2016-09-13 ff. School Daze

[Bob Schroeck]

School Daze
By Robert M. Schroeck

Franklin High School
Franklin Township, New Jersey, USA
Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Clarisse Sherrel looked up from her desk at the sound of a knock to see Samuel Franks, one of her vice principals, standing at her open door with a handful of student file folders. "What's up, Sam?" she asked.

"Something a little odd I wanted to bring to your attention," he replied as he stepped into her office. As soon as he got close enough, he handed her the folders. "We've got five new transfers."

"So? The only thing odd about that is how close to the start of the school year it is," she replied. It hadn't even been a week yet since the first day of classes for 2016-2017.

Sam gave a sort of half-smile. "No, there's a bit more than that."

She just raised an eyebrow.

"Five girls," he went on. "All Japanese, as in fresh from Japan, not just ethnically, on student visas yet. Ui Hirasawa, Azusa Nakano, Nao Okuda, Sumire Saito, and Jun Suzuki. They all have perfect fluency in English and don't require EFL^[1] classes." He laughed. "Saito's originally Australian. Has the accent and everything. The others sound like they grew up here in Jersey. Anyway, they're all transferring in from an all-girls school called Sakuragaoka."

Clarisse perked up at that. "Sakuragaoka High School? I recognize that name. The new music teacher, Sawako Yamanaka, used to teach there." Frowning, she began paging through the folders. "Quite a coincidence, that."

Sam nodded. "Yeah, well, maybe not. Yamanaka is the guardian of record for three of them." Clarisse's eyebrows shot up. "Nothing formal like a fosterage, just documented requests from their parents to watch over them while they're in the States. Knowing that, it's probably not a surprise that all five girls and Yamanaka live together for all practical purposes — in the Douglass Gardens Apartments complex on Hamilton Street. What's odd is that they're in almost sequential apartments, basically starting at apartment one."

She looked up. "Taken all together, that's kind of getting into Twilight Zone territory, isn't it? Let's keep an eye on the six of them for the next few weeks."

He nodded. "I'll spread the word."


Monday, September 19, 2016

Clarisse was hip-deep in the new and completely unexpected plan to expand the high school before the start of the 2017-2018 school year. Forget about where the money had come from — the multi-million-dollar grant from the state, specifically earmarked for educational facilities, seemed to have appeared completely out of nowhere. The question gnawing at her was why the state had decided that Franklin Township suddenly needed facilities for another two to three hundred middle and high school level students above and beyond anything they expected from census data and the existing enrollments. That and why they were so insistent it had to all be done by next September.

It was enough to give her a migraine.

A familiar rap on the metal frame of her office door had her look up to see Sam standing there with three student files in his hand. "Good morning, Sam. What's up?"

He held up the folders. "Our Twilight Zone girls just got some friends."

"What?" Clarisse immediately forgot about the paperwork in front of her.

Sam tossed the folders onto the pile of papers and she quickly scanned the names on them: Hikaru Shidou, Umi Ryuuzaki, and Fuu Hououji. "More Japanese transfer students?"

He nodded with a humorless smile playing on his lips. "Three freshmen, again with the perfect English."

Clarisse picked up Shidou's folder and opened it. "All from Sakuragaoka?"

"Nope, not this time," he said, shaking his his head. "Three other schools. But, and here's the thing, they're all living..."

"At Douglass Gardens Apartments," Clarisse finished for him. "Sequential apartments again?"

Sam chuckled. "They're all in the same apartment." She just stared at him, and he held up his hands. "I am totally serious."

"Who're their guardians?" she asked as she searched through the information.

"A couple named, um, Shrohk I think it is," he replied. "Turns out they're the managers of the apartment complex. Apparently all three girls' parents know them well enough to appoint them."

She shook her head. "There's something odd going on here."

"I thought so, too, so I made a few calls and had the Sakuragaoka girls' paperwork checked," he said. "Absolutely perfect and completely aboveboard, all the way up to the State Department and INS. I suspect our new students' will be exactly the same."

Clarisse sighed and closed the folder, before gathering all three up and handing them back to Sam. "Like before, keep an eye on them. If any of them step the least bit out of line, I want to know."

He nodded. "Will do."


Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Two mornings later, Sam didn't have the chance to knock before Clarisse said, "No, don't tell me. More Japanese girls."

He snorted. "Just one this time, but you're going to want to see this. Atsuko Natsume, transferring in from a Kyouyou High School. Pretty girl, very bubbly. Again, perfect English, although her transcript is a bit less impressive than most of our other recent transfers. Again, living in Douglass Gardens — this time with her entire family, no odd guardianship arrangements." He opened the folder and pulled out a thick sheaf of papers held together with a black binder clip and handed it to her. "But this is the really interesting part."

Clarisse began flipping through it. They were medical records and doctors' letters, mostly in Japanese but with translations attached. She hadn't gotten far in before her eye was caught by the words "quadruple amputee". She frowned and went back to the beginning. "What the hell...?" she muttered. She spied a photocopy of a TSA notification card, of the kind carried by persons with significant quantities of metal implanted in their bodies. Then she came upon a set of surgical reports. She'd averted her eyes from the graphic color photographs illustrating them, but not before one phrase leapt out at her: "extensive experimental prosthetic systems". She read on for several more pages before looking back up at Sam with an expression of shock on her face. "Seriously? She's basically The Bionic Woman? How is that even possible?"

Sam shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. But if that's for real, then why they even let her out of Japan is beyond me — if I've read that right, she's a treasure trove of medical technology beyond anything anyone in the States thinks is even plausible."

She threw the medical paperwork back into the folder and snapped it shut before shoving it back into Sam's hands. "Take her over to Security and have them test her with a metal detector. If these records are on the level, she couldn't give a stronger positive if she were wearing a suit of armor." She shook her head. "And if she does, well, we'll just have to hope she doesn't want to join any of the sports teams, because the poor girl is a walking performance enhancement."


Friday, September 30, 2016

"More?" Clarisse asked when she spied Sam with a handful of the now-dreaded student files.

He nodded. "Just like before. Native Japanese. Absolutely perfect English with Jersey accents. Living in Douglass Gardens, in near-sequential apartments. Four girls this time: Eimi Ohba, Chisa Tsukamoto, Asahi Sakurai, and Ikumi Tachikawa. All their paperwork in absolutely perfect order."

"Any more bionic women?" Ms. Natsume (whose entire body, head to toe, had registered very strongly indeed on the metal detector) had quickly fit in (and well) to the student body — her neighbors had helped her there — and to Clarisse's relief had shown no interest in any sports or teams. (The cheer squad, though, was very interested in her.) Somehow, though, her medical details had leaked almost immediately and she had picked up both a following and the nickname "the Six-Million Dollar Girl".

"Fortunately, no. Just a band of relatively ordinary girls."

Clarisse sighed. "I'll believe that when I see it."


Monday, October 17, 2016

"Not again," Clarisse groaned when Sam showed up at her door with yet another handful of files. "And it was such a good month, too."

"Hey, it's different this time!" he said with false cheerfulness.

"How?" she demanded.

"One of them is a boy!"


Friday, August 11, 2017

Clarisse leaned back in her chair and stretched. Her first year as principal of Franklin High School was just about over, and except for all the strangeness with the students from Douglass Gardens right at the start it had been a good year. She'd even been able to navigate the bizarre circumstances around the rush-job expansion of the high school mandated (and totally funded) by the state a year earlier. She still had no idea why anyone thought it had been needed — the school was going to look like a ghost town come the start of September.

Or so she thought until Sam staggered into her office with a stack of student files easily two feet tall clutched in his arms.

"Oh, fuck no!" she yelled. "What the hell is going on with Douglass Gardens?"

---

1. RMS: English as a Foreign Language.
   

[robkelk]

"Three freshmen, again with the perfect English."

Why am I hearing this sentence as if it was spoken by a stereotypical Jewish grandmother?

[Bob Schroeck]

Why am I hearing this sentence as if it was spoken by a stereotypical Jewish grandmother?

Maybe because "Franks" is a Jewish surname dating back to at least the 17th century?