There is a curious balance between watched and watching. Between prey and predator. He sees the whole class, he watches her. She sees him; she watches her back and knows because of this she is being watched. But by whom she doesn't fully know.
It's a teacher, she knows. She feels the disapproving eyes on her as she moves from group to group, but they don't see all, they don't know. Or, if they do, there's nothing they can do. She never brings anything contraband to college, she never sells in this district. Oh, sure she's got some customers from this area, she's even sold to one or two teachers before. Those were awkward times, when she'd got a call from another part of the city, only to turn up to find the person behind the door was a teacher. Was her teacher. Those were the classes she got the best grades in now. She thought of it as lubricating her future. There was no way she was going to be stuck in this dump with these losers for the rest of her life. She was going to make a name for herself. Everyone would know Elsa.
Well, everyone already did. Everyone knew Elsa sold the best weed. Yes, you had to pay a little bit more for it, but it was clean and not cut with anything else to carry the weight. Elsa was someone you could trust. But still, there was this feeling she had, on the back of her neck. Someone knew, someone wasn't happy.
Daniel Jennings stood at the widow of his chemistry lab on the third floor. It gave him a perfect bird's-eye view of the events in the school ground below. It was here that he first noticed Elsa's bizarre behaviour. Though she was one of the stoners; the crowd who didn't do so well in class, but never made too much of a fuss so teachers just let them coast on the lower grades; she rarely spent a lot of her time with them. As Daniel stood there sorting through the latest mock-exam papers for the upcoming STUDIES exams, he watched as Elsa flitted from group to group in the grounds below. In his hand he clutched her paper; he'd marked it as a low 'B' grade. But she was a stoner. It was her hand-writing. Even without comparing it to her class work, he knew it was her handwriting because of the distinctive way she wrote the word 'oxygen'. The 'xyg' looped into each other in such a way that it made Daniel think of those adverts for hydrating drinks.
He was still convinced she'd cheated somehow.
True, her grades had been high all year. Also true that she'd shown real interest in class. But still, she was a stoner. They coasted. They didn't get top-ten grades in class. Something was amiss, he was sure of it. His eyes drifted over her again. Perhaps she was paying one of the science nerds in weed to do her homework for her, to feed her the answers. Perhaps she was cheating.
Daniel rolled the word around his head slowly. It wasn't often he thought this. He wanted to think the best of his pupils. But there was something up with her. He couldn't place it, but he knew it was something he didn't like. He was young for a teacher, not quite fresh out of University, but this was his second placement. The first, he'd lost that doe-eyed certainty that he was making a difference in the world in less than a term. Now he was just getting through each day. He was glad that he taught Chemistry. The ability to simply blow something up on a bad day and call it 'science' was very satisfying. His first school had been an inner-city one. The kids were rougher than this lot. A day where for one lesson he could be heard over the din of chaos was a good day. They didn't happen often.
This school was in the suburbs, true, but it wasn't the wealthy part of the city. It was the area bordering the slum part of the city, where prostitutes and drug dealers alike were selling their wares openly in daylight. Here, the prostitutes stayed home, the men came to them; the dealers went to your door instead of standing on the corner. It wasn't much better, but it was more discreet. No student of this college would achieve a glowing future; on the other hand, at least they weren't as doomed as those in the next district over.
Daniel sighed as he put the paper back in the pile. Far below, Elsa moved again from one group to the next, conversing with everyone, making sure she was on good terms with all.
------
For once Elsa did the normal teenaged thing of hanging around on a street corner, looking like she was up to no good. She'd run out of produce a while back, and had just enough time to get to the bank before it shut to deposit most of the cash into an account for her future. However, her curfew wasn't until nine, and in the summer it was warm and light outside at that time. At home all she had waiting for her was her drug-addled parents and cold, bad food. Her friends had gone home for their tea a long time ago, and she didn't want to go to the cinema alone, especially not this late. It was a school-night besides.
Elsa had already done her homework, she'd only had the time between when she got back from college and when her dad got back from 'work' around 5 or 6 to do anything by herself. He would either want her to smoke with him, or he would be in a foul mood and demand to know how much she'd made for him. He wasn't her real dad, but he'd taken care of her since she was very little and her mum was constantly in a stupor. Keith had started out as her mother's dealer. Then he began to spend more and more time around. He often said as a joke that Elsa was so quiet, he'd lived with them for two months before he realised his new girlfriend had a daughter at all. Elsa remembered that time with a little haze. The guy her mum had kept around before Keith had been very touchy-feely with her, and she didn't like him. When Keith kicked him out one night for beating Elsa's already-unconscious mother half to death, Elsa was still frightened this new one would be like the last one.
Keith, however, was very different. He'd been kind and made sure she always had something to eat in the evenings. He even drove her to school when she missed the bus. He was like a real dad to her, except when he was in a rage. Keith worked the streets for the harder drugs. He had a weed plantation somewhere out in the sticks which kept him supplied, and he also peddled pills and rocks for the bigger drug dealers. But if his supply got cut due to a raid, or if a client died or went into rehab, he wasn't happy, and when he wasn't happy Elsa was the first to know. He never beat her, or touched her in anyway. He was just bitter and cruel to her. She was an easy target, she knew. So instead she became an absent target. She came home long after he'd smoked himself into a blissful state, and went straight to her room.
When she was thirteen he'd approached her one morning and asked her if she wanted to make some pocket money. He'd slipped twelve plastic bags of some green across the breakfast table, telling her each was worth £10. "Enough for your little friends to get a little happy." She'd refused to sell them at college, but she said she'd ask around for afterwards. That's how she began. She'd go round each clique, they all knew who she was now. She kept up on the gossip, and got people's phone numbers and addresses to go drop the stuff off later. It was tough work without a car, some people lived out in the middle of nowhere, but it gave her enough to get by and never ask Keith or her mum for money. Keith, of course, expected a little kickback for the green he provided, but he was reasonable. He knew she was saving to get out of there, and he approved whole-heartedly.
So now Elsa was about half an hour's walk from her house. Her friends had abandoned her, the streets were getting darker and she scuffed her shoes along the outside of the curb, hands in her hoodie pockets and staring at the dimming sky. A couple cars had slowed to a crawl on the off chance she was stood there to sell something, but when she didn't approach the windows, they quickly pulled away.
She was startled to feel a hand yank her arm backward out of her pocket. Ready to fight or flee, she turned.
"Mr Jennings?" Her surprise made her forget her stance, one fist raised behind her head. His eyes flicked angrily from her fist back to her face. She lowered her arm. "You surprised me."
