(Reginald, you are going to get sick from all that candy!)

Word Count: 10019

Okay, out of the first chapter and now the kids are talking amongst themselves. I really do work better when there’s some people to work off of and Cassie’s not doing so well at holding my attention, interesting as she is as a character. So, break time with the students.

“Something is weird about her,” Jerry said quietly to Addie, who was working on a bit of vocabulary homework, trying to understand just what she was supposed to be doing.

“What?” Addie asked, looking up at her blue haired friend’s green eyes.

“Miss B,” he said. “You notice she keeps moving her hands weird?”

Addie shrugged, going back to her homework. Jerry kept pressing.

“I think there’s something going on,” Jerry said. “She knows something. You ever notice how this is the only room in the whole English wing that doesn’t have that weird cold draft? That one that you can only feel right on the back of your neck that goes down your spine?”

Addie kept her head down. She knew he was right. The only reason she wasn’t skipping Writing anymore was because she didn’t feel the things on her in here. Sure, they were in the hall still, but they weren’t in the classroom and Cassie was getting curious about why. That feeling, the draft, it followed her the whole way through her entire English career. She liked the class fine, but that feeling was weird and a little terrifying for some reason. She always felt like something was missing when it passed and, now that it wasn’t happening for the first time in three years, she wanted to stay at least long enough to figure out what was doing it. And Jerry had a point about Miss B seeming to be odd, so maybe she was the one doing it.

Still, she didn’t want to get her hopes up just yet. She was just starting to rediscover that she liked English as much as she did in middle school again and she wanted to enjoy it without worrying about whatever that feeling was. “Can’t you just be happy it’s not happening anymore?” she asked. “Maybe it just stops in grade 12.”

“Or maybe you need to stop pretending like nothing is going on,” Jerry hissed back insistently. “You know it’s not just nothing. Not everyone feels it, but both of us have. In this room. And now it’s gone and what’s different? Her. There is something going on here and it has to do with her.”

“I don’t really want to talk about this right now, Jer,” Addie told him.

“Hm,” they heard from behind them. Addie jumped and looked back to see Tommy lingering behind them, clearly listening but not willing to say anything. She blushed and turned right back to her homework, insisting not to look back up.

(Reginald is stealing all of my cupcakes. I don’t think he’s going to let me have any.)

Word Count: 7008

I HAVE FINALLY ESCAPED THIS CHAPTER! And this is a nonsequitor that appeared.

They enjoyed the rest of their dinner, Ursula continuing to warn them about some of the students and tell some more stories about the school and classes. They exchanged horribly interesting back stories and generally had a good time with a couple of light drinks. They didn’t have too many because school was in the morning and a hang over on the second day was definitely not a good idea.

Although, perhaps it would be fun to stumble into class the next day still drunk from the night before. They could all go off to Mexico for the evening. Crossing two boarders would be a little difficult, though, and they had yet to receive their first paychecks for the year, though, so it would probably be an ill advised venture.

Still, they could probably drink until the place closed. Sammy and Sylvia weren’t so old yet that they didn’t know how to not drink like college students, still both seeming to be about college age. They could probably manage to drink the adults here under the table, though Cassie had no idea what Ursula was capable of. She was a bit of a light weight, though, and would need Wil to defend her honour when she fell early in the competition.

Not that they were doing any of that. They just finished dinner and went home instead.

(Reginald likes cupcakes)

Word Count: 2448

I’ll be honest. it’s not starting off so well. I don’t have a good grasp on the plot and I don’t have the same amount of time in the day to just throw myself into the story. As such, I’m doing something a little different! Not the first words, but a different bit! Because the first words REALLY SUCK!

“Miss B,” one of the students piped in, hand in the air. He was surrounded by several others, the whole class seeming to come together for the challenge of deciding which curriculum she’d be teaching. “What’s Nanoreemo?”

“Nanowrimo,” she corrected him. “It’s short for National Novel Writing Month.”

“So we’d have to write a novel in a month?” he asked, a few other eyes following his own back to her.

“Not exactly,” she told them with a grin. “It’s only fifty thousand words.”

“So.. a novel,” he said back.

“More of a novella.”

“And we’d have to write it in a month,” he repeated.

“Yep.” She smiled back at them. “Read the whole description. You will be graded based on the percentage of the word count you complete. It’s supposed to get you to learn to write every day and take on a challenge. Plus, since it happens in November, it means that there won’t be a final for this class during December when the rest of your classes are handing them out.”

Silence. She knew she’d come to like that from this class.

“But how are we going to write anything good?” someone asked. Jerry, she knew, as he was in her English class that morning. “You’re not actually going to read them, are you?”

Cassie shook her head no, brushing away a creature that was coming for her. “I’ll skim them over to see if you just repeated one word over and over for fifty thousand words and run a couple checks to make sure they weren’t copied off the internet, but so long as the word count is done, it’s not going to matter whether or not they’re any good.”