[Closed RP for Claire] English was never so interesting

[geekboy_sammy]

Sam and Dean parted ways so they could go teach their respective classes. He found room 213 fairly easily. The classroom had a few students in it already but it wasn't anywhere near full, something he was grateful for as he walked in. He shifted the backpack on his shoulder, realizing that maybe it wasn't the best idea. It made him look a little

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[thecheerleader]

When Claire walked into her classroom three minutes after the last bell, she immediately looked to the teacher's desk to see that the substitute of the day was already there. She nodded apologetically to him, and couldn't help but take note of his age. He was a lot younger than the last few they'd seen; attractive and obviously nervous. She thought she would be too if she was coming into this school, considering everything that had happened over the past few days.

He hadn't started class yet thankfully, but she still thought it would be a good idea to apologize for her lateness on the way out just in case he thought it was disruptive. She'd been following Lyle around since everything had happened, trying to make sure that he stayed safe. With their dad gone, Claire knew it was her job to protect him.

She took her seat and pulled her notebook and pencil out of her backpack, along with her copy of Sleepy Hollow. They were supposed to have it read for today as a follow up to yesterday's lesson on Rip Van Winkle. It had been an easy read, and even though she was supposed to blend in, she still had a few things to say--assuming Mr. ...Ramone didn't just let them have a free period like Ms. Shaw. If he was nervous, it was probably because he planned to teach something.

She was only a little disappointed by that, normally she wouldn't care at all, but she had a fifth period Spanish test to study for. The time would have been useful.

Oh well, what could you do?

[geekboy_sammy]

Sam was just getting ready to start when the pretty blond walked in.She nodded at him and he nodded back with a slight smile. He walked around to the front of the desk and leaned against it, hands braced against the edge of the desk on either side of him. He was facing the class and his nerves jumped up a notch before he choked them down.

"Okay. I know you guys were supposed to have a lesson on Sleepy Hollow today. How many of you actually read the book and how many of you just rented the movie with Johnny Depp in it?" He paused and then raised his hand. "I have read the book but the movie is a pretty decent telling of it."

[thecheerleader]

Claire inched forward in her seat and wrote the date at the top of her page, along with the words Sleepy Hollow. She wasn't going to argue with Mr. Ramone, but she knew he was wrong in his explanation that the movie had taken more than loose inspiration from the short story. From what she'd seen of the movie, it was a lot different.

Maybe he just wasn't teaching it because he wasn't familiar with it. Either way, Claire was still going the "ordinary" route and waiting to see what the teacher had in store for them.

[geekboy_sammy]

So she was right in calling bullshit on the movie and the book but Sam was trying to get everyone to relax a little, loosen up and talk to him. And apparently it was working a little. One of the guys near the back raised his hand. Sam grinned at him and nodded. "So what did think? Headless Horseman...pretty scary stuff."

"Yeah if you believe in stuff like that," a girl in the third row said. Sam nodded and raised his eyebrows.

"So you don't?"

The girl laughed and shook her head. "No way. It's like horror movies. None of that is real."

Sam glanced around the class room. "You all believe that? None of it's real? The Headless Horseman was just Abraham Van Brunt trying to scare Ichabod away from Katherine?"

[thecheerleader]

She might have cringed at the names, but she couldn't help it. At all. He didn't know the story and was trying to talk about it to start a discussion or something, and she couldn't understand why. She did know that the majority of the class probably hadn't done anything with the book or the movie, which was probably why no one was saying anything.

For a moment, she thought of West telling her about how she didn't have to hide the things that made her different and how he was flat out wrong about that. Sometimes it was better to hide what you were, and this was one of those times. It wasn't as serious as what she'd done to Debbie, but she'd learned her lesson.

[geekboy_sammy]

Sam sighed and glanced around the classroom. This was going great. Really. Friggin' fantastic. Time to change direction. Maybe Sylvia Plath would have been better.

"Okay, so Headless Horseman not so much a hit." He glanced around the class room and stood up to pace in front of the room, hands shoved in his pockets, jacket bunching up around his arms.

"Color floods to the spot, dull purple.
The rest of the body is all washed out,
The color of pearl.

In a pit of rock
The sea sucks obsessively,
One hollow the whole sea's pivot.

The size of a fly,
The doom mark
Crawls down the wall.

The heart shuts,
The sea slides back,
The mirrors are sheeted."

He looked around the room after he'd recited the poem. "Sylvia Plath. That was one of the last things she wrote before she stuck her head in an oven and killed herself. The imagery is dark and brutal and..." Sam trailed off as one of the girls got up from her seat crying and ran out of the room.

He winced and bit his bottom lip. He was totally batting a thousand today. "Uhm..." he pointed to a redhead in the first row. "Can you go tell the counselor that I made a girl cry and she could probably use someone to talk to in the bathroom? But come back to class after that. Thanks."

[thecheerleader]

Claire sighed to herself when Cat made her dramatic exit. She knew a lot of people were upset over the suicides, but when a known drama queen turned on the water works it didn't make her feel as bad as it would have if it had been someone else. The way she'd looked at Mr. Ramone on the way out made it pretty clear that she'd just tried it for the attention.

Claire was sure he felt bad about that, though she couldn't think of anything to contribute that would help him move his lesson along. At this point she was just hoping he'd give up and let them have a study hall. She still had that test coming up and they weren't covering the real material anymore. Why he'd chosen a suicide poem (of all things) was beyond her.

[geekboy_sammy]

Sam sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He sat down on the edge of his desk.

"So...Plath left warning signs. A lot of suicides do. They aren't always poems or letters. I was thinking something more subtle." Yeah, like him. Christ he was handling this bad.

"I know you guys have been experiencing a lot of that here lately. We could go back to discussing Sleepy Hollow," he suggested. Right now they could discuss the newest season of Survivor for all he cared. Not that he'd seen the newest season of Survivor...or any seasons really.

[thecheerleader]

This was pretty bad. Claire felt guilty for not knowing what to say to Mr. Ramone, and no one else seemed willing to try. They were all still holding out on the idea that he might give them a free period if his lesson tanked, which it looked like it was going to. Even if she offered something, she doubted it would make much of a difference in what happened, and everyone would be pissed off at her for cutting into their free time.

But if she was honest with herself, she had to admit that most of them didn't like her too much in the first place. What did she have to lose?

Claire reluctantly raised her hand, directing her eyes to the substitute so that she wouldn't have to look at the people who were going to be annoyed with her. "When you say Plath left warning signs, do you mean that they could have been cries for help? Like she wanted someone to tell her not to die?"

This was the worst topic to have to be helpful with, ever.

[geekboy_sammy]

Sam was so grateful for the participation he wanted to hug the blonde. Only that would get him in trouble or something. And he didn't need any trouble. Particularly trouble involving a minor. He gave the girl a grateful smile and nodded.

"Something like that. We know Plath was probably pretty lonely at the time. She was separated from her husband, and in the sixties that wasn't terribly common yet. She had two children and being a single parent is hard. Maybe she just wanted someone to reach out," he suggested. He paused, glancing over the class. This couldn't go any worse and as badly as it was going, they wouldn't get to stick around for long.

"Or maybe she wasn't in control of her actions. Maybe she didn't want to die but something was compelling her to kill herself anyway and her poetry was a cry for help in that sense."

[thecheerleader]

Claire wasn't sure what he was getting at with his last suggestion, but she knew that people were staring. On the bright side, Mr. Ramone looked like he felt a little better about whatever it was he was trying to do. She couldn't help but think that was good, she knew how much it had to suck to be in his position. He couldn't force them to do anything, but they could ruin his lesson in record time by just not speaking up.

"Like medication or something?" Claire asked again, raising her hand by not waiting for him to call on her before she spoke. She was the only one participating right now, she didn't think she had to. "Did they have anything like that back then?"

[geekboy_sammy]

"Absolutely," Sam nodded. "Valium's heyday was in the sixties and seventies. It got a nickname 'mother's little helper' and was prescribed to a lot of women for emotional problems." He paused, watching the blond for a moment before looking back out to the rest of the class.

"I don't know if Plath had a prescription for valium or if she was taking something illegal but I was sort of talking about something else. Odder things...weirder things. Something that could give us an explanation for why Plath might have done this or why anyone might do this."

"Like depression?" A guy in the middle asked. Sam shrugged in response. "Maybe?" he responded.

"But not everyone who does that is depressed," the guy countered.

"True," Sam nodded. "So if it's not drugs or depression what else could it be? Maybe something weirder. Do you all read Stephen King? Since we're not talking about Sleepy Hollow and I need to do something or I'll never get hired again, imagine this is a Stephen King novel. What would it be? Call it creative brainstorming. I can put that on my lesson plans."

[thecheerleader]

Claire was relieved when other people started joining in. They'd probably like the idea of talking about Stephen King more than Sylvia Plath. Mr. Ramone was finally getting on track with some kind of discussion. She couldn't tell what he was getting at, but other people seemed to be interested.

"Maybe the devil made her do it!" Eddie White suggested jokingly. His comment was met with a few laughs, and Claire couldn't help but smile.

"Possession," she added. "If Stephen King needed a reason, he might like that one."

[geekboy_sammy]

"Maybe he did," Sam smiled at the kid and nodded. The blond's comment made his attention snap to her with probably a look entirely too intense for the conversation. His expression softened and he nodded.

"Right. He would use possession. But possession has signs. At least it does in all the movies and books. Things like flickering lights, people acting out of character even before they do anything major, black eyes, the smell of sulfur. Flinching at the Latin name of God. So if, hypothetically, we were in a Stephen King novel, we'd have to have a hero. That hero would have to notice things happening around the school Things he might have seen. Anything weird happening here that the hero could pick up on? Or would King have to give up on Costa Verde has a location and move somewhere else?"

[thecheerleader]

Claire noticed Mr. Ramone's reaction to her idea of demonic possession. It was like she'd said something wrong at first, but then he looked like he caught himself and calmed down for her sake. She hadn't really meant anything by it, other than to add in something that she thought the author would like. No one else in the class had been bothered by it, but Claire was going to keep her mouth shut for a few minutes. She knew she'd touched on something they probably weren't supposed to, and even though she didn't know why, she knew to stay quiet for a while.

[geekboy_sammy]

The kids were quiet again and the blond in the front row looked like she was shutting up for good, which was bad. She'd gotten them to talk in the first place.

"Nothing?" Sam asked.

Some kid shrugged and said "You mean besides seven suicides in two weeks? Two of them being teachers?"

Sam half shrugged because the kid had a point. "Okay, so we're writing our book and right now there's nothing weird going on at the school. Let's go with this idea of possession for just a minute. Whatever is possessing the people has to be able to move from person to person pretty easily. Were the kids all close? Did they hang out at the same places or do the same things? Entities can move through a lot of different means. Touch, water, certain words or phrases, songs, things like that."