follow you like toy soldiers [nala]

"Jamie! Doing okay?" she asked, falling into step beside one of her students, some Thunder punk in Grade Eleven who was shuffling around the hallways. It was lunchtime anyway, so if he wasn't going to even head toward the mess hall and if he wasn't even with any of his friends then she wasn't going to bother being nice enough to leave him alone. Maybe Chris liked to ruin lives, just a little. "Uh... yes." Stupid Thunders. They were never too forthcoming with information. "Oh. That's funny, because you weren't in class today, so I expected that you must have been dying or something." Jamie didn't answer. "Because you shouldn't skip class. So don't." It would have been an understatement to say that Chris wasn't overly fond of many of her students. A majority of them she was probably okay with, at least. She could practically see the gears grinding in this kid's head, though, and she waited before he finally said, "But see, my History teacher held me back." It was too bad for him that Chris wasn't stupid. This kid had skipped half of her classes so far this year, and she was pretty sure that Nala wasn't irresponsible enough to actually keep a kid for an entire period. Plus, she also knew that Nala would have been teaching that period, so it didn't even make sense.

"Held you back all period? Oh, I'm sure. Who's your teacher?" Somehow it didn't look like he'd anticipated this. The kid obviously didn't think further ahead than the next thing to come out of his mouth, but he seemed to be telling the truth when he said, "Miss Thomas." Chris just smiled and put a hand on his shoulder, steering him down another hallway as they passed by. "Oh, convenient, and we're even near the History department!" This was totally unnecessary at this point, she knew, but for Chris, the alternative was spending this period marking more tests and making up lesson plans. That was possibly the most boring thing in the world, and she had to have fun some way. It wasn't like she could run around throwing parties on the roof or something and inviting all the students. She gestured for him to follow her as she walked over to Nala's classroom and knocked. The door was already open. "Hi Miss Thomas! Are you busy? Ran into Jamie here and we started talking so I was just wondering, why'd you keep him after class for so long that it caused him to have to miss Math?" she asked breezily. She wondered if Jamie was nervous. The mean part of her (which, honestly, was most of her) hoped he kind of was. That'd teach him not to skip her class. Chris didn't fuck around, okay? Okay... actually, that was sort of all she did, but in this case it was the kid's own fault.