4

The first day of class dawned bright and clear. The junior-class girls dashed in and out of the bathroom, dressing in record time.

"Those seventh graders look like they're going to make pants, they're so nervous," Nora laughed as he splashed his face with cold water.

"I feel the same way," Talia admitted.

"Don't worry, the first day is always rough," Nora said. "But we'll get through. Somehow we always do."

The girls finished dressing and raced to the chemistry building.

"Shouldn't have slept so late and missed breakfast," Nora said. "My stomach's growling."

"Mine too," Talia said as they slid into the chem lab. Katherine, Charlotte, Rebecca, and McCall were already in the class along with some other juniors.

In the front of the room a balding, bespectacled teacher handed out huge textbooks. "In addition to the assignments in the text," she said sternly, "you will each pick three lab experiments from the project list and report on one every five weeks.

The first twenty problems at the end of Chapter One are due tomorrow."

Charlotte Davis's eyes popped as she stared at the text and listened to the teacher. He shot a disbelieving glance at Katherine Osborne, and both girls shook their heads in dismay.

Talia was the only one among them who didn't seem fazed by either the book or the things the teacher was saying.

The teacher's voice droned on, but the boys stopped listening somewhere around the words "the first twenty problems."

Finally, the bell rang, and almost everyone from chemistry moved into Mrs. Fedli's classroom. Fedli, probably the only German teacher in the history of contemporary education with a Scottish brogue, wasted no time in getting into the subject. She handed out the books and launched in.

"We'll begin by stating the correct thes in German," she said. "Der…..Die...Das...." Fedli walked around the room, repeating the German words as the girls struggled to keep up with her".

After forty minutes of recitation, Fedli stopped and stood, facing the class.

"You will be tested on those nouns tomorrow, ladies. You have your work cut out for you." she turned and faced the blackboard as a collective groan rippled across the room.

Before Fedli could begin round two, however, they were saved by the bell.

"That woman is nuts! I'll never learn all that by tomorrow," Charlie moaned.

"Don't worry," Meeks said. "I'll teach you guys the system. We'll study together tonight. Come on, we're late for math." Mathematical charts decorated the walls of Dr. Brown's classroom, and books were already waiting for them at their desks.

"Your study of trigonometry requires absolute precision," Dr. Brown instructed.

"Anyone failing to turn in a homework assignment will be penalized one point off his final grade. Let me urge you now not to test me on this point. Who would like to begin by defining cosine?"

Rebecca Collins stood and recited, "A cosine is the sine of the complement of an angle or arc. If we define an angle A, then …"

Dr. Brown bombarded the class with mathematical questions for the entire period. Hands flew into the air, and students stood up and sat down like robots, reeling off answers, staunchly taking harsh reprimands for mistakes.

The bell rang, but not soon enough.

"Thank God," moaned Talia as she piled up her books. "I don't think I could have taken another minute of that." "You'll get used to old Brown," Mccall consoled him. "Once you get the pace of it, you'll do fine."

"I'm already six paces behind," Taliagroaned as the boys walked together to their next class. He didn't say another word as they dragged themselves into the English room, dropped their books on their desks, and fell into the seats.

The new English teacher, wearing a shirt and tie but no jacket, sat at the front of the room, staring out the window. The boys settled down and waited, grateful for a moment to relax and shed some of the pressure of the last few hours.

Anderson continued to stare out the window. The boys started to shuffle uncomfortably. Finally, Anderson stood, picked up a yardstick, and started strolling up and down the aisles. He stopped and stared into the face of one of the girls. "Don't be embarrassed," he said kindly to the blushing girl. He continued to move around the room, looking intently at the girls as he walked. "Uh-huh," he said aloud, looking at Talia Abbot. "Uh-huh," he repeated, moving toward Nora Parker.

"Ha!" He slapped his free hand with the yardstick and strode forcefully to the front of the room.

"Nimble young minds!" Anderson shouted, looking around at the class and gesturing with the yardstick. He jumped dramatically onto his desk and turned to face the class. "'O Captain! My Captain!'" he recited energetically, then looked around the room.

"Who knows where that's from? Anybody? No?" He looked piercingly at the silent boys. Jumped off the desk walking around the room. He stopped at Talia's desk and saw she had written the answer down.

But no one raised a hand. "It was written, my young scholars," he said patiently, "by a poet named Walt Whitman about Abraham Lincoln.

In this class, you may refer to me as either Mr. Andrson or 'O Captain! My Captain!'" He jumped down from the desk and resumed strolling the aisles, speaking as he moved.

"So that I become the source of as few rumors as possible, let me tell you that, yes, I was a student at Welton institution many moons ago, and no, at that time I did not possess this charismatic personality."However, should you choose to emulate my manner, it can only help your grade. Pick up your textbooks from the back, gentlemen, and let's retire to the Honor Room."

Using the yardstick as a pointer, Anderson headed to the door and walked out. The students sat, silent, not sure what to do. "We'd better go with him," Nora said, leading the class to the back of the room.

They each picked up a text, gathered their books, and proceeded to the oak-paneled St. Charles Honor Room, where they had last waited to see St. Agatha. Anderson walked around the room as the girls straggled in. He studied the walls, which were lined with class pictures dating back to the 1800s. Trophies of every description filled shelves and glass cases. Sensing that everyone was seated, Anderson turned toward the class.

"Miss"—Anderson looked down at his roster—"Pierce," he said. "A rather unique name. Stand up, Miss Pierce."

Price stood.

"Open your text, Pierce, to page 542 and read for us the first stanza of the poem," Anderson instructed.

Pierce leafed through his book. "'To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time'?" she asked. "That's the one," Anderson said, as the girls in the class chuckled out loud. "Yes, sir," Pierce said. She cleared her throat.

"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old time is still a-flying: And this same flower that smiles today, Tomorrow will be dying." She stopped. "'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,'" Anderson repeated. "The Latin term for that sentiment is Carpe Diem. Does anyone know what that means?"

"Carpe Diem," Mccall, the German and now Latin scholar, said. "Seize the day." "Very good, Miss....?"

"McCall."

"Seize the day," Keating repeated. "Why does the poet write these lines?"

"Because he's in a hurry?" one student called out as the others snickered.

"No, No, No! It's because we're food for worms, laddies!" Keating shouted. "Because we're only going to experience a limited number of springs, summers, and falls.

"One day, hard as it is to believe, every one of us is going to stop breathing, turn cold, and die!"

He paused dramatically.

"Stand up," he urged the students, "and peruse the faces of the girls who attended this school sixty or seventy years ago. Don't be timid; go look at them."

The girls got up and walked to the class pictures lining the honor room walls. They looked at the faces of young girls, staring out at them from the past.

"They're not that different from any of you, are they? Hope in their eyes, just like yours. They believe themselves destined for wonderful things, just like many of you. Well, where are those smiles now, boys? What hope?"

The girls stared at the photos, their faces sober and reflective.

Anderson walked swiftly around the room, pointing from photo to photo. "Did most of them not wait until it was too late before making their lives into even one iota of what they were capable of? In chasing the almighty deity of success, did they not squander their boyhood dreams?

However, if you get very close to girls, you can hear them whisper. Go ahead," he urged, "lean in. Go on. Hear it? Can you?" The girls were quiet, some of them leaned hesitantly toward the photographs. "Carpe Diem," Anderson whispered loudly. "Seize the day. Make your lives extraordinary." Talia, Nora, Katherine, Charlotte, Collins, McCall, Pierce, and the other girls all stared into the pictures on the walls, lost in thoughts that were rudely interrupted by the bell. "Weird," Pierce said as he gathered up his books.

"But different," Nora said thoughtfully.

"Spooky," Katherine added, shivering slightly, as he headed out of the room.

"You think he'll test us on that stuff?" Collins asked, looking confused. "Oh, come on, Collins," Charlotte laughed, "don't you get anything?"

Todd Anderson remained where he was after the bell rang. He remembers his first class with Mr. Keating. He took a minute to remember his time at Welton. He saw how Talia acted in class and it reminded him of his younger self. He promised to never let their memories die, especially Neil's; he saw so much of Neil in Nora. The one thing he thought about though was "Maybe there might be a sooner meeting to the dead poet's society than 15 years later. He just hoped history would be repeated it's self in the deadly way it did last time. With the horror and the horrible parents.