Mr. Iero

Chapter 2

*Ashley's POV*

I was waiting in a long line of students to get my student ID photo taken.  Half of the kids here were dressed normally, while the other half dressed really nicely and got their hair and makeup done just for these few insignificant seconds.

I was a bit in the middle.

I was just wearing a grey dress that went halfway down my thigh and a denim jacket.  It wasn't that much, really, but it was enough to satisfy my parents.

"Next," the photographer called.

I walked up to him and gave him the ticket that my homeroom teacher had given me that morning.  I sat down on the stool that was in front of a white backdrop.

"Now could you tilt your head a bit to the right?" he instructed.  I did so.  "Now turn you head a bit more towards the camera."  I did so.  "But keep your shoulders facing where they were before."

After a few more instructions, he finally took the picture.  "All set," he finally said.

I stood up and walked out of the gymnasium, where the pictures were being taken.  The pictures were being taken during lunch, so it's not like I had missed anything important.

I walked down the halls to go to my locker.  I turned the knob, missing the correct numbers several times, until I finally got my combination right and opened the locker up.  I stuck my hand down my backpack and fished out my brown paper bag of lunch, then closing my locker and walking to the cafeteria.

I had to walk past the office to get to lunch, and while I was walking by, the vice principal came out of the office.  "Excuse me," she angrily said to me.

I turned around to see her cross her arms and shift all of her weight to one hip.  "Yes?" I asked.

"Have you any idea what you're wearing?" she asked as if it were obvious.

I looked down at what I had on.  "A dress?" I guessed.

She curved her finger as a signal for me to follow her.  "Come to my office.  No being fresh with me."

I stood their in complete confusion until I finally followed her into the office.  The vice principal took out an orange slip of paper and started filling it out.  I suddenly started to freak out.  That's a detention slip I thought.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Ashley Moore," I answered as if I were awaiting death.

She wrote out my name and then signed the slip.  She handed it to me from across the desk and I read it.  'Violating the dress code' was checked off.

"How did I violate the dress code?" I asked.

"Stand up," she ordered.  I did as she said.  "Put your arms down at your sides."  I did so and then she pointed at my hands.

I looked down and saw that my dress was hardly an inch above my fingertips.  "I've been wearing this dress for a year though," I argued.  "Since when is this not okay?"

"Well you've obviously grown because now I think that it shows too much thigh.  I don't care what you wear when you're at home, but I don't want you causing any inappropriate thoughts to the boys at our school."

"But that's not fair," I protested.  "There are girls wearing shorts and skirts way shorter than this."

"Well I don't have time to hand detentions out to everybody," she said.  "Administrative detention's scheduled for tomorrow after school."

I sighed in annoyance and left the office.  I stuffed the detention slip into a pocket in my jacket and went to the cafeteria.  I stepped outside to where my bench was.  I knew that it wasn't my bench, but everyone knew that this was the third year that I'd be spending every day eating alone on the bench.

After lunch I went to Music Theory, just to be confused as usual.  Then I went to Algebra where we did basically an entire period of warm-up work.  And as a finish to my oh-so-great day, History.

After the bell rang, Mr. Iero walked into the class room.  Every period that I passed his room I noticed that he stood outside of his classroom door to greet his entering students, which was cool.

Mr. Iero looked around at the students in the room.  "You guys all look really nice today," he mentioned.  "Especially you, Jake," he said, pointing to a student who was wearing his pajama pants.  A few kids laughed and then Mr. Iero turned around to write something on the board.  In all capital letters, he wrote the word, 'TERRORISM.'

"Today, we're going to read some articles," Mr. Iero said.  "I have a stack here with different events in early American history that some people might consider acts of terrorism.  You're all going to annotate them and just write a couple sentences about what you think.  I'll pass them out now," he said as he walked to his desk in the back of the class.

Mr. Iero picked up a large stack of papers and started handing them out to students, going down column by column.

When he got to my desk, he put the stack down and started picking articles out from all over until he found the four that I needed.  "Your dress looks very nice, Miss Moore," he said, catching a peek at my dress through the corner of his eye before going back to the pile of articles.

"Thanks," I quietly said, unable to think of anything else to say without feeling extremely awkward.

Mr. Iero handed me my articles and then picked up the pile of articles left to hand out to the other students.  He gave me a nod and then walked off to the student behind me.

Your dress looks very nice.