troubled teachers

Chapter 2

this chapter should give you some more info on Emma and Henry as well as beginning to delve a little deeper into Regina's character. Excited to see what you lovelies think about how I'm developing her storyline and what your thoughts are about it.
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The breakfast table was silent. The whole house had been that way since Monday night when Henry had stormed out of the car. Emma hadn't seen him at all that evening, although the pasta bake serving she had left outside his room had disappeared and an empty plate replaced it. The following evenings he had at least joined her for dinner but they had been shrouded in awkward, stony silence.

So on Friday morning Emma was watching Henry carefully over the rim of her coffee cup. His eyes looked slightly puffy, as if he hadn't slept well. He was eating quickly, the large spoonfuls of cornflakes being demolished by his insatiable teenage appetite. He wasn't looking at Emma, instead reading a comic book with apparent interest. But Emma knew it was an old one he had long since outgrown. She also knew Henry had not got around to unpacking his books yet and was probably just using the comic as an excuse not to speak to her. She didn't blame him. She doubted she would have spoken to her mother either if she had been wrenched away from everyone and everything she knew to 'the arse end of nowhere'. Well, if she had a mother.

Instead of berating him for his antisocial behaviour, Emma simply took his now empty bowl and began to wash up. Three weeks after the move and they still not had the dishwasher plumbed in yet. By the time she had turned back around, Henry had gone.

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Emma hated driving in silence so she had switched on Radio 1 and was currently badly humming along to an Adele track as they drove the increasingly familiar short journey to school.

"I want a haircut."

Well, Emma thought as she turned down the music, at least he's talking again.

"Really?" she asked, reaching over the gearstick and trying to ruffle his brown hair. Henry ducked out of the way. "I like it like that. You look like Justin Bieber when he was younger."

"Exactly my point," Henry glowered. "I do not want to look like Justin Bieber. Please, Mum. Please let me cut it."

"Will you let me cut it?"

"No!" Henry squealed, making Emma laugh.

"In that case I'll ask around today. I don't want to be taking you to just any old salon to de-Bieber you, do I?"

"Thanks," Henry said, a small smile at last on his face.

He still wouldn't walk through the gates beside her though.

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Emma already felt settled in her new routine of classes. She was quick at learning children's names and had already mastered her tutor group's. Felix and Peter hadn't been any more trouble so far and the rest of the students all appeared to be great. Her warm up lessons had gone smoothly and Emma was particularly excited about one of her GCSE classes who all seemed keen to learn and just as passionate about geography as she was.

The geography department at Storybrooke School was rather small and Emma found herself on Friday lunch time in the geography office with the one other teacher of the subject and head of the department. August Booth was a couple of years older than Emma, had a scruffy beard, twinkling blue eyes and wore black leather jackets. He rode a motorcycle to school and Emma could tell at once that he was one of the 'cool' teachers.