Chapter 27

27

As the students hurriedly followed Melissa out of the class for lunch, Abraham Lincoln Panim picked up his scarf, put it around his face as he had been doing, took his lunch out of his bag, and went straight to the teachers’ room.

He opened the door, sat down where he normally did, and kept his scarf on when he began to eat his lunch.

Mr. Sedall was talking to his usual group of teachers in the back of the room, and then seeing “Mr. Abraham” sitting and eating lunch, he winked at the other teachers and came over to where “Mr. Abraham” was eating lunch.

“Hey Abraham, I can’t believe you are still here,” Mr. Sedall said. “You have a lot of guts, coming in here again. But I give you a lot of credit, you must really be a glutton for punishment.”

Abraham Lincoln Panim continued to eat lunch, not acknowledging Mr. Sedall’s presence at all.

“Hey Abraham, I am talking to you,” Mr. Sedall said, raising his voice with each syllable. “I’ve been here 20 years, and when I talk to you, I want you to listen, and to listen good. But then again, you really think you are taking over that class from a real teacher, somebody who has been here even longer than me, so what can I expect?”

Abraham Lincoln Panim continued to eat lunch without acknowledging Mr. Sedall’s presence.

“Hey, if you aren’t going to give me respect, at least eat your lunch without your scarf on,” and with that, Mr. Sedall pulled Abraham Lincoln Panim’s scarf off his face.

“Look at me, Mr. Sedall, where did you get the impression that I had a rat face,” Abraham Lincoln Panim said, as Mr. Sedall blinked and did a double take when he saw the young teacher’s handsome face.

“But … but … you had a rat face … what happened to … ?” said Mr. Sedall, barely getting the words out of his mouth. The other teachers there saw what had happened, and crowded around Abraham Lincoln Panim and Mr. Sedall.

“Where is my rat face, Mr. Sedall?” Abraham Lincoln Panim asked once again. “I am quite handsome, aren’t I? And I am certainly better looking than you!”

“My, he sure is,” said one of the female teachers to a few of the other female teachers who had crowded around Abraham Lincoln Panim and Mr. Sedall when the commotion happened.

“I’ll say,” said another female teacher.

“I want his phone number,” said another.

Mr. Sedall rose from the couch, brushed himself off in a nervous sort of way, and walked to the other side of the room while the female teachers, and the male teachers, began to talk with “Mr. Abraham.”

As the bell rung to end lunch, three of the female teachers walked out of the room together.

“That is the last time I listen to that blowhard Sedall about anything,” one said. “He does this to all the subs, and I really can’t stand it, I don’t care how long he has been here.”

“Yeah, he’s a blowhard,” said another, and Mr. Sedall was right behind them as the left the room.

“He had a rat face,” Mr. Sedall said to them. “My eyes were not playing tricks with me. HE HAD A RAT FACE!”

Abraham Lincoln Panim walked back to class, without his scarf on. As he walked past teachers and other students, all of them pretty much stopped in their tracks to look at “Mr. Abraham,” but he shooed them away.

“Yes, I am so good looking, but let’s get to class before the bell rings, or we are all going to be late,” he said. “We can all admire my handsomeness another day.”

As he said this, Abraham Lincoln Panim had many thoughts running through his mind.

“Did I really say this? … Should I be saying this? … Doesn’t it make me look stuck up and full of myself? … “

“YES, YES, YES … !” he said out loud as he approached the classroom.

When he opened the classroom door, “Mr. Abraham” went to his desk, and saw the students file in, with Melissa once again the first one into the room.

She sat in her usual first seat in the first row, and as her fellow students came into the room, they scowled at her, each and every one of them, and as each student came in and looked at her, she slid further into her seat.

“Melissa, sit up in your seat, or you are going to fall on the floor,” “Mr. Abraham” said to her, as the class laughed. “I was on the floor the other day, and I can tell you from personal experience that it is not a good place to be.”

He continued, “I think Melissa might have, what shall we say, her tail between her legs a little bit right now. Melissa knows what she did, and she has to live with it. Let’s move on to our work.”

The day went well for Abraham Lincoln Panim and his class. The students were attentive, they did the work they were supposed to be doing, and everything went as well as he could have hoped.

Every so often, he would see both teachers and students peering through the small glass in the window that was in the classroom door. He would look over, give whoever was at the door a wink, and those at the door would scamper away.

“Boy, I am so happy to be in this class, because ‘Mr. Abraham’ is, like, the most handsome man I have ever seen,” said one girl in the back of the room to another girl just ahead of her.

“Yes, he is so dreamy,” said the other girl.

“Who is so dreamy?” “Mr. Abraham” asked the two girls as they spoke to each other.

“Umm … umm … well … you are, ‘Mr. Abraham.’ You are!”

“Well, you might find me dreamy, and you might be right, but we still have some work to do, so let’s put the dreams aside and get to what we are supposed to do,” “Mr. Abraham” said, with a definite chuckle in his voice.

He eyed Melissa in the front row, and she sunk further down into her seat as Abraham Lincoln Panim spoke to the other two girls.

He turned to Melissa and said, “And Melissa, sit up in your seat,” he said. “That tail between your legs seems to be pushing you off the chair. It’s better if you sit up.”

And she did just that. Or at least tried to, as all eyes of her fellow students were on her, with that same scowl that they came into the room with after lunch.