Alone With Your Smile [Jalex AU]

Jack

Enjoy this gif of 'Dwayne McGurten', commonly known as Alex Gaskarth. 

                 He wrote his name on the whiteboard –Jack Barakat. The thick, dark lines stood out against the pearly white of the board. There was almost something tragic about it; the first words written on a never-before-used board. It was like the first steps in fresh snow. It would never be the same again, and no matter how hard you tried, it would never be so clean –so perfect– again. Jack couldn’t help but compare the thoughts to his own life, how it was once perfect, and in one fell swoop, everything had been ruined. It had been hard to move on from it, but now he had a decent life and was finally starting his new job, which, unfortunately, was at the school he dreaded most. Jack snapped out of his thoughts –he did not want to go there, especially not when class started in less than thirty seconds. The job was a new beginning, it would do no good to live in the past. He had just crossed the ‘t’ when the bell rang.

                Seconds later, the door burst open, a stampede of students on the other side. They made their way in, some gossiping with friends, other walking quietly by themselves. There was one boy in particular that caught Jack’s attention. He was loud, so loud. He was jumping around, arms flailing wildly, exclaiming something about a concert he had attended over the summer. His chestnut colored hair was a mess, most likely from the jumping, but he didn’t seem to notice. Honestly, with all the jumping and yelling he was doing, it was hard not to notice him.

                The final bell rang, the shrill sound filling his ears. The students rushed to the desks, their chairs violently scraping the floor as they sat. None of them looked particularly happy to be at school, and Jack couldn’t really blame him. Kenwood High was the last place on Earth he wanted to be as well, though his reasons were probably vastly different than theirs.

“I hate first days of school. They’re pointless, to say the least. All you do is sit and fill out stupid forms about yourself, class after class, hour after hour. The teacher tells you what to expect from the year, though it’s the same speech every teacher has given for the past thirty years and you’ve heard it all before. Same shit, different teachers.” The cussing seemed to pique their interest, so he continued, glad they were finally listening. “I’m pretty sure that if I were to go down the hall to Mrs. Owens’ room right now, she would be giving the same first day lecture she told my class when I went here. So yeah, like I said, this stuff is pointless. This is a creative writing class; it’s kind of self-explanatory what we’ll be doing in here.”

“Let me guess, we’ll be writing?” One student asked.

“Exactly! See, you guys already know. We’re all still getting over summer break, I don’t want to lecture, you don’t want to be lectured, so I figured we could be like Kindergarteners again. We’ll go around the room, introduce ourselves, and tell a crazy story about our summer. Any questions?” The students were noticeably interested now, the majority of them donning big smiles. That just proved Jack’s theory correct. No one wanted to listen to a lecture, especially if they had just finished a summer of fun.

“Do the stories have to be school appropriate?” A petite brunette girl that was at the back of the class asked. The boy sitting next to her snickered quietly.

“I mean, mine’s not really appropriate, so I guess yours don’t have to be, either. Just don’t let the other teachers know I’m letting you tell me stories about getting wasted, okay? I mean it, guys, if I get fired after being here for a day, I will be seriously angry. I’ll be cool if you’re all cool.”

   There were a few muttered ‘got it’s, and that was that. Jack knew how the other teachers at this school were –complete assholes with no sense of humor– and he was determined to be different. If the students wanted to cuss, then so be it. He had quite the potty mouth himself, and he wasn’t about to censor it for anybody.

“Right. I’ll go first. I’m Mr. Barakat, but I’m totally not okay with being called that. Just call me Jack, I suppose. Mr. Barakat is too, I don’t know, official? I’m twenty-two years old, and this is my first year of teaching. I like to think that I’m cooler than other teachers, in the sense that I don’t have a giant stick shoved up my ass. I also cuss a lot, like an abnormal amount, and I’m not going to stop, and telling you guys not to would be hypocritical, so say what you want while you’re in here. This is Creative Writing, after all, and sometimes colorful language is needed.” He stopped for a second, trying to think of what to say next. “This is kind of turning into a lecture, isn’t it? Sorry. Okay, now for the craziest story from my summer. It’s actually kind of hard to pick just one story, as I did a lot this summer. I’d have to say the craziest thing I did this summer was go to a concert-“

“Oh, come on! That’s not even crazy! I went to, like, ten concerts this summer!” The loud boy from earlier shouted.

‘So he’s not only loud with friends, he’s loud with everyone.’ Jack observed.

“You didn’t let me finish. As I was saying, I went to a concert this summer, and basically, I got hammered and tried to kiss Pete Wentz at a Fall Out Boy meet and greet. It was horrifying, to say the least. Not my best moment.” His face heated up as everyone burst into laughter. He wasn’t sure why he chose that particular story. Surely it wasn’t a good idea to tell a class full of students about his public intoxication and possible sexual harassment, but what’s done is done. “So now that I’ve properly embarrassed myself, let’s move on. Why don’t we start with you?” He thrust his finger at the same boy who had just shouted, partly because he wanted to hear what amazing things he did with his summer, but mostly because he just wanted to know the boy’s name.

“My name is Alex Gaskarth. I went to that Fall Out Boy concert, by the way. It was fantastic. Anyways, I’m seventeen years old, and the craziest thing I did this summer was with my friends Rian and Cassadee. We broke into the mall after it closed and kind of just wandered around, getting drunk and doing random stuff. Was a good night.” He smiled fondly at the memory, and Jack couldn’t help but marvel at how perfect his smile was. He shook his head, as if that could shake the thoughts away.

“Alex, you stole my story!” A girl at the back of the class, the same one who asked the question earlier, yelled. Jack assumed that she was Cassadee, and that the guy next to her was Rian, the other two people from Alex’s story. He snapped out of his thoughts, only to be greeted by the sound of Alex and Cassadee arguing, each shouting from different sides of the room.

“Hey, guys, shut up, would you? You’re going to get me in trouble on my first day working here. That probably won’t leave a good impression. Let’s move on. Who wants to go next?” Multiple hands shot into the air, so he just pointed to a random girl.

“Hi, my name is Kirsten, and this summer I…” He tuned her out, his mind drifting back to the boy’s smile. No matter how hard to tried, he couldn’t get it out of his mind. It was totally inappropriate –and incredibly weird– to be thinking about a student that much. He couldn’t help but think that he wanted to get to know Alex, and possibly be friends with him. He seemed like the kind of person Jack would like to hang out with. He couldn’t, though, seeing as how he was a student, and being friends with one of your students is weird, Jack told himself.

                His attention went back to the class. A different girl was talking now, a small blonde girl going on and on about her trip to Florida and ‘how much it rocked’. He couldn’t focus on here, though, not really. The only thing he could do was stare at the obnoxious chestnut haired boy and think, “This probably won’t end well.”

 I was rereading this story and realized that wow, it was really poorly written and turns out, I hate writing in first person now, so I decided to go back and rewrite it in third person. It's much better now, in my opinion.