Since this is literally all I've written so far LOL.
Not sure if I'll ever write more of it anyway, but its a start:
Some people thought Harold and Emily were meant to be... But it didn't always seem that way.
When they first met, she hardly noticed him, and he perceiving this pretended not to notice her.
But he did notice her... Severely. He was taken by her at the first glance.
To him: she was a wonder- the kind of natural, easy- but untouchable- beauty that seems to float effortlessly above the reach of regular people. She stole his breath.
To her: he was a blur in her peripherals. Not bad looking by any means, but he lacked status and recogniton so she had no reason to bother looking.
He was unnoticed, just another kid in the classroom. He felt it. And so he forced himself to breath. Ambivalence as a response to her disregard.
And all this hardly noticing and feigned not noticing would never have happened if they had not been seated together on the first day of 12th grade English, by Mr. Hanlon.
This is how it happened:
Class was supposed to start at two. Kids began milling in five minutes before, but by five minutes after the room was still half empty.
Mr. Hanlon stood up front, with his arms crossed the entire time. He didn't speak, but counted each entrance with a nod and a mark on his paper.
Every desk had on it a blank index card.
Harold stepped through the door around five past two. He looked around and saw her immediately- and then he couldn't unsee her. She held herself with such... such... It was almost like royalty or celebrity- or some other unattainable appeal.
His heart beat hard.
He wanted to sit right next to her, and there was an opening there beside her... But he was far too intimidated.
So he took an empty seat closer to the door- farther from her, but she was still effectively the only one in the room.
He fidgeted nervously with the index card.
"Thirty one. Good. That's everybody." Mr. Hanlon put down the paper he was marking, and spoke with pathetically self-indulgent enthusiasm and communicated an exhausting sense of desperate authority. "Welcome to twelfth grade English."
He looked around at the glass, with an almost gloating smile. "I see you've all chosen your seats. If you look down you'll see an index card on your desk. Write your name on the card.
Harold strained his eyes to see (without looking like he was looking) what she wrote on her card.
He wanted to know her name. knowing her name would make her that much more real.
But she wrote nothing on the card.
Instead she hesitated for a blink of a moment- such a brief pause it would have been easy to miss if one was not watching her fully.
Then she raised her hand. Her voice was like silk- "Mr. Hanlon, I need a pencil."
Harold saw the teacher's jaw drop, and knew immediately that this man was a blubbering baby on a power trip. "What is your name?"
"Emily Green." She wasn't buckling under the pressure- yet.
Harold could tell that Mr. Hanlon saw it too... The teacher's jaw was still open, but the expression in his eyes had shifted towards one of gloating contempt. He finally shut his mouth, just so he could shake his head. He made a very emphatic mark on the clip board.
Then he took a pencil out of his pocket, he gestured with it pointing at Emily, "You did not come prepared for class, Emily Green.
Explain yourself to the class, please."
She looked taken aback at first, but then she cleared her throat. "It's the first day Mr. Hanlon, all we are doing is picking up our syllabuses."
He chuckled at the front of the class, and crossed his arms. "First of all, Emily Green, you had better learn that attitude isn't going to get you very far in life. Coast through highschool after graduation- if you even make it that far- it'll be only uphill from there. You wont get far without effort. And second, the plural of syallabus is syllabi, so-"
"Actually Mr. Hanlon, there are two accepted plurals of syllabus." Nobody had been expecting a third voice to ever enter the mix. The people up front turned around to look at Harold.
All eyes were on him, and he was nervous. But all the energy of the first day of classes, and his infatuation with Emily, and his adreneline at challenging a teacher had his blood coarsing hard through his veins and drumming in his ears.
He continued, "Normally I wouldn't correct somebody in front of the whole class. I guess it's kind of rude. But you don't seem to have a problem with it, so..." He wanted to end with more power, but he didn't know what else to say. He could almost feel the veins in his face throbbing, and he knew his face was bright red- which only made him flush harder.
Mr. Hanlon's jaw was opened once more. When the rest of the class realized what had just happened the laughter started.
First it was just snickers, but it quickly ballooned into an uproar.
Harold felt anxious. He had no way of knowing for sure whether all that laughter was at his expense, Mr. Hanlon's expense, or the both of them.
Emily shot him a glance that he couldn't read. But when he looked to meet her gaze, her eyes swung back to the front of the class. She looked embarassed. Her face wasn't as red as Harold's, but still.
Mr. Hanlon stood there, seething and silent at the head of the room.
Harold was confident that he had just royally smudged any chance of a good first impression on this particular teacher- and he knew the rest of the year was going to be rough, at least in English.
Harold didn't know whether he was happy about what he'd done.
On one hand, he was proud that he stood up against an asshole, and he hoped it earned him some brownie points with Emily. On the other hand the rest of the class might think he's a lunatic, might cut him out so they don't get the royal smudge on them too.
The laughter slowly died down. The silence was almost worse... He felt like he might have just committed social suicide.
"And what is your name?" He was pointing with the pencil again, aggressively jabbing the air.
"Harold Maria."
Mr. Hanlon suppressed a guffaw, but he couldn't hide his giddy smile. "You're last name is Maria?"
Harold knew this game, from all the way back in kindergarten. Back then he had kept his eyes down, but hearing it from a self-important teacher pushed all his buttons, and his chin stayed up, "Did you hear me? Or should I say it again louder?"
The class was laughing again- and the swirling chaos between his red hot cheeks, Harold once again didn't know who they were laughing at, so he supposed it was him.
The laughter was shorter this time. Mr. Hanlon nodded again. He put a very deliberate mark on the clip board.
"Class..." The laughter trickled away, but a couple people were still giggling.
The clipboard came down on the edge of one of the desks in the front row- came down with such force it broke into two pieces. The girl behind that particular desk screamed, and jumped almost out of her chair.
The last of the laughter died abruptly. Nobody dared look at anything besides Mr. Hanlon. Nobody besides Harold, because he figured he was already in the shit house and it no longer mattered. He could see a couple faces bending under a quiet strain- they were trying not to laugh again.
"Write your name on the index card in front of you, and then pass the card up to the front. I will write Miss Green's name in on the blank card for her..." He glared at the students, "Does anybody else expect to pass me a blank card?"
Harold thought about it... But he did have his supplies, and he wasn't about to antagonize the toddler up front further, not without provocation anyhow. He wrote his name and passed it forward.
Mr. Hanlon collected the cards, shuffled through them, found the blank and hastily scrawled a name on it. He shuffled further, and put one other card beside it.
"Everybody stand up- take your stuff with you."
Chair legs squeaked and shoes shuffled.
"Go to the walls."
Everyboyd moved quickly, leaving the desks behind mostly deserted. Ironically somebody had left a pencil behind in the middle of the room.
Mr. Hanlon strolled up and down each row, putting a name on each desk, except the two front and center.
Those he left empty.
After he had placed all the cards besides the two he had set aside, he put those on the empties in the middle of the front row.
"If you chose your own seats, you will be too comfortable." He was speaking loudly, in a voice that was all to confident, "That's why I'm shuffling you guys like a deck of cards."
Harold saw a red headed girl on the other side of the room roll her eyes at that.
"Because I don't want you to be too comfortable. You are here to learn. Katherine Malone."
The owner of that name looked up, and raised her hand timidly.
"Find your seat."
That was the only direction he gave. The girl looked around, aimlessly at first. It was obvious to Harold that she felt uncomfortable being put on the spot like that.
But eventually she found her seat, and planted herself in it. She stared at the chalk board- avoiding the eyes of their classmates.
"Marcus James." He didn't seem quite so shy. He walked through the aisles, leening in to look at the cards.
"Shari Amoud."
"Bethany Lange."
"Timothy Gromm."
"Ashley Leonard."
He kept reading names, waiting between each for the called upon to find their seat, until the only two who remained standing were Emily Green and Harold Maria.
"And you two lovebirds, I put you exactly where I want you."
They both started moving. Harold was looking at her. She was carefully avoiding his eyes. So he played the same way.
Mr. Hanlon addressed the class while they were walking to their seats.
"Exactly where I can see you, and where the rest of the class can too. We'll all see what a lack of preparedness and a smartass attitude get you by the end of the year. Like I said in to Emily Green earlier, coasting might work for a while here in shcool, but it wont work in real life. If you ever want to amount to anything you better put forth more effort."
They sat down. And that's where it all started. Harold was still burning for her, but she hardly took notice. So put on a face and acted unfazed by lack of attention... Ambivalence as a response to her disregard....
Mr. Hanlon started passing out packets of paper. "And here are your syllabi... Or syllabuses if you think you know everything."
Most of the other first day classes let out early... Those that didn't just jumped right in to the course material. Mr. Hanlon did neither. He spent the full period reading and explaining the overly lengthy syllabus....
"Now class," he said, though he was looking only at Emily, "Take out your pencils. Here are your reading assignments to complete before the next class."
Harold took out a spare pencil and handed it over to Emily.
"No chance!" Mr. Hanlon shouted. He darted in and grabbed the pencil from between them, and snapped it in his hands.
"Absolutely no sharing!" he waved the pencil shards at the class, "If you don't come prepared to class, you won't be depending on the misplaced generosity of others. If you come without your pencils you wont be taking notes- you'll be taking zeros on all the in class work though!"
Harold looked at Emily, she looked kinda pissed off, at Hanlon... But she gave him a somewhat appreciative look and he lived for that. He nodded at her, and looked back upfront.
Mr. Hanlon was still droning. "After today, if anybody lends a spare to somebody who came without, that generous fool will be lending me all their pencils till the end of the period- they'll be in the same place as the person who doesn't care about their own future."
Five minutes before the bell, people started packing up their things.
He consulted his clipboard, and called on that person, "Mary Morelli. I have not dismissed the class. Unpack your things."
It was the red headed girl whom Harold had seen rolling her eyes. She had that same look again now.
When the bell rang, he called out loudly, "You aren't dismissed yet!"
Everybody sat back down, "You won't leave your seats when the bell rings. You'll leave your seats when I say the class is over."
He slowly eyed each student, almost combatively.
Harold really couldn't stand this guy.
"When you come back on Wednesday, you'll sit exactly where you are now. If anybody can't remember where they are sitting and choses the wrong seat, then you'll lose your desk for the rest of the class. If you are too stupid to remember where your butt is now, then you're probably too oblivious to feel uncomfortable on the floor."
The minute hand had already crept almost 3 minutes past the end of the period.
Mr. Hanlon was still droning. Harold grabbed his stuff and stood up.
"Where do you think you are going?!"
Harold walked towards the door, "To my next class, because this one ended 3 minutes ago."
"Harold Maria!"
Harold looked back over his shoulder, as he put his hand on the door. He was already making a list in his head of the things he was going to tell the administrators about this tool bag.
"Harold Maria, you aren't dismissed. If you walk out of here before dismissal, you are just proving to the rest of the class that you wont amount to anything more in life than the class clown!"
Harold knew he should have kept quiet, but he simply couldn't keep up with his mouth. "Well atleast I know I'm not going to be a power-tripping English teacher, who gets off on controlling 17 year olds. See ya Wednesday, Hanlon."
He swung the door open and walked out into the hall. He thought about waiting for Emily to come out. But he didn't think that would accomplish anything- leaving just to wait. And he legitimately didn't want to be late for the next class.... So he started walking down the hall.
He looked back before he rounded the corner, but the door was still shut.
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If you liked it, check out chapter 2 of my book (The Long Arm of Hanlon)!
