My American Idiots, chapter 5

"Okay class, settle down NOW!" the maths teacher yelled in her prim-and-proper English accent. There was immediate order and silence. She could obviously control the class very well. Just seconds before it was pandemonium. Books and papers were being thrown around the classroom! Some students obviously had luck on their side, as the projectiles generally missed sensitive areas.

"That's Mrs. Witcroft," whispered Trè who was sitting on Jess's right. Billie was at her left and Mike in front. "But mostly we call her Mrs. Witch-croft. When she's not listening!" She was a large woman, very... Chunky, with big round glasses and an awfully itchy looking woollen cardigan. She had beady little eyes, which made even the most reckless student behave when under her glaring gaze.

"Today, we have a new student. Miss Murray, come forward please!" she ordered, just a little bit quieter that the way she usually addressed the rabble of students. Jess walked towards the front of the classroom with her head held high.

"So, Miss Murray, would you care to tell the class a bit about yourself?" Mrs. Witcroft asked.

"Okay, um. My name is Jessica Murray; I'm here on an exchange program for the next eighteen months. I just got here about two weeks ago, and I'm staying with Mike Dirnt and Billie Joe Armstrong."

A boy with light hair raised his hand, "Hey, where did you move here from?" he asked.

"Well, I caught a quick flight over here from the Bahamas, but I move around a lot now that Mum and Dad have their charter business all set." Jess replied.

"Your parents own a charter business?" asked a dark haired girl in the back row.

"Miss Hemsworth, hands are to be raised if you wish to speak in my class," Mrs. Witcroft chided.

"Yeah, a sailing Yacht charter," Jess replied. "We bought her, the yacht, in Turkey but our business is actually based in Australia, where I was born. Usually we do coastal charters off Exmouth in Australia, but sometimes we even do Bluewater Charters for a few nights. In the off-season we travel the world."

"Excuse me, but how big is the boat?" asked a guy with a pen behind his ear. Which was leaking.

"She is about twenty metres or so, from stern to the tip of the bow sprit and about six or seven metres in berth," Jess replied.

"What's her name?" asked a guy in the middle row.

"The 'Amanda N. Stephens'," Jess replied.

"Who's Amanda N. Stephens?" asked Mike. He'd heard about Jess's yacht before, but not the story behind the name.

"The boat belongs to Amanda and Stephen, who are my mum and dad, so it's Amanda and Stephen's," Jess explained. She thought it was pretty obvious. But then again, she'd been raised outside the square.

"If there aren't any further ques-," Mrs. Witcroft had begun before someone at the back called out.

"What have you been doing in the fortnight you've been here?"

"Mostly just sitting around, decorating my room, unpacking all my stuff and settling in," Jess replied.

"If that is all, class, we shall begin our lesson on trigonometry. Turn to page One-Ninety-Eight, if you please," Mrs Witcroft told the class.

"But Miss, what if we don't please?" asked Billie Joe, hand in the air.

"You shall be sent to Mr Danielson's office, IMMEDIATELY!" Mrs Witcroft boomed. She had trouble with 'Those Three', known to most people as Trè, Mike and Billie Joe, almost everyday.

"What if you have an aversion to trigonometry, Mrs Witcroft?" asked Mike, hand barely raised.

"Michael Pritchard, you will also be sent to the principal's office!"

"Its Mike Dirnt, Miss," Mike said hotly. "If you cannot get that through your fat head, YOU should go to Mr Danielson's office!" Mike hated his real surname passionately, for reasons he didn't disperse.

Mrs Witcroft was so enraged by Mike's outburst she could barely squeeze out the words, "YOU... GO... PRINCIPAL'S OFFICE... NOW!" between growls of barely suppressed rage.

"Fine!" Mike yelled back. "At least it'd get me out of this waste-of-time class!" He slammed the door behind him, and stormed down the corridor.

"And let misbehaved students such as Michael Pritchard be an example of what not to be to all students who wish to go far, especially the newer members of our class," Mrs Witcroft returned to writing sums and explanations on the board when Trè started talking to Jess.

"See why I spend all this time in Boredomsville doing Life Drawings?" he was saying.

"Frank Edwin Wright the Third! Face front, be QUIET and stop disturbing other students!" Mrs Witcroft was still getting over the Mike incident, and was quick to anger. At first Jess had no idea who Mrs Witcroft was talking to, but figured it out when Trè made a sour face, slumped in his seat and did more 'drawings'.

"Excuse me Mrs Witcroft," Jess said after being permitted to speak. "He wasn't disrupting me; I was talking to him first. I had forgotten the number of the page we were supposed to be on, and was just asking him if he knew. I didn't want to disturb you with such a trivial matter, seeing how upset you are at present."

"Very well Miss Murray, but in future, please ask me. Page One-Ninety-Eight," Mrs Witcroft said, returning to the blackboard.

*~*~*~ At Recess. ~*~*~*

"Jess?" Trè asked as the four teenagers sat down to recess.

"Yeah?" Jess replied, popping open a packet of chips and offering them around the group.

"Why did you lie to Mrs Witch-croft in Maths? You know, about you asking me for a page number," he finished, munching on a pretzel. Then he passed the packet around.

"Oh that? I dunno," Jess replied, "I didn't want to see another of my friends sent to the office for practically nothing. You guys are right. She is a old witch!"

"Well, thanks Jess. I mean it. That nasty old bitch has had it in for us since we first started her class," Trè said, offering the pretzels around.

"It doesn't have anything to do with your..." Jess stumbled for the term. "Need to express your opinions, does it?"

"Might do. We've never asked her," Mike replied, buttering a bagel.

"She'd probably have a fit if we did," Billie Joe observed as he opened a packet of some sort of mini jam rolls.

"What in Hell's name are those?" Jess asked, motioning to the jam roll thingies.

"Twinkies," he replied, biting into one.

"Can I have one? Please, oh please, oh please?!" begged Trè, giving Billie Joe puppy-eyes.

"Twinkies?" Jess repeated. "I've sorta heard of those. Hurley was hoping that there'd be some in the Hatch on Lost. And some comedian dude, Jimowen, tried one on his tour of America. He reckons they're disgusting."

"They're not, honest!" said Mike with his right hand on his heart and his left in the air.

"Want one?" Billie asked, holding the packet out.

"Try everything once, I always say," Jess said. "Thanks Billie." Jess tenderly took a Twinkie from its packaging, lifted it to her mouth and took a bite. Then ran to the nearest bin to spit it out.

"I'm sorry, guys," Jess said, wiping the last of the mock-cream from her lips. "I guess Twinkies just aren't for me. They just taste, well, fake. Like mock cream, with powdered eggs, powdered milk and soy butter."

"It's okay," Mike said.

"We'll just have to find some other American junk food for you," Trè said, quickly devouring the remainder of Jess's unattended Twinkie.

"Hotdogs?" asked Jess hopefully. Even though on the yacht Jess and her family had been living on a healthy Mediterranean diet, she still had cravings for red meat and hotdogs etcetera, as any teen would.

"I thought you were a vego?" Trè said. He was a little confused.

"By necessity, more than choice," Jess explained. "On the yacht, it's very hard to keep large amounts of red meat, and pretty much any sort of meat, fresh over long voyages. So, I went partially vego. But I still crave a nice, tender, juicy lamb chop from time to time."

"Oh," said Trè. "Good to know that you're kinda normal."

"And vegetarians aren't normal?" asked Mike.

"By normal I mean 'eats meat'," Trè said. "It's about time I had a friend who I could take to McDonalds without having to fork out a fortune on those stupid salad things!"

"There's a Macca's nearby? Hallelujah!" Jess cried. "I haven't been to McDonalds in ages!"

"It's about an hours drive to the nearest one," said Mike.

"Not including traffic lights, pedestrians, toilet stops and stuff like that," Billie added, counting them off on one hand. "We'll take you there sometime. Now I've got my car, we won't have to wait 'til Mom has a night off."

"Billie Joe Armstrong I would kiss you right now, if I didn't think you'd be embarrassed!" Jess said with a grin.

"Why would you want to kiss that?" asked one of the guys from Maths class, who was walking over with a bunch of other guys from the school football team. He gave Billie a filthy look and said, "Hi, my name's Luke Dorfman, Jessica isn't it?"

"Yeah," said Jess warily. "Did you want something?" she asked politely.

"Only your number!" called one of his cronies.

"Shut up, Michelson! Go watch the cheerleaders practice!" Luke yelled back. "I was just wondering if you would be interested in coming to a little Get-Together I'm organising for the weekend after next. Strictly casual," Luke asked Jess.

"Well, I don't know. I have plans," Jess said. She was getting a bad vibe from this guy, and her intuition was rarely wrong.

"Cancellable plans?" Luke asked, giving her a look.

"Look, dude, she's not interested," Mike said, stepping in.

"So back off, Dork-man," Billie Joe told him, standing next to Jess.

"Ooooo," came the pathetically monosyllabic chorus from the assembled Jocks.

"Oh, go to a speech therapist, for God's sake!" Trè told them. "You're lack of vocabulary is giving me an ear ache!"

"What was that? Did I hear a little birdie?" said Luke, his voice brimming with malice.

"No. But you just farted," Jess said turning back to Trè, Mike and Billie as Luke tried to figure out if that was an insult. "C'mon guys. Let's go. This guy's giving me the skits."

Luke grabbed Jess's arm above the elbow. "Hey, you didn't give me an answer yet, lil mama," he purred.

"Let go of me!" Jess said loudly.

"C'mon what's it gonna be?" asked Dorfman.

"Let go of me right now. I'll not ask you again," she replied, her voice was filled with a quiet malice that made Trè, Billie and Mike shiver.

"Oh yeah, what are you gonna do?" Dorfman sneered. "You're a little girl."

"This!" Jess said. She wrenched her arm free and slapped her hands over both of his ears, making him dizzy. The she got into a boxing pose, and gave him two quick, hard jabs with her left hand, then a vicious upper-cut with her right, which sent him reeling backwards into his gaggle of cronies, half-conscious. Jess was still in a boxing pose, fists in front of her face, until Dorfman's cronies carried him off.

After a few seconds of stunned silence, Trè and Mike began congratulating Jess. "Wow, where in hell did that come from?!" asked Trè as the three boys ran up to Jess.

"Dad has been teaching me to fight since Eighth grade," she said modestly.

"I guess it paid off!" said Mike, slapping her on the back.

"What the fuck did you do that for?!" Billie Joe demanded. "I could have handled it!"

"Jeez, dude! What's crawled up your ass in the last thirty seconds?!" asked Trè.

"It doesn't matter," he snapped. "Why did you fight him?" Billie asked Jess, a little louder than necessary.

"What is your problem?!" Jess asked, almost shouting. "Did I bruise your male ego or something? Just coz I fought him, instead of letting you, and playing the damsel in distress!"

"I'm outta here," Billie said. "I don't have to listen to this."

"Fine, then! Go for a walk!" Jess yelled after him. "It might get that pickle out your arse!" In reply to this, Billie Joe 'flipped the birdie' over his shoulder at her.

"Hey! Wait up!" Mike yelled at Billie, and ran after him. "What your problem, dude? Just coz that chick can fight is no reason to go off your fucking nuts at her!"

"If she had of just let me do it..." he started, getting angry.

"Well, she didn't, dude. Get over it!" Mike told him, giving him a little shake of the shoulders.