September 2, 2005
Jim Halpert groaned. Don’t get him wrong- he was excited to start his job. Career, actually, though that word had always kind of scared him. He was just going to miss summer. He had done basically nothing for the three months since he graduated. Mark and his other friends had started their jobs, and Jim’s job was to be there waiting for them when the weekend started, and otherwise be an absolute bum. It was the kind of existence that made him stress-free and without a care in the world, except that he sort of knew that living such a life at twenty-two years old was somewhat childish. But it was his last summer as a free man. Except that he was going to be a teacher and would thus still get his summers off. But still, it would be different after he started his job. Or career.
Jim got out of his Toyota Corolla and entered West Scranton High School. He had called Mr. Scott, the principal, three times last week to figure out what he needed to do when he got here, but had never actually spoken to him on the phone, each time leaving a message asking what time he needed to come in and whom he needed to ask for. Each time Michael called back, Jim let it go to voicemail, and then instantly regretted doing so, although it was probably better than having to actually speak with Michael. He couldn’t believe this guy was first of all, his new boss, and second of all a high school principal. The first time Michael called back, the message he left said, “Jimbag. Jimbo. Jimaroni. This is your new friend, Michael, returning your call. I’m just chillin’ right now, ya know, enjoying the summer tryin’ to keep all the ladies off me. Gimme a holla later to tell me what you’re doing.” That message answered none of his questions and was just kind of…weird. The next message, Michael spoke in a weird voice and said, “Fat Halpert. Fat Halpert. This is Michael again. Just callin’ ya back. Phone tag- smack! You’re it. Later.” Again, just creepy. The third message, Michael said, “Can’t wait to see you in a couple days, Jimsock. I guess it will be on Tuesday. Holla!” At least that one told him to come on Tuesday.
So Jim walked in at 8:00, not wanting to be late, and made his way to the principal’s office. As he walked in, he stopped at the door as he noticed the secretary, and his breathing stopped. She. Was. Gorgeous. And not the same person he had met in March. She wasn’t really glammed up like some girls were, but she had that understated, natural beauty that so few people were truly blessed with. Her dress was professional-like, with a striped button-down and a cardigan, but she still looked absolutely beautiful. She had curly hair pinned up in a barrette and a gold chain around her neck. He was in love.
“Um…hi,” he said to her, as he walked up to her desk.
“Hi,” she said sweetly, smiling at him.
What a smile, Jim thought. She could light up a town with that. “Um, I’m the new English teacher, and I think I need to speak with Mr. Scott.”
“Oh. Michael won’t be in probably for…” she looked up at the clock, “a couple of hours. It’s his summer break and he has to ‘get his beauty sleep for the ladies,’” she told him, as she made air quotes around the end of the sentence.
“Wow,” said Jim. He instantly admired her contempt for her boss, as he had grown to feel the same, though he had only had one conversation with him. “Do you know… I mean… do you have any idea what I should do until he gets here? I mean… it’s my first day as a teacher and I don’t really know…”
“Oh, yeah,” she interrupted his rambling. “Angela Martin is the head of the English department; I’ll just take you to see her. She’ll know what to do.”
“Thanks,” he smiled at her.
She got up and walked to the door. “C’mon.”
They had walked down the hall for a minute or so when Jim said, “So I’m Jim, by the way. Jim Halpert.”
“Pam Beesly,” she said, sticking out her hand to shake his. He noticed that it fit perfectly in his.
“So did you just start, or…”
“No, I’ve worked her for three years, I guess. When Mr. Truck retired, Michael decided to keep me on. Said I would do a great job as ‘the face of the school,’ whatever that means.”
Jim cringed a bit; he was starting to realize that maybe his boss was a creep. Though, if his boss had any sense, he wouldn’t have hired him after he heard about Jim’s antics, so maybe it wasn’t all that bad. “Oh. It’s just that I didn’t see you when I came to interview last March, so I figured…”
“Yeah. I was pretty sick for a couple of weeks last spring, so they had someone come in and cover for me. I missed most of the interviews for your job.”
“How many people did they actually interview?”
“Um, I’m not sure. I think about ten. Michael told me all of them were too ‘buttoned up’ except for the guy he hired who was hilarious.” She paused. “I was actually kind of scared to meet you when Michael said that.”
Jim chuckled and looked at her. She was grinning up at him. “Yeah, I think I would be, too, actually. But I don’t think I’m too scary.”
“Me neither. But what did you say to him in your interview?”
Well, here’s where she finds out how pathetic I am. “Um, do you know Dwight?”
“Schrute? Unfortunately.”
“Yeah. Well, he was in my high school class here at West Scranton. And I used to kind of play pranks on him and stuff. And Dwight told Michael all about them, and then a couple of the senior pranks I pulled, and Michael thought there were awesome. I actually kind of thought I was done for, but Michael said I was just what the school needed.”
“What kind of pranks?” she asked curiously.
“Well, I don’t know all of what Dwight told Michael, but I used to just mess with his locker and stuff. Like one time I popped a stink bomb in it and it smelled for like a week and everyone was pretty mad at him. I convinced everyone it was some kind of beet odor from his beet farm, and that got him even angrier. And one time, I got a hold of his car keys out of his book bag while we were in gym class and moved his car to a shopping center down the road so that when he went to drive home at the end of the day, his car was gone. And one time I switched out his P.E. uniform with a girl’s uniform. I don’t know, stuff like that.”
When he finished, he looked over at her. She was looking at the ground and laughing with her arms wrapped around herself. He thought it was adorable.
“Wow,” she finally said. “I really wish I could’ve seen Dwight’s reaction to all of that.”
“Well, if you’ve spent any time with him, I’m sure you can guess what happened. He always ran to tell Mr. Truck. Which was especially funny when he was in the girls’ P.E. uniform. I never could figure out why he kept that on, or never realized it didn’t fit him, but it’s Dwight, and I gave up trying to explain his actions years ago.”
She laughed out loud, and it was like music to his ears. “So that’s what Dwight told Michael that made him hire you?”
“I actually don’t know what Dwight told Michael, but the thing that Michael thought was the coolest was when I had Mr. Truck’s car towed to the football field one day.”
“What? Why would Michael think a prank on the principal was hilarious? He’s the principal now.”
“Yeah, that was what had me so baffled. But, it’s Michael, so…”
“Yeah,” she said.
Things got quiet, then, as they walked down the halls. Soon, they arrived at their destination. “Angela?” Pam said as she knocked on a classroom door.
“Yes?” said Angela coldly. Angela was a short, skinny blonde woman who was sitting at her desk dressed in a gray sweater over a white collared shirt buttoned all the way up. The way she answered Pam coupled with the way she was dressed made Jim shiver a bit.
“This is Jim Halpert. He’s the new English teacher.”
“Very well,” Angela said, with almost no emotion. “I’ll take care of him. You may go, now.”
“Okay, um, bye, Jim.”
“Bye, Pam.”
Author's Chapter Notes:
Skipped forward here a bit. We meet a couple more familiar faces in this chapter.
Chapter End Notes:
A/N: I’ve decided to split up Jim’s first day a bit for length reasons. And I imagined that school begins mid-September. Decreases the amount of time I have to cover, and it helps me with the timeline a bit.
