Children Of The Crucible

Making an Appearance

Blair's PoV

We were all glad to have reached the school and get in out of the cold. We all trailed up to the classroom and filed in. Immediately, we were greeted by the tutor, a man probably in his mid thirties who looked like he got through life on caffeine and sugar. As he was waiting for us to get seated he shoved a handful of chocolate buttons in his mouth and proceeded to chew loudly while glancing around at us all, clearly trying to draw attention to himself in order to get us to quieten down.

"Good evening everyone, thank you all for coming! My name is Mr Wa- he paused for a moment - Howle."

We all looked around the room at each other, confused as to how he temporarily forgot his own name. He looked pretty flustered as well, and so chose to swiftly move on.

"It's great to see you have all made it tonight for this chemistry lesson. I haven't got any specific topic planned, I wanted to know what you guys felt you needed to work on first, and then take it from there."

We all glanced round at each other. None of us...well most of us...didn't actually want to be here in the first place let alone work on what we most struggled with.

I turned back around to face him and noticed he was now standing right in front of my desk.

"Ok, we will start with you, is there anything you would like to focus on in particular?"

I racked my brain for a relatively easy topic that would still benefit me, but wouldn't make the others hate me for being to difficult.

"Uh well I would like to focus on redox reactions."

I let my eyes fall on my desk, I hate holding eye contact for too long.

"Alrighty then. Sounds like a good plan."

I breathed a sigh of relief that he accepted my topic of choice and moved my eyes back upwards as he walked over to the board.

He selected a blue whiteboard marker and began writing out an example ( after he had picked it up from the floor following his failed attempt of throwing it up and catching it).

"Ok, I'm assuming we all know what a redox reaction is, so who can tell me how we would begin to solve it."

Everyone swiftly broke eye contact, not wanting to be picked on. He was about to choose his unlucky victim when Stevie raised her hand gingerly as our saving grace.

"Yes Stevie."

She looked slightly startled for some reason but quickly returned to reality and explained how to solve the equation.

I wondered what had surprised her but I didn't have time to ponder as we had to copy down the example then solve some ourselves.

When we finished our examples about half an hour later, he announced he was going to run to the toilet and we could have a break until he returned.

James' PoV

As soon as he left the room I breathed a sigh of relief and leaned back in my seat.

"Hey, Gwen?"

"Yea"

"What did you get for question 8?"

She passed me her notebook as she replied.

"I have no idea if it's right, I'm literally making it up as I go along."