"Glad to hear it!"

Their teacher hasn't shown up, yet. It's unlike him, normally he's here early.

"So, Savannah's not mad at me anymore. Making dinner worked."

"Agreed. Those were kind of freaky."

Their teacher continues to not show. Eventually another teacher walks into the room, plops herself at the desk, and then waits. She starts watching the class with a silent, judgmental look as they talk. Several students don't get the hint and keep talking. So the teacher keeps waiting, and watches.

She turns out to have a very terrifying stare. The more talkative students eventually are on the other end of it and quiet down. Until, at last, there is silence.

"Hello. Mr. Peters is ill today. I'll be your substitute," says she of the terrifying looks. On the board, she writes, 'Mrs. Adams.' "My name is Mrs. Adams, I teach the upperclass English. So please avoid acting like this is a free day, I'm quite qualified to teach you and we will be doing something other than coloring or crosswords today."

Mrs. Adams has horror stories. Bella probably doesn't know them. They are summarized as, 'She is a hardass, teaches like her students are already in college, and is kind of scary.'

And now she shall be their substitute. Great.

Darren does the same.

This proves to be the smart option.

Mrs. Adams doesn't just expect people to have read the book. She expects them to have opinions on it. She expects them to have their opinions backed up through the text. She turns out to be fond of rhetoric, and a few times she will call on someone and just - ask questions. Usually she never says that someone is wrong, she asks why they think that and what evidence they have to prove it. If they don't have any, she will go over the part of the book applicable to their opinion and start explaining it to them, and pointing out parts of the book that support their opinion. Several students have not read the book. If they say as much, she will tell them that next time they should be more prepared, and then she will move on. That will be that, nothing more. (It isn't her class, so she will not actually enforce reading the book.)

In cases where they try and bullshit her - she plays with them. She asks them questions, leads them to assumptions, and ultimately proves every time that they have no idea what they're talking about. Mrs. Adams tells them that next time, if they don't know something, they should say they don't know and save everyone the trouble. That if they want to act smart in front of her they'd better actually be smart. Acting smart gets Mrs. Adams to ask you to back it up. If they can't do that, then they shouldn't try, they should pay attention and actually learn something.

Nearing the end of class, she turns it into a debate room. She drags out differing opinions from students and starts asking each of them to question 'Why' to defend themselves to someone who disagrees with them. The purpose is not to be proven wrong, the purpose is to think. It doesn't work across everyone (several people just stay utterly silent) but for the people willing to learn, it's kind of fun.

It's during this debate and two students are getting into a heated discussion about what something means that she walks to Bella's desk. In a perfectly normal tone of voice, she says, "I know."

When called on, Bella handles herself adroitly in terms of presented content, if not in terms of beautiful rhetoric, in this class format. It helps that she's read the book twice and remembered to actually bring her copy to flip through for support; but she's not short of opinions, mostly intradiegetic. This character should have known this fact because it was accessible through evidence they had by page thirty, this other character behaves inconsistently here versus here and that implies something offscreen insert speculation.

"I beg your pardon?" Bella says when Mrs. Adams addresses her.

Mrs. Adams is wearing a necklace. It was under her shirt, hard to see, but - now it's out and she's playing with it absently. She's spinning it, it's got - some kind of circular metal pendant. Innocuous, under normal circumstances, except for what Bella knows about medallions.

"That you've already read this book before," she says, innocently. "You're rather good at this, I hope to see you in my class next year. Try to stick around until then, I need more intelligent students."

Then she is back to teaching the class. Like nothing happened.

(She knows.)

It goes on without incident.

Mrs. Adams makes no other strange non sequiturs. Class goes on as normal, and then it ends. If Bella would like to question the teacher, she probably has a few minutes before needing to get to the next class.

Darren glances at Bella. He'll wait, if she's going to.

"Maybe," agrees Darren. "But now wouldn't be smart, I think."

Mrs. Adams waves back, looking faintly amused.

Off they go, to their next classes.

Lunch arrives.

Savannah... Acts like nothing happened. Like, at all. No weird looks, no smug smiles, no jokes about sphinxes. It is a normal day, in Savannah-land. She just happens to know that Bella is a critter. No big deal.

"So! Still coming over today for geeking out with my brother?" she asks.