Chapter Text
“Okay class,” Lena says with a slightly raised voice to drown out the sounds of twenty-six students, and waits for them to quiet down and pay attention to her. “There are just over fifteen minutes left in this class, so tidy up all of your equipment ---wait for me to finish talking please,” she chides when a few students make noise as they start putting away their stuff. “After that we can get to the most exciting part of this experiment: testing your results. You have ten minutes to put everything away where it belongs and sit back down again. If you don’t finish in time, I won’t give you marshmallows when the testing is finished.”
Lena pulls a bag of marshmallows from her desk drawer and watches her students clean up faster than they have ever done before. Food is a great motivator turns out time and time again. As the students put away their equipment, Lena gets out a container of tasting papers and corrects some students when they put things where they don’t belong. Well within their assigned time, every single one of them is seated and waiting not so patiently to earn a marshmallow.
“Well done,” Lena compliments the class and pulls up a table on the digiboard.
“First, let’s discuss what we expect based on the genotype analysis we did. Who expects not to taste a single thing? So, who is a homozygous non-taster?”
Seven hands are raised, some a little more hesitant than others. Lena puts it into the table by adding a ‘7’ for homozygous non-taster.
“Good. And who is a supertaster, so a homozygous taster?”
This time, five hands go up. Lena nods and writes down a ‘5’ for homozygous taster.
“And last but not least, who is a heterozygous taster, a slight taster?”
Thirteen hands go up. Lena adds the number to the table again.
“I think I’m missing someone. Who didn’t raise their hand yet?”
One student nervously puts up his hands.
“What did your genotype show?” Lena asks.
“I think something went wrong,” he admits. “I didn’t have any results show up. I don’t think I had any DNA in there.”
“That’s okay,” Lena reassures. “You will just get a surprise result when we do the taste test and you can put what you think could potentially be the cause of your lack of DNA in your report.”
She adds a row ‘unknown’ to the table and puts in a ‘1’. Now the total adds up to 26 and everyone in the room is accounted for. Time for the taste testing, Lena’s favourite part of this experiment.
“I’m going to hand each of you a piece of tasting paper. Please wait for everyone to get one before you put it in your mouth.”
She starts handing out small strips of the slightly blue tasting paper. The students eye their papers suspiciously but obediently wait like Lena had asked.
“When I tell you to, you can put it on your tongue. You don’t have to swallow it. It’s not meant for eating, only for tasting, though nothing bad will happen if you do swallow it. It is just paper. If you don’t like the flavour, you can take the paper out of your mouth and throw it in the trash can, not on the floor please. And lastly,” Lena says as she reaches the last few tables, “if you doubt whether you can taste it and it tastes like anything other than paper or stale paper, you can probably taste it. Okay. Everybody ready?”
Lena gets back to her desk, standing beside it and grabbing the bag of marshmallows, knowing what will happen and that some students will need the candy.
“You can put it in your mouth.” She has barely finished the sentence before sounds of utter disgust fill her classroom. Eyes tear up and two very unfortunate students rush over to the trash can to dump their paper and any and all of the spit in their mouth that they can get out. Lena hurries over to hand them both a marshmallow, which they gratefully accept, and then makes her way over to all the other unhappy looking students who just put a very strong bitter flavoured paper in their mouths. The lucky students who taste nothing but paper are in different states ranging from complete confusion to enjoyment at their classmates’ pain. She can hardly blame the ones who see the glee in this because it is indeed very entertaining to watch the contorted faces of the students who could taste the bitterness of the paper.
When all of the students who could taste it have had a marshmallow, Lena hands one to each of the students who didn’t taste anything. They might not have experienced the same torture but they deserve a treat anyway.
She asks the class again whether they tasted it or not and they compare the results from what the genes of each student show with what they experienced when they taste-tested. Not everybody got the results they expected. Lena considers that all the more useful for their lab reports. It gives them a chance to reflect on the methods they used to get their results and their execution of them.
“I will upload these results this week so you can use them in your report. The deadline is the 29 th . That information and the written instructions on the report are in the year overview,” Lena tells her class just before the bell rings and almost all of them storm out. Two students are loitering near the door but still inside the classroom.
Lena gives them a moment but when no movement occurs, she addresses them. “I love that my class makes you not want to leave, but I have a stack of tests to grade and would love to be home before dinner.” She subtly tries to shoo them out of her classroom so she can finish her work for the day.
Reluctantly, they shuffle a tiny bit closer to the exit but without the enthusiasm Lena would expect from teenagers who just finished their school day.
“Is something the matter that you don’t want to leave?” Lena asks, giving up on her attempt to get them out of her classroom for now. If anything is going on with her students, that takes precedence over getting home before dinner. She can always heat up a pizza from the freezer if she gets home too late to cook.
The two students glance at each other. The taller one shrugs and then the other one starts talking. “We’re just bored, Miss Luthor. And my mom has her book club over today and we don’t want to go there because they always ask weird questions. And Jude---” the student points at their friend--- “just had a baby brother so there’s only crying in their house.”
Lena quickly takes in the information and gauges the situation. It sounds like the students are both safe at home but have, hopefully, temporary reasons for not wanting to be there right now. She bobs her head in understanding. There were times she didn’t really want to be home either as a teen. Although she sought refuge in the library instead of teachers’ classrooms.
“So, you don’t want to go home, but you can’t stay here all day. I have work to get done.”
“We know,” Jude says. “Ime and I just thought maybe you had a fun project for us, like a fun experiment we can do.”
Lena thinks deep for a moment. “I don’t have any projects lying around right now,” she tells them, “but you could always do some interesting research around the school if you want to.”
That seems to pique the students’ interest, so Lena gives them a few simple suggestions to work with.
“You could look at the flora and fauna around the school, map out which plants grow where and which animals you find. Or you could do population research among your peers. Ask their opinions on something and see what they think. For example, see how popular something is or whether specific factors influence answers they give, like asking in a specific place or at a time of day.”
At the second suggestion, the two share a look, and before Lena can say more, they’ve both slung their bag over their shoulder and are leaving with a brief bye.
“Thanks Miss Luthor,” Jude tells her, already halfway out the door.
“Good luck with grading!” Ime leaves with a nonchalant wave.
The two giggle conspiratorially but Lena decides that they are no longer her problem and she can get to her mountain of grading now. Left alone in her classroom at last, Lena shakes this last interaction with her students off and pulls out the first stack of tests to grade.
The pile next to Lena is only slowly diminishing, and not for the first time this afternoon she has to shake a cramping ache from her wrist and fingers. She stretches her back and arms and gets up to walk to the teachers’ lounge to get something to drink so she has an excuse to get away from her desk and take a very short walk. It is that time of year when many teachers find themselves grading tests and papers after class so Lena meets a few coworkers and has very brief conversations about how today was, the amount of grading they all have to do and about the weather.
When she returns, she notices her co-worker Kara in the room across from hers is still working through a pile of papers herself and she greets her with an encouraging nod when her colleague looks up. Kara sends her a cheery wave and turns back to her work as Lena enters her own classroom and settles back down in her chair, ready for more grading.
She works her way through one test. Two. Three. Four. Ten. Twenty.
Halfway through the twenty-fifth test, she puts her red pen to the paper to correct a student’s answer, but no red appears on the page. She tries again but all her pen leaves behind is a slight dent in the paper. It is out of ink.
Lena sighs.
She had just gotten comfortable and was finally making some decent progress grading. In a futile attempt to bring life to her dead pen, she shakes it and tries writing on the sole of her shoe. But neither works. The pen is really and truly empty. Not another letter will flow from it.
Resigned, Lena leans back to check her desk drawers but there are no new red pens in there. Lena does find a glittery gel pen that she cannot remember ever having seen before. And she finds a big stack of print outs from past homework assignments. Assignments she should really throw away.
With that in mind she takes out the papers and puts the stack in the last free spot on her desk as a reminder to bin them later.
But she still does not have a pen and she is still sitting far too comfortably to get up and do something. So instead of just getting over it, Lena looks around her classroom and out the open door. In the room opposite hers, she notices Kara, who is too still working. Only, Kara has headphones on and her head is bobbing quietly along to music Lena cannot hear.
Lena tries to wave to get Kara’s attention.
Kara is too focussed on her work to notice. Dejected, Lena turns back to her desk. But before she can despair for too long about having to get up, her eye once more catches the stack of old print outs, and an idea grows inside her brain. And it is probably because of the long she has had that makes her not have the impulse control to stop this wild idea.
Thoughtlessly, her hands take a piece of paper from the scrap pile and, by sheer muscle memory, they fold the sheet into a paper airplane.
“Do you have a spare red pen?” Lena writes on its right wing before gripping its body between index finger and thumb and, with an expert flick of the wrist, she tosses it onto Kara’s desk where it lands exactly on the paper Kara was reading. It is almost like fate or luck or some entity meant for that to happen. Only Lena doesn’t believe in any of those, so to her it has just happened by chance.
When the paper lands, Kara startles the slightest bit from its appearance. Lena can see her do a double take before picking up the airplane and reading the message on its wing. She looks to the right to find Lena looking back at her with an innocent smile. Lena sends her a small wave and holds up the bag with the last few marshmallows from her class as a motivator. She knows how much Kara loves food.
The promise of marshmallows spurs Kara into action and she starts going through her own desk drawers. While Lena waits, she finds her hands moving to get a second piece of paper and folding it into another perfect airplane. Now that she has started folding them, she finds it difficult to stop. It brings her back to her childhood of spending hours on end perfecting her paper plane folding technique in hopes of defeating Lex at their regular competitions in the garden.
Lena doesn’t get the chance to completely lose herself in her memories. A loud clack brings her back to a red pen that has hit the side of desk and is now waiting on the floor, ready for her to pick it up. She leans down and takes the pen, shouting, “Thank you!” to Kara, who pretends she can’t hear Lena and gestures to her mouth in a ‘sims is hungry’ kind of motion to signal to Lena that the only thanks she will accept is one in the form of marshmallows.
Lena writes “Thank you” on the wing of her second airplane and tosses it over to Kara, immediately followed by the bag of leftover sweets.
With a small but excited squeal, Kara catches the bag and puts a marshmallow in her mouth, sending Lena a thumbs up and big smile in appreciation. In the meantime, Lena finds herself folding a third paper airplane, but then catches herself doing it and pushes the stack of papers away slightly so she can focus on her work again.
The pen is perfect and finally, she finishes the comment she wanted to write all along. It gives her a small sense of accomplishment. She still has much left to grade, but it all seems more achievable now.
However, Lena doesn’t get far before she gets distracted again. This time by the small thud of something light hitting her desk. It’s a crumpled up piece of paper. She raises an eyebrow at it before she looks up to see where it’s coming from. Her eyes fall on a sheepishly grinning Kara. Curiously, Lena picks up the prop of paper carefully peels at its folds to open it.
“Do you have more marshmallows?” is written on the page.
With a warm laugh, Lena decides to use the last airplane she had already folded and writes, “No” on it in big letters. Slightly smaller and below it, she adds, “Do you want a lesson on folding paper planes?”
Gracefully, the plane glides through the air and finds its way to Kara’s room. Kara plucks it from the air, pouting at Lena when she reads the reply.
“Sorry,” Lena mouths to her with an apologetic shrug.
Kara turns back to her desk, sifting through some of her papers only for her to turn to one of Lena’s planes and pick that up instead. She writes a message on the empty wing and sends it flying back to Lena. It lands at the foot of Lena’s chair and she leans over to pick it up and reads the message.
“Please, teach me! I will bring snacks.”
Lena can’t help laughing again and folds another airplane to send back to Kara proposing to set a date after all the grading is done and the school year has settled back into its usual pace.
They send paper airplanes back and forth for a while in between work until their desks and the floors are littered with paper airplanes and the bulk of tests and papers are graded. With her last airplane, Kara urges Lena to go home and have dinner and some time to relax and tomorrow they can both finish their grading, this time sitting in the same room so they can chat properly.
It’s an offer Lena cannot resist, so she packs her things and leaves the building with Kara.