Chapter Text
Catherine Rhodes’ eyes sweep the room of squirming students. It may be her third year teaching at Softwell Academy for the Arts, but every first day of class brings the same nerves. First impressions are the sort of things that keep her up at night.
Miss Rhodes recognized a few faces from the halls, students she had seen in passing. When she felt her stares reciprocated, Catherine steadied her gaze to her folded sunglasses on the desk, then her nuclear hot coffee, her yellow legal pad, her small-batch, too-expensive pencils, and her heavy black metallic hair clip.
Was this the desk of a confident, promising, admirable young English teacher? Were these the belongings of a classy, chic, modern woman? Was she presenting herself as the effortless, mysterious, intelligent academic she claimed to be? Would that warm crackling fire of a personality wear her hair up or down on the first day of class?
Miss Rhodes eyed the glossy red analog clock in the back of the room, deftly swiped and clawed her meticulously tossed and curled hair into a careful mess, and began the performance.
“Good morning, Advanced Creative Writing Block 2. I trust that you all are in the right room. This is the Senior-only block of Advanced Creative, so as you know we will have completely different readings and assignments from the other group.”
Miss Rhodes stepped weightlessly from behind the desk. Long, long, long legs swinging outward to the middle of the room. Black tights under a long black skirt, and an echoey “clack… clack…” from two ultra-shiny black heels of modest height.
“I’m sure many of your teachers begin the first day of class by introducing themselves, preparing a slideshow— including a picture of their adorable pet, and the whole production. I won’t be doing that today.”
The teacher slowly pivoted directions, continuing to clack clack around the room slowly.
“You may hear writing teachers demand that you consider your audience, and write for them. Personally, I believe that we often think too much of our audience. I don’t want 18 papers written for me. I’ve read plenty of things written for me. It gets rather boring after a while. Many novels, letters, essays, and such that I love are written and intended for someone not at all like me. And my absolute favorite stories are written for no one else but the writer themselves. I’m much more interested in reading a story you write for yourself.”
The voice made her way to the front of the room, and had done another playful pivot on toe to face the class again.
“So you don’t get to know anything about me! You don’t get to know that I have a cat named Trotsky… you don’t get to know that I drive a 60 year old car here every day… and you certainly don’t have the privilege of knowing that my favorite musical artist is LCD Soundsystem. No, divulging all that information would just contaminate your writing brains. You’ll be putting old Lincoln Continentals and Marxist cats and 2000s hipster dance-rock artists in all of your essays. —Enough about me!”
Miss Rhodes was in full swing. She had every bespectacled young woman in the room waiting on her every syllable, and every mommy-issues-ridden young man spaced out in awe. Right on schedule!
Catherine wasn’t manipulating the students. She was just playing the part of the English teacher she would’ve wanted to learn under, or be.
“Let’s start with you!”
An arm and a pointed finger flails to a front corner desk, and a caught-off-guard student.
“Tell the class your name, aaand… your favorite novel.”
The young man starts to open his mouth.
“—but it can’t be something you had to read for school! Okay, go.”
About halfway through the room— 8 names and 8 novels later— time came for a student who could only be described as cold to the touch. She said her name was Fiona, though very few could actually hear her. The creature was so pale that she was nearly blue, though not in a sickly way. It’s like she could have actually been a sort of ice sculpture, yet somehow hot to the touch. Fiona silently meditated for just under a minute, murdering the momentum in the room, before deciding “Anna Karenina” as her favorite novel.
Catherine felt a corner of her mouth twitch as her routine was interrupted. What a rare bird this Fiona was turning out to be.
“It’s a good one, everyone; Anna Karenina. Excellent choice, young lady.”
The rest of the names and novels were routine. The rest of the period was routine save for a few fleeting moments where Catherine’s eyes would catch Fiona staring outside through the window. The sunlight hit her porcelain skin harder than anyone else in the room, and shrouded her in a sort of blinding emanation.
Miss Rhodes dismissed the class a full minute before the bell, a calculated decision rather than the spur-of-the-moment whim she had presented it to be. Catherine was sitting back at her desk now, and watching over the packing up and filing out. She had the eraser of an expensive pencil squishing her bottom lip up against a wall of bright white teeth.
She read Alexander immediately to be the elite of the class. She could smell the generational wealth on him, and the accompanying confidence. Catherine kicked herself over coining a nickname of “Alexander the Great” on the first day. Plus, she delivered it too coquettishly. The last thing she needs is to hear rumor of another student building a masturbation shrine to her. Never again.
There were more than two students who reminded Catherine of herself at this age. She felt herself smiling to them as they executed the exact decision she would have made, a reroute to walk by the desk and give a purposeful smile and wave. They’ll want to have lunch in her room in a few weeks.
One last time she caught a glimpse of Fiona. At last, she figured out what seemed to make the girl such a special case. Any psuedo-goth, depression-vogue, mysterious loner type, even the handsome ones, would pair this archetype with its accompanying terrible posture. Fiona stood up straight. Her chin and spine were model-trained. There was something runway about the beast that intimidated Catherine. There have been pretty girls in Catherine’s classes before, but one moves on from that kind of thing. Fiona was a dark angel, a white-hot flame of a girl. And just like that, she was out to haunt the halls.
What was Catherine doing still thinking about that girl?