[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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[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."

[thecheerleader]

Claire was surprised someone else hadn't gotten upset by the conversation yet. She was still the new girl. She didn't have a lot of friends, and while had been in gym class and homeroom with Katie Ashton, they hadn't talked much. The news of Katie's death had surprised her, mostly because Katie had been so friendly and open and well, happy, but she didn't like to think about it too much. Death was so final for everyone but her, it made her feel kind of sick.

She sat back and listened to the class talk about possession, wondering if Mr. Ramone still thought she was strange for suggesting that one. She wanted to tell him she didn't have a clue as to what she was talking about and she wasn't one of those weird kids that hated everyone, but what was the use? He'd probably be gone tomorrow and another sub would be battling against the class for a discussion.

[geekboy_sammy]

It took anyone a few moments to respond. It was a hard subject. Finally another girl said something.

"Kind of? Like three of the kids were Emo so no one was really surprised. And then it was a teacher and then Katie who didn't hang out with any of the Emo's. She hung out with the popular kids and now...it's just all over," the girl said the last a little quietly. "There wasn't a common factor."

Sam nodded, giving the room a moment before he said anything else. "There was. There's always a common factor. I just haven't found it yet."

He bit his bottom lip and scanned the class. "I mean...we haven't. For the Stephen King book we're writing today. So it's a common factor that's easily over looked, maybe something that you wouldn't notice or something so broad that everyone shares it."

[thecheerleader]

Claire looked up at Mr. Ramone when he said he hadn't found the "common factor" he was talking about. There was something about the way he'd said it that made her think he was serious and that it was more than just a slip up. He looked like he was worried about them, but that could have meant anything. Everyone kept talking about how bad they felt for the students and faculty, it was all over the newspapers.

To Claire, the hard part was in not being able to help anyone. She was never around when it happened, and by the time the news leaked to the school, it was too late to do anything. She was starting to think that it was fate, especially after her mother's lecture on playing God.

But what was the use of having her ability if she couldn't help anyone with it?

[geekboy_sammy]

The girl shrugged and glanced around at the class. "Well...I guess we all go to Costa Verde is too broad of a common factor?"

Sam nodded and stood up to start pacing again. He raked a hand through his hair as he paced. "Probably. The point is to eliminate some people so that we can figure out why they aren't being targeted while the others are. We're assuming at this point it's something being done to the kids...for the sake of our story...rather then something they're doing precisely. Like the possession," he nodded at the blond in the front row. "So we need a common factor that gives us a lead or that would give our reader a lead as to what's going on."

[thecheerleader]

"What about a school event or something?" Claire asked, raising her hand again. She still had a lot of questions about why someone would want to have this discussion with a classroom of grieving high school students, but it was a thought. It probably didn't have anything to do with their lives or what was actually happening.

"If they don't have anything else in common, then they're all usually at the same place at the same time in most books," she added, just for the sake of explaining herself.