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“I hate school.”

Buffy Summers looked up from the paper she was reading and watched her daughter Jessica drop her spoon in her grapefruit and pout, shoving the dish from her.

Buffy frowned and lifted the paper once more. “So says kids your age across the board that has school in a half hour.”

“Do you even care that I hate school?”

“No. Jessie, I hated school at your age too.”

“No you didn’t. You were a geek, admit it,” Jessica teased, her eyes twinkling in mischief.

Buffy smiled at her daughter, setting the paper down. “Despite what you think about me being a geek now, I wasn’t a geek back then.”

“Yeah, right,” Jessica muttered.

“I was cooler than cool,” Buffy said, somewhat defensively.

“Mom, the fact that you just said ‘cooler than cool’ means you were then, as you are now, a geek.”

It was a losing battle, Buffy decided. She figured it was her payback for being ‘cool’ back then and now she was told what a geek she was. Shaking her head, Buffy studied her daughter, who, in her humble opinion, was a gorgeous young woman. She frowned slightly when she asked, “Jessie, do you have to wear so much makeup?”

Her daughter scrunched up her pretty pixie face. “What do you mean? I’m not wearing a lot.”

“The black eyeliner, the dark shadow, the blush, the lipstick…can you tone it down? You’re a student, not a streetwalker.”

Jessica rolled her eyes at her mother and got up to deposit her dishes in the sink. She spun to her mother, her chemically dyed red hair bouncing in the ponytail she had it up in. Come to think of it, Buffy was not sure if she approved of the outfit either. Her daughter’s lithe body was clothed in a mini jean skirt and a form-fitting shirt that accentuated her breasts more than a young girl’s breasts should be accentuated, and the black tights that seemed to have strategically placed rips in them.

“How much did you pay for those?” Buffy asked, pointing to her tights. “I could rip them for you for free.”

“Mo-om,” Jessica whined.

“No, seriously, I’d like to know how much of your allowance goes into buying those things.”

“I got them on sale. Is that better?” Jessica snapped.

“Jessie, honestly, I just don’t understand why you have to dress like that. You’re such a beautiful girl and you hide it behind all that junk on your face—“

“Mom, just shut up.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me, I said just shut up.”

“You don’t tell your mother to shut up, young lady!”

“Then stop harassing me about my clothes! Just because you’re all washed up and still hung up on my dead father--“

“Jessica Summers, you are walking a thin line. If you don’t want to be grounded for the rest of your natural life, I suggest you shut your mouth,” Buffy said angrily.

“Why is it that I don’t have any pictures of him? You were so in love with him, after all.”

“He died, Jessica.”

“So what? Did you bury him with his pictures or something? Burn them? Maybe you were lying. Maybe you just got knocked up by loser guy and Poppa sent you away to have me all alone.”

“Get your things and get in the car. I don’t want to hear another word out of you,” Buffy barked at her.

“I hate you!”

“Good. You can hate me for the next month because you’re grounded!”

In reply, Jessica stomped off and Buffy fought the tears that were threatening to come. Her daughter could not have hurt her more if she had come up and shoved a knife in her back.

~~~~~~~

William Mayne had always loved the first day of school. As a student, he loved the whole year of learning ahead of him, the smell of new textbooks, and the feel of his newly pressed uniform.

Now as a teacher, he loved it for an entirely different set of reasons. As he watched his first class at Sunnydale High shuffle into class, he loved the fact he had a new beginning here.

When he first had yearnings to come across the pond to the US, it was to conquer the world in the way most young men thought they could by singing in a punk rock band. He never dreamed of being a teacher and a high school teacher no less. His love for learning waned a little when he went through his rebellion punk rocker “Spike” phase, but for all the late night partying and mischief he got into he had managed to keep his grades up an above respectable level.

This was a good thing, because now not only did he have an honors degree in English Literature, but it also gave him the opportunity to leave merry old England, and start a fresh. Finding a job was easy; the Yanks loved someone coming from the mother country to teach their young bright minds the language they had invented.

As the teenagers continued to pile into the classroom, he decided the hard part was only beginning. He actually had to teach, stand up in front of a class and assert some kind of authority. He knew the English accent would help, as well as the fact he was half the age of the rest of the staff. In addition, the fluttering of teenage eyelashes that he could currently see also told him he would not have too much trouble making the young ladies listen to him as well.

He smiled to himself as he watched all the different tribes of teens gather marking their territory so to speak. Honor roll students front and centre of course, notebooks already opened waiting to drink whatever new facts they could. The somewhat smart and just a rung above the geeky kids were in the middle of the class. Then there was the interesting battle of who could care less at the back of the room. The current stand off was between the Jocks, the popular girls and the wannabe punks. The Punks made him laugh. Avril Lavigne and Simple Plan had a lot to answer for. Part of him wanted to give the first lesson alone about how being into the punk rock was actually more about listening to the real punk of the 70’s and 80’s and not about dying your hair jet black, fire engine red in fact any color named after a form of transportation.

No, he could not do that. He was here to teach English and that was what he would do.

“Good Morning Class, I am Mr. Mayne and I will be your English teacher for the year.”

~~~~~~~

Being a single mother was not easy. It was damn difficult as far as Buffy was concerned. Course, it had been even harder when Jessie was younger, but as Buffy was learning, ‘Small children, small problems, big children, big problems’.

She loved her daughter like nothing and no one on Earth. She meant the world to her and she did everything she could to provide for her, be there for her, and to keep her on the straight and narrow. While she wished she could have had Jessie at an older age, she would not trade her daughter for the world. Jessie was her world and she did not want her daughter to feel gypped. She did not have a father, and that was an issue that had been coming up increasingly more and more, but Buffy tried hard to be both for her daughter. She had the sinking feeling however, as she pulled into work, that she was failing at that. No matter how hard she tried, no matter how hard she worked.

She struggled to attend college when Jessie was still just a baby. Thankfully, her parents had helped, even if they did not particularly like the fact that Buffy was a single mom. However, they helped her through school, helped her as she worked part time, and then came home to take care of her baby. She remembered many times staying up to study while Jessie slept peacefully. Then when she would finally get to bed, then Jessie would awaken and it was all-nighters for Buffy.

Entering the busy newsroom, Buffy headed straight for her desk, turning on her computer and flipping through the memos on her desk. She had articles to follow up on, articles to edit and articles to pitch to the editor. Looking around the bustling newsroom, Buffy smiled. She had worked hard to get where she was, and she would not trade a moment of it.

Looking at a picture of her daughter on her desk, Buffy just hoped that one day Jessie would have aspirations that went beyond buying the latest CD and attending the “sickest” parties. Moreover, whatever her daughter wanted to do, Buffy would support her, as her parents had supported her, one hundred percent.

~~~~~~~

“So, how did it go today?”

William looked up from his class notes to see the school librarian and fellow countryman, Rupert Giles standing next to him in the Teacher’s Lounge.

“It went well, surprisingly. Most of the children listened most of the time so I guess I am ahead of most teachers around here.”

“I see you have Jess Summers in your class. You should be in for an interesting year,” Giles commented as he made his cup of tea.

“Really how so?”

“She is a gifted student but she is going through a testing phase.”

“From that tone of voice, I can tell you are not talking about SAT’s Giles.”

“Not quite. Sixteen is a difficult age for most but Jess seems to be taking it to the extreme.”

“Surely her parents are doing something to rein her in?” Sure, he had not been in the teaching game long but parents had to take some kind of role in disciplining their own children.

“It not that simple William. I taught her mother…” William started to laugh.

“Gee Rupes I know you were old but that takes the cake. At the same school as mother and daughter. How long have you been teaching here?”

“Sixteen years. I taught, Jess’s mum, Buffy, in my first year here at Sunnydale.” Rupert watched as the penny dropped.

“Well that makes perfect sense. A teenage girl gets knocked up; boyfriend leaves her high and dry, I am guessing. It doesn’t take Freud to work out the kids got issues.”

“Listen, you are new so I am going to let that slide, but you don’t know anything about anything here. Jess’s dad, Buffy’s high school boyfriend, was killed in a car accident three months before Jess was born.”

William felt like a right git, his heart went out to Jess and her mother.

“Oh, I get it. “

“I don’t think you do. Buffy really bucked the teenage mom trend. She came back to school as soon as Jess was born made the honor roll. Showed everyone who had told her she could not do it. All to give Jess a better life.”

“And now Jess is throwing it back.”

“Now, you are starting to get it.”





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