The Brown family arrived in town recently, so Clarinda didn't get a chance to see the school before today. She's not going to worry about lockers right now when she doesn't even know about the school's layout that much.

Anyway, she's here on time, and that's the important part probably? Are there assigned desks here … it looks like no. She'll take this one. Oh, hey, they're giving out handbooks today so she doesn't have to go to the office about it. Convenient. This looks like a printing error but that's fine, it's rare for color printing errors to make the black-and-white text unreadable.

As the rest of the students filter in, Ms. Andersen greets them with a smile.

"Hello students, and welcome to your first year here at North Central Fremont High School! My name is Ms. Andersen and I'll be your biology teacher and homeroom instructor -- if any of you have a teacher other than Ms. Andersen labeled as your homeroom instructor on your schedules, please act now!"

A few especially nervous freshmen check their schedules, but nobody leaps up to run panicking out of the room. Well, better than some classes she's seen!

"Before we get started in earnest, we're going to have a brief session where we go over some of North Central Fremont's policies and procedures. Each of you should have a handbook on your desks -- let's open those up!"

Clarinda opens her handbook! She is also, at this point, quietly fidgeting with a four-color pen.

"The first section we'll be going over has to do with... "Vandalism and Destruction of Property"."

Apparently the administration wanted to put that front-and-center after last year's Homecoming Week prank disaster. Well, Ms. Andersen doesn't blame them -- she's put a lot of effort into decorating her classroom walls, and it'd be a shame for any budding hooligans to destroy her hard work. (Model DNA strands! High resolution images of flower petals! A poster of a T. rex skeleton that in retrospect was probably designed for a younger crowd!) 

Clarinda is pretty sure she knows how to not do vandalism or destroy property. Blah blah it's hard to spray-paint things by accident blah blah no chewing gum because other people stick it to the undersides of desks even though it comes with wrappers et cetera. In the meantime … huh, that bacteria shape diagram is neat. From there it naturally follows that the handbook section on vandalism now includes some extremely stylized Heliobacter pylori making silly faces. (It's not vandalism, the handbooks get printed anew every year!)

"Next up, we have "The Campus Grounds"."

This section talks about how the custodial and groundskeeping staff works hard to provide us all with a beautiful and tidy campus and we should respect their work by keeping things clean, our responsibility to put trash and recycling in the proper bins, etc. etc. etc. Not exactly a thrilling read.

It is at this point that Clarinda realizes she forgot to pack a lunch. She checks her wallet, which does have enough money in it to buy lunch on-campus. She flips to the daily planner section and jots down 'set up lunch reminders' in an awkward hand before going back to the relevant section of the handbook.

Which, yeah, seems to match what's being said aloud. It also seems like a good place to draw flowers. Realistic ones, today, red tulips and bluebells and … what is there to do with green besides stems. Snowdrops! Snowdrops with blossoms delicately outlined in green.

"Locker and Hallway Policies" comes after that. Don't run in the halls, don't put stuff in other students' lockers, don't use more than one locker for your belongings even if the second locker is unused, yadda yadda... did they really require this many policies for basic things back when I was in high school?

Well, if they did, Ms. Andersen probably didn't pay enough attention then to remember! Clarinda sure isn't. Clarinda is drawing a sun setting in a mountain range, which doesn't really use the green portion of the pen. Black mountains and a negative-space white sun and puffy clouds lightly shaded in red and a sky in red and blue and black.

....no horseplay in the halls, no throwing paper airplanes in the halls, no playing games in the halls...

Why are there so many hallway policies! Passing periods are always too short, who has time for paper airplanes. Anyway, the mountains are finally finished, time for … something less representational. How about paisleys, paisleys are good.

The rest of the period goes by in a bit of a bureaucratic blur -- some more dull handbook stuff, then Ms. Andersen goes over her syllabus and distributes textbooks (these the students have to sign for, so they get brought out separately), and by the end of it there isn't time for much of anything real so she lets the class go a few minutes early. All in all, not a lot of learning going on yet.

Well, first days are usually pretty dull - there's an entire school year ahead of them, after all!

And Clarinda goes to her next location! Which is on the other side of the school it turns out. Again. Why would anyone have time to throw airplanes during passing period.

At least the place is prettier on the inside than on the outside. There's some planters full of flowers which only have a few soda cans and one corroded battery in them. There's some outdoor benches that may have actually been washed, distributed around the school instead of in one 'lunchyard' area. Maybe they trust high schoolers more than middle schoolers or maybe things are just different here. A wall of what looks like the shop classroom has paisleys which neatly work around some vents and miscellaneous equipment. The library, which is where she'll need to turn in textbooks at the end of the year, has some outdoor tables near it, and on one of its walls there's a gorgeous mural of a silhouetted figure on a horse riding off into the sunset in a mountainous desert.

Ms. Andersen sees the last stragglers leave from the homeroom group and closes the door -- the passing period is brief, but she can use it to tidy up before her next section gets here. Luckily, the place isn't too messed up -- she pulls a desk or two back in place, throws away a forgotten gum wrapper (someone's already breaking the rules!), then looks back over the room with a satisfied smile. Model DNA strands! High resolution images of flower petals! Those weird promotional posters with cartoon antibodies!

Looks like the start to another exciting year -- and without the handbook to review for this next class, maybe this time she'll actually get to talk about some science before the period ends!

Honestly, nobody really bothers with that thing after the first day anyway.