Outside Watchers

Lowell Kassidy

I slumped down in my chair, the examens the students had written in front of me along with a cup of steaming green tea, a picture of my beautiful wife, Georgie and my son, Kian and a stack of dictionaries. The first one on the pile was Jonas Heyls, supreme nerd (I knoe, I know. Nerds are good students, but that still doesn't keep me from calling them nerds. Even my son, Kian, finds nerds swag) and I quickly hurried through his answers and grading him with an A. Obviously. I glanced at my watch which told me it was nine pm. The sun was slowly setting over the Manhattan skyline and I decided not to correct all of the tests today - family comes first!

I took up the next paper, adjusted my glasses and stared at the name for a long time to make out what it said. Perseus Jackson, English, 28.04.2014. Well, at least he spelt his name right. I smiled to myself - I loved writing sarcastic comments and hilarious smiley faces on Jackson's work. Some of the things he wrote were so funny (f.x Who married Hades (against her will)? Percy's answer: Oh, f****, Demeter's daughter, the apple girl. Persephone? You didn't know this, Mr. Kassidy? Jesus. Is this examen for second graders?)

We were currently doing Shakespeare and the first question sounded: How many plays did Shakespeare write?

I braced myself for an answer along the lines of, I don't know, I guess he just wrote one every time he had an idea.

As I read the answer my jaw dropped. "To date, 38 plays have been credited to William Shakespeare, but many of these may have been written in collaboration with other writers. The 38 plays are categorised into tragedies, comedies and histories."

What the f¨ck?!

I graded the rest of his examen, finding every single answer correct, some even better and more detailed than Jonas Heyls. I deciced to figure out what was going on tomorrow. Had he cheated? He probably had.

Next day

The bell rung and I saw, that Percy quickly got up to leave. Trying to get around this conversation, are we?

"Mr. Jackson, can I speak to you for a second?"

The other students hurried out, as Percy stayed behind. "Yes, sir?"

"I've come to the conclusion, that you have scored an A on your examen," his face lit up, with happiness and it didn't even look fake. Maybe he had studied really hard for a change.

"But, I do not understand how a student like you can go from an F to an A in the matter of three weeks?" it came out as a question. Percy's cheeks turned red.

"I had help from..."

"Me," a voice said. I turned around to see a gorgeous girl with honey blonde curls and stormy grey eyes in the doorway.

"And who are you?"

"I'm Percy's girlfriend. I am a student at Macorro School for Extremely Gifted and I helped Percy study."

I glanced back and forth. Maybe she had some good tactics I could use on Percy later, when they had broken up - which they probably would sometime. "Uh... and how did you do that, Ms...?"

"Annabeth Chase. I, uh..." her face grew red and so did Percy's.

"She gave me a kiss everytime I got an answer right, sir."

Now it was my turn to get red cheeks. Not a tactic I wanted to use on Percy, alright. "Okay. Well, I can tell you Ms. Chase, that he scored an A thanks to you. So, it was... nice meeting you!"

She smiled cautiously and Percy followed her outside, hand-in-hand. I slumped down in my chair - when they broke up, I would so try to get her to date Kian!