Jonny Dale

The Good, the Bad, and the Teachers

     As lunch came to an end, and the bell rang, I went to Mr. Ray's. Jonny was right, Mr.Ray was nice, at least for a P.E. coach. My last P.E. coach was rather unpleasant, every day we had to jog for twenty minutes straight. Then, we would divide into two teams. The first team was the team of popular kids and the ones that are the best at dodge ball, and then there are the other kids. I was always on the team of other kids.
     After P.E. I went to my next class language arts that is taught by Mrs. Stowgard. As my other peers trickled in, one such caught my attention, he had black hair pressed to his forehead, and sticking up in the back. He was wearing a black t-shirt, with a logo on it that said Hurley in fancy lettering, and he had on light grey pants, his shoes were black leather Van's, it was most surely Jonny.
     He had seated himself two seats up and one seat to the left from were I was sitting. The girl sitting next to him had leaned towards him and whispered something before sitting back in her own seat.
     Mrs. Stowgard walked to the front of the class, and took role. Then, she had us pull out our composition notebooks, and put a section in the back of our books. A reading list, from what we are reading now, and what we would be reading next.
     Next, she had us put down each page number we were on. Finally, she had us flip to the front of the notebook, and put a table of contents on the first six pages.
     "Every two pages should be for each term." She said.
     "Now students, put this in your table of contents. Due dates. Page number 1."
     Their was a long pause, before she continued.
     "You should all be on page number one. Now I will go over this term with you. First we will read the Odyssey, by Homer. While we are reading the Odyssey, we will also be on Google classroom, there we will do several essays to get you warmed up for the 5 page essay due by the end of this term, none of you are allowed to work on it until two weeks from the due date." She continued, but the girl next to Jonny had caught my attention, she had just reached across the walk way between her and Jonny, she then handed him a folded piece of paper. I looked back at the front of this class Mrs. Stowgard was finishing the last due dates on the board. She then turned and waited a minute or two.
      "The rest of the time is yours." She said, before sitting at her desk.
     Jonny was still sitting at his desk, but the girl had walked over to a group of her friend.
"What does the paper say?" I asked as I sat next to him.
"I have no idea what you are talking about." Said Jonny, and he stood up. He walked to the door as the bell rang.
     I followed him out of school, but I stayed a good distance behind. Jonny walked a few blocks west before he turned right, and I lost sight of him. When I reached the spot were he turned right he was leaning on a tree.
     "Why are you following me?" He asked. "I must say, you have the determination of a fat boy who wants a donut."
     "Jonny, I know that girl in Stowgard's class gave you a note, or something." I said.
     "Your pretty observant, I do give you that. You are very athletic, but if you had been more observant, you would have noticed the girl that gave me this note, was also in your P.E. class. I asked her if she would note some key points about you for me."
     "That's not creepy." I said under my breath, not meaning for it to reach his ears.
     "Well you see, I have an old friend, ...enemy, in fact an arch enemy more like, and I figured I could use some help. Not wanting to go to someone who knows me, you seemed to fit the best picture. Besides, I am always careful with who I associate with." He said as he started to walk again. From behind us, the girl from Stowgard's class came up to us.
"Did you know he would follow you?" The girl asked Jonny.
"Well seeing that Sam here was alone at lunch, I figure that he would most likely want a friend, so I had a brief discussion with him at lunch, and then when we had last hour in Stowgard's, I knew that he could see you give me the note. So there for curiosity and determination got the better of him." Said Jonny.
"Bull shit, you did not know that I had seen the note until I had asked you about it." I said with a little anger.
"See, I knew you were observant. Would you like to join our little group of Sheala and I?" He asked.