Chapter Text
“I still think she should’ve gone to a better school.”
Oh noooo, not this year…
Ryland took off his glasses from where he was leaning against his desk, and started to massage his nose bridge. Gosh darn it.
“Marcy, this school is fine. It’s all we could afford, because of you.”
The voices drew closer, and Ryland quickly put his glasses back on.
Soon, the door labelled with his name opened, and in walked a small, little, totally not dysfunctional family.
A girl with blonde hair and blue eyes was standing in front of her parents, face turned to the side as she pocketed her phone. Ryland recognised her type. Not enough attention at home, so she has to take it out in school. Ryland felt bad for her, but he mentally prepared himself for a troublemaker.
Behind her stood a woman, presumably her mom, with identical eyes and hair. But while her daughter looked warm, under all that bravado, Ryland could tell this woman was cold. Her eyes held a sort of iciness, and it made Ryland just a tad uncomfortable.
Beside her stood a man, presumably the dad. He had medium-length black hair and brown eyes that Ryland had to look away from before he got lost in them. He was also built like some sort of army officer, but he didn’t look hostile. Well, he only looked hostile towards the woman, and she seemed to share that dislike. But under all that, he seemed protective of his daughter and just wanted to keep her safe. How could Ryland tell all this? He didn’t know.
Teacher magic, maybe.
The girl looked around the class in awe, and Ryland felt some sort of pride in that. He knew his classroom design was good; he had that at least to pride himself on.
Despite that, he also noticed the mother glancing around with poorly veiled disgust, and Ryland felt anger flare a little inside him.
He’d spent years perfecting how he interacted with the students, and the classroom was no exception. It was one of Ryland’s many prides in his workspace, with a hanging model of the solar system just high enough so no one would bump into it, but low enough to gaze at in between classes. The walls were lined with various pieces of scientific equipment, and little posters he had made with jokes, rules or just random drawings from his students.
This room was a living testament to how much he loved his students, and he was not going to let this woman disgrace his work.
Okay, maybe he was getting a little riled up about this.
The man cleared his throat and gently nudged the girl forward. She turned to glare at him, but slowly stepped forward. She cleared her throat, then slowly reached her hand forward to shake Ryland’s.
“Nice to meet you, Mr Grace. I’m…Elaine.”
Her voice was deeper than what Ryland would’ve expected, but it was soft. He grinned, summoning up that ‘Best Science Teacher’ energy.
“Nice to meet you, Elaine!”
He picked up his attendance sheet and wrote down a small tick next to her name.
“You're the first one here, so why don’t you go and choose the best seat for you?”
Elaine smiled tentatively and walked off to a seat on the left. Ryland mentally correlated that seat to her and then turned to look at her parents.
“And you are Elaine’s parents, yes? I’m Ryland Grace, her science teacher.”
The man gave him a small but warm smile and gave him a calloused hand that Ryland shook readily.
“It’s really nice to meet you, Mr Grace. I’m Simon, Simon Markson, and this is my…”
Ryland barely managed to stop himself from wincing before he continued.
“...wife, Marcy Markson.”
Marcy didn’t seem to share her husband’s politeness and looked Ryland up and down, clearly unimpressed.
“Teach my daughter the best you can.”
Oh my god.
She snarked, and Ryland hoped his dislike didn’t look as red-hot as it felt.
It was gonna be a long year.
“Well, I’m sure you both have things to do, so I won’t hold you back.”
Please get the hell out of my classroom.
Ryland smiled. Simon smiled back awkwardly, then they both walked out of the classroom.
Ryland made his way back behind his desk and totally didn’t notice Simon hesitantly waving to Elaine, who waved back.
~
The school bell made Ryland jump, as it often did, and his class laughed as they started packing. He muttered out a few non-curses, laughing softly.
“I’ll get these graded and back to you by tomorrow, so go home and rest!”
A chorus of agreements and farewells echoed throughout Ryland’s classroom, and the kids all filed out of the classroom, chatter and laughter bringing a small smile to Ryland’s face, as it always did.
He sighed, then stood up from where he was sitting behind his desk, stretching and hearing his joints crack. Hah, maybe he was getting too old.
He grabbed all the test papers from his desk and made his way upstairs to the high school floors and to Rocky’s office.
Svyatogor Rokotov, or Rocky, as everyone called him, was one of Grover Cleveland’s resident CTE teachers for the high school connected to them. He specialized in design and coding, but he wasn’t a CTE teacher for nothing.
Ryland had tried to learn his original Russian name before, but not only did Rocky like being called, well, Rocky, just looking at the text made Ryland’s head spin. He taught science, not languages!
Ryland pushed open the office door and spotted the man perched in his swivel chair, cargo boots resting on his desk, clacking away at his laptop, which rested on his lap.
He also spotted Ryland and paused his typing to wave and smile at the other man as he pulled up a chair opposite Rocky.
“Grace! Good to see you. How were the new kids?”
He had a thick accent, and Ryland’s first name was always a struggle for him. So, he stuck to Grace.
“Ah, they were pretty good. Good kids, shitty parents, you know how it is.”
Rocky hummed in agreement, returning to typing away on his keyboard. Ryland sat down, flicking open the worksheets for him to mark.
He did this at the start of every year, giving the students a small worksheet that is. It helped him judge their character as a whole, and helped them judge him as well.
“Mm mm mm, Elaine. Question 5 is C.” He muttered, writing down small notes in a red pen.
Giving them a test first thing wouldn’t seem so ‘Best Science Teacher’, but that was until you read the questions.
He also had a bonus question at the end. Non-compulsory, of course, and it was normally not even at a middle school level, and somewhere around a tenth-grade science question.
It was related to whatever topic they would start with, and was an incredible hook to get them interested, if Ryland didn’t say so himself. Their first topic was light this year, so the question was related to that.
“How can defects like myopia and hypermetropia be corrected?”
Most eighth-grade questions only required one-word answers, so this was bound to stump at least some of them. And so far, it had stumped all of them. Most left it blank, some even providing a couple of little question marks to express their confusion.
Well, except for one.
Ryland flipped to the last page of Elaine’s worksheet and paused.
For many serious vision defects such as myopia and hypermetropia, surgery or glasses can be used to bend the light rays before they enter the corneas, such as a plus-powered convex lens in many…
Ryland blinked, skimming through the rest of her answer. Fully correct.
“Grace? You are okay, yes?”
Ryland tilted his head to this side, eyebrows furrowed in confusion as he kept his vision on the paper.
“Yeah, I’m fine, Rocky. Don’t worry about me.”
Rocky returned to his clacking away, and Ryland marked down red ticks in appropriate places, drawing a little star at the bottom, the universal signal for a job well done.
Maybe I should talk to her about that gifted kid programme.
~
“Hey, kiddo.”
Simon sighed, waiting for the click of Elaine’s seatbelt before he took off from the middle school.
“Where’s Mom?”
“...”
Answer enough for Elaine, apparently.
“How was school?”
He glanced back at Elaine through the rearview mirror and paused.
Elaine was staring out the window, a small smile on her face.
Simon hadn’t seen her smile in months.
“Something good, I hope?”
Elaine nodded, still staring out the window.
“Yeah. Mr Grace was super cool.”
Mr. Grace… Him. The science teacher. A cheerful blond with ruffled-up hair, tall, and crooked glasses framing probably the bluest eyes he’d ever seen. Warm smile.
“He gave us a worksheet to do, but it was super funny.”
Elaine smiled again, wider.
“He had this question, I think question 5? It was just, Mr Grace is 5 steps away, and you're eating something, what do you do?“
Elaine smirked, then laughed slightly.
Simon felt his heart melt a little.
“Answer C was literally ‘Give him some’! With a smiley face! He’s really nice too, I can tell he really likes science, which makes it fun to learn.”
Simon turned his attention back to the road, keeping an eye on Elaine through the mirror as she kept chuckling every now and then.
It was a nice name, Simon had to admit that.
Ryland Grace.