Playground, school bell rings...again

"...Now, the second point I'd like to go over is my late work policy. Please note, there isn't one." Sharpe said plainly, "I do not accept work late, ever! Especially papers. You will have a small paper, most likely a reactionary paper due every week. These will be one page and will most likely be a response to a reading that you did that week, or a video that we watch here in class." Sheridan continued walking, but he couldn't get the strange, wrenching feeling out of his stomach. He knew the red haired girl from somewhere. She was such a perfect duplicate of his long lost love, that it pained him to even look at her. He wanted to. He wanted to just stare at her for hours on end, but at the same time, each glance was like a knife of pain through his heart. "Don't start freaking out just yet. The papers only have to be a page to a page and a half long, with one point five spacing."



Kelly jotted down a few side notes, mostly about the weekly papers, but in all went back to her doodling. She'd grown up in a hard life. The world she'd come from was cruel, unforgiving, and now that she was being expected to actually do work, Kelly resented it. It wasn't that she was lazy, or uncapable of doing the work, it was that Kelly didn't want to. She was a very angry girl. She felt the world owed her something and she was going to get her pound of flesh out of it, one way or another.
Soon she found herself tapping the back of her pen lightly as Sheridan rambled on. She was aware of the black-haired girl's stares. She couldn't figure out what the girl wanted. Her eyes seemed to be darting from her, to Kelly's red-haired room-mate. Kelly decided to stop paying attention and went back to her doodles. This was just another class to her, with papers, and grading and everything.


Christine, too, felt a strange feeling. While Sharpe's was longing and sorrow, Christine's was ramped curiocity. She seemed to more and more sure that she knew her teacher, but reality she'd never met Sharpe before in her life.
Christine put the thought of it out of her mind as she jotted down Sharpe's comments about the papers as well as where the essay topics might have been coming from. She found it particularly interesting when Sharpe even offered that they could use his lectures as topic's for their paper if they could site it properly. It was a daring move for a teacher, bearing his throat to the hungry teeth of an 8am class. An 8am class, she could tell, was irritated and unruly.

Sharpe stood up, "Alrighty everyone. Let's get our attentions back up here." He paused while everyone stopped writing, "Now. Let's hear what some of you came up with for answers. There's a particular reason I put these phrases and words up on the board. I want to see if you guys can figure out where I'm going with this." He looked around, "YOu, what's your name?" He walked over to his desk and picked up his class roster, "The one with the black hair."


"Kelly." Kelly responded looking up at the teacher.

"Alright, Kelly." Sharpe replied, "What were some of the things you came up with?"

Kelly picked up her paper, "I just talked about how they are all values that seem to have become clouded in the modern world, and that a lot of good men and women have died for them." Kelly looked at the teacher, hoping that her answer was good. She had worked hard on it, but she wasn't sure if that's where Sharpe wanted the students to go.

Sharpe nodded, "Alright, forgotten morals and sacrifice. That works to a point." He paused, "But not exactly what I was looking for. Who else. How about the young lady in the second row there. What'd you come up with?"

"A very good point," Sharpe replied, "And I'll get to why in just a moment." He looked around, "Alright, one more. You in the back, what did you come up with?"

The student sat up, "Um, well I just wrote about how all those things are protected in our constitution and stuff."

Sharpe had been waiting for the obvious slacker, and in his mind, he'd just found him, "And I don't suppose it crossed your mind that those things that are protected in our constitution, had to origionate somewhere, and they had to make their way to this country somehow?"

The kid sat dumbfounded.

"I thought not." Sharpe replied briefly, "Now... What I wanted you to think of is connect all these principles, and rights, and ideologies with those who came to this country, seeking many of the things you see on this list. Religious freedom, just as one of our students said. While you said that you think the church is too strict, many people back then thought that it had grown lavish and too loose with it's rules. That's how we end up with the Puritians. They came here because they felt the Church of England was too lax in their rules. Maryland was given to Lord Baltimore and made into a safe-haven for Catholic's fleeing England." Sharpe pulled down a map of the origional thirteen colonies, "Each one of these colonies has a story in how it was founded. Some of them were founded by religious refugees, others were founded for exploration and bragging rights, like Virginia. While others were formed by radicals who fought against the extablished system, like Rhode Island and Conneticut. These principles were not just what founded our country in the sense that they were put into our Bill of Rights, they were the very motivations that drove our fore-father's to come to this country in the first place!"


Kelly took a few notes, but once she saw that Sharpe was venturing off into the land of Pocohantus and the Pilgrims, she lost interest. Ever since she was in grade school it was all she'd heard when it came to early US History. The only piece of new information was about Maryland, but even that had no interest to her. Kelly didn't care how the colonies were formed, or why, the important thing to her was that they had been, and now she lived in the byproduct of their establishment. With that in mind, she went back to her doodles.


Christine sat fixated. As she listened to Sharpe the strangest thing happened. Her mind began to show her images of a colonial city. What she didn't know was that they were memories. But the question was... memories of what? Wherever the colonial city was it was French. Christine tried her best to clear her head of the images as she jotted down copious notes as to what her teacher was discussing. She knew that Sharpe had a great knowledge of the subject matter, but she had no idea that deep deep down.. she had it too.

Sharpe looked at the clock. It was nearing the end of the period. He sighed. Time went so quickly when he was teaching. He looked at his students for a moment and his eyes fell on the red-head once again, "Alright let me call the role. For homework," Sharpe started as he walked over to his desk, "I want you to read chapters one and two in the Lirin book. It'll get you up to speed for our next discussion." He picked up the paper, "Alright. Let's see who we have stuck in purgatory this semester." He started reading off names.

Christine's head pounded. There was still a lot of emotion coming from that one girl, and she was picking up so much anger from another girl in the class, but she didn't know which one, or who it was, all she knew was that they were giving her a monstrous headache and she was getting tired of it. It was unusual for Christine to feel any sort of anger or annoyance towards people, but she was and she couldn't explain why.

Sharpe continued to read off names, "Christine Dawson?" He looked up waiting for a response.

Christine almost didn't hear him but she looked up, "Here." She said in her soft angelic voice. No one had heard her speak thus far, but her voice was soft, and sweet, and had the slight hint of a french accent in it.

Sharpe froze, he thought he almost felt a tear come to his eye as he looked at her and heard her speak. A lump grew in his throat and his stomach was doing knots. He looked back down at the list, clearing his throat but his voice still caught on the next name.

Christine could tell he was mourning. It had been unclear why he had such feelings of saddness and remorse before, but now Christine knew it. He was mourning the loss of a loved one. Christine couldn't tell if it was a sister, a wife, a mother, or who it was, but all she could surmise was that she must have reminded him of her. She felt sad, and helpless, helpless that she couldn't do anything to ease his pain.

Sharpe continued reading the list, "Ok, and um... Sara Reynolds?" He looked around.

Sharpe continued down the list, through the S's and the T's, "Kelly Williamson?"

"Here." Kelly said, not sounding at all enthusiastic in her response.

Sharpe finished the list shortly after, "Alright, so on your way out if you'd just drop your free writes on my desk I'll have them back to you next class. They aren't graded, I would just like to see what you all said." Sharpe sat down at his desk as the students put their things away and began bringing their papers up to his desk.
The students were a usual batch of jocks, and geeks, and nerds, and girly-girls, and so forth. It was nothing that surprised Sharpe. He'd been teaching for so long that he'd come to expect such a class. Nothing surprised him anymore.

Kelly put her notebook away and slung her bag over her shoulder before walking up and putting the paper on Sharpe's desk. Their eyes met for a moment and Sharpe could tell she had had a rough life, though he couldn't tell the details, and Kelly was just as happy that way as she fumbled with her ear-buds and put them back into her ears as she headed for the art studios.

Christine put her backpack up on one shoulder and fluffed her hair out from underneath it. She grabbed her paper and walked up to where Sharpe was sitting. She held out her paper and as Sharpe took it their hands gently touched. There was something familiar about it all, and as Sharpe gazed at her, she could have sworn his eyes became a deeper, truer blue than they normally were. The world seemed to slow around them, and in the brief moment, she felt at ease, as if she knew what was going on, but that was impossible.
After what seemed like minutes, but was only a couple of seconds Christine smiled sweetly and headed out the door of the room, leaving Sara next in line.