Jon's legs were walking with practically a mind of their own after that. With his brain still a whirlwind of conflicting emotions after what had just happened with not-Karyn and not-Karyn, there wasn't any space in there to perceive things like "where he was going" or "what he was doing"; it was all muscle memory that guided him down the familiar path through familiar corridors to the familiar homeroom, and toward his desk.
"... Can I help you?"
Someone was sitting at his desk. Jon snapped out of it and looked up. That wasn't his homeroom teacher, who just spoke to him: it was some other teacher.
Of course it's some other teacher. Duh, her life probably got switched too!
"You're in the wrong class, Mr. Gibson. Do you need something?"
"No, no," Jon smacked his own forehead theatrically, "I'm sorry, I think my brain's still in Spring Break mode. Can I get a pass to go to my proper one?"
The teacher rolled her eyes and wrote a quick slip. She made especial note of the time. "Don't get caught with this too late, Mr. Gibson," she admonished, and let him go.
As soon as he was out in the hall and had a moment to walk, Jon checked his class schedule. All the classes were the same and in the same order, but all the teachers were different, and so were most of the classrooms; some of them he recognized as being for other teachers of the same subjects before the swap. He'd probably end up with a fresh new set of classmates per class too, he realized. One more knock-on of the mass life-swap.
Whatever. They're all the same content in all the same curricula, right? And I have some assurance that things won't have changed too much. I can totally wing it for this change, at least, and maybe figure out what I'm gonna do about the two halves of Karyn instead.
Jon figured it was nothing interesting. Jon could hardly have been more wrong.
Yes, all the new teachers were teaching the same subjects according to same district guidelines as before, now lived in more or less the same slots he'd mentally fit them into, but it turns out he'd severely underestimated the impact a single teacher's unique personal touch could have on their classroom and teachings. Case in point: his first period Math Class, after homeroom.
His old teacher Mr. Smith was a laid-back 30-something guy that kept a very chill, non-stressful (by math standards) atmosphere in his classroom. He was fond of sharing puzzling brain-teasers with the students for extra credit and was chronically behind the curriculum schedule by at least a week. Mrs. Wagner, on the other hand, had to have aged for at least 60 hard years, and not only was she NOT behind schedule by a fortnight, she was apparently teaching AHEAD of schedule, and poor Jon had effectively missed 3 weeks worth of math curriculum in one night. He found out very quickly that Mrs. Wagner ran a very tight ship with a wrinkly iron fist, and delighted in making Maths as hard as it possibly could be on her students. If he didn't have his homework etc. done already thanks to the wish's retroactivity he would have been in serious trouble right out the gate.
It didn't stop there. History class, in seemingly direct contradiction to the wording of his wish, somehow got much MORE interesting: his old history teacher was an old lunatic that seemed to think of his job as a podium from which to proselytize his politics in his student's general direction, but the new girl? She was approaching History-teaching like weaving a narrative, an actually interesting saga of the adventures of George Washington-Senpai and Alex Hamilton-Chan (that wasn't a figure of speech, she had actually called said founding fathers by those names). Gym class saw Coach Barry's drill-instructor-aspirant hollering at students be replaced with Coach Allen's not giving half a damn about the students, and by English class Jon was mentally exhausted, trying to keep track of the changes. They were on the poetry unit, and the elderly old man that was apparently his English teacher now had a lecture voice like soothing silky tea. At one point he was reading a sonnet, and that put Jon to sleep as soundly as a lullaby. He had to be woken up for lunch.
Lunch. Next period was lunch.
Fuck, that meant he was going to have to deal with Karyn-Nicole and Nicole-Karyn again already!
