The snowed in street leading to Ann Arbor High School didn’t seem to slow the traffic down one bit. Casey Lewis sat patiently in her brand new car with the radio playing smooth R&B music at a moderate volume. She was a gorgeous young woman with seemingly flawless dark brown skin, rich black hair, and almond shaped, hazelnut brown eyes. Unfortunately, she currently found herself stuck behind two school buses and three minivans, all carrying children with a curiosity and childlike intuition that she had lost many years ago. Even though she was only 27 years old, she felt as though she had been 27 since she was a child. The oldest of her 4 siblings, she was forced to grow up quickly and, at a young age, she formed a strong sense of responsibility that followed through her many years of schooling.

One of the minivans in front of her made a sudden U-turn and she was allowed to move up a space. She ogled her wristwatch. It was 7:50AM. She was going to be late for her first class of the day. Nay, the first class of her career. She had never imagined herself as a teacher. As a child, she often imagined herself as a superhero. Fighting crime alongside the likes of Batman and Wonder Woman, saving the world from caricatured super villains with extraordinary personalities and a micro-level focus of doom. She always thought it odd that Joker never seemed to want to leave Gotham and instead was simply staying there to make Batman’s life difficult. Nonetheless, she imagined herself fighting with Batman side by side. She had the physique for it. Those dreams were shattered when she suffered a devastating injury to her left knee during a JV soccer game in middle school. She broke her knee – and her heart – in three different places and gone were her dreams of death defying leaps from rooftop to rooftop, chasing down so-called bad guys and crooks. Instead, she was restrained to a hospital bed for six months and endured six more months of grueling physical therapy before she could even walk on her own again. Every day she was reminded of her limitations when she got out of bed. A slight limp characterized her gait now and, while it took her a long time to get used to it, she had finally come to accept it. So her dreams of athletic and heroic feats were dashed and her intense ambition was permanently deterred.

The final school bus in front of her had finally finished unloading the copious amounts of children it carried in its underbelly and obnoxiously roared away from the curb. Casey inched up slowly. Her car clock read 7:53AM. Almost there, she thought to herself. She had discovered her passion for teaching during her freshman year of college. She wasn’t the most gregarious person on campus and she rarely went to the oft-mentioned “college parties” she had seen depicted so many times on television shows. When she first attended one, her high expectations were quickly diminished. No hot guys. No free drinks. No drama. It was just a cramped dorm filled with sweaty and exhausted college students listening to EDM music from 3 years prior. The “booze” they had procured tasted like cheaply and carelessly made bathtub gin and the only drama that occurred was due to the lack of ample parking. At some point, Casey had been lingering around the lone TV set in the living room when it suddenly came to life, scaring everyone else in the room.

“What the fuck is going on?!” a tipsy classmate of hers bellowed. “That doesn’t just happen. You think it’s haunted?” He asked no one in particular.

A lazy shrug rippled throughout the room and, for some odd reason, all eyes fell on her. So there she was, the only one standing in a room full of intoxicated, bleary eyed young adults sitting, staring blankly at her. It felt all too familiar, but she couldn’t put her finger on why it did and she also couldn’t understand why she was the center of attention. Then her eyes noticed something on the sofa packed with her cohorts. Her tipsy classmate with all the questions was sitting directly on the remote control and was accidentally changing the channel as he squirmed around in discomfort and growing panic at the television set he assumed had turned itself on.

Casey simply pointed at his crotch. “You’re sitting on the control,” she said matter-of-factly.

Everyone else’s eyes fell to his crotch and it was then that he realized that the haunted television set was his own doing. He reached down and yanked the remote control from under his crotch and glared it as though it had groped him against his will. He quickly glanced at Casey, suddenly embarrassed.

“You’re really observant. That’s pretty cool” he said.

The others around him nodded their heads in unison, murmuring words of agreement. Casey simply stared at them all with a blank expression. Later that night, as she was washing her friend’s vomit from her hair, she decided right then and there that she wanted to be a teacher. Simply because she liked being the center of attention for at least one minute. She had never been the center of attention growing up. Her parents always seemed to put the needs of her younger siblings above hers.

She changed her major the very next day.

Back in her car, the clock read 7:58. Class began in just two minutes and she was finally pulling into her own assigned parking space. She shut her car off and stared at herself in her rearview mirror for a moment. Her makeup was nicely applied, her hair was neat with not a strand hanging out of place, and her teeth were brighter than the sun.

“It’s showtime,” she muttered.

She took another deep breath and finally opened her car door. She swung her work bag over her shoulders, shut her car door, and walked with her slight limp across the parking lot onto the school’s main grounds, ready to begin the rest of her life.