The Shipping Game
Miss Lejion always seemed to be in some sort of rush. Beads clattered as she hurried up the length of her classroom, coming to a halt in front of the board with a bright jingle of bangles. She grinned broadly, and whipped off the knitted hat, decorated with a smiley cat face and little pointed ears, revealing her wild bob of red hair.
"Hello! Everyone have a wonderful summer?" Her class made vague affirmative noises; the Art teacher's enthusiasm could be a little trying second period on a Monday morning. Miss Lejion clapped her hands together with a clink of rings, long fingernails painted a dark green. "Excellent! I hope you guys found some time to work on your portfolios; I can't wait to see how everything is coming along!" At this subtle queue, students began taking out their folders and workbooks, some with less enthusiasm than others. Nepeta Lejion smiled to herself. This term was her favourite, and she had been preparing carefully.
"Right! As I told you before the holidays, this term we will be working on portraiture. I've picked some names out of a hat, and I will now tell you your partners!" At the protest that emerged from the class, Nepeta held up a finger. "No, no, no, no! It's important that everyone doesn't just pick their best friends; this is all about really examining another person's features! If it's a face you see ALL the time, you can get lazy and not pick out everything! So hush! Right, Alex, you're with..."
While Nepeta hadn't been lying about the tendency to skip details of a familiar face, she had other motives behind her "random" selection of partners. Every teacher plays little games with their classes, and Nepeta's favourite was what she called the Shipping Game. As third years took portraiture in their autumn term, Miss Lejion had a pretty good idea of each student's crushes, secret admirers and possible partnerships that just needed that little push. So Nepeta made careful notes of each budding relationship she spotted, and she was good at spotting them, and made sure that the partners for portraiture were selected according to who fancied whom. After a term of carefully examining each other's faces, most of her predicted relationships were certainly moving along. Of course, she wasn't 100% accurate, and sometimes the partnerships exploded horribly, but that was all part of the game. All the planning was worth it; a quiet boy Nepeta had partnered with the student he had been giving longing looks at for the past two years gave her a tiny, grateful smile, blushing to his roots.
As the class moved to sit with their new partners, Nepeta wrote up the first task on the board. Then she sat down and retrieved her laptop from its bag, eager to update her shipping chart. As she logged in, the staff chat popped up, showing dark blue text. She grinned happily as she read;
"D - I have been informed that you have free period after the current. Would you perhaps come to the Staffroom to take coffee with me?"
She tapped out a reply confirming coffee with Equius. For no discernible reason, she and the Design Technology teacher had hit it off as soon as they met. It would be difficult to find two people more different – He a very formalised man, private school accent and manner, and a tendency to lose his cool very easily, she the eclectic product of a rebellious childhood, and in a state of near permanent optimism. They had come to work at Skaia Secondary at around the same time, and had become fast friends without missing a beat. Nepeta sometimes wondered if there was something more to their relationship, but in all honesty she thought of the man more like an older brother, despite their similar age. Besides, it wasn't just the students relationships Nepeta kept a close watch on, and her best friends shy glances towards the head of History, Miss. Megiddo, had not gone un-noticed. Sadly, the history teacher was much harder to read. Sometimes she seemed to have no emotions at all...
As break approached, Miss Megiddo raised her milky blue eyes from her desk. The class was silent at the moment, heads bent over textbooks, but she knew that as soon as there were less than ten minutes left of the lesson her students would become restless. There was no clock in the room, but she had always had an uncanny grasp of time.
"Five minutes to answer the questions, students." Her voice was flat, despite her perfect enunciation, and always seemed to be coming from some distance away. As she had predicted, the murmurs began, and she busied herself with tidying away her things. It would take this class around five minutes to go from working to packed up and ready to be dismissed, and the bell would ring in just over ten. She prided herself in never having the students stay later or leave earlier than the bell. "Leave your papers on your desks and I will collect them."
As the last backpack was zipped up and slung onto a shoulder, the bell rang. Miss Megiddo nodded to her class, and they left, chatting quietly. Even the rowdiest students were quieter in Miss Megiddo's classes- the woman's hushed manner seemed to leak into her students without their realising. As she collected the papers, a movement at the window caught her eye. Dark blue boiler suit, slightly open to reveal a vest. As soon as her eyes fell on him, Mr. Zahhak lowered his head and walked away smartly.
Bangles chimed as Nepeta waved enthusiastically to Equius. Two mugs of coffee had already been set on the table; one adorned with what might have been cats before they were exposed to near-terminal amounts of glitter and adorableness, the other a surprisingly dainty china cup, or what was once- it had been glued and repaired many times, causing the motif of running horses to take on an Escher-esque quality. They chatted amicably about Nepeta's matchmaking and how Equius had broken another circular saw, when what sounded like a battle cry rang out through the halls. It started with one voice, but slowly grew in volume as more and more voices took it up, with an undertone of running feet. Nepeta looked at Equius, open mouthed. He cleared his throat.
"I would cautiously suggest that we remain in here until whatever is happening... stops happening..."