TIME WARP: Bad Days Ahead

[Kateri Rivera]

10 November 2006

Why had she come into work today? Every year, she made the same mistake. Yes, this was a new school and a new place and for some reason she’d decided that would make it better, but it really hadn’t. New place, new area, new people to deal with and even five years of separation didn’t make this day any better.

Kateri sat at her desk, pressed her fingers to her lips and was very, very glad that the classes were over for the day.

Because she was crying, and couldn’t seem to find a way to stop.

It had been five years, she told herself in mental tones of frustration as she dabbed at her eyes with yet another Kleenex. Five years to the day and she still couldn’t get over this. It was silly. No. It was stupid. If Chris was there, he would have laughed at her and teased her that it wasn’t like the fiery redhead to cry about anything, and that this wasn’t the girl he knew. He would have gotten her to laugh in that gentle way of his, and then just held her, because he liked to.

Of course, that was the problem, wasn’t it? Chris wasn’t there. What she had left of him was a flag and a bunch of medals. Not much comfort on a nasty day like this one. And she WAS being silly, she knew. It had been five years and yes, it had been shocking, but she should have adjusted by now. She was older and wiser. It was time to move on already.

At least, she reflected glumly, no one was here to see her. The twenty-six-year-old dabbed at her eyes again to get rid of the little makeup that had run, then pushed herself up to her feet and set herself to tidying up her new classroom. At least that was productive.

[JD Paerson]

JD had only been at the school for a few months. He was still getting used to the whole idea of being an entire ocean away from his family. This was, of course, on top of the shock of being discovered as a metahuman and his father yelling at him and practically disowning him. According to mom he'd calmed down since then, but JD knew very well that his father didn't approve of metahumans in general and had been particularly upset to find out that his own son was born with the gene.

Today, though, he wasn't focusing on his family problems or wondering if his dad might get relocated somewhere closer in the future. Today he was racing back to his last class of the day--Pre-Algebra--because he'd left behind his Nintendo. He knew he shouldn't have had it out in class, but the guy next to him had wanted to look at it, and then somehow it hadn't made its way back into his backpack. He only hoped that the room was still open and he wouldn't have to wait until tomorrow to get it.

The door was unlocked, so he let himself in. His teacher, Ms. Rivera, was already cleaning up. JD nipped over to where his desk was by the far wall. His plan was that, since her back was turned, he'd just use his super-speed and go get the game, then run out. Easy.

Running across the room, he found that he couldn't stop in time. "Aaah!" he screamed, flailing his arms as he crashed into the wall. "Ow!" he said, falling onto his back. He felt at his nose, which had gotten the worst of the blow. It was bleeding, and he stood up.

Glancing over at Ms. Rivera, he winced slightly. "I'b sorry," he said. "I jes cabe to geb..." Wait a moment. Was she...crying? Was it because of him? Should he try to apologize or something? Should he go get help? Floundering, he just swiped at a few tissues on the desk and held them up to his nose.

"Ub. Yeah. Is ub, is somefin wrong?" he asked finally, holding his video game behind his back. Technically she could still confiscate it, and while he wanted to make sure everything was okay, he didn't want it to cost him his Nintendo.

[Kateri Rivera]

Kateri was tidying up her desk. This was a serious process, even though she’d only been there for a few months. The piles that she would develop later were already shaping up, and she was doing her best to sort them all out the right way. Unfinished homework went into one folder, lesson plans into another, homework that needed grading into another… doing it, she was reminded why she had the piles in the first place. It was easier than putting it in a folder. But it was distracting, and she tried not to get anything too wet with the tears that were still running down her face. Once she was done, she dabbed at her eyes again and turned to the board to start wiping it down. She was so lost in her own world that she didn’t notice anyone had entered the room until there was a loud crashing noise, and she whirled about to stare at the young student who was picking himself up off the floor.

“Jesus!” she exclaimed, her own problems momentarily forgotten. She knew she still looked horrible, with her eyes puffy, face red, and the tip of her nose the color of a tomato, but she didn’t care as she moved to the boy’s side as he grabbed some tissues.

“Put your head back,” she ordered, business and big-sister like. “And squeeze if it doesn’t hurt. If it does…” What if it was broken? She could handle this. This wasn’t her first year teaching, after all. It was just she felt so…weak and helpless today. It wasn’t a good time for a student to come crashing through the wall. She was dangerously close to wringing her hands and she didn’t like it. She let out a rather shaky exhale, then shook her head. “I’ll take you to the doctor. And I’m…” She hesitated. No. She couldn’t honestly say she was all right. “Never mind. Why don’t you sit down, JD? D-did you have a question or something?” She moved back to grab a tissue and blow her nose, then moved back to sit on a desk in front of him.

[JD Paerson]

JD obediently put his head back and squeezed. It didn't hurt, at least not too badly--no more than would be expected when one ran face-first into a wall. His vision was getting a little blurry, so he blinked quickly to try to get rid of any tears from the pain.

He sat down in the chair she directed him to and kept his head tilted back. "Ub..." Did he have a question? If he did, that would be a much better reason for him to have come back than to just get his game system. So he decided to play along.

"Yeah, I wondered abou' somefin you said im class today." His mind raced back over the lecture until he struck upon a point he could comment on. "All thad higher math sduff. Lige, how mush more math is dere?"

It was hard to look at his teacher, since his head was tilted so far back, but he turned his head a bit so he could see her out of the corner of his eye. She was still crying, which probably meant that it wasn't about him or anything. It also looked like she might've been crying for a while. He wasn't exactly sure how to respond to all this, but he thought it was only fair that he at least ask what was going on.

"Ub. Are you...are you really ogay? Do you need lige, help...or somefin?" He wasn't exactly qualified to help, but he had been raised with manners, and manners even applied to teachers.

[Kateri Rivera]

It was a little strange to have a student who actually listened to what she had to say, although she supposed it might have just been shock. Then again, he was pretty young—perhaps a commanding voice still worked at this stage. Then again, all her classes tended to say otherwise…

In spite of her tears and her general still-upsetness, Kateri found herself smiling a little at his question—after she’d mentally translated it from squashed-nose, of course. “It depends on how much farther you want to go with it, JD. There’s,..oh, I went up to several levels of calculus. And then you have theoretical math, which deals with mostly imaginary numbers…Let’s just say there’s a lot of it, all right? Math makes up most of everything. Why? Does that worry you?” Yes, let’s find the subject change.

Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to work. Yes, she was still crying, but she’d been kind of hoping that he would have blurred vision from running into the wall. Apparently, that wasn’t the case. “I don’t need help, JD, but thank you,” she said quietly. “This is just…a bad day for me, that’s all. I’ll be all right.”

Why had he been running, anyways? She frowned a little as that occurred to him, then eyed him, still rubbing at her nose. “JD,” she said, more sternly now, “did you really come running here to ask me that, or was there something else? It can’t have been bothering you that much.”

[JD Paerson]

"Really?" JD asked. His nose wasn't running as much now, and he pulled the tissue away slowly, still keeping his head tilted back. "No, that's not scary. It's kind of cool. So I guess we're just learning the basics...but if this is the easy stuff, shouldn't we be learning it faster?" JD had long held to the opinion that the classes weren't going fast enough. He'd finish in half the time that it took most of the other students, and he'd always wished to either just leave earlier or to move on to something harder. Honestly, it wasn't like any of this was hard.

"A bad day? Did someone get hurt or something?" That had always been the problem he'd seen. People would find out that someone had died in fighting, it would get back to the camp, and then there would be people crying and upset. But maybe it was Ms. Rivera's grandma or something, and she was just upset. Or maybe her dog had gotten hurt.

JD was finally able to start to put his head back down, still keeping the tissues close just in case he needed to stop the blood flow again. "Uh..." he said, stalling for time as he tried to think up an excuse. Why had he been running? Now that he thought about it it seemed pretty dumb. "Mostly I just wanted a chance to use my powers. I keep practicing, just like my trainer taught me," he said. But he looked down at the desk and shuffled his feet, then slid his game system under his leg and hoped his teacher wouldn't notice.

"I just...sorry that I interrupted you. I guess I should probably leave now, since the bleeding stopped." He tried to smile, but it hurt his nose, so instead he just stood and waved a bit, keeping one hand behind his back. "Hopefully everything will get better!"

[OOC: Sorry for the delayed response.]

[Kateri Rivera]

((No worries! Take all the time you need, always.^^ Besides, like I have a good track record...))

“You need to know the easy stuff in order to get the harder stuff,” she told him with a wry smile. That was actually a very good question, and one she hadn’t really thought of. So this boy who smashed into walls hadn’t completely knocked out all his brains yet. That was a pretty good sign. “If you learn the basics and learn them well, you’ll have fewer problems with the more advanced math, and you’ll be able to learn the rest of it faster.” She tried to remember if JD had a problem with the pacing of the class, and came to the glum conclusion that the answer was “yes.” She’d have to ask if there was a way to make an advanced class. She didn’t mind putting in the extra hours if it had a good result, and she thought that this would. Her thoughtful look, however, vanished at his question, and was replaced by a grimace.

“Y-yes,” she said, slowly. “But it was…it was a long time ago. My, ah. My husband. Died in a war. But look, you probably don’t want to know more.” He was too young to play confidante, and he was her student, not a friend. He didn’t need to know the details. “Still, thank you for asking. That is very…very kind.”

When JD tilted his head down, she leaned over to grab a trashcan and nudged it over to him so he could throw the tissues away. That also let her notice his hesitation, and she eyed him, grief forgotten as she wondered what exactly he was trying to hide. “You aren’t supposed to practice in the hall, I think. Isn’t that right?” She leaned over as he seemed to slide something away, and when he rose, her eyes narrowed. “What do you have behind your back, JD?” She made a beckoning motion. “Turn around. And I shouldn’t run if I was you. You have a nasty habit of running into things when you do.”