Ode to Optophobia (2A)
Title: Ode to Optophobia, or: Ten Men That Loved Annie Edison (3/19)
Author: veryspecial0ne
Rating: R for the whole series, to be safe
Word count: ~2800 for the chapter, ~9300 for the series thus far.
Disclaimer: I have now been tweeted by both Dan Harmon and Alison Brie. I'm pretty sure that's the closest I'll ever come to having any ownership over Community.
Spoilers: Through the end of Season 2.
Summary: Chapter Two (in which Annie is loved in a way she's not aware she needs), Part One. Starring Jordan Harding, Annie's history teacher. "There was no experience, however, quite like being Annie Edison's favorite teacher. It was, to speak frankly, a heady ordeal. She was a dedicated and singularly focused student, as unreserved in her adoration for Jordan as she was in her zealousness for schoolwork. Which, considering the fact that the latter caused her to develop a habit for Adderall so strong that she started hallucinating about robots in the middle of Jordan's review of Dred Scott v. Sandford for their upcoming midterm, was truly saying something."
A/N: Unbeta'd. Once again spitting out a chapter sooner than I anticipated, happily. You guys and your lovely reviews keep me motivated. I'm not kidding. Title is from the song "Ode to Optophobia" by Danielle Ate the Sandwich, and here is the link to that song if you haven't listened to it yet. And I'll keep posting the link because Danielle is very good.
Previously: Chapter 1B.
Jordan Harding was no stranger to the experience of being a pupil's favorite teacher at Riverside High School. Perhaps he didn't garner quite the adoring praise and cult-like following as some of the younger, more attractive and progressive teachers who taught subjects more inherently intriguing than U.S. History, but he preferred being liked and respected, and being the favorite of the more discerning students. In the last edition of the school paper published every year, the seniors would all fill out a questionnaire and their answers would be published en masse: "What was your most embarrassing moment?" "What are you leaving behind at this school?" "Where will you and your friends be in ten years?" On the page dedicated to students naming their favorite teachers, Jordan was always guaranteed a respectable number of mentions. It wasn't why he taught, of course, but it did provide some assurance of a job well done and he had grown somewhat used to a steady level of appreciation.
There was no experience, however, quite like being Annie Edison's favorite teacher. It was, to speak frankly, a heady ordeal. She was a dedicated and singularly focused student, as unreserved in her adoration for Jordan as she was in her zealousness for schoolwork. Which, considering the fact that the latter caused her to develop a habit for Adderall so strong that she started hallucinating about robots in the middle of Jordan's review of Dred Scott v. Sandford for their upcoming midterm, was truly saying something. It was also the reason Jordan was now in his classroom on the second day of winter break, waiting for Annie to arrive for the make-up exam the counselor had arranged, while he shuffled through test papers.
"Hey, Mr. Harding." The voice that came from his doorway was familiar, as were the words it spoke, but it was also uncharacteristically glum. Jordan looked up to see Annie Edison hovering in his doorway. "Did they tell you I was coming in?"
"Of course, Annie," Jordan said warmly. "Come on in. I'm ready to start whenever you are."
Annie nodded and slumped into the room. She took her usual seat at the front of the room, slipping off her coat and draping it over the chair before sitting and digging through her backpack for a pencil. Jordan saw, with a wince, the bandages that still covered a few cuts on her arms. He had watched the ambulance take Annie away several days earlier, and remembered the nauseating sight of her blood on the floor, surrounded by hushed, wide-eyed students. Annie yawned, meeting Jordan's gaze, and he quickly averted his eyes to the test he was holding. He stood from his desk and walked up to Annie's desk, putting the test in front of her.
Annie, when she saw the thickness of the stapled stack of paper, whimpered a little bit before seeming to catch herself and instead looked up at Jordan with some attempt at her normal attentive expression that fell sadly short. "My mom said I should be sure to thank you for coming in when we're on break," she mumbled.
"It's not a problem, Annie," said Jordan, reassuringly. "I hope you're…feeling better."
She nodded unconvincingly and turned back to the test with resignation. Jordan returned to his desk and started grading the copies of that same test that her classmates had completed on the day of the exam. He had just finished covering Troy Barnes's test in a disturbing quantity of red ink when Annie spoke again.
"Mr. Harding?"
Jordan looked up.
Annie's eyes were shifting back and forth. They were the only part of her that looked animated at all. Her arm was draped listlessly across her desk where her pencil hung from her fingers and her back hunched over so far that Jordan had a sudden memory of this same girl strapped into a back brace the previous year. "Is it okay if I go to the bathroom?"
"Of course," answered Jordan with an allowing gesture of his hand. Annie rose and, hesitantly, started to reach for her backpack until Jordan halted her with "Annie, I can't let you bring your backpack out with you."
"Please?" Annie begged.
"It's not that I think you'll cheat," Jordan reasoned with her, "but you know my rules when taking exams."
"But I just…" Annie looked terrified. "I need something in it."
Jordan stared at her in confusion until it dawned on him. "Annie."
Annie burst into tears.
Jordan watched helplessly as she collapsed back into her chair, dropping her face down on her desk. He stood and again approached her, this time reaching out and putting a hand on her shoulder, which only served to make her cry harder. Through the sobs, he thought he could make out "just this once" and "need an A" and "Dartmouth." She seemed to tire herself out quickly, though; Jordan thought privately that this had probably been happening a lot lately. Finally she raised her head with enormous effort, sniffling.
"Annie," Jordan began, not sure how to broach the subject, but he should have remembered that drugs or not, Annie Edison had never needed encouragement to talk to Jordan.
"I just can't remember anything," she moaned. "I tried to study in the hospital, and when I got home, but I'm so tired all the time and I couldn't concentrate and I kept having to re-check which of the Union states allowed slavery like six times. I wanted to try to do it on my own, Mr. Harding, I really did, but I have to get A's on all my midterms because those are the grades that are gonna be on my applications and all of a sudden it just seemed like so many tests, like, way more tests than I could handle on my own and so I just went to sleep instead because I don't know if I mentioned it, but I'm really tired. I think I may have caught something in the hospital, so maybe if we just...rescheduled..." Annie trailed off as if she was aware of how weak this sounded.
"Annie," Jordan said as gently as he could. He hadn't been trained for this. Nothing in his life had prepared him for having to tell one of his favorite students, "You're not sick. You're in withdrawal."
Annie began to cry again with renewed vigor. Jordan retrieved the box of tissues from his desk, setting them down in front of her and settling into the desk next to hers. She gurgled a "thanks" and tried to wipe her nose daintily, then gave up and just blew. When her eyes were again dry, she turned to Jordan and whispered desperately, "Couldn't I just take one? One more time? Just for the test? It's my last one, I promise. My mom flushed all the others."
"You know I can't let you do that, Annie," Jordan said apologetically as he held out his hand expectantly.
She nodded in dismay and handed Jordan her backpack, looking despondent and at this moment, very young. And she was young, Jordan reminded himself, only seventeen, and for all her book smarts couldn't conceive right now that there would be life after detox. He started to root through her backpack but couldn't find any pills. He looked at Annie, questioningly.
She was watching him. "It's sewn into the lining underneath the name tag," Annie admitted. "It was my emergency stash."
And there it was, in a little plastic bag, blue and white and very small, and not at all looking like it could ruin a bright, young, idealistic girl's life. Jordan told her to wait at her desk and he would be right back. He took the pill to the teacher's bathroom and flushed it down the toilet like all the others had gone. When he returned, he found Annie back at work on her midterm.
"Annie," Jordan said as he walked towards her, "we don't have to do this today."
"No, I do," she insisted, not looking up from her test. "I have to take this exam and get back on track with my winter break studying. I'm putting this behind me. That's what my mom-- that's what we decided."
Jordan has met Ellen Edison before, and while she was perfectly polite and even friendly to her daughter's favorite teacher who gave her shiny gold stars on all of her history papers, Jordan doubted very much that the decision to put Annie's addiction in the past was at all a mutual decision. His suspicions were confirmed in his mind when he caught sight of one more tear falling on Annie's test paper, despite her face still being turned away from him as she bent over her desk. Jordan stood in front of Annie's desk and snatched the paper from under her, her pencil leaving a long dark streak down the page where it had been pressed down in mid-word.
"Mr. Harding!" Annie cried, frustrated and a little scandalized.
"What is it you want to do, Annie?" Jordan pressed, knowing quite well that he was overstepping the boundaries he himself had set with all of his students for the last dozen years. "Do you want to put this behind you?"
Annie stared wordlessly at him. Her eyes were still red-rimmed and her nose was a bright pink.
"Annie?"
She started to shake her head frantically. "I...I just..." Her eyes were wide as if she was shocked by what was about to come out of her mouth. "I don't want to feel like this anymore," she managed.
There was a long pause as the two regarded each other: student and teacher, each others' favorites, on the precipice of a decision. Jordan nodded. "All right then. Come over here."
His laptop was open on his desk. Annie propped herself up against the wall behind him where she could see over his shoulder, but when she saw him pull up the web page for Arapahoe House, she stood straight.
"Mr. Harding," she protested, "I can't do rehab. My mom..."
"You said you didn't want to feel this way anymore," Jordan reminded her. "I can't tell you what to do. I can tell you that you have options other than sweeping this whole thing under the rug, and that one of them involves me having a connection to this facility."
Annie stared at the computer screen. "My mom..." was all that came out of her mouth.
Jordan spun his chair to look at her directly and did something that he had never done in his twelve years of teaching high school. He took his student's hands and held them in his own. "Annie, I'm sure you and your mother love each other very much. And I'm sure she thinks she's doing what's best for you. But you're very nearly an adult."
Annie was now peering down at the place where her small hands completely disappeared into Jordan's larger ones. "I turn eighteen next Monday," she murmured.
"This is a decision you can make for yourself," Jordan told her firmly. "It's your life. You can decide how this is going to happen."
Annie nodded and took three deep breaths. Jordan waited for her, until she lifted her head to meet his eyes again. "I'd be dropping out of high school, wouldn't I?"
Jordan hesitated, but could see no way around it. A minimum 90-day program, even if she entered it the moment she turned eighteen, would take up the vast majority of the second semester of her senior year, if not extend past the end of it. Instead of trying to avoid the issue, he simply said "yes."
"No more high school," Annie breathed, and for a moment it seemed to Jordan like a glimmer was about to enter her eye, but the next second it was gone. Jordan wasn't terribly surprised that this was the first bright side Annie seemed to be glimpsing. He had heard her new nickname whispered around the school -- unfortunately, not exclusively from students -- and knew it could only be a matter of time before she learned about it, if she hadn't already.
"You can still study at Arapahoe," Jordan promised. "They have an on-site school where you can get your GED. You could still go to college."
Annie let out a vague snort, withdrawing her hands from Jordan's. "Yeah. A good school's really going to take me now."
"Annie, this isn't the end of the world!" Jordan urged her. "Plenty of people have setbacks that still go on to do great things. You can do a couple of semesters over at Greendale, or City College. Get good grades. You know you can. And then transfer. But if you want to get yourself help, you know what you have to do. Do you want help?"
Annie's eyes flicked once more towards her midterm, sitting where Jordan had thrown it on his desk next to his laptop. She hadn't yet finished the first page. "Yes."
"Okay then," settled Jordan. "Have a seat and I'll make some calls."
"You're sure your...connection will be able to get me in?" asked Annie, sinking back into her desk and looking grateful to be sitting again. "I know their youth program can only take twenty at a time..." At Jordan's glance, she confessed, "I may have done a little bit of research."
"We might as well try to figure something out," Jordan said as optimistically as he could. He glanced back at the page for the youth program he had on his screen and tried not to cringe visibly as he spotted one of the bullet points about ideal candidates for residential care: youth who were unlikely to benefit from outpatient treatment due to their environment, including "no support for recovery."
The next hour was spent not on Annie's make-up exam, the activity for which that time had been allotted, but on the logistics of getting Annie admitted to Arapahoe. After confirming with Jordan that she had some money saved up, and that her father "wasn't an issue," as Annie put it quite firmly, Jordan made phone call after phone call as he called in and promised favor after favor, and dropped his voice to a hush as Annie finally drifted off for about twenty minutes.
The clock struck noon and Jordan, reluctantly, crossed over to Annie's desk and nudged her awake. "Annie," he said softly. "It's twelve. Your mother will be coming to pick you up any minute."
Annie nodded blearily and stood to put on her jacket before slinging her backpack over her shoulders. Maybe it was the power nap and maybe it was purely his own hopeful perceptions, but it looked to Jordan like maybe the backpack was weighing a little less on her shoulders now than it had been when she walked in, even though only one little pill was missing.
"So..." Annie was saying. "Did you...I mean, am I..."
"They'll be ready for you on the day after your birthday," Jordan told her. "Here's the information you'll need," he added, handing her a piece of paper. Annie turned it over to check the back and saw that it was the last page of her history exam, left blank and torn off for re-purposing.
Annie exhaled in a whoosh. "Okay," she said. "Okay," she repeated, a little more softly, as if to herself.
"Who knows," Jordan couldn't stop himself from saying, "maybe your mother will come around."
Annie shook her head while continuing to read the piece of paper she'd been given. "She won't," she said almost absently, like the words were in her mouth already without requiring the assistance of a single thought to break free. She met Jordan's eyes and though he was expecting her to have to search her fatigued mind for words again, she only said immediately, "Thank you, Mr. Harding."
Jordan nodded at her. There wasn't a lot else to say. "Good luck."
She didn't hug him. She only smiled, the first one Jordan had seen from her since she walked in, and probably in weeks if he thought about it, and that was when he saw it. "Hey, you got your braces off!"
"Oh," said Annie, remembering. "Yeah, I did. Yesterday."
"They look great," said Jordan honestly, and Annie flushed with pleasure. She picked up the little pile of used tissues that she had collected on her desk by the tips of her fingers and left the classroom, depositing them in the trash can on her way out.
That spring, when the senior edition of the school newspaper was released three weeks prior, Jordan was mentioned as a favorite teacher three times. A week after graduation, he received an e-mail from Annie that she had completed her program, had just signed a lease on her own apartment, and would be starting at Greendale in the fall. He read the school paper with a smile and then recycled it, like always. He printed the e-mail and hung it on his refrigerator.
Next: Chapter 2B.
Author: veryspecial0ne
Rating: R for the whole series, to be safe
Word count: ~2800 for the chapter, ~9300 for the series thus far.
Disclaimer: I have now been tweeted by both Dan Harmon and Alison Brie. I'm pretty sure that's the closest I'll ever come to having any ownership over Community.
Spoilers: Through the end of Season 2.
Summary: Chapter Two (in which Annie is loved in a way she's not aware she needs), Part One. Starring Jordan Harding, Annie's history teacher. "There was no experience, however, quite like being Annie Edison's favorite teacher. It was, to speak frankly, a heady ordeal. She was a dedicated and singularly focused student, as unreserved in her adoration for Jordan as she was in her zealousness for schoolwork. Which, considering the fact that the latter caused her to develop a habit for Adderall so strong that she started hallucinating about robots in the middle of Jordan's review of Dred Scott v. Sandford for their upcoming midterm, was truly saying something."
A/N: Unbeta'd. Once again spitting out a chapter sooner than I anticipated, happily. You guys and your lovely reviews keep me motivated. I'm not kidding. Title is from the song "Ode to Optophobia" by Danielle Ate the Sandwich, and here is the link to that song if you haven't listened to it yet. And I'll keep posting the link because Danielle is very good.
Previously: Chapter 1B.
Jordan Harding was no stranger to the experience of being a pupil's favorite teacher at Riverside High School. Perhaps he didn't garner quite the adoring praise and cult-like following as some of the younger, more attractive and progressive teachers who taught subjects more inherently intriguing than U.S. History, but he preferred being liked and respected, and being the favorite of the more discerning students. In the last edition of the school paper published every year, the seniors would all fill out a questionnaire and their answers would be published en masse: "What was your most embarrassing moment?" "What are you leaving behind at this school?" "Where will you and your friends be in ten years?" On the page dedicated to students naming their favorite teachers, Jordan was always guaranteed a respectable number of mentions. It wasn't why he taught, of course, but it did provide some assurance of a job well done and he had grown somewhat used to a steady level of appreciation.
There was no experience, however, quite like being Annie Edison's favorite teacher. It was, to speak frankly, a heady ordeal. She was a dedicated and singularly focused student, as unreserved in her adoration for Jordan as she was in her zealousness for schoolwork. Which, considering the fact that the latter caused her to develop a habit for Adderall so strong that she started hallucinating about robots in the middle of Jordan's review of Dred Scott v. Sandford for their upcoming midterm, was truly saying something. It was also the reason Jordan was now in his classroom on the second day of winter break, waiting for Annie to arrive for the make-up exam the counselor had arranged, while he shuffled through test papers.
"Hey, Mr. Harding." The voice that came from his doorway was familiar, as were the words it spoke, but it was also uncharacteristically glum. Jordan looked up to see Annie Edison hovering in his doorway. "Did they tell you I was coming in?"
"Of course, Annie," Jordan said warmly. "Come on in. I'm ready to start whenever you are."
Annie nodded and slumped into the room. She took her usual seat at the front of the room, slipping off her coat and draping it over the chair before sitting and digging through her backpack for a pencil. Jordan saw, with a wince, the bandages that still covered a few cuts on her arms. He had watched the ambulance take Annie away several days earlier, and remembered the nauseating sight of her blood on the floor, surrounded by hushed, wide-eyed students. Annie yawned, meeting Jordan's gaze, and he quickly averted his eyes to the test he was holding. He stood from his desk and walked up to Annie's desk, putting the test in front of her.
Annie, when she saw the thickness of the stapled stack of paper, whimpered a little bit before seeming to catch herself and instead looked up at Jordan with some attempt at her normal attentive expression that fell sadly short. "My mom said I should be sure to thank you for coming in when we're on break," she mumbled.
"It's not a problem, Annie," said Jordan, reassuringly. "I hope you're…feeling better."
She nodded unconvincingly and turned back to the test with resignation. Jordan returned to his desk and started grading the copies of that same test that her classmates had completed on the day of the exam. He had just finished covering Troy Barnes's test in a disturbing quantity of red ink when Annie spoke again.
"Mr. Harding?"
Jordan looked up.
Annie's eyes were shifting back and forth. They were the only part of her that looked animated at all. Her arm was draped listlessly across her desk where her pencil hung from her fingers and her back hunched over so far that Jordan had a sudden memory of this same girl strapped into a back brace the previous year. "Is it okay if I go to the bathroom?"
"Of course," answered Jordan with an allowing gesture of his hand. Annie rose and, hesitantly, started to reach for her backpack until Jordan halted her with "Annie, I can't let you bring your backpack out with you."
"Please?" Annie begged.
"It's not that I think you'll cheat," Jordan reasoned with her, "but you know my rules when taking exams."
"But I just…" Annie looked terrified. "I need something in it."
Jordan stared at her in confusion until it dawned on him. "Annie."
Annie burst into tears.
Jordan watched helplessly as she collapsed back into her chair, dropping her face down on her desk. He stood and again approached her, this time reaching out and putting a hand on her shoulder, which only served to make her cry harder. Through the sobs, he thought he could make out "just this once" and "need an A" and "Dartmouth." She seemed to tire herself out quickly, though; Jordan thought privately that this had probably been happening a lot lately. Finally she raised her head with enormous effort, sniffling.
"Annie," Jordan began, not sure how to broach the subject, but he should have remembered that drugs or not, Annie Edison had never needed encouragement to talk to Jordan.
"I just can't remember anything," she moaned. "I tried to study in the hospital, and when I got home, but I'm so tired all the time and I couldn't concentrate and I kept having to re-check which of the Union states allowed slavery like six times. I wanted to try to do it on my own, Mr. Harding, I really did, but I have to get A's on all my midterms because those are the grades that are gonna be on my applications and all of a sudden it just seemed like so many tests, like, way more tests than I could handle on my own and so I just went to sleep instead because I don't know if I mentioned it, but I'm really tired. I think I may have caught something in the hospital, so maybe if we just...rescheduled..." Annie trailed off as if she was aware of how weak this sounded.
"Annie," Jordan said as gently as he could. He hadn't been trained for this. Nothing in his life had prepared him for having to tell one of his favorite students, "You're not sick. You're in withdrawal."
Annie began to cry again with renewed vigor. Jordan retrieved the box of tissues from his desk, setting them down in front of her and settling into the desk next to hers. She gurgled a "thanks" and tried to wipe her nose daintily, then gave up and just blew. When her eyes were again dry, she turned to Jordan and whispered desperately, "Couldn't I just take one? One more time? Just for the test? It's my last one, I promise. My mom flushed all the others."
"You know I can't let you do that, Annie," Jordan said apologetically as he held out his hand expectantly.
She nodded in dismay and handed Jordan her backpack, looking despondent and at this moment, very young. And she was young, Jordan reminded himself, only seventeen, and for all her book smarts couldn't conceive right now that there would be life after detox. He started to root through her backpack but couldn't find any pills. He looked at Annie, questioningly.
She was watching him. "It's sewn into the lining underneath the name tag," Annie admitted. "It was my emergency stash."
And there it was, in a little plastic bag, blue and white and very small, and not at all looking like it could ruin a bright, young, idealistic girl's life. Jordan told her to wait at her desk and he would be right back. He took the pill to the teacher's bathroom and flushed it down the toilet like all the others had gone. When he returned, he found Annie back at work on her midterm.
"Annie," Jordan said as he walked towards her, "we don't have to do this today."
"No, I do," she insisted, not looking up from her test. "I have to take this exam and get back on track with my winter break studying. I'm putting this behind me. That's what my mom-- that's what we decided."
Jordan has met Ellen Edison before, and while she was perfectly polite and even friendly to her daughter's favorite teacher who gave her shiny gold stars on all of her history papers, Jordan doubted very much that the decision to put Annie's addiction in the past was at all a mutual decision. His suspicions were confirmed in his mind when he caught sight of one more tear falling on Annie's test paper, despite her face still being turned away from him as she bent over her desk. Jordan stood in front of Annie's desk and snatched the paper from under her, her pencil leaving a long dark streak down the page where it had been pressed down in mid-word.
"Mr. Harding!" Annie cried, frustrated and a little scandalized.
"What is it you want to do, Annie?" Jordan pressed, knowing quite well that he was overstepping the boundaries he himself had set with all of his students for the last dozen years. "Do you want to put this behind you?"
Annie stared wordlessly at him. Her eyes were still red-rimmed and her nose was a bright pink.
"Annie?"
She started to shake her head frantically. "I...I just..." Her eyes were wide as if she was shocked by what was about to come out of her mouth. "I don't want to feel like this anymore," she managed.
There was a long pause as the two regarded each other: student and teacher, each others' favorites, on the precipice of a decision. Jordan nodded. "All right then. Come over here."
His laptop was open on his desk. Annie propped herself up against the wall behind him where she could see over his shoulder, but when she saw him pull up the web page for Arapahoe House, she stood straight.
"Mr. Harding," she protested, "I can't do rehab. My mom..."
"You said you didn't want to feel this way anymore," Jordan reminded her. "I can't tell you what to do. I can tell you that you have options other than sweeping this whole thing under the rug, and that one of them involves me having a connection to this facility."
Annie stared at the computer screen. "My mom..." was all that came out of her mouth.
Jordan spun his chair to look at her directly and did something that he had never done in his twelve years of teaching high school. He took his student's hands and held them in his own. "Annie, I'm sure you and your mother love each other very much. And I'm sure she thinks she's doing what's best for you. But you're very nearly an adult."
Annie was now peering down at the place where her small hands completely disappeared into Jordan's larger ones. "I turn eighteen next Monday," she murmured.
"This is a decision you can make for yourself," Jordan told her firmly. "It's your life. You can decide how this is going to happen."
Annie nodded and took three deep breaths. Jordan waited for her, until she lifted her head to meet his eyes again. "I'd be dropping out of high school, wouldn't I?"
Jordan hesitated, but could see no way around it. A minimum 90-day program, even if she entered it the moment she turned eighteen, would take up the vast majority of the second semester of her senior year, if not extend past the end of it. Instead of trying to avoid the issue, he simply said "yes."
"No more high school," Annie breathed, and for a moment it seemed to Jordan like a glimmer was about to enter her eye, but the next second it was gone. Jordan wasn't terribly surprised that this was the first bright side Annie seemed to be glimpsing. He had heard her new nickname whispered around the school -- unfortunately, not exclusively from students -- and knew it could only be a matter of time before she learned about it, if she hadn't already.
"You can still study at Arapahoe," Jordan promised. "They have an on-site school where you can get your GED. You could still go to college."
Annie let out a vague snort, withdrawing her hands from Jordan's. "Yeah. A good school's really going to take me now."
"Annie, this isn't the end of the world!" Jordan urged her. "Plenty of people have setbacks that still go on to do great things. You can do a couple of semesters over at Greendale, or City College. Get good grades. You know you can. And then transfer. But if you want to get yourself help, you know what you have to do. Do you want help?"
Annie's eyes flicked once more towards her midterm, sitting where Jordan had thrown it on his desk next to his laptop. She hadn't yet finished the first page. "Yes."
"Okay then," settled Jordan. "Have a seat and I'll make some calls."
"You're sure your...connection will be able to get me in?" asked Annie, sinking back into her desk and looking grateful to be sitting again. "I know their youth program can only take twenty at a time..." At Jordan's glance, she confessed, "I may have done a little bit of research."
"We might as well try to figure something out," Jordan said as optimistically as he could. He glanced back at the page for the youth program he had on his screen and tried not to cringe visibly as he spotted one of the bullet points about ideal candidates for residential care: youth who were unlikely to benefit from outpatient treatment due to their environment, including "no support for recovery."
The next hour was spent not on Annie's make-up exam, the activity for which that time had been allotted, but on the logistics of getting Annie admitted to Arapahoe. After confirming with Jordan that she had some money saved up, and that her father "wasn't an issue," as Annie put it quite firmly, Jordan made phone call after phone call as he called in and promised favor after favor, and dropped his voice to a hush as Annie finally drifted off for about twenty minutes.
The clock struck noon and Jordan, reluctantly, crossed over to Annie's desk and nudged her awake. "Annie," he said softly. "It's twelve. Your mother will be coming to pick you up any minute."
Annie nodded blearily and stood to put on her jacket before slinging her backpack over her shoulders. Maybe it was the power nap and maybe it was purely his own hopeful perceptions, but it looked to Jordan like maybe the backpack was weighing a little less on her shoulders now than it had been when she walked in, even though only one little pill was missing.
"So..." Annie was saying. "Did you...I mean, am I..."
"They'll be ready for you on the day after your birthday," Jordan told her. "Here's the information you'll need," he added, handing her a piece of paper. Annie turned it over to check the back and saw that it was the last page of her history exam, left blank and torn off for re-purposing.
Annie exhaled in a whoosh. "Okay," she said. "Okay," she repeated, a little more softly, as if to herself.
"Who knows," Jordan couldn't stop himself from saying, "maybe your mother will come around."
Annie shook her head while continuing to read the piece of paper she'd been given. "She won't," she said almost absently, like the words were in her mouth already without requiring the assistance of a single thought to break free. She met Jordan's eyes and though he was expecting her to have to search her fatigued mind for words again, she only said immediately, "Thank you, Mr. Harding."
Jordan nodded at her. There wasn't a lot else to say. "Good luck."
She didn't hug him. She only smiled, the first one Jordan had seen from her since she walked in, and probably in weeks if he thought about it, and that was when he saw it. "Hey, you got your braces off!"
"Oh," said Annie, remembering. "Yeah, I did. Yesterday."
"They look great," said Jordan honestly, and Annie flushed with pleasure. She picked up the little pile of used tissues that she had collected on her desk by the tips of her fingers and left the classroom, depositing them in the trash can on her way out.
That spring, when the senior edition of the school newspaper was released three weeks prior, Jordan was mentioned as a favorite teacher three times. A week after graduation, he received an e-mail from Annie that she had completed her program, had just signed a lease on her own apartment, and would be starting at Greendale in the fall. He read the school paper with a smile and then recycled it, like always. He printed the e-mail and hung it on his refrigerator.
Next: Chapter 2B.