A Lesson In Crime

Chapter One

"Rian Dawson" Alex called, exhausted and only minimally aided by the doubled amount of caffeine he added to his morning coffee that day.

"Here" A young man with a mop of hair called back. He'd grow out of that haircut hopefully, Alex thought as he held back a giggle. He had no room to speak, though, sporting his own mop of hair straightened excessively.

"Zack Merrick"

"Here" This one was kind of buff. Looked the kind of guy he expected to beat up underclassmen during passing periods, but at the same time kinda didn't - multi coloured heart stickers littered all over his binder. On second thought, he just looked like a surfer. Alex didn't know why he liked to figure these kinds of things out.

"Jordan Fish"

"Here" a weak voice spoke up from the back of the class. Alex wouldn't embarass him by pretending not to hear. They were just lucky it was him teaching today, and not Mr. Ross.

Ryan was a dick, plain and simple. But he was doing Alex a massive favor, and he wasn't a dick to him, so it didn't matter all that much.

He continued to go down the line of names of students, randomly - not by alphabet, so no one could guess who they were sitting by beforehand. As requested. Another example of Ryan being a dick, Alex thought.

He finally got to the last - that should have been the first - name to call.

"Jack Barakat" He called, not looking up from the sheet.

Silence.

He looked up then, scanning the room briefly.

"Jack Barakat?"

Still no reply. He just furrowed his eyebrows, seeing for himself that every seat was full. There was no way anyone was absent. He sighed to himself, not a class clown already. He didn't get paid enough for this! Or, at all, anyway.

"He's right there", someone spoke up finally. Zack, he thinks it was. Alex's eyes met with who he was referring to.

To put it nicely, he looked scared. Maybe like he was having an asthma attack, hands visibly shaking and mouth parted slightly like he was trying to get in any breath of air he could.

"Are you okay?"

That seemed to make it even worse, Jack's eyebrows furrowing closer together.

"He's not going to talk, sir." Zack answered again.

"Oh," Alex said. Briefly remembering Ryan saying something about a mute student now.

"That's fine, Jack" Alex said, and thankfully he visibly relaxed. Alex smiled at him reassuringly and tried not to worry much about the fact that Jack just redirected his gaze down to his not-so-interesting advanced English book.

"Okay" Alex said, looking back to the class. "Now that you've all been introduced to me, kind of- I'll introduce myself to you. My name is Alex-"

"Alex?" Someone interrupted. A girl with long curly brown hair and a nose ring. Tay, he thinks. "I thought this was Mr. Ross' class?"

Alex smiled again, trying to will down the anoyed feeling bubbling in his stomach from being cut off.

"Yeah, it is. But he didn't want to come in today and I'm his teachers assistant."

"A student assistant?" A boy named Christopher asked from the back of the room.

"Yes and no," Alex said. "I just graduated. Not from this school, but a private school not so far away"

"Oo, fancy" the boy teased. Alex just tried to laugh back.

"Yeah" he agreed. "English is my forte Ryan and I have a deal. I essentially teach his class for him, you all do good, he writes me a badass recommendation letter and bam! I'm teaching it at Stanford."