X-Men Evolution: Rogue Evolution

A Day in the Life 3.2

"Every book you read in this class is written by a manic depressive man trying to find his way in this manic depressive world." So said Anna's new English teacher moments after she took her seat in the back row. Her teacher, Miss Crane was sat, near lounging, on her desk up front. She was a tall wispy woman dressed in long lacy black drapes. Her gray roots eventually turned black as her long wavy hair turned the bend around her ears, past her shoulders, and gathered in the loosest ponytail Anna had ever seen at the small of her back. Miss Crane looked at her right hand and watched as her long acrylic nails cascaded till they met into a single jagged point. "It's why I wouldn't blame you for not doing your assigned reading." She then threw out her hand into the body of students as if throwing glitter over them. "But so help me God if I find that you are using one of those online 'cheat books' to cut corners on your assignments I'll fail you so hard and so quick your grandchildren will be begging for extra credit! Life is pain! Life is depression! The sooner you children realize it, the sooner you accept it, the better off you'll be."

Anna couldn't see herself, but she could certainly feel the deep-set grin on her face and the tears she was desperately trying to hold back from laughter. She looked around and found her fellow students completely unfazed. The girls who came in talking were still talking, a boy next to her was texting someone under his desk and hadn't regarded Miss Crane for even a moment despite her threatening his grandchildren with failure, and the kid on the other side of Anna was already faced down on his desk sleeping.

Anna watched as Miss Crane slithered her strange narrow body off of the desk and wrote a few random words on the whiteboard behind her in black ink. It took Anna a little while, but she eventually caught on that they were discussing the book 'All Quiet on the Western Front.' At least they were until it somehow got twisted up into some sort of one-way discussion about how much of a misogynist Alfred Hitchcock was on the set of 'The Birds.' A couple of girls and at least one boy sat front and center, all similarly dressed in ratty black clothes as Miss Crane, looked to write down every single nonsensical word that fell out of her mouth as if it were gospel.

The bell rang simultaneously too soon and not soon enough. After navigating through the packed halls, Anna found her next class, Algebra, with not a moment to spare. She found another seat in the back and watched as a man in a crisp white button-up and khakis walked his way into the room with a measured smile. Below his cursive written name on the whiteboard, 'Mister Joe', the man wasted no time discussing the night's homework and picking up presumably where they had left off the day before. In contrast to Miss Crane, the man was like a bath of icy cold water. Every word he spoke was even-keeled and well projected towards the back of the room. He left little room for misinterpretation as he explained the formula's on the board and answered questions in turn. One boy made some sort of joke that Anna couldn't quite hear, and the room of her peers had a round of laughter. All except for Mister Joe who only smiled, waited for the room to settle down, and continued on. By the end of class, Anna was 98% positive the guy had to be some sort of robot. All straight back and no-nonsense, she was sure that if someone were to ask him to 'quantify love' his ears would start smoking and a spring would fly out of his neck.

Seeing now both ends of the crazy spectrum, Anna was curious where this 'Mr. McCoy' guy would end up in U.S. history. His room at least was cozier than the others. Its bank of windows along one wall overlooked the school's concrete courtyard. The room itself had an eye-pleasing gold banner stretched along its upper corners and below hung a number of portraits and posters from history. She recognized a couple of posters sat side by side, one as Martin Luther King Jr, and another guy she was fairly sure was Malcolm X. Caty-cornered at the front was a ratty old-looking desk with a sickening green metal kick-panel front, and its weather-beaten dark wood surface was covered in little knick-knacks. A few of the little desk toys included a tiny model of a steam engine train, another was a tiny funky-looking American flag hanging out of a pencil cup, then a miniature wooden ship roughly the size of her thumb, and at the very edge of the desk was a small dusty looking football trophy.