Chapter 1

Introducing Olympus Middle School: the downsides of an alternative school

Winter: Seventh Grade

Stanley Smeade rubbed his protruding belly as he surveyed the group of 40 odd students seated in front of him. The students, all dressed in variations of the same sweatpants and t-shirt combinations, sit impatiently waiting for what he has to say. A sagging yellow lab drooped at his feet, her belly as full and round as her master’s. He fiddled with his curly tangled beard. Stanley isn’t happy. He started this middle school, Olympus Middle School, as almost an experiment, to see how his teaching style could improve students more ‘gifted’ than others. He had felt so confident at the time, which was almost six years ago now, that his teaching style was the way of the future, that there would be books written about his pioneering the teaching field. Unfortunately, his experiment was wielding some unintentional results, which could prevent his rise to fame and fortune. He started his speech, hoping that his students would revel at the chance to listen to his pearls of wisdom.

 

Tanya quietly inched herself backwards until she touched the wall of the small room. Gratefully, she leaned back and let herself slouch against the wall, hoping that none of the other teachers would notice and scold her for her bad posture. She rolled her eyes inwardly as Stanley, the school’s headmaster, droned on about the “lack of commitment” to Helping Tasks lately. To Tanya, Helping Tasks were simply a cute name for forcing the students to clean the school every day because Stanley was too cheap to hire a janitorial staff. Some students had to sweep, others had to clean windows, scrub desks, and take out the trash, even feed his slobbering yellow lab, Suki. Tanya always bristled when Stanley lectured them about commitment or responsibility. So that should tell you that he did it often. Being twelve years old, Tanya was pretty sure she already knew all that she needed to about people, and that it was unrealistic and even stupid to expect a bunch of middle schoolers to behave responsibly. And yet, despite this obvious fact, Stanley and the rest of their teachers kept trying. Tanya almost felt sorry for them. Tanya’s classmate Wally made faces at her from across the room. She rolled her eyes, physically this time, and subtlety flipped him off.

Tanya’s friend Mandy noticed the exchange, and leaned over and scribbled on Tanya’s assignment notebook.

“Do you still like him?” She asked in her bubbly script.

Tanya wrinkled her forehead. “Wally?” She asked underneath Mandy’s question.

Mandy looked at Tanya with her huge brown eyes and nodded.

“HELL NO.” Tanya scrawled angrily. “Not after he called me fat and humiliated me!”

“Sorry!” Mandy wrote. “I was just curious.” Mandy shifted her attention from their conversation to Stanley as he pontificated grandly.

 “You are all required by this school to act as ‘Model Olympians’. You represent Olympus Middle School, and when you don’t embody our values, it reflects poorly on us. It is important that as young students you show respect for each other and for us.” He emphasized this statement with broad, sweeping, gestures. “So go forth and be the best you can be. Try to think of other people’s happiness before your own. In other words, ‘don’t take the last piece of cake.’” Stanley winked, and rang the gong, signaling the end of their morning meeting and the start of their classes for the day.

Everyone scrambled to get out of there as fast as possible, in a furious rush to get the best seats in whatever class they were headed to first. Tanya slid in her slippered feet over the bamboo floors as she gained speed over the rest of her grade.

“God, Stanley’s f*****g out done himself this time. We don’t take the last piece of cake. You’ve got to be f*****g kidding me.” Tanya’s classmate Sam complained.

He was right. Stanley was always coming up with the dumbest phrases that were barely relevant to the school’s philosophy. No matter how hard he tried, they were always cheesy and corny, and none of the students except for a few took him seriously. Those who did were widely considered teachers pets, and were subject to ridicule. Wally caught up to Tanya and whispered, “Fat a*s.“ in her ear before passing her. Tanya stopped suddenly, ignoring the crush around her as everyone else stampeded into the three main classrooms: The Science Room, The Humanities Room, and The Art room. Tanya’s face had flushed a bright red, and she struggled to keep herself from crying. She pushed the hurt down, and masked it with an intense expression of antipathy. He could know that she hated him, but not that she cared about what he said to her. Even worse than that, a teacher might notice her crying and try to intervene. If you were caught expressing an emotion in this school, the teachers pounced on it, determined to make you tell them and then let them ‘help’ you feel better. This kind of ritual was not something Tanya was willing to participate in. She felt things, like any adolescent, but she couldn’t understand why on earth she should share that with a group of adults who judged her and the other students daily on their social worth and merit. She was not going to let them have anything real to judge her with. She preferred to let them think what they wanted, at least that way she knew whatever conclusions they had about her weren’t accurate. It was a small victory for her, but a victory nonetheless. In this place, the little victories were what kept her going.