A/N: Hey guys. Sorry its been so long. I had finals and stuff to attend to. This chapter is quite...awful, so I'm wondering why I continued anyway. I've just had a major block lately and my writing just hasn't been good. I blame school! Or my overly-tired, miniscule mind. Either one. Anyway, enjoy as much as you can. I'd also be more than pleased if you reviewed. It gets the spirits up, donchaknow:hugs:
Minor Threat
Chapter Four: Fourth Period Continued!
The florescent lights couldn't bother his eyes if they were pressed against his arms, Doug Penhall had decided. He remembered this position well, because he had never given it up. High school had seen him with his arms on his desk and his head on his arms, his closed eyes hidden from view. He thought when he'd graduated that he'd said goodbye to this juvenile pose, but then there was quite clearly the ACADEMY to take into consideration. And of course, upon his initiation as a full-fledged police officer, he found himself reinstated as a high school student. Thus here he was, back in this all-to-familiar stance, waiting for the bell to ring…or something interesting to happen. Most likely, for the bell to ring.
"Doug McQuaid," Mr. Puz (it was a funny name, and no student could say it, or even think it, without laughing) said, tensely tapping his yardstick against his calf, glaring not just at the student in question, but at the wide range of students in his fourth period English class. He hated kids, and no one, not even he, knew why he felt the need to have a yardstick. Once, he had chalked it up to a subconscious desire for a defense implement. Other times, he felt it just emphasized his overall authority in the classroom.
Joe Vega had never been scared of Mr. Puz's yardstick, but he knew several kids that had. His best friend, Jimmy, once confided in him that "the Puzstick", as the twosome referred to the teaching instrument, had given him "the shivers". Joe, being a sixteen-year-old boy and still miles away from maturity, had asked his number one comrade if by "the shivers" he had meant something border lining arousal, or one of the many other physical emotions they gained by looking at Cassandra Epstein. Jimmy had not been amused. In fact, that particular jeering remark had earned Joe one of the rare, hurtful blows to the arm that Jimmy so infrequently bestowed upon him.
"Doug McQuaid," Mr. Puz said again with yet a more authoritative voice.
Joe decided, not without first thinking of possible consequences, to help the Puz out in his plight. He had sat in front of Doug McQuaid that afternoon, in hopes that he would have the opportunity to do just this.
"Just this" being the shinning of his most infuriating nemesis.
"Jeez!" the bigger McQuaid exclaimed as he sat up, a most satisfying mixture of pain and fury marring his handsome face. "What'd ya do that for, schmoe?"
"He was simply attempting to wake you up for me, Douglas," Mr. Puz informed his savage-looking student in a calm, almost taunting tone of voice. "It seems to have worked."
"What the heck did you want me woken up for…Puz?" Doug fumed. The class twittered at the name. It was too hard not to.
"Calm down, Mr. McQuaid. I merely wanted to ask you what your perceptions were of the relationship between the narrator and Florence in The Good Soldier."
Doug, being a cop, never did the homework and thus, had no idea what the Puz was talking about. And being Doug, the only decent way to handle this situation by not taking the all-too-easy way out was making something up.
"Well, lets see…" he trailed off, thinking. After he felt that his pause went on for too long, he continued, "The narrator is just this laid-back sorta guy. He doesn't want to cause no harm to nobody, so he just sits back and lets Florence do whatever she wants. Florence is just this crazy broad who just thinks its okay to throw the narrator's good intentions back in his nice guy face, so she just goes around, prancin' off with these other guys without any consideration for the narrator. Meanwhile, the narrator is dying a little on the inside everytime Florence opens her tactless trap so at long last, he just gives up."
He sat back with a smug look on his face. There was nothing quite like channeling his past with Dorothy and stretching the truth just a tad to get his day started. But he didn't quite understand why Puz-o-rama was looking at him that way with his ugly jaw practically hitting the floor.
"What?" he finally asked.
"That…that was almost correct."
Doug made a mental note to read The Good Soldier when he had some free time on his hands.
..,But at this moment, his partner, brother, what ever the hell they were this time, was barging through the classroom door.
"Yo, Puz," Tommy greeted the infamously bad-named teacher with a smile and smack of his gum. "Can I borrow my brother for a mo?"
"Mo?" Mr. Puz asked dryly. "Mr. McQuaid, is it much too difficult for you to speak correctly? To say words in their entirety?"
Tommy McQuaid stroked his chin, a thoughtful look on his baby face. A strand of his dark hair fell out from underneath his bandana and into his eyes, and he casually flipped it to the side. The girls giggled. The boys felt their intestines turn green with envy.
"Well, Mr. Puz," Tommy began. He stepped backwards to the teacher's desk and lifted himself onto it with the kind of nonchalance the other boys (and the teacher himself) could only dream of. After a quick, blind roaming of the hands, young Tommy found a shiny red apple and throwing caution to the wind, bit into it. Mr. Puz's eyes narrowed as the boy chewed loudly and tauntingly- obnoxiously.
"Well?" Mr. Puz prompted, trying to keep his temper in check.
"Well," Tommy conceded, cocking his head to the side, glancing at the mutilated apple in his hand with the kind of wonder a small child would have before turning the same expression to the ill-titled Puz. "Is it much too difficult, Mr. Puz, for you to not be a pretentious bastard? You're teaching remedial English for crying out loud!"
That didn't sit well with Susan Livingston's classmates. It didn't exactly sit well with Susan, either, but she found herself too preoccupied with the anger she was feeling over the apple to focus on the anger she was feeling over Tommy McQuaid's self-proclaimed witticism. She loved The Good Soldier. So much, that she shared it with her mother and her father after dinner the night before. To quote the novel, it was the saddest story she had ever heard. Her mother suggested that she show Mr. Puz her appreciation for his chosen curriculum by giving him a nice, red, juicy apple as a gift. Susan always followed her mother's advice.
That apple had not been for Tommy McQuaid.
"Go to Principal Polanski's office!" Mr. Puz bellowed through the mayhem that had followed Tommy's remark. There was paper being thrown, angry feet stomping, fists flying through the air. "That means you, McQuaids!"
"I didn't do nothin'!" Doug McQuaid protested.
"Et tu, Brute!" Tommy yelled, a laugh in his voice as he shoved his brother out the door. "See ya around, kids!"
More paper was thrown. A book was thrown, too, but it met its destination against the door that was slammed right before it had the chance to make it through. The McQuaids were free to live another day, the Jump Street undercover cops free to go over whatever minimal information they had absorbed on that hazy high school afternoon.
And as they left, to reconvene in the boy's restroom, their classmates were free to sit and simmer with their adolescent animosity and angst. It was the day after Marty Normick's untimely demise and everyone was a suspect. They just didn't know it yet.
TBC...