Who: Vir and Jasper When: Wednesday, Oct 18, early afternoon Where: Spanish class Status: Complete
In spite of the soda he’d had at lunch, Jasper was sleepy by the time Spanish class rolled around. He was tempted to just cut his last two classes and go home, but he was trying to keep his attendance up so he could graduate, and he knew Ms. del Río would mark him absent and send it up to the office. Plus, there wasn’t much for him to do until after school hours anyway. He’d already called Amelia that morning to tell her she was coming over to hang out with him and Ruby for a while, then spend the night, and there was no way he was going over to his mom’s before his sister got home and ready to go.
So going to class it was. That didn’t mean Jasper had to pay attention. Spanish was a lot cause on him, he thought, but it was a requirement to pass at least one year of it. He just couldn’t focus on it to save his life, it seemed. Especially not today when he felt restless and tired at the same time. He sat in his usual spot in the back, his face propped up on one hand as he gazed out the window and daydreamed. Ms. del Río was droning on about conjugation or something -- wasn’t that prison sex visits? -- and Jasper was just not following any of it.
As well as English and Spanish, Vir had taken quite a few linguistics papers at university. She had been astounded—literally astounded—to find how many people didn’t know how to conjugate a verb. And they had been doing it their whole life! It seemed like there was such a disconnect between what they’d been doing their whole life, and giving it a name… whatever. Vir was dedicated to taking the scary out of it.
“Honestly, you have been doing this your whole life,” she told her class in what she hoped was an encouraging voice. “Like, you know instinctively that ‘I are’ doesn’t sound right, just like ‘he am’ sounds weird, ¿me entiendes? Well, that’s conjugating. Please, don’t be afraid of it because I have given it a name. You can do this, I promise.”
There was a vague murmur of agreement from the front row, but nothing that was truly encouraging. She sighed, and wrote up the first verb of the day. “Escuchar: to listen,” she said. Fleetingly, she met the eye of Jasper Lucas, sitting in the back and looking like he was barely clinging to consciousness. Was she bold enough to engage him? When she looked back, he was back to staring out the window, and she chickened out and called on someone in the front.
“So we have talked about -AR verbs. I listen: escucho. You listen: escuchas. He, she, or it listens… who can tell me?”
Jasper was definitely not the one to tell her, as he wasn’t escuchando in the slightest. He knew on some level that he had to pass this damn class, even though he’d failed it twice now and was currently sitting around a bunch of underclassmen, but it was so hard to pay attention when it all just seemed like gibberish to him. Why did he need to know any Spanish at all anyway? It wasn’t like Point Pleasant had a huge Hispanic population, and it wasn’t like he was going anywhere else with his life. It was all about as useful to him as algebra -- which was to say not at all. Plus it made him feel dumb because he could never remember many of the words, and Jasper wasn’t fond of feeling dumb, so it was easier not to try.
He didn’t volunteer an answer because he didn’t know, and someone else in the class would. Jasper let his mind drift as he gazed outside, wishing the time would pass faster so he could get out of there. Ms. del Río was some good eye candy sometimes -- especially in the short skirt she had on today -- but that wasn’t enough to save him from how painfully bored he was.
Vir took an answer from the front row, then looked round the room again. “Can you write this down, please,” she said in what she hoped was a firm voice. “-AR verbs, verbs that end in -ar, follow this pattern.” She wrote the endings for the verb up on the board, next to the fully conjugated escuchar. She didn’t like turning her back on her class for long enough to write, but the fact remained that they needed to have some sort of notes, something to show for the day.
“Right, let’s move on to -ER verbs,” she said, keeping her voice steady. She had the attention of about half the class, which was a good day for her. “I thought… I thought maybe if we can get through the basics of conjugation, we could play a Kahoot to finish off the class.”
Jasper didn’t take any notes, but his gaze was naturally drawn back to the front of the room as Vir turned around to write. He couldn’t help it when she wore those short skirts, with all that glossy black hair hanging down her back. She had a nice ass, and it tripped him out sometimes to think that she was probably only a few years older than he was. Jasper had been lusting after teachers less and less these days with Jules keeping him pretty damn satisfied, but a nice ass was a nice ass, and looking kept him more awake.
The rest of the class shifted and perked up a bit at the suggestion that they might get to play a game right at the end, but Jasper just sighed heavily and rolled his eyes. He got competitive about certain things, but knowing Spanish wasn’t one of them. He went ahead and put his head down on his folded arms, intent on completely disengaging until the bell rang.
Teaching was a constant battle of engaging their interest. It looked like the game had piqued the interest of most of the students, but Jasper…
And the truth was, most of the time she just wasn’t brave enough to confront him directly. But at some point, she was going to have to.
“J-Jasper,” she began, then cleared her throat. “Jasper, I haven’t seen you write anything down. You’re not going to have a good time with the test next week if you can’t do this.” She walked down the aisle between the desks until she was standing right in front of him, and tapped his desk—his empty desk—lightly. “If you need a pen, or some notebook paper, I can supply those, but I need you to get something down for today.”
Irritation flashed through Jasper. He hadn’t even gotten to start dozing before Vir was there being annoying. He hadn’t even worked the night before, he had no excuse to be so sleepy, he just was. “Nah, I’m good,” he said, the words muffled a little by his arms. He had all that stuff in his backpack, along with the textbook he hadn’t even bothered to take out. He was supposed to be doing better, yeah, but fucking off during one class wouldn’t kill him, right? Just this one, then he would really try to dig into Spanish.
Feeling her temper rising, Vir did her best to swallow it down. She was in charge, she reminded herself, and if she couldn’t assert her control, she’d never be taken seriously. “I didn’t actually ask you if you were ‘good’,” she said, keeping her voice even. “I asked you to write down the notes on the board. I’m afraid it’s not negotiable, and if you don’t do the work as asked, there are going to be consequences.”
That sounded… credible, didn’t it? She forced herself to keep her expression calm, even a little stern. “So sit up please, and take out a pen and paper.”
Jasper’s smirk disappeared in the little cave of his arms. He hated it when they threatened him with ‘consequences,’ like they could actually do anything to him. All she could do was send him to the office with complaints about his behavior, and it wasn’t like Jasper hadn’t already been in that position a thousand times before. He sat up, not in any hurry to comply, and leaned back in his seat to look at Vir, both hands still on his desk. Jasper tilted his head at her, his eyes cold as he looked her up and down. “Consequences, huh?” he murmured. “What kind? You gonna spank me or something?” One corner of his mouth quirked upward slightly as he let his gaze drift down to her legs again.
She saw the way he looked at her and barely suppressed a shudder. That… was not okay. She fought the urge to tug her dress down slightly, knowing that it wouldn’t do anything but call attention to her discomfort, but lost the fight and tugged at it anyway, mentally cursing herself. Great. Now he’d know for sure that he’d got to her.
“That’s inappropriate,” she remarked uselessly. Of course it was inappropriate. He knew it was inappropriate. That was why he’d said it.
“But if you continue to disregard my requests and refuse to do the work in my classes, then I have no issue giving you an incomplete for the course. Or failing you entirely,” she told him firmly.
The surge of victory when Vir tugged her dress down was satisfying but short-lived. Jasper’s brows drew together as she threatened his grade, anger bubbling up to replace the smugness. “For one day?” he snapped in disbelief, perfectly aware that it wasn’t just one day. He hadn’t done great in this class since school started back, but it still aggravated him that she was making such a big deal out of it. It made him want to make a different big deal out of it, but he was too aware of everyone in the class staring at them. If he cussed out a teacher with witnesses, he would definitely be suspended.
After glaring at her for another heartbeat, he reached into his bag to pull out a notebook and a pen. Jasper slapped the notebook down on his desk and hunched forward to start scribbling down whatever bullshit she’d written on the board.
“See me after class,” she said softly.
The battle had been won, but Vir wasn’t foolish enough to believe she’d won the war. She walked back up to the board, cringing internally at having to turn her back on Jasper and his leering/scowling eyes, and ran through the process for -IR verbs.
When that was done, she set up the Kahoot, giving the students the chance to log in on their phones or other devices before hitting Play.
Jasper had to physically bite his tongue on a what the fuck at that particular direction. He stewed through the rest of class, though he did take notes and pushed random buttons for the Kahoot game, just to look like he was participating. She couldn’t just fail him for in-class bullshit, could she? If he did his work -- more than he had been doing -- and passed the tests, she had to pass him, right? Maybe he could get Roxy to help him with it, she spoke Spanish and everything. Jasper mulled it over grumpily until the bell rang.
He stuffed his things back into his bag and stood up, tempted to just walk out with everyone else. Ms. del Río was such a little mouse, he wasn’t convinced she would call him out. But Jasper was just pissed enough to want to see what she had to say. So he approached her desk as the rest of the class filed out, looking at her with an expression that was sarcastically expectant.
Taking a deep breath, Vir perched on the edge of her desk and waited for the rest of the class to leave. Honestly she had expected him to walk out and ignore her request to stay behind entirely, so she wasn’t exactly sure how to say what she thought she might say to him.
“Is… is everything okay?” she asked softly when they were alone. “I mean, Spanish has some tricky grammatical things if you’re not used to them. Sometimes I take it for granted that I grew up speaking both languages. If I’m going too fast, or if there’s anything you need clarification on…”
Three go-rounds of the same class didn’t exactly scream “he’s getting it” to her.
“I just want you to succeed. I think you can. You don’t strike me as stupid. Grumpy, sure, but not stupid.” She smiled nervously at him, hoping he’d take her little joke in the manner it was intended.
Jasper had expected her to start bitching at him for his behavior, so the seemingly sincere concern threw him off a little. Irritation followed the surprise -- he hated it when they seemed to want to have these little heart-to-heart chats with him, like he was going to bare his soul so they could swoop in and help fix the broken boy from the fucked up family. Like this was some kind of feel-good movie and he was typecast as the Troubled Teen. Given how young Vir was, he wouldn’t be surprised if she had some of that in her head.
“Listen,” he said, leaning in a bit closer to her. Jasper let his voice drop deeper and softer, but there was still an edge to it. “The only way you could help me? Is to lock the door and hike that little skirt up. The fact that this class is a requirement? Is bullshit. I don’t need it and I never will.” His heart was thumping hard as he said it -- he knew he would never get away with it with other teachers, but Vir was meek and tiny and young enough to intimidate, and he was just sick of everything today.
Vir’s face went pale, then flushed violently. She knew this, because she felt it happen—her cheeks suddenly going very cold, then burning hot. She mentally cursed, knowing he could read her reactions on her face as easy as he had read what she had written on the board.
“It… it’s not okay for you to speak to me that way,” she said firmly. “You may think you’re learning nothing in here, that I am teaching a useless class, but there are more benefits to learning another language than simply knowing another language. And even if there weren’t, you still don’t get to… to s-sexually harass me.”
She could hear her accent getting thicker, and knew she was moments away from losing control and lapsing into Spanish, which would help no one. She took a couple of deep breaths, closing her eyes and trying to compose herself.
“So you wrote the notes off the board today, that’s good. It tells me that you’re not physically incapable of doing it, and that it hasn’t killed you. Now I want to talk about all the other times you’ve sat in my class either staring into space or pointedly not doing as I’ve asked. I’ve decided,” on the spot, but that was neither here nor there, “to offer you a choice. I can give you an incomplete for all of those instances. And I have documentation for them.” What if her documentation was her texting her mother venting about her class? He didn’t need to know that. “Or you can write me a one page essay, in English, about the benefits of learning a second language.”
Jasper felt some sick satisfaction that he’d gotten to her, at least somewhat. That bright blush and the stutter made him feel powerful for a moment, and if this had been happening the year before, he might’ve pushed her further, said some truly vile shit just to get a reaction out of her. She’d annoyed him just as much then, so it wasn’t that he was warming to Vir, he just ... had other goals. Goals he was currently not pointed toward, because he did genuinely want to graduate in the spring. He just wanted to do it on his own terms. Terms that didn’t involve having some bitch only a few years older than him try to tutor him out of pity or whatever.
The touch of sarcasm as she kept talking made his eyes narrow a bit, and Jasper’s jaw clenched. He also didn’t like that she apparently had been keeping documentation about him. The school year wasn’t that far along yet, and he wondered if those incompletes would really fuck him up overall and keep him from getting out of this school the way he wanted to. The out Vir gave him sounded too simple to turn down -- Jasper had made great strides in bullshitting his way through essays. “Due by when?” he grumbled. “I got plans tonight.”
“Friday,” Vir said after a moment’s pause. “And don’t think you can just phone it in, either. I expect you to put some effort into it—the effort you haven’t been putting into my classes.”
She hopped off the desk and gestured toward the door, hoping against hope he didn’t catch the way her dress accidentally rode up even higher. This is no longer a work appropriate dress, Vir. “Go on then. I’ll see you tomorrow. Enjoy your… plans.”
Jasper openly rolled his eyes at her warning, then turned to go. Not because she’d told him to, but because he had another class to get to. Not to mention, if he hung around to be stubborn, he really was going to say something that would get him suspended. Jasper didn’t need that hassle right then, not with everything else going on. He would deal with putting ‘effort’ into the essay later, a couple of days was a lifetime when it came to homework. Until then, Jasper was just going to try and not let this ruin the rest of his day.