After a good 20 minute drive over to the next town, Rebecca was at the school.
It was 7:30 in the morning. The only people there were the other teachers and those few students that always seemed to turn up 2 hours early for whatever reason. Surprisingly it was a nice, sunny day, which was honestly rather odd for England. Even in the Summer it poured rain. So, for an autumn day to be warm and sunny was strange.
After stepping out of her small car and closing the door, Rebecca put on her shades and began walking towards the reception building. She scanned her badge to sign in and walked upstairs to the staff room. After coming in she was greeted with slit eyes that made her uncomfortable. Scoffing, she went over to the kettle and poured herself a coffee.
"Oh, Miss Clarkson - you know you have a lot of catching up to do with your year 10 and 11 classes. They're falling behind with their topics," said the Headmaster.
"Oh, yeah, sure.. " said Rebecca. Then she muttered under her breath," Maybe if you didn't stick all the fucking assholes together and give them to me ..."
"What was that?"
"Nothing, Sir, nothing at all. I'll get right on it," she replied.
Power walking into her classroom Rebecca smacked open the door, put her coffee down, kicked back, turned on her monitor, and booted up the smartboard, ready for the first lesson of the day.
At 9:00AM first lesson arrived and Rebecca knew it was going to be painful. She got up as she heard the loud chattering of her year 10 class. She opened the door and let them all come in. She watched them as they sat down in their places and got their books out of their bags. Rebecca walked back in and sat down at her desk, too.
Rebecca switched on the board and straight away it started: constant irrelevant questions, loud chattering that wouldn't settle down, things thrown across the class and at her - just general chaos. It continued through the first hour and then began again with her year 11 class. When the last class left for break time at 11:00, Rebecca leaned back in her chair and sipped on her coffee in relief.
The first half of the day is over, she thought. The painful bit at least.
This perked her up bit.
"Ahhhh thank fuck for that. Think I'll head over to the English office for a bit now, " sighed Rebecca, waltzing out of her class.
Before she left, Rebecca locked her computer and turned off the projector for the smartboard. The she made her way across the school grounds.
After a good two minutes of avoiding desperate year 7's trying to get to the cafe, she made it to the English office. And to her relief once more, she was greeted by the only two people she could call her friends, although even that was stretching it. And so to make life more bearable and to somewhat kill the air of awkwardness that now lingered she engaged in the art of conversation. And who would have guessed it? Her efforts sparked up a nice lively talk and some invites to dinner (though they were unfortunately declined). As break time drew to a close Rebecca made her way out the door and back to her class again.
"See ya whenever, lunch probably, bye," said Rebecca as she then made her trek back to her teaching room. She nudged past the students amassed at the door. Then she let them come in behind her and she sat down at her desk.
As she unlocked her computer Rebecca failed to notice the eerie black can directly to the left of her on her desk. But as she watched the last of the late goers come in and take their seats on that side of the room her eyes quickly fixated onto it. She smirked at it with both amusement and confusion as she tried to piece together whether it had been there before she left. But she was quickly snapped back to reality by an innocent question from one of her year 9's.
Rebecca looked up and smiled - hopefully the next few hours weren't going to be too painful.