July 1989

I punched into work at the Metro Police Department when Captain Briody called me into his office. He said that Fuller wanted me to report to the chapel, and off I went.

I walked into the eerily silent church and peered around. As soon as I walked in, I heard, "it's the fuzz! Scatter!"

My eyes widened at the sudden voice but my face fell to a grin when I saw Tom walking over to me wearing a white bandana and a gray sweatshirt.

"How's it going?" I asked and he gave me a hug.

"Good," he said while my face was smushed against his shoulder. We squeezed each other in our embrace, neither of us wanting to be the first to let go. We had both been busy with our new schedules, so we had not been able to see each other for a few days. It is so hard being without Tom, I didn't like being away from him for so long.

"Know what the assignment is?" I asked him when we finally pulled apart. My hands wrapped around the back of his neck and I leaned back to get a good look at his beautiful face.

"Yes," he said with a nod.

"Are you going to tell me?" I asked.

He shook his head with a serious face and said, "no."

I squinted at Tom with annoyance and let my hands drop.  "Fuller!" I called out, which echoed from the acoustics of the church.

Fuller came out of his office and said, "great. You're here."

"What's the plan? And where is everyone else?" I asked.

"I just wanted you two for this," Fuller said and met us by the table. He handed us our folders and allowed us to flip through them.

"Right on," I said. My mood was brightened considerably after finding out that I was getting a little break from working Vice.

"A kid, Duke Richardson, was caught drinking at prom and got arrested and expelled. He was allowed to come back to school if he completed a Drug and Alcohol course," Fuller began to explain.

"Let me guess, he didn't take it?" I asked.

"Right, he did not take it," Fuller confirmed. "Little does he know that you need to take that course in order to graduate high school, so he is taking it during the summer at Eisenhower High School."

"What does that mean for us?" Tom asked.

"I thought you already knew?" I asked him.

"I did not know everything," he clarified sarcastically.

"Take a look at your assignments," Fuller said and we did as he told. "Mickey, you are going to become Miss Williams. And Tom, you're going in as a McQuaid."

"Is Doug joining us?" He asked. Doug is his usual partner when it comes to being a McQuaid.

"No, not this time," Fuller said.

"Wait, I'm Miss Williams?" I asked, "emphasis on the Miss?"

"You are going to be the Drug and Alcohol Course teacher," Fuller informed.

"Don't they already have one?" I asked.

"Yes, but the students chased him out," Fuller said. "Tom, you're going there to try to set a good example for the students and Mickey is going to make sure that they actually learn the information. Most of them are repeat offenders. If they don't complete it, they get expelled with the risk of going to juvie."

"As a McQuaid?" Tom asked. McQuaids are usually troublesome kids, so turning the cover into someone who is more of a goody-two-shoes was unusual.

"We had a plant earlier in the summer gassing up the McQuaid name. Since they know how rebellious you are and if they see you get clean, we think they will follow suit," Fuller said.

"Is this an all summer kind of thing?" I asked.

"Yeah, it's one hour everyday," Fuller nodded. "During the summer school session."

"I can vibe with that," I said and closed my folder.

"You're going to report to class from 11 o'clock to noon every week day in Room 212," Fuller told us. "There's already a curriculum for you that you just need to follow. I think you two can manage just fine."

"Woah, wait. If I'm a student, do I have to go to the same classes every day all summer?" Tom asked with his eyebrows raised.

"Yeah, Hanson, if you wanna keep your cover," Fuller replied with a touch of sass.

"Will do, Captain," Tom said flatly, clearly not excited to be having to go to class all summer.

Fuller excused us, and I had to riffle through our elaborate costume department to find something to wear that a teacher would. I had to get out of the mindset about dressing young, because now I had to dress as old as possible. I finally settled on a blue patterned dress with short sleeves and a belt. The shoulder pads made me feel so sophisticated, and the light fabric was perfect for a hot summer day at school. I threw my wavy hair up into a bun and Tom came over and gave me a pair of fake glasses to balance on the bridge of my nose. They were the same glasses that he wears when he has to be nerdy for a case. I felt like a real adult. I'm twenty-one years old and I've never truly felt like an adult until now. I've always had to be a teenager.

I'm not going to bring my badge with me on this assignment. Usually we do carry fake IDs the department gives us with our fake names, but we can't have anything else real just in case some kid steals our wallets or our bags. We do carry our badges but we keep them hidden really well, but I don't think we will need them for this assignment.

We drove to the school after Tom put his finishing touches on becoming a McQuaid, but we took separate cars. Tom waited in his Mustang for class to start but I had to get to the classroom early to prepare for the students. I read through the lecture for the day, seeing that today's topic was marijuana.

When 11 o'clock rolled around, the students were trudging in the room like they were half asleep, and ready for the school year to be over. Everyone was getting settled when Tom finally arrived and took a seat at the front.

His eyes sparkled up at me, but I had to pretend like I did not know him. I found it so fascinating how easily he can blend in with the students in every cover he has. He's so good at his job, and you can tell that he loves it too.

"Where's Mr. Carlson?" A voice from the crowd asked.

"I will be replacing Mr. Carlson for the remainder of the summer," I answered. I heard some stifled chuckles throughout the classroom, but then it stopped when I looked up and scanned their unenergetic faces.

I grabbed the attendance sheet and noticed that there were twenty five kids in the class. Every kid in here, aside from Tom, was caught with some sort of drug or alcohol during the school year.

"Roll call. Ethan Dunn?" I began.

"Here," a voice called out flatly from the classroom. I looked up and would wait for them to raise their hand so I could quickly match names to faces.

I checked him off my list and moved on, "Miles French?"

"Here."

"Elliot Gates?"

"Present."

"Thank you. Anthony Jacobs?"

"Here."

"Lisa Kennedy?"

"Here."

"Thomas McQuaid?" I had his name already checked off.

"Tom," he corrected.

"Thank you, Tom... uh, Riley Moore?"

"Sup."

"Sup?" I chuckled and checked his name off. "Zachary O'Ryan?"

"It's Zac."

"Zac," I repeated as I wrote it next to his name and marked him as present, "great. Duke Richardson?"

"Here," he answered gruffly. He had bright blonde hair and sunken eyes.

"Jayne Roberts?"

"Here."

"Justin Stevenson?"

"Yeah."

I continued to call out the rest of the names, and as soon as that was over, I put the sheet away and turned to the blackboard. "My name is Miss Williams and I will be your Drug and Alcohol Course instructor for the remainder of the summer," I said as I wrote the name on the board in white chalk.

I took a glance at the curriculum and saw that there have already been a few weeks that the students already had. I took the next available lesson, which was on marijuana.

I wrote the name of the drug on the board and asked, "can anyone tell me what marijuana is?"

Riley raised his hand and said after I called on him, "it's a drug."

"That's right, and what does it do?" I asked.

Justin raised his hand and said, "it gets you high."

"Right," I said. I decided to start with the basics with this group so I asked, "can anyone tell me the dangers of drugs?"

Tom raised his hand and blurted out, "because drugs can make your teeth fall out and you get really ugly and don't have any friends."

I paused for a moment but nodded. His emphasis on the teeth and lack of friends made me want to laugh but I kept my face stern. I added, "yeah. A multitude of health conditions may arise as well. And in most cases, fatal overdoses are a significant danger. Today I want to bring our focus to marijuana. Marijuana is an illegal drug that distorts your sense of reality. In large doses, it can cause confusion, hallucinations, and paranoid delusions. The main ingredient is THC. Can anyone tell me what that means?"

The students looked around at each other, no one was willing to try to answer. I knew it was a long word that was not that common so I decided not to single anyone out by calling on them, especially since this was the first lecture discussing it. I took the chalk and write the long word on the board. "Tetrahydrocannabinol. It's a powerful hallucinogen. It can accumulate in your body and stay in there for up to 30 days, whereas alcohol can dissolve in water and is out of your system in a matter of hours. Even if you smoke once a month, the drug is never fully out of your system and you are always at some level of intoxicated. It has harmful effects on your heart and lungs. In fact, smoking one joint per week is worse on the lungs than smoking 25 cigarettes in the same amount of time."

One of the students raised his hand and I paused my lecture to call on him, "yes, Elliot?"

"What if you eat it?" Elliot asked.

"Eat it?" I raised my eyebrow.

"Yeah. Like in a cookie or a brownie or something," he said.

"With edibles, it depends on how much you have. But, the drug takes a little longer to start working and people tend to have way too much of it without realizing. It is in your system much longer, and the effects are more intense," I informed him.

"Okay," he said.

Another kid raised his hand so I pointed to him and asked, "Zac, what's your question?"

"How old are you?" He asked and put his hand down.

"That question is quite personal, but I am twenty-five," I answered. I knew that that age was reaching a little high after it came out of my mouth. But I felt that if I said I was older than I actually was, they might respect me more.

"You don't look twenty-five," he stated.

"Yeah," another student said, "I woulda guessed you were still in high school."

Having a young face does have its ups and downs. This was a down. They weren't going to respect me any time soon. If they didn't respect me, then they weren't going to learn. I gazed at the small class of students and stopped at Tom. He looked at me for a moment before putting his head down on his desk, pretending to be asleep.

I knew what he was doing. He was giving me an opening to earn the respect from the students. And the only way to do that, was to establish some sort of dominance. I casually grabbed a ruler from my desk and held it in my hands behind my back.

I started slowly pacing around the room to continue my lecture. I said, "marijuana use can affect learning ability, attention, memory, coordination, balance, judgment, and decision-making. Marijuana use in adolescence can have short-term consequences of difficulty learning and retaining information, injury, car accidents, risky sexual behavior, and bronchitis. You are more likely to get addicted, have a poorer quality of life, and drop-out of school because the drug alters your brain development and cognitive impairment." I stopped walking when I reached Tom's desk and smacked the ruler on the wood. He bolted upright, and grunted groggily. His hair was messy, and his eyebrow arched when he adjusted in his seat.

"Glad you could join us, Mr. McQuaid," I said loudly.

The other kids froze before realizing that I was not going to be pushed around like they did the other teacher. No, I wasn't going to hit them with my ruler, but this was a way to show them that I will not tolerate fooling around in my class.

These kids need to wake up. Drugs hit really close to home for me because I saw the effects growing up of cocaine, heroin, alcohol, marijuana and Ecstasy. I've seen what it can do to a family, and I never want anyone else to have to go through that.

I continued with my lecture, walking back to the front of the class, "it's even worse when your brain isn't fully developed yet. Believe it or not, but your brain isn't fully developed until you are twenty-five. When you use marijuana, your judgment, alertness, concentration, coordination, and reaction time are all impaired so you are much more likely to get into a car accident, especially when you mix it with alcohol. Does anyone have any questions?"

I was a little surprised when a couple of the students raised some genuine questions about my lecture. I was content that they were paying attention, which was all I wanted.

After I answered their questions, I looked down at my watch and noticed that the hour flew by. I said, "all right. Class is dismissed, and I'll see you all tomorrow. McQuaid, can you stay back?"

All the kids packed their notebooks and pencils and left the room. Tom slowly packed his backpack and I walked up to him. I glanced around the room to make sure no one was in there before I asked in a low voice in case anyone was listening, "how did I do?"

"I think you did great," he answered and turned to face me.

"I was so nervous... I'm not used to teaching," I said. I looked up at him and was instantly comforted by his soothing brown eyes.

"No, babe, you did great," he reassured. He smiled at me and his eyes were staring into mine. The love I felt just from his look alone made my heart flutter.

I chuckled and said in a low voice, "don't look at me like that. We are at work."

Tom responded with, "don't be so darn cute."

Butterflies fluttered around in my stomach as I scrunched my nose at him and shuffled some papers from the desk I adopted. I said, "I can't believe it's going to be an entire summer of this. We aren't even watching for anything, just making sure we shove the information down their throats and hope they take it to heart."

"Yeah, and probably be on the look out to make sure that they aren't using," Tom said, "kids are more likely to show up to summer school under the influence."

"Yeah, that's true," I nodded, "what's your next class?"

He peered at his schedule and said, "Integrated English with Mr. Peters."

"Exciting," I said sarcastically.

"It's only noon. What are you going to do for the rest of the day?" Tom asked.

"Probably go back to the chapel and make a plan for tomorrow. We are supposed to learn about the dangers of alcohol... so fun."

"Maybe you can talk about your brother? Try to hit them with something personal," Tom suggested.

"That's a good idea. Thanks, Tom."

"Of course." He smiled at me again and slung his backpack over his shoulder. He was quick to pull out a folded note from his pocket and hand it to me. "This is for you."

I took the note and held it in my palm. I took a step back and waved him out of my classroom, "see you tomorrow, Mr. McQuaid."

"Bye, Miss Williams," Tom said and went out the door to his next class.

I sighed and watched him walk out the door. I glanced down at the paper and unfolded it to see a note that Tom had written during the class. Addressed to me, I immediately read it.

This may not be the most romantic note I've written for you, but I just want you to know that you are always on my mind. You are doing amazing. I am so proud of you.
With all my love,
Tom

Tom always finds a new way to show me acts of love everyday. Even this simple little note showed that Tom truly cares for me. I really notice the little things, and I appreciate them greatly.

I gathered all my belongings and the written curriculum to bring to the chapel so I could make a proper plan for the next day without just spitting facts. I slipped my note into my pocket so it's safe until I can add it to the others. Tom was right, I needed to make a personal connection with these kids so they won't throw their lives away to drugs and alcohol.

This was going to be one long summer.

I think they should make another Jump Street movie and/or reboot the TV show because it has so much potential! 😩
And don't come at me for the inaccuracy of some of these drug "facts", this is what they believed in the 80's!! 😂
Next chapter is inspired by the episode Draw the Line when Tom goes to jail for shooting a cop! Stay tuned!!