Welcome to Rimbaud High
Summary: New school, new job. Today is a lot of news for a newly-subbing teacher who doesn't really get everything that's going on. He does meet two peculiar persons, though... Including one who makes him discover he's probably not doing so hot.Â
Notes: This is an Alternate Canon, so it explores a bit an alternate timeline where Fran is a substitute at Rimbaud.
AO3 version available here.
It’s pretty cold outside, but it’s nothing surprising. It’s winter and it’s always pretty cold, most of the time humid too, but today the freezing and dry air hurts his throat and lungs more than usual. It’s okay: he’s taken his asthma medicine this morning. He tends to be forget about it often, but lately he’s been on a roll. He’s still expecting the visit of his monthly crisis.
From the other side of Gambetta Lane, the “pool side” as they call it (to be distinguished from the “library side”, sides which are separated by the building), he can see his current workplace: one of the most known public high schools of the region. Must be the Dance speciality they propose here, because otherwise, it’s ordinary.
The sign of the school reads “Arthur Rimbaud High School” in white letters over a black sign, looking at Gambetta Lane, fixated on the corridor linking the second stories of the main building and a smaller one usually nicknamed “the green rooms”. It’s thanks to their green linoleum floor. These guys have a really weird taste for floor colours, he first thought when he stepped foot inside the school,
He arrives in the teacher’s lounge just fine. There, he comes across a bunch of his workmates, most of them he still doesn’t know much. He’s only here for a substitution after all, and he wasn’t so happy to leave Italy for whatever that school was.
This is the first year he gets to be an actual teacher, not just some assistant who barely sees students. The city is a calm one with a swamp nearby. La Sorbonne and the rich part of Paris are very far from where he currently is, and that should sadden him, but he’s not that sad. He didn’t even cry when he realized he had to at least rent a place to live in.
The thing is that he’s an agrégé doing a certified teacher’s job. His former classmates would laugh at his “sorry ass” would they know. He doesn’t know, he lost contact with them years ago. As soon as he got to “graduate” from Henri IV, actually. He never wants to see most of them ever again, and the ones he wanted to keep in contact with remain his friends to this very day. It’s crazy how these people were hungry for fame and recognition.
The main issue he has with the school is how cold it feels. The school is badly isolated: a leftover from the different eras of building mixing in together. The walls of the lounge aren’t the oldest: the part of the school he has to teach in is the worst.
The Coste Pavilion is by far the part of the high school which is the most sensible to temperatures from the outside. It’s a square-shaped block of plastic, pre-built in the nineties because of the school’s growth spurt. They have their eyes on a to-be-abandoned building nearby of a professional high school (whose name he can’t remember), but for now, they have to with the “The Prebuilt”. That’s the name students have started to call the thing before he even joined.
He has few classes today. The teacher he substitutes for is about to retire he heard, and his niece is also a teacher there. Some say she’s a lovely lady, others say she’s fierce and terrible. While he’s sure it depends on whether or not people prefer looks over brains, it’s not much of his concern until he comes across her. Apparently, she has a deep voice and freckles.
“Oh,” someone calls for him, “you must be Bernard’s substitute… What’s your name already?”
If he remembers correctly, she’s an Ancient Literature teacher too. She may be called Rose, or Renée, maybe Raphaëlle, but it really doesn’t ring much to him right now.
“Bernard Leeht, you mean? That’s me,” he replies.
Her pale features soften up, to the point her eyes look like they’re made of turquoise cotton.
“My name is Raphaëlle Ralousse, and I’m in short the Latin teacher of the tenth graders. I also get to teach French and Literature here and there.”
“Don’t you have that weird… Literature-Society thing too?” he asks, remembering reading “RALOUSSE” on classroom timetables somewhere around the Prebuilt.
“It’s right. I’m paired with a History-Geo teacher you may have seen around… She usually stays by herself in a classroom, so you may not have…” Her face slightly changes, then goes back to her calm expression. “Oh, excuse me, I rambled. Can I get a small presentation of you?”
He clears his throat for emphasis and gives her his warmest smile (as warm as it can get when he feels an incoming headache).
“I’m François Bannaire. I’m a doctoring teacher in Ancient Literature, and I’m subbing for a guy named Bernard Leeht at the moment… Nice to meet you!”
His voice is hoarser than he remembers. That’s weird.
“I’m glad to meet you too, François. Have you been shown around already?”
“Huh, yeah, I visited a bit on yesterday… I think I have class in not too long though, so maybe I should get going…”
“I have class too. Have a nice day.”
“Have a nice day too!”
After this is done, he rushes to the Prebuilt, where a class of ES eleventh graders await him. That’s his first real class, ever, so he’s really nervous about that: he’s heard the 1ES1 kids weren’t exactly the calmest, nor the most attentive to French of all things. He doesn’t really know how these are: he graduated high school in Literature, not Economic and Social.  He’ll get to know soon, he thinks.
When he gets there, he finds a bunch of students in a disorganized state and a cluttered corridor. Right. Somebody probably told him how awful the circulation was in these narrow passageways between classrooms. The only ones he can distinguish are Raphaëlle thanks to her waist-long red hair and one or two students here and there, including a blond girl on her phone with headphones.
François smiles to whoever is in front of the door, and the girl lifts her eyes from the screen in her hands. He opens the door after a bit of troubles unlocking it, then enters in a swift move, inviting everyone to come in. They follow, most of them with slow feet.
He has to wait for a few minutes for everyone to get installed and going. He sees their face as a large disappointment: for once that a teacher can substitute for someone, the students look like they’re the last excited about the ordeal. He should have expected that from ES majors, right? He still thought it could be okay because they have that anticipated French final at the end of the year, but they don’t seem that pressured to get a substitute for an old man who sadly injured himself.
There’s just that one girl staring at him as if he was from another planet. Maybe he is, to their eyes, after all.
“Hello everyone!” he yells so people calm down, and surprisingly enough, it does work. Now his throat just hurts, so he clears it. Oh well, now he can move on.
“I’ll be Mr Leeht’s substitute for at least January to April, as your teacher recovers from…” Oh, maybe he shouldn’t be so precise, “whatever happened to him, who am I to know. I hope we can get along.”
He grabs a marker from his bag, his worn-out blue backpack, and looks at the pristine white board. Now that’s something he hasn’t seen in years. He’s about to write his first name with his last name, but then remembers it’s high school, so he just writes “Mr” instead.
“I’m Mr Bannaire, and we’ll have class for that amount of time. I’m very happy to meet you all, but before we can start class, I have to see who is here and who isn’t. It’ll help me learn all of your names.”
He turns on the desktop, remembers how awfully old computers are (he’s used to his personal laptop he loves very much, thank you), enters the temporary login he’s been given (francois.bannaire, password 02121988, he has to change it though) and enters it yet again on that weird program he’s never used before.
Pronote, huh. The login interface is simple: enter F. BANNAIRE, enter the generic password he wrote down inside his agenda, profit. He goes to the rollcall section of the program and starts reading the list out loud, checking after each name if a hand is risen and the face associated to it if so. He gets to see the girl who started at him, who is now on the front row next to the door, is called Justine Lhotar. “Justine” will do. He finishes the rollcall, ticks “call over” and goes back to the class.
The class goes… alright. The students are not exactly proactive, albeit they look a bit less bored than he imagined them before. Thanks, temporary workmates. He knows some of them are on their phones, so he threatens them with a supplementary homework, and it works instantly. He can’t hide the smirk on his face when he realizes it actually works.
During the break, he sees most students go outside, except for some including the girl who struck his eyes. He doesn’t know what is so striking within her: maybe it’s her weird small bag where she seems to put everything from her pens to her cafeteria card (reminds him of that weird “confirm you’ll eat at the canteen today” system these guys have). It’s probably her loneliness within a class made out of happy, chattering teens. Maybe she reminds him of himself when he attended high school. Oh well. He’ll probably never see her again after the substitution anyway.
The break sounds very early (three minutes is very short for a mid-class break, damn), and he asks politely everyone to come in again to the people in the corridor. Everyone goes back to their seats, discussing random stuff here and there. He’s lucky he got the classes he was supposed to make because he would have never guessed he had to talk about Manon Lescault. In reality, he hadn’t read that novel at all before being called at Rimbaud. Pretty forgettable in itself, if he was asked about it.
Despite the fact the place is supposed to be freezing, he feels pretty warm. He asks a girl (her name might be Juliette, just like that one History-Geo colleague everyone keeps mentioning) to take off her coat, but all he gets is barking in the local accent, so he just sighs and keeps on with the class. It’s not that important anyway.
The second hour is far longer than the first one. He feels a bit lightheaded too now… Oh well, must be his stress. It’s his very first class since his… training period, which was like… three years ago, maybe? It didn’t exactly look like trying to entertain bored teenagers. There’s a difference between Parisian high-profile schools and ordinary northern schools, got it. He’ll have to sleep a bit more tonight.
Towards the end of the class, someone knocks at the door. In a tired voice (he can feel it himself, ouch), Mr Bannaire calls for whomever is asking to enter in an unconvincing “yes?”. It rings at the same time, so he tells everyone class is over and to have a nice lunch. Who can this be?
As people leave, only a few of them tell him goodbye, including the girl with the colourful bag. She seems happier than when he first saw her, right? Maybe it’s him. In the flood of students, one figure ends up imposing herself: a rather short woman, with long brown hair and piercing blue eyes staring straight at him.
Freckled face, foul mouth, short. That rings a bell to him, and he knows why barely minutes after: it’s the infamous Sarah Leeht he’s been told about. Now that’s someone he may not want to deal with.
“Huh… Hi? How may I help you?” he asks her as the remaining students leave the room.
“Ahem,” she clears her throat, “name’s Sarah Leeht. May have heard of me from everyone else in that school of ours. I don’t think I’ve seen you around before.”
“It’s normal, I’m subbing for…”
“My uncle, got it. You’re his sub. Guess you just dealt with the 1ES1 twats.”
Her tone is very violent.
“Twats? They weren’t so bad… I guess it’s because I’m a sub or something?”
“They’re gonna eat you alive before you know it. I can tell you’re a naïve ingénue who doesn’t know what he’s just stepped in. Lemme guess, you had mutation points to gain, so you accepted a garbage sub in a not-so-bad school?”
Oh, she’s one of these disenchanted teachers then. Fair enough. That’s a shame, she’s very pretty… He gets to be both scared to death and enticed by these eyes.
“Actually, I’m writing my thesis. I was just called for the sub because Eleventh Grade finals or something… I haven’t introduced myself yet! I’m François Bannaire. Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet ya too, I guess. You seem like a nice fella… Did you just say you were writing a thesis?!”
“Well, huh, yeah…? I graduated from La Sorbonne like five years ago.”
“You’re one bizarre thing to happen to this school. We’re not used to the top of the ladder, y’know. Usually we get shitty subs who can barely do their goddamn job.”
The sharpness in her words was the very exaltation of anger and frustration, goodness gracious.
“So, you’re from Paris, right? You’re probably freezing your ass down here,” Sarah asks as he closes the door from the outside.
“Actually,” he replies, “not really. In fact, I feel a bit hot in here. It’s just me?”
“It’s just you, really, dude. How can you even feel warm in the freezer that is the Prebuilt?”
“I don’t know… I was freezing when I arrived, but now I’m sweating a lot…”
“Now that I look at your face and under that invading beard of yours, you look pale as shit. You’re sure you’re not sick? That would be a shame, a hilarious shame but still a shame, if the sub was sick.”
“I guess I have a small cold? Nothing big, I’m sure. Just a bit of a throat…”
Her head is already under his bangs.
“What is it with people in that school and being sick idiots! You’re burning up, dumbass!”
“I do…? I’ll just sleep it off this afternoon, before the Latin class with the twelfth graders.”
A slight smile appears on her face. She’s prettier when she smiles.
“You’re a dork. I could get used to have you around though. Have you been shown around the nurse’s office? Because that’s where you’re going.”
“I don’t think so, but isn’t it reserved to students?”
It gets a scoff out of his workmate.
“Yeah, right. That nurse has seen some shit before you even were a thing. By that I mean Juliette Jonquille, our eternal stubborn workmate who doesn’t know what the word rest means. Seems like you don’t know it either.”
“I do! Well, I guess I learnt because of pneumonias here and there, but…”
In a move of her hand, Sarah cuts him off.
“You’re getting to the infirmary right now.”
She resumes her course and he simply follows. She’s one peculiar girl… He hasn’t seen someone so earnest in a while. She speaks her mind like she thinks. That’s amazing. He can swear he’s never seen such thing before. He’s fascinated, completely fascinated.
“Oh, that’s right, you mentioned Latin”, she suddenly asks him. “You’re an Ancient Lit major?”
“Yeah! I would have preferred having Greek lessons, but I guess you don’t always get what you want in life…”
“Greek lessons in a regular high school! Be lucky there’s more than five Latinists who made it to their last year of high school. My uncle spends his time regretting the good ol’ times where it was popular to learn those languages. Personally, I couldn’t care less.”
François’s the one to chuckle now.
“I really like your honesty, Sarah. You’re a great person.”
“We literally just met. Calm down. I know I’m single and attractive and whatnot, but hold your horses.”
“I didn’t mean it that way!” he stutters as he blushes. “I think it’s amazing to have such honesty! Being so honest means you can be trusted, because you’ll never pretend things are okay when they don’t!”
“And you’re the type to spill your heart, no matter how cheesy and stupid it could sound to other people. That’s cute.”
“Usually I’m getting told I’m dumb.”
“It’s dumb to spew everything out, sure, but I would lie if I said I didn’t want more people like you. People are so fake nowadays, I’m tired of the constant hypocrisy around, especially here. The students are vipers and the teachers are vipers.”
They’re now facing the infirmary, but he doesn’t feel like going in and maybe losing her track. He wants to discover her more.
“You don’t have to take a day-long nap, y’know,” she tells him. “You can just ask for some fever reducers and be done with your day. She’s used to us being brainless idiots, so you can go ahead. Just ask politely.”
“Got it. By the way… Thanks for walking me there.”
All Sarah does is smirk back.
“Take care of yourself, clever idiot.”
She promptly turns and walks away as he doesn’t know if the heat on his face is his fever getting worse or her. Maybe both. He should go get these reducers.
