anne," Roy stated.

"Today hasn't been the best day," Anne said softly.

"What went wrong?"

She told him the mishaps of the day starting with the annoying Pringle entrances and ending with the brief argument with Morgan Harris. At the end of her tale, she looked exhausted.

"I might get fired!" she cried.

"Anne, listen to me," Roy began. "Those Pringles don't know what the hell they're talking about. They're just upset that their own kind wasn't smart enough to take the job. Don't listen to them. You're strong, Anne. You can take them. All you have to do now is to get them back at their own game. You can't give up now."

"I know. I know. I just..."

"Just what?"

"I don't know. I guess I'm scared; that's what."

"Don't be. I know you can handle it."

"You think so?"

"I know so."

Anne looked at Roy and blushed. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it. If you ever need anything, just give me a call." Roy wrote out his home and cell phone numbers on a napkin.

"Thanks for listening. It means a lot to me, especially on a rough day like this," Anne said.

"Anytime."

"Roy, I think I better get going. I need to get home to prepare myself for tomorrow if you know what I mean."

"Okay. Anne, I'm not leaving for school until next week, so I'd like to get to know you a bit better before I leave. Would you like to have dinner with me tomorrow night?"

A date? With me?

"Sure," Anne replied. "I'd love to."

"Great! How about I'll meet you up on the roof of our complex at 7:30?"

"Sounds good."

Anne gave Roy a hug goodbye. "Bye!"

"Bye."

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Before Anne even started her engine, she sat in the driver's seat of her car and just thought about everything that had happened to her in the last few weeks. Gilbert had proposed, she rejected him, Diana got married, all of Avonlea wanted to see how she and Gilbert would react to each other, Gilbert proposed yet again, she rejected him again, she moved to Kingsport, she was challenged by a juvenile delinquent by the name of Jen Pringle, all the KLC parents wanted her removed, and she had a date with Roy scheduled for tomorrow night. Not to mention that there was a handsome man with a red Corvette that drove all the way from the middle of nowhere to Kingsport just to see her.

I could use a vacation... thought Anne.

She finally started the car and shifted the gear to drive and went on her way back to her apartment. At a red light, she noticed a figure of a man that looked vaguely familiar. Gil?

"Gil!" Anne screamed. She had forgotten that her windows were rolled up.

The man turned around slightly to look at another pedestrian behind him and then walked away. It wasn't him, but Anne thought it was him looking at him from behind.

"No," Anne moaned.

She wanted someone to talk to in this town where she felt like an outcast. She wanted someone that she could relate to and could laugh with. After a sigh, the light turned green, and Anne continued on her way home.