Chapter 2 - Brent
“Mister Andrews?” asked a whiny voice.
I didn’t need to look up from my screen—where I was grading the work of a different class—to know that it was one of my graduating seniors. He—and the rest of my high school students—were mentally clocked out for the year and ready for summer break.
That it was a Monday only added to their fatigue. And mine, if the reflection from my monitor was any indication. I’d let my brown hair grow out a bit more than usual, and my beard needed a trim.
Nothing out of the ordinary for a teacher in May.
“Yes, Isaac?” I asked.
“It’s not saving my colors. It just keeps giving me errors.”
I stood, rounded my desk, made my way down the center aisle between long desks that boasted only moderately outdated desktop computers interspersed with netbooks for the kids who were multitasking, and over to where he sat.
I leaned over and looked at Isaac’s screen. “Ok. Show me what you’re doing.”
“So I’m doing what you said, and using colors from the color wheel…”
“Ok…”
He clicked one of the colors, and a tiny ‘copied’ notification flashed. “I copied the color…” He switched back to the website backend of the content management system he’d chosen. “I pasted it. But it doesn’t do anything.”
He pasted in the color code, pressed save, and a vague error code popped up.
I immediately spotted the problem. “You need to strip out the number symbol.”
“What?”
I pointed at the number symbol on the screen. “See how the symbol is already there in front of the text field? The plugin is putting it in automatically, so the code gets confused when you put it in again. Remove it, and it should work.”
“The hashtag?”
I forced myself not to sigh. “Yes. Remove the hashtag.”
He did it, and the page saved without issue. “It worked!”
I let out a single chuckle. “Was there anything else?”
“No.”
“Ok. I’ll let you get back to work, then.”
He nodded as he leaned in to stare at the screen again.
I decided to tour the classroom while I was up. This was my advanced business software class, and the kids were working on design projects rather than listening to me lecture… for all of our sanity.
I checked in with the kids who were glaring at their screens, making sure they didn’t need help. I spotted one of my slackers had abandoned his project in favor of playing a game, but he’d tucked himself into a corner of the back row and wasn’t disturbing anybody else.
I’d emailed his parents several times—to no response—about his grades over the course of the year. But if they didn’t care that their kid failed, then I wasn’t going to waste energy fighting at the end. He wasn’t disturbing anybody else, which was enough.
I probably wouldn’t have let him into the advanced class, but he’d squeaked through the intermediate class with grades just good enough to meet the prerequisite.
For as little as his parents cared about his grades, they raised holy hell when somebody tried to deny their precious son.
Trying to kick him from the class would have been a nightmare of his mom complaining to administration, then me having to take him anyway.
It was easier for me to just tell him to keep quiet in the back corner if he was going to slack off.
I glanced at the clock and saw that the bell was about to ring.
“Ok, everybody,” I said loud enough for them all to hear. “Remember that this is the last week to work on your projects. Presentations start next Monday. And they’ll be randomized, so be ready. You won’t get a do-over if I pull your name early and you’re not done.”
“Yes, Mister Andrews,” replied the ones who weren’t completely checked out.
The bell rang, and they all grabbed bags before shuffling out.
I waited around for several minutes to make sure nobody from another class came in with any questions. Once I decided that the coast was clear, I grabbed my bag, made sure I had everything I needed, then headed to the teachers’ lounge.
I checked the bulletin board inside the door to make sure there were no changes to the after-school duty schedule, spent a few minutes commiserating with my fellow teachers about the kids with senioritis, then headed out to the parking lot.
Warm humidity hit me as soon as I was outside, but one glance at the line of student cars gridlocked as they waited for the light told me that there was no point in rushing to my car—unless I wanted to waste gas.
I paused to chat with a former student there to pick up a younger sibling, then found myself drawn into a discussion with the band teacher and an English teacher as they took bets on who’d come back after summer break with new mates and babies on the way.
Of course, I snorted when the English teacher suggested that I’d have a mate at the beginning of the next school year. It was a bet he’d lost before, but I’d take my prize come August if he wanted to try again.
Not that I wouldn’t mind having an omega to go home to—a man to tuck into my arms in the evenings. But I’d never met one that felt right.
I wasn’t about to rush into mating and starting a family with a man whom I wasn’t positive was the one.
The traffic finally eased, and I decided it was a good time to head over to the community college to sort out the standard administrative bullshit for the basic computer skills course I taught there on the side.
Physical attendance sheets from my spring class were due, and it was time to update my security and vaccination information. Plus I had everything I needed to give the chair of the continuing education department for my classes for the next school year.
I was halfway there when I found myself stuck in traffic in the historic district. Cars moved at a crawl, and tourists seemed to think that they were invincible as they made the problem worse by jaywalking as they criss-crossed between stores.
My gaze flicked to the dashboard clock. While I still had time, people would grumble if I pushed it too close to five.
Movement from the corner of my eye caught my attention. I looked up to see somebody applying vinyl lettering to a glass door.
TechSpeed Consulting…
Something about the name made me think. Maybe I was wrong, but the word ‘Tech’ was promising.
My kids, especially in the basic classes, loved to ask when they would use the skills once they graduated. To them, everything was in the cloud, and they were used to apps rather than desktop applications.
I mentally filed the name away. It was one thing for me to tell my students that they were learning important things. But maybe this TechSpeed place was the type of business that could tell them that the skills were still relevant.
The light changed, and horns sounded to spur pedestrians from the middle of the road.
I pulled forward and managed to just make it through the intersection on a yellow.
My thoughts returned to what I needed to do at the community college as I mapped my path between offices.
It felt like a lot sometimes, but keeping both teaching jobs was what let me live in Harris Cove. So I’d do the paperwork and make sure I was set to keep teaching my college courses.
But as the traffic eased again, I recalled the teasing from the English teacher.
It would be nice to have an omega.