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"I don't think you'll find the apical complex of a shoot on the inside of your eyelids, kiddo."

Not that this particular assignment required anyone to do much searching anyway, everything was spelled out in plain English with convenient diagrams on the front page of the handout. Several students had noticed this early on in the class and had proceeded to fill in the answers before it had even started, flipping back and forth between the information and the question sheet, but Dr. Westerman wasn't letting his class get off that easy. He was still making the class go through the whole procedure, making cuttings of plants and squinting at the pre-prepared microscope slides that were full of indistinguishable squiggly lines and blobs when they were put into focus.

He was making his rounds around the class, prodding thumb-twiddlers with questions about plant anatomy they should know the answers to without shuffling through their handouts if they'd finished everything and had nothing better to do -- asked them what sense they could make of the slides, providing some assistance handling the equipment where necessary. It was only inevitable that he'd eventually make his way to the table Calintha Johnson was fighting to not nod off at.

Dr. Westerman's hand was flat on an unoccupied part of the table, leaning over good-naturedly to meet Calintha's persistently droopy eyes. He didn't seem too miffed, but he never really was by class interruptions or lackluster student perfomance. At the very least, he was wearing his usual disarmingly charming smirk as he spoke: "How about you stop by my office after we're all wrapped up, here, and I can promise you you'll come out of it with all your fingers and toes intact."

The look her lab partner gave Calintha at her protest wasn't a mirror image of the one Dr. Westerman was giving her, but there was still the smallest sense of disapproval at the change in his expression: a brow was lifted just the slightest bit as if he were saying yes, and? and his gaze briefly alighted on the somewhat mangled tulip bloom splayed forlornly some inches away from the girl's arm.

After assuring her he'd get a note passed to her match teacher, though, he quizzed her partner for a few moments and then left their table, whistling his way up to the whiteboard to erase the notes and instructions he left there to prepare it for the next class.

Dr. Westerman's office had belonged to another biology teacher before he had taken it over, and it was an interesting game of Spot the Differences to look at before he sauntered his way in: there was still the handful of science-joke comics taped to the door, although they'd been replaced with ones more according to Perry's preference; the desk was still the same desk and the chairs still the same chairs. There was a little ceramic tortoise loyally guarding his computer monitor, and -- a small, pastel-accented box from Dippin' Donuts on the far corner.

"Glad you could make it, Cali, go on, have a seat," said Perry good-naturedly, as he made his way over to his own chair. He had a deep, slightly gravelly voice, not entirely unpleasant to listen to, with a distinctive Chicago accent. As he sat he turned his swivel chair around so he was leaning back a bit and regarding Calintha sideways, inviting her to grab a doughnut with a little nudge of the box before setting his forearm down along his desk. "How're things going for you?"

"It's a Galapagos tortoise," the teacher explained, briefly reaching over to lift the figurine up in the air for a brief second before setting it back on the desk again. "Well, this guy's an overpriced trinket from a museum gift shop, but you get the idea. Anyway."

Dr. Wes snagged the edge of the doughnut box with a hooked finger and drew it closer to his side of the desk, picking out a chocolate glazed one for himself. "You say you've been alright," he said, gesticulating a bit with the pastry -- he was still wearing his charming, easygoing smirk as he spoke, so at the very least he was keeping up a pleasant demeanor -- "but your perfomance in class says otherwise. I say this because I know you can do better than how you've been doing lately, kiddo, it's not like you to hold out on me like this."

His expression flatlined just a bit at this, and he paused to took a healthy bite out of his doughnut. "Refresh my memory, don't you got some kind of different arrangement for your living sitch?"

"An apartment," he parroted, slowly, chewing over the thought at the same time as chewing over his late, unhealthy lunch. Perry's eyes narrowed a bit in thought and he was silent for a few moments, obviously weighing in all the implications of a high school girl living away from her parents. Whatever he may have been able to guess wasn't quite clear, but what was clear was that he found the situation a little worrisome.

He turned his gaze back to Calintha -- his eyes were a very pale grey, almost as if she were looking at them through frosted glass -- and, allowing another smile to nudge its way into his features, he asked, "You living there all by yourself right now? That ain't easy, lemme tell ya."

82 plants -- Perry gave a low whistle at that, his face lighting up a little bit with genuine interest. "Now that's gotta be sight for when your landlord stops by. I bet the inside of your place looks like that once scene from Jumanji," he said, conversationally. "You ever seen? I got a kid cousin living around here who used to be nuts for that movie, he's a good kid."

Dr. Westerman polished off his doughnut, fished around the box for another only to decide against it, closing it and pushing it back to the corner of his desk space. "I don't got any plants at home myself aside from the ones renting space in my refrigerator," he went on, kicking a little at the floor to move his swivel chair so he was facing the desk straight on. From there he rested his forearms on the desk, one in front of the other, leaning forward just a little bit. "But it sounds like you got a pretty full plate for someone still in high school. You got a schedule put together for all this stuff, or are you improvising as you go like most kids your age?"

Dr. Westerman had only started teaching at Meadowview in January, but he'd gotten wind of the Barren Pines survivors fairly quickly, within the list of kids to keep an eye on. Allegedly they'd all been drugged so badly none of the lot of them had been able to see straight through the entire ordeal, all of them gifted kids who had lost an entire year of their lives to one of the sickest operations he'd ever heard of. Sometimes they got tensed up with unwarranted bouts of anxiety in the middle of class, like they were hearing nails on a chalkboard no one else was noticing.

Probably withdrawal symptoms from whatever the hell they'd been on.

And this one was living alone -- Perry's smile faltered just a tiny bit, but he managed to put it back up quickly enough.

"Careful, kiddo, someone outside might think we're cutting a deal for some pot," he joked good-naturedly. "I guess I'm more of an animal person than a plant person, I got more skulls at home, and then there's Lady Peppermint Stripe and My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Lady's my dog, she's a real sweetheart." His Ex, however, went on unexplained for the moment.

Most of the pitches and dips in Calintha's expression had gone, seemingly, totally unnoticed by her teacher, which matched up fairly well with how he carried himself in class: he missed a lot, and that made it a favorite class in which to pass notes and sneak text messages under the tables. On the flip side of the coin, sometimes he had a tendency to run through his lectures without noticing how well people were following what he was saying. His students had had to quickly learn to more or less shout at him to stop if they needed a better explanation on something.

He did, however, catch the clear look of confusion she was giving him at his choice of naming, so he grinned and went on, "I've been thinking of bringing my Ex up here for a little show and tell somewhere down the line. She's a real fun gal, you just gotta be careful handling her so she don't bust your thumbs open."

This was not helpful, and in fact sounded a little disturbing.

"My vote's for you getting the cat if you've been thinking about it." Perry reached back over to his box and picked out a cruller, and took a moment to take a chunk out of it. "Cats aren't my number one pick, personally, but it sounds a hell of a lot better than being stuck all by your lonesome when you're not at school or work or something." Then he made eye contact again -- ah, there was the point.