Chapter One:

A piercing cry from a young boy gave me a headache. I reached in my pocket in hopes there was a stray Advil, but I was never that lucky.

"Okay, stop!" I hollered, which made all of the boys in the gym stop playing with their basketballs. The kids just stood there as I walked to the boy who had a huge red mark dominating his pale skinned face. It was safe to assume that a basketball hit him in the head.

Tears streamed from his teary eyes as his hand tried to cover up the circular mark on his face. I grabbed his hand and yanked it away so I could see the wound. My suspicion was confirmed when he said, "I was hit with a basketball,"

I was going to reply with, "That's obvious, you're an obvious target," but I knew that would not solve anything. He really did look like a target. He was frail, fragile, and possessed very little or absolutely no athletic or social abilities.

"How many times do I have to tell you all that your peers are not backboards? The big things hanging from the ceiling are the backboards!" I said out loud so everyone would hear. A few whispered echoed throughout the room.

"He threw the basketball at me," The crying kid said, pointing to a kid that looked like a 'bully', who was big, round, and had two goons at his side. I rolled my eyes when I saw the bully just shrug his shoulders at the accusation and I really did not care to punish the kid right now.

I grabbed his hand as I led him towards the nurse's office. The nurse was an older lady who was sitting at her desk until she saw the crying fourteen year old with a red mark dominating his small circular shaped head. I sat on one of the couches as the kid skipped onto one of those beds that had that weird white paper spread across it. The nurse bent down, opened the fridge, gave him one of those blue ice packs which the younger boys also insisted on trying to pop until that blue gunk got all over the place, and then told the boy to place it on the wound. She motioned her head at me to go outside, which I did.

"How'd this happen?"

"Someone threw a basketball at his head," I exhaled a large breath when I said this.

"How did you let that happen?"

"They're thirty five boys in the class. I can't have a set of eyes on each one of them,"

She rolled her eyes.

I wrinkled my eyebrows and gave her a pouty face.

"Who are watching over them right now?"

I turned left to right, trying not to look at her in the eyes as she impatiently tapped her foot.

"Fine,"

My arms hung as I lazily walked back into the gym.

The second I entered, the first thing I noticed was a small thick red liquid forming a puddle on the wooden floors which I knew were waxed just yesterday. The kid was crying, some were laughing, while others were lingering around the doors as if they were not associated with the incident.

I walked over to the boy and bent down so him and I were at eye level. He looked up to look at me in the eyes. I asked, "What happened?"

I told the nurse what happened to boy number 2. He bounced the basketball into his own face, which caused his nose to bleed. Now with two kids on the room, she asked for me to go outside, yet again.

"This is what happens when you don't have any discipline!" She yelled at me. She even pointed her finger at me.

"He's fourteen! You think he would have enough coordination right now not to bounce a basketball in his face,"

"Excuses are intolerable,"

"I'm sorry, but learning how to bounce a basketball is like learning how to write. Once you figure it out, which you do at a young age, it really should not be that hard. It's not like, oh, I forgot how to write in a straight line, oh, oh," I really had no idea where I was going with this. I ran my hands through my really short cut, pretty much buzzed cut, hair as I tried to think of something.

She arched an eyebrow and then turned around to walk back in her office in order to tend for the two kids I sent in there. Before she went inside, she said, "You make a new record everyday, Chris. You always manage to get some kid hurt and then sent to me. My office may as well be connected with a gym with a revolving door,"

"Oh! Ouch and burn!" I retorted. I placed a finger on my arm and then whipped it away, like how a kid moves his hand when he touches a hot plate. Unfortunately, though, she did not get to see my display.

Thankfully, the bell rang. I projected my arms up into the air once I knew I was done for the day. Okay, I was not done for the day, but I was done with gym classes. I did not have to watch over kids playing any kind of sports for at least another eighteen hours. I looked down at my watch to see the time. Yeah. At least another eighteen hours.

I felt a tap on my left shoulder, so I turned over to my left, but I saw no one. I then felt a tap on my right shoulder, so I turned to my right.

"You oaf!" I heard a feminine voice say. It was Melissa! My identification was correct once I saw her beaming face in front of me. I thought she was rather pretty, so I smiled.

"Do you have a free period now?" I asked.

"Yes I do, sir. You want to get some dejeuner alla cafeteria?" While she said this, she was very expressive with her hands.

"What?" Was I missing something?

"Oaf, you want to eat, yeah?" She playfully punched me in the shoulder.

"Yeah!" I said, rubbing my shoulder, "Hey, if you're an English teacher, why did you just try to talk to me in not English?"

"I don't know, Chris. I just don't know,"

In the cafeteria, Melissa and I grabbed our plates full of food and sat down at our little table by the window. The table only had seats for six, but no other teachers really sat with us. They sat at another teacher's table. Melissa called it 'age discrimination' because since we were in our twenties, we were exiled, while the forty plus year olds got to discuss how popping Viagra really was not a blessing towards one's sex life.

"So how was your day?" She asked.

"Sucky. Two kids got their faces busted and the nurse continues to lecture me,"

"You have been here for over a year and yet you have not figured how not to get one kid injured at least once a day," She laughed as she stabbed a slice of lettuce with her fork.

"I think she is going to report me. She really doesn't like me,"

"I'm sure she really really likes you!" She giggled. Whenever she smiled, her teeth looked as white as the clouds did in the sky.

"I think you really really like her," I retorted.

In a weird tone, she asked, "What?"

Chris, you were a moron. Always was and always will be. I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head.

"How's English?"

"Well seeing as the language has nicely settled into our society for a long time now, I would think English would consider this day average, not too bad, but not too well. If you're talking about my English class, then it was okay. My senior class got all riot-like because everyone got a C or below on their literary analysis on Beowulf,"

"Really?"

"Yeah. They don't understand that words have semantics, so even though we use a word today with a certain definition, in other times, that words was thought of as something else," she waved her fork and looked so into her discussion. I smiled and nodded my head.

"That really does suck,"

"Well I'm offering a rewrite, so they'll get over it,"

"That's good,"

Her long wavy blonde hair almost fell into a piece of lettuce that was drenched with Thousand Island dressing. I took the last bite out of my meatball hero.

"I'm so glad tomorrow is Friday," I announced.

"Same. I heard on the news report that this weekend is supposed to be blue skies,"

The bell rang. We both dumped our excessive trash and placed our trays in the stack that ran almost as high as Mount Everest.

The class I was about to have only met once a week, on Thursday, so this was the first time I was going to meet my senior year health class. As Melissa and I walked down the halls, we noticed how a young boy was taping posters of half naked women into his locker.

"Look at that!" Melissa almost pointed and laughed at the poor kid.

"Underclassmen are so stupid,"

"That's half the school, Chris. You can't think half of the school is stupid,"

"Well it is like that metaphor, is the glass half empty of half full? Depends how you look at it. I am actually saying I think the upperclassmen are rather smart,"

She laughed, punched me in the shoulder, and said, "You're ridiculous!"

I tapped her in the shoulder as I said, "No, you are!"

"How am I ridiculous?"

Strike two! Luckily, I just reached my destination. I just smiled as I opened the door and slid in. Once I turned around to face the classroom, I saw twenty sets of eyes just staring at me. I continued to have a really wide smile on my face as I strutted to the chalk board. I looked down on the mantel until I grabbed a piece of chalk that was hanging at the end.

"Welcome all to twelfth year health. Don't think because you are seniors you can skip this class, as it does count just like every other class," I said, trying to sound strict. I wrote my name on the board.

"You can call me Mr. Marlow," I said, reading my name off of the board.

A boy sitting in the back raised his hand. He had broad shoulders and all I could tell was that he wore the school's football jacket, which meant he was on the team. I pointed in his general direction.

"Marlow? Do you pronounce that like the wine, Merlot?"

"No, it is Marlow,"

"Merlot," He repeated. I gritted my teeth.

"Mar as in like Mars, but without the 's', and low, like, damn man, I'm feeling quite low today," I answered.

"Mar-s, but with no 's', low" He repeated.

I nodded. Anyways, moving on…

"In this class, you are going to learn about contraceptives and all the things about sex that your parents did not tell you until you started puberty, and more," I winked, expected a laugh, but no one said anything. The only noise I heard was the sound of people's pens writing furiously as they wrote notes to each other.

The kid, who obviously wanted to impress his friends, raised his hands.

"Yes?" I said.

"Are we going to talk about unconventional sex methods?"

"Like what?"

"Anal, threesomes, whips and other fetishes," his grin was obvious.

"Why do you ask?"

"Because I think it is really important. People always seem to be doing it these days, you know, in order to test the limits and raise the bar. Personally, I wouldn't want someone intruding my ass," he started. He leant back in his chair as the people around him were snickering like hyenas.

I flinched and twitched.

"You know," I started, "I have a little project for you and some of your friends that will really explain everything in detail,"

"Yeah? What kind of project?"

"Oh, it'll knock your socks off," I smiled.

(Author's Note: I cannot believe I started this in 2003! It is now almost 2008! Wow I started this when I was fourteen, no, wait, fifteen. Anyways it seemed I completed this, but never uploaded it. Anyways, due to the fact that everyone loved my rewrite of Through The Words of Gossip, I decided to rewrite this. I have the entire piece rewritten, and if you read the original, one may see I cut this version drastically and all of the characters' roles have changed a little bit. Oh well. I change and so does my work. If you ever want to read the original 22 chapters I will not send out the original ending as it has never been published on this site let me know in a review, leave me your email, and it will be sent. Thanks for reading. Review! I will review your pieces too!

Ps. Expect updates every few days as I do not have to worry about writing any chapters. I just need to find time to upload.)