Temporal Exploring 101 - Cultural Immersion

II.24 Natty gets careless and I learn to dance

The day of the next school council meeting was drawing closer. That meeting where the Concerned Parents' Initiative would be be put to the vote, an attempt to bar all those students whose board and tuition were not paid by their own parents from enrolling at, and attending, St. Albert's Boarding School for Girls. Currently, the only student whose tuition and board were not paid for by her parents was my roommate, Natalie Fogg. No matter that she was the recipient of a prestigious fellowship for gifted girls.

Quite a few students, among them Dorothy Barnett and her friends, were not shy to talk about the upcoming school council meeting, especially when Natty was within hearing range. And there were several teachers, among them Natty's personal nemesis Ms Gablins, who made a point of talking about it as well. Natty would pretent not to listen when that particular topic came up, but you could see that it was getting to her.

I have never been known to be a very diplomatic person, myself, but compared to Natty I was the epitome of diplomacy. When attacked, she would tend to respond and retaliate with jibes and taunts of her own. That might have been understandable, considering the circumstances. But it did not win her any new friends, to put it mildly. Which, in turn, was not really helping her case.

Perhaps in reaction to all this, Natty was getting careless. She would withdraw into her own world, scribbling in her notebook, blissfully unaware of what was going on around her.

All that might serve to explain, but certainly was no excuse for the way she acted during that particular incident in Ms Gablin's Geometry class.

The teacher had repeatedly thrown angry glances in Natty's direction when she had noticed that my friend, rather than follow Ms Gablins' lengthy explanations of non-Euclidian geometry, had been writing in her notebook or staring out of the window, lost in thought.

Finally, the exasperated teacher dropped her piece of chalk and strode towards the place where Natty and I were sitting.

"Fogg, may I have your attention, just for a moment?" she asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "That is to say, if you can tear yourself away from your studies of the park outside, and from doodling in that notebook of yours?"

"Oh." Natty looked up. Clearly, it took her some effort to return her attention to the outside world.

"Well?" Ms Gablins demanded.

If Natty had apologized at that point, she still might have gotten off lightly. As fate would have it, my friend was in somewhat of a belligerent mood, herself.

"What can I do for you?" she asked Ms Gablins pleasantly. "Can I be of help? Is it something on the blackboard that you fail to understand?"

There were quite a few titters coming from the other girls at that.

An angry flush spread over our Geometry teacher's face.

"I have had quite enough of your insolence and disrespect, Fogg," she declared. She started to write on one of those dreaded yellow slips of paper. "You will pay a visit to your tutor, now, for a much-needed attitude adjustment."

Ever so slowly, Natty got up from her seat and walked over to the teacher's desk. She rolled her eyes. "Will that be all, Miss?"

The teacher glared at her. "You are truly asking for it, aren't you?"

She added another entry to the yellow note before handing it to my roommate.

When Natty returned, about fifteen minutes later, she looked sullen and miserable. I watched her walk back to her seat and gingerly sit down next to me.