It took a while for him to find decent work. He was already 30 years old, and only had two years of experience under his belt. That’s what happens when halfway through your junior year of college you have a nervous breakdown, and don’t think you’ll be able to make a decent teacher. He was afraid that he might repeat the mistakes that were made against him. It was a reasonable fear, but one that took a long time for him to let go of.
He vowed to himself that he wouldn’t hurt any of his students the way he was hurt. He couldn’t do that to any innocent student left in his care, he wouldn’t – he couldn’t. He would do his best to protect his students from anyone who intended to harm them, which is why when he saw a bunch of what looked to be seniors standing around the dumpsters wearing letterman jackets, with a scrawny kid who looked incredibly uncomfortable, he stopped to ask them what they were doing. It brought him back to his days at Westerville High and he didn’t like the feeling that accompanied it.

“What’s it to you?” One of them asks, and Blaine arches an eyebrow. This kid was gutsy, that was for sure. Blaine had never seen a student backtalk a teacher like that, then again this large African-American boy probably didn’t realize Blaine was a teacher, what with him being shorter than the boy in question and having never taught at the school before.

“Just want to make sure none of my students are doing anything.... inappropriate.” They all shook their head in unison, a sure sign that something was wrong.

“Nope, we were just talking to the new kid.” The new kid looked incredibly frightened, as if he knew what was about to happen, even though Blaine had no clue.

“Okay then, carry on.” Blaine continues to walk towards the building, but has an uneasy feeling and turns around just as he heard a scream. The guys in the letterman jackets were tossing the ‘new kid’ into the dumpster. Once he was in, they all started to laugh and high five each other. Blaine wouldn’t take this lying down. He stormed over to them once again.

“Okay, all five of you. Figgins’ office, right now.” He points to the building. “Don’t think about ditching, I have a very good memory. If any of you aren’t there when I arrive, I’ll personally give you detention for the rest of the year.”

“C’mon. Let’s head to the cafeteria. The lunch ladies should probably be putting the food out by now, and we can get first in line.” David suggested, and all of them, being teenage boys are completely amenable to that idea.

He quickly climbed up the side of the dumpster, to help the smaller boy out. “Are you okay?” The kid shrugged.

“It’s not like this is the first time this has ever happened. I’m not exactly new here.” This confused Blaine for a moment, since those boys had described him as a new kid, but shook it off.

“Here, give me your hand. I’ll pull you out.”
Once Blaine got him out, they walked inside and headed towards Figgins’ office. Luckily it was the first day of school. Mostly what was in the dumpster was bags full of old papers and shredded files. No food. So it wasn’t hard to clean the boy off of whatever stray pieces of garbage had stuck to him. When they got to the office, Blaine was glad to see that all five boys were indeed waiting for him to get there.

“Figgins, I found these boys tossing this young man into the dumpster.” He placed his hand on the teenager’s shoulder. Figgins looked at the five hooligans and narrowed his eyes.

“Is that so?” Four out of the five of them all looked down at the floor, not daring to speak a word. The last one however, wasn’t so wise.

“He asked for it!” The heavy set African American from earlier defended him and his buddies.

“Are you telling me, this young man,” Blaine looked at him, raising his eyebrow and the boy took the hint.

“Rory.”

“Right, Rory. Are you telling me, that Rory asked for you to toss him in the dumpster?”

“He was making fun of us, using that weird accent of his!”

“It’s not weird! I’m Irish, not making fun of you.” Rory tried to defend, but it wasn’t working. The burly brute was just getting angrier at Rory’s brogue.

“Whatever man, you need to speak normal for a change.” Blaine just shook his head and looked over at Figgins who was rubbing his temples.

“Figgins, a little input here would be nice.”

“All right. Mr. Adams, Mr. Karofsky, Mr. Smith, Mr. Murphy and Mr. Thomas you all know that we don’t allow bullying here. Therefore, I have no choice but to suspend you. You will each serve one week in-school suspension. Report to homeroom, and then head to ISS. Your teachers will be informed.” They all grumbled as they left the office, Rory holding back not wanting to leave with them.

Blaine could understand. He had been bullied when he was in high school, and the last thing any person who was bullied wanted to do, was be alone with a bully, let alone 5 of them who had just gotten suspended for a full week.

“Do you honestly believe placing all five of them in one room for the next week, for 8 hours a day is going to do any good?” Blaine asked, and Figgins shrugged.

“We’ll see, won’t we?”

If Blaine believed in love at first sight, he probably would have called it this, but he doesn’t so he didn’t. Instead he just called it intriguing. He didn’t know much about Jeremiah Walton, but he wanted to. It showed in his eyes how much he was falling for his teacher in a matter of moments, hanging onto his every word. Anyone who was looking at Blaine could see it. It was lucky he was in the first row, so no one could see his face, except Jeremiah. But when Jeremiah did see it, he grinned.

By the time Blaine walked Rory to class, and got to his own class, he was 10 minutes late. What a way to introduce yourself to your students. Luckily homeroom was 15 minutes long, so he still had 5 minutes to take attendance and pass out all the papers he needed to pass out. Anything leftover would have to wait until the next day. Once homeroom was over, he started his day. He was the English teacher, and luckily none of the English teachers currently at McKinley had any desire to teach AP and Honors English. Apparently they had enough on their plates trying to teach regular English to the students who couldn’t stand the class that they couldn’t come up with an Honors and AP curriculum on such a short notice. Blaine on the other hand, had been working in New York for the past couple of years as an Honors and AP English Teacher and could easily transfer his syllabus and curriculum over to McKinley for those who were interested in the upper level classes.

Most of his morning classes were all Honors class of some level. First period was sophomore level, 2nd period was Senior. Third period was freshman, but 4th period was when he got to the class he was really interested in, always had been. AP English Literature. A class that required so much more concentration and dedication than any of the other English classes he taught. As he saw his students enter the room, he was surprised to see Rory enter, along with about 5 other people. There was an Asian girl who had just finished kissing another Asian boy who Blaine assumed to be her boyfriend. A girl with short blonde hair who looked like all the girls his parents had set him up with as a teenager. He let out an involuntary shiver when he made the connection. Next to her, was a handicapped student who Blaine could only assume was confined to his wheelchair. The last one, who was sitting next to Rory, was a young man who was absolutely stunning. He was wearing black dress pants, with a white long sleeve dress shirt, and a black vest that made every inch of the teen’s body pop.
Blaine had to take a deep breath and count to ten, because he knew that thinking that way about a student, was not going to be a smart idea. He couldn’t let himself become attracted to a student. He promised himself when he became a teacher, that he would never let anything like that happen to a student of his. He would never, ever do something so cruel, so heartless. He had experienced the pain of that particular type of heartbreak once before and he never wanted another living soul to experience it either.

He never quite got over what happened to him, never quite was able to look past all the emotional turmoil he put Blaine through. But through all of that, Blaine made a promise to himself that he wouldn’t let any of his students hurt the same way he hurt, the same way he was torn apart and pushed aside like yesterday’s garbage. He wouldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t.

He looked down at his class roll for the period, and saw that there were only 10 students in the entire class. That meant that there were only 4 more students that had to show up, a minute after the six sat down two girls walked in wearing cheerleading uniforms. ‘Huh, cheerleaders care about their academics… who knew?’ Blaine thought to himself. He had never seen any cheerleaders take an Advanced Placement course before, this should be interesting. Following those two, were two boys, members of the AV club, if their clothes and demeanor shed any light onto the situation. ‘This’ll be interesting.’

“Welcome to AP English Literature. If you’re in the wrong class, or you didn’t want to actually read books in this class please go down to student services and switch classes, because this is a reading intensive course. You will be reading over 20 novels between now and May, and I expect you to actually read them, and not use Sparknotes or Cliff Notes.” The two cheerleaders rolled their eyes. “I check those resources when I make the tests, and ensure that none of my questions can be answers with a quick perusal of them, so if you want to pass my class as well as the AP exam at the end of the year, you will actually read. If you leave right now, I will not fault you.” The two cheerleaders looked at each other and immediately without saying anything got up and walked out of the class. “Well now that we’ve got that settled. Today, we’re going to be going over the syllabus, and I’ll be handing out the first novel that we shall be reading.”

“Excuse me, Mr….” The stylish one from Rory’s group raised his hand. “We kind of, don’t know who you are? Our schedules still say TBA…”

“Oh…” Blaine was embarrassed. He had no clue that the school hadn’t changed the schedules yet, especially since he had been hired 3 weeks ago.

“Mr. Anderson will do fine, and you are?”

“Kurt, Kurt Hummel.” Blaine nodded.

“Well Kurt Hummel, would you mind passing out these syllabi?” Kurt got up and took the stack of papers out of Blaine’s hand, accidentally brushing their hands together as he did so. Kurt’s fingers were soft, and the touch was electric, at least it was for Blaine. He could write it off as static electricity, but he knew better. There was some sort of primal attractive that Blaine couldn’t hide from. Maybe Kurt felt it, maybe he didn’t. But Blaine had to at least pretend that he didn’t feel it.

“As you can see, this is the list of novels we’ll be reading. Fifty percent of these novels have been on the exam before. The rest are great American classics that any student should have read. If you’ve read them in your studies before, that’s great and we will be able to get through them quicker.” As Blaine let them read through the list, he heard a couple of snorts.

“Seriously, Mr. Anderson, My Antonia? I read that book in the 8th grade.” Kurt bemoaned.
“Well then you will only need to refresh yourself with it, now won’t you?” Blaine countered.
“It was the most boring book alive. I’ve never fallen asleep reading a book in the middle of the day, but I did with that one.”

“Tough.” Kurt frowned, but said nothing else.

“Good thing Berry isn’t in this class.” The blonde girl whispered, but Blaine heard it. “I’ve read The Jungle before when I was at Fairbrook, we’d never hear the end of her and her vegan ways.” She rolled her eyes. Blaine was confused, but said nothing.

“If there are no more questions about the book list we’ll continue. Everyone go to the back of the room and pick up a copy of The Scarlet Letter. I want you all to read the first 50 pages by tomorrow.” All eight of them groaned. “Get used to it. This is a reading intensive course, I’m easing you into the workload with only giving you 50 pages for tonight.” Blaine sits down at his desk, and they begin to go over the syllabus. He can’t wait to get into the thick of this class, because reading has always been a passion for him, it was a way of escaping, a way of coping with the tragedy that was his life. He hoped that he could show his students the same thing.