Even from the start (meaning, before Noah had the chance to take his headphones out), I knew what Noah was like. Every kid has to take a visual art to graduate and the counselors love dumping all the seniors who haven't taken one yet into "Intro to Theater." It's safe to say that none of the kids are happy to be in the class and I'm not exactly to have them there. Noah was one of those kids. He wasn't bad, just aloof and apathetic. There are kids who try to cause chaos when they don't want to be somewhere, I have a lot of those, but he was content with spending the year playing with his phone and listening to music. I could deal with that.

But when Lennon quit, which wasn't surprising, I was surprised she hadn't quit earlier, I was forced to hire a replacement. The administration didn't like my department very much and were always looking for ways to cut it out. So they always nitpick everything. The latest way they decided to do this was to say that I didn't involve enough students in my program, whatever that means. So they required me to find another ASM so "enough students would be a part of the program" or whatever. And since no one is crazy enough to want to sign up, I decided to force one of my students. Noah was the unlucky one I picked.

For all his apathy, I could tell Noah was a smart kid. He wasn't bad and he got good grades, he just didn't want to be there. But he hadn't done any more work than he was required to do so I offered to give him extra credit if he would help out. I knew Bea would be upset that I picked someone without telling her but it had to be done. They were both smart and good kids, they'd figure things out. Hopefully.