Doctor Dash

Chapter 31

*like I promised, here is a new chapter on my birthday. It sucks tho because I'm sick but whatever lol* enjoy

Kwan watched his students as they gathered around the cage with their new class bunny inside it. The bunny was donated from one of the parents as part of learning experience in how to care for animals. The students would be expected to feed it and give it water and clean the cage. Every weekend a student would be chosen to take it home and watch over it until Monday. "So," he said, loudly enough to be heard over the gasps of the children as they stared at the brown furred bunny, "shall we vote on a name? Who has suggestions?"

"Peter!" Billy cried out immediately with a bright grin on his face.

"Nu uh!" Melissa argued. "The bunny's a girl, so it should be, um," she pressed a finger to her chin as she pondered a name, "Snowbell!"

"It's not even white, dork," Jeremy said, snorting at the name suggestion. He was standing away from the group with his arms folded as he scowled at his classmates. Even Vincent stopped hanging around him for a while now. Jeremy seemed to have gone from the big bad bully to the class outcast.

"Jeremy," Kwan said warningly with a stern glare at the boy. "How many times do I have to tell you that name calling won't be tolerated?" He narrowed his aqua green eyes, and Jeremy grumbled as he looked away. Turning back to the other students, he said, "It was a very nice name suggestion, Melissa." He wrote the names on the board. "Does anyone else have a name to add?"

"Thumper," Denise suggested, though her voice was much quieter than the others that were throwing out names.

"Bouncer," Henry offered.

"Flopsy," Julia shouted.

"Dasher," Xander said, crouching down with his eyes level to the bunny. Kwan didn't miss the pinkness coloring his cheeks after giving his suggestion.

"Okay. Let's vote. Who wants to name the bunny Peter? Raise your hands." Kwan counted the number of hands that went up into the air and wrote the number beside the name. He repeated it down the list until a number was next to each name. "It looks like the winner is: Bouncer." He noticed Henry puff out his chest in pride at having his name suggestion chosen.

The bell rang a second later, and the students hurriedly grabbed their things to leave. Some of them actually looked sad, wanting to stay and play with the bunny. Kwan caught Jeremy before he could leave the classroom and crouched down in front of him. The boy refused to look at him, glowering at the wall.

"Jeremy, I know what it's like to be a bully," Kwan told him quietly so that Xander and Lex wouldn't overhear. The other two boys remained at the bunny's cage, sticking their fingers through the bars to try to get the bunny to come close enough so that they could pet Bouncer. "But you're just going to grow up to be miserable if you continue like this." He could already see the start of it now that his one friend abandoned the boy.

"You don't know anything!" Jeremy argued, yanking away from his teacher, but Kwan grabbed him before he could race out of the classroom. Something in the boy's expression worried Kwan.

"Explain it to me then," Kwan said, refusing to let the boy go until he got some answers.

Jeremy still wouldn't look at him, but the tears that started to build up in his eyes really got his teacher worried. "My," the boy hiccupped, "parents are," tears slipped down his cheeks, "getting deversed."

Kwan's jaw dropped, stunned by that response. He seriously hadn't expected that, though he couldn't say he wasn't surprised that Mr. Duvall was finally leaving his witch of a wife. "Hey," he said gently, lifting the boy's head so that he could meet eyes with his student. Jeremy sniffed, trying to hold back tears but failing. "Parents getting divorced is always hard for their children, but whatever happens, it isn't your fault that your parents are splitting up." His parents had never gotten divorced but there were other students at Casper High that had divorced parents, and he heard a lot of them blaming themselves for the divorce. "Okay?"