[center][img]https://78.media.tumblr.com/3aa702e19f47be27bd38528a7148048b/tumblr_p8w6z7pGCh1unpjngo1_500.png[/img][/center][COLOR=SLATEGRAY][INDENT][B][SUP][SUB][H3]M A T H E R   M E M O R I A L   H I G H   S C H O O L:[/H3][/SUB][/SUP][/B][/INDENT][hr][/COLOR][INDENT][sup][COLOR=SILVER]Tuesday, August 21[SUP]st[/SUP], 2018 — 7:30 am  |  Auditorium[/COLOR][/sup][/INDENT]
[color=gray]“Look, Morgan, you have three lines. [i]Three.[/i] So if you can’t memorize them in twenty minutes, don’t bother getting onstage,”[/color] Brynn said to the wide-eyed girl she’d cornered behind the curtains. Morgan, the flaky sophomore class representative, had experienced “technical issues” during the summer, conveniently causing her to not receive the script sent out to all student council members. Unfortunately for her, though, Brynn had been the one who’d sent the email, and Brynn wasn’t feeling particularly generous on the morning she was to participate in a skit detailing the rights and wrongs of unprotected sex and consent. 

[color=gray]“Do you want me to hold your hand as you read your script or something?”[/color] Brynn snapped when Morgan didn’t move. Taking the cue, the sophomore darted off, disappearing backstage as Brynn pressed a hand to her temple in an attempt to ease her coming headache. It was too early in the morning for her to be dealing with dimwits who couldn’t even come up with half-decent excuses, and on top of the ridiculous skit she was being made to participate in, there was the matter of—

Brynn snapped up as Makayla Hall appeared at the doorway with another member of the council.

“Hey, Brynn! Sorry, were you using this room?” the council member asked.

[color=gray]“No—go ahead,”[/color] Brynn said, making for the door. 

“Oh, okay,” the boy said as Brynn exited without looking back. Unlike Morgan, Brynn needed no second warning.
[h3]  [/h3]
[hr][INDENT][sup][COLOR=SILVER]Tuesday, August 21[SUP]st[/SUP], 2018 — 12:31 pm  |  Main Quad[/COLOR][/sup][/INDENT]
“No way! He chucked it at her—just like that?”

“No!”

Brynn shifted as her table devolved into cries of disbelief. Jonas Lehrer, the new teacher on campus, had apparently thrown an eraser at a student. The exact truth had been muddled after multiple retellings, and though Brynn knew better than to believe anything that came out of Adrielle’s mouth at face value, she also knew that there was no faster way someone could get a run-down of the latest happenings at Mather Memorial. In this case, though, believing in what she heard also meant believing her final period was liable to be led by an eraser-chucking wild card, which—in addition to the fact that she’d tried and failed to get excused from the class even after speaking to the principal—was beginning to sound like it couldn’t get any worse.

“And what’s that new class he’s teaching? ‘Social Conscience?’ Sounds like some depressive shit right there,” someone else added. “Are they gathering the loners for group therapy or something?”

Adrielle met Brynn’s eyes from across the table, and Brynn shook her head. No, she wouldn’t be sharing that she was slotted in the aforementioned class—not after that comment. 
[h3]  [/h3]
[hr][INDENT][sup][COLOR=SILVER]Tuesday, August 21[SUP]st[/SUP], 2018 — 2:23 pm  |  The “Loft”[/COLOR][/sup][/INDENT]
Social Conscience—the class had been a total mystery when it appeared on Brynn’s schedule, and Brynn didn’t take kindly to mysteries. A few dozen interrogational emails and phone calls to the school later, she came up with a few facts that she was grudgingly forced to accept. The course was mandatory, was only held at the end of the day, and would take the place of Brynn’s scheduled history class. While she would receive credit for the said history class, Brynn didn’t like the sound of “Social Conscience” one bit. For all the reassurance she’d received about the class, it sounded more like some sort of pseudo-philosophy class than anything, and that could mean that grades were determined by how much one agreed with the teacher. Sure Brynn had written her fair share of English essays specifically tailored to bias teachers, but English was a mandatory requirement listed on all college applications. “Social Conscience,” on the other hand, sounded like a possible time sink that yielded no specific benefits other than the credits it would replace.

The students making up the class itself, though, were a spread of knowns and unknowns. Consisting of various faces from the junior and senior classes, the group looked like a bad survey of Mather Memorial’s upper-class population—which was exactly what the school office had promised Brynn, really. The variety of students reassured Brynn that the class would be no grade-breaker, and she took a seat by some familiar faces before turning her attention on Jonas Lehrer, who seemed just as interested in her as she was in him. There was no trace of the bight hope present in many new teacher’s faces; rather, Jonas seemed to stand like a tenured instructor, confident in his continued employment despite whatever might happen during the year. 

After he’d finished the usual run-down, Jonas opened up with an icebreaker—something teachers always seemed to insist upon doing on the first day of class. Granted the icebreaker was inspired by a topic many teachers would loathe to broach, but that didn’t make it much more compelling.

[color=gray]“Humans no longer feel the same pressures of natural selection,” [/color]Brynn said after the first round of volunteers had gone. [color=gray]“In the process of changing our priorities, we've managed to change how we're selected for."[/color]

Brynn fell silent, opening the floor again. Her eyes trailed to Jonas, watching for a reaction: how had her answer fared?