001. spanish with señor chang

episode one, season one

MARY HAD ZERO CLUE why she had made the executive desicion to sign up Spanish One class. Growing up in a Puerto Rican family, the woman had started speaking Spanish before she could even walk. Now, she was sitting in Señor Chang's, the only Spanish teacher at Greendale, class waiting for the bell to ring and start the twenty-year-olds personal nightmare. Mary could have easily picked Spanish Three or Four. Her reasoning behind the choice of the class was that it would be an extremely easy A. Mary knew practically every word in Spanish; there is no way she wouldn't be able to pass.

Mary had gotten there five minutes before the bell rang, giving her time to pick the seat furthest away from people. The woman's logic was that she was there to get a degree, and then get the hell out of there with absolutely zero friends. Mary loved being alone; people bothered the hell out of her.

She walked down the aisle, past a blonde woman, scribbling down notes, a man staring at that said woman with a lovesick look in his eyes, an old guy checking out a woman in her mid-thirties at least, and a man with stars shaved into his sideburns.

She stopped in her tracks, staring down at the man in the seat below her. The pencil in his hand stopped mid 'Monday' as he drew his eyes up off the paper and onto the woman above him.

"You look stupid," Mary stated before continuing her way down the aisle, the corners of her lips tugging ever so slightly upwards as she listened to Starburns make a noise of protest. It was fair, the man did look stupid, with his weird vest and even weirder sideburns.

The small woman slammed down in the chair connected to the desk, which was luckily placed all the way in the back corner. The rest of the class was on her left, and on her right, a wooden bookshelf filled with textbooks, a window covered with a thin layer of dust, and a cabinet with a couple of colorful sombreros were thrown together to give the appearance of a classroom.

"Hi. I'm Abed. I'm sitting here." A man, suddenly standing up next to Mary, announced.

She turned her head up to look at the sudden voice, her eyes falling on a skinny, Indian man. He was tall, a brown bag was slung over his shoulder, and over a graphic tee, he had a cardigan thrown on. He just screamed 'nerd' to Mary. Definitely not someone she would ever want to be friends with. That being, she needed to want friends first.

"Okay." She said, adverting her attention away from the man, and back to the eraser in front of her that she was currently stabbing over and over again with her pen.

"What are you doing?" Abed questioned as he stared down at her mutilated eraser.

"Directing a movie. What does it look like?" Mary shot back, not even bothering to look up at Abed.

"It looks like you're stabbing an eraser. You direct movies too? I love directing. It's a dream for me. I just have to follow in my dad's footsteps, which is running our family falafel restaurant, which he's been running for over thirty years, so I don't follow filming. I'm only enrolled here to take classes to help the restaurant. Languages are important. I already know a bit of Spanish, but just the basics."

Mary momentarily stopped her assault on the pink eraser, turning her gaze up to Abed with a mixed look of disgust and confusion on her face. Her suspicions were way off. Abed wasn't weird. Mary was pretty sure Abed was from a whole different planet. Who comes up to a random stranger and practically spilled their life stories upon them? This Abed character apparently did.

"Just push your dad down the stairs, blame your neighbors, and then get millions of dollars suing them. Then you can make a cool documentary about his sad, stupid, boring life leading up to his untimely death, become rich, and run away and start your own fun waffle or whatever business." Mary said with a shrug as she turned back to her eraser in front of her.

Abed nodded once or twice before shrugging and going right back to his notebook. Five minutes later, a loud and annoying ding on the loudspeakers gained all student's attention as they turned and waited for the arrival of Ben Chang.

"Buenos Dias, losers. I am Señor Chang. I don't want a word out of anyone. You speak, you fail." The man said, spinning both pointer fingers in a circular motion before dropping them.

Silently, the class watched as Chang made his way around his desk and pulled out a sombrero, sliding it onto his head. He sucked in a breath as he looked around aimlessly, taking in the classroom as a whole.

"Welcome, young grasshoppers, to Spanish One. In this class, you will learn to speak the language of the Gods. I will be your main God. Like Jesus. Except Korean."

"Aren't you Chinese?" Mary spoke up from her seat. Her friend, Thomas Jones, had been in this class last year. Not needing to teach Mary Spanish or give her any answers to the tests, the last thing he could gift her with was the knowledge of the borderline psychopath, Ben Chang.

He was the only Spanish teacher at Greendale College. And boy did this man get talked a lot about by students. Things like him kicking a student out all because he coughed during his speech about Beyonce's Lemonade or the time he drank in front of the class and then offered the flask to the students. Greendale couldn't afford to fire him, so by some weird and twisted luck, Benjaman Chang stayed.

Chang let out a noise that sounded like a chuckle mixed with an exaggerated sigh. He glanced around the room,

"I'm sorry, what'd you say?" Now, Chang had positioned himself in front of Mary's face. Both hands were placed on each side of her desk; his body bent so he was eye to eye with the twenty-year-old student.

Silence fell across the classroom as the two adults stared down each other, waiting for the other one to speak. Mary never gave in; and she definitely wasn't backing down to some 30-year-old burnt-out loser who taught Spanish at a community college.

Leaning closer to her face, Chang clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth and nodded his head slowly. "I don't think you know who you are but-"

"Sal de mi cara antes de te pego." (Get out of my face before I hit you) Mary mumbled quietly, her words cutting his off. She slowly looked up, locking eyes with Chang.

He seemed to be taken aback, sucking in a quick breath between his teeth. Both were just silently staring at the other, waiting for the other to break; the classroom so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Students glanced at each other; everyone trying to build a reaction on how the other's were acting. Confusion quickly spread like a wildfire amongst the peers as they tried to figure out what the hell had just happened.

"Okay...okay," Chang said simply, giving her a curt nod before slowly backing up. Everyone's eyes were on him, even if they had absolutely no clue what words the two had just exchanged. Chang leaned his hand against his desk, back towards the students and face towards the chalkboard. "Class dismissed." He said in such a hushed tone, no one moved. That is until he slammed his palm against the wood, screaming the words again.

A couple of students in the front of the classroom hesitantly got up, causing a chain reaction throughout the classroom. After the first couple of students stood up, the rest followed and everyone made their way towards the door.

"Wow," A girl said, suddenly standing next to Mary. She was wearing a green cardigan over a blue dress, and half of her hair was neatly pinned up. The rest of the long, chocolate brown locks fell right below her shoulders; dancing as she turned her head to lock eyes with Mary. "What'd you say to him?"

Squinting her eyes, Mary brought her finger up to her mouth making a gagging noise as she looked the girl up and down. The girl's head snapped down to look at her outfit, making a small, yet dramatic gasp.

And with a contempt smile, Mary tightened the grip on her backpack and left the Spanish classroom. No new friends, people were already weary of her, and she got the teacher to hate her. Already successful on her first day at Greendale.

[ three hours later, mary's dorm ]

Shoving another handful of popcorn in her mouth as she watched the pictures change on her television. Currently, she was watching Forrest Gump, one of her favorite horribly made movies. She had to be halfway through the movie before her phone buzzed, unfortunately getting her attention. Pausing the movie, a sigh escaped Mary's lips and her hand was reaching for the small, light-up box.

Pressing the on button, Abed's name came up as a text message notification. Shoot. She forgot she had given her his number. And this time she had messed up and given him her actual number. Usually, she was handing out the number to the senior center down the road.

ABED
Hello, it's me! Abed. Do you want to come to a Spanish Study group later today? It's run by someone I know. He's in our Spanish class. Jeff Winger. Britta Perry said he wanted to invite us and just didn't have any time.
-Abed

MARY
not really

ABED
For me?
-Abed

MARY
fine
only because people cant say no to you
it doesnt mean were friends
stop signing your name it's a text

ABED
Okay. See you soon.
-Abed

Two hours later, Mary found herself walking towards Greendale's one (and only) study room. Study room F was the only functioning room the students had to study in. Other rooms had hanging lights, broken chairs, practically anything bad you could think of. Placed in the middle of the library, the study room was a hotbed for students and clubs to hang out. It also became the place with the highest fight rates throughout the whole school.

Mary made her way through the computer area of the library, shoving the cold metal on the glass door, stepping into the study room with one stiff and angry move.

"Hey, Mary, welcome. Jeff just stepped out but he said he should be back soon. Britta went to the bathroom, but other than that we're all here." Abed said as he pointed to two empty chairs next to the table. "You can sit there. Right between Annie and Jeff."

Mary's eyes followed Abed's finger to the seat, continuing their way to fall on the girl who would be sitting next to her. It was the same, fashion blind woman who had tried talking to her before. 

This "Annie" girl was staring at Mary with an angry look plastered on her face. Weirdly enough, Annie was still mad from the incident in Spanish class.

"Hm. I didn't know we invited anyone and everyone."

"I mean, have you seen Thomas and Shirley over here?" The older guy asked, making a gesture with his thumb to the black man who sat next to him.

"It's Troy," He said with a quick glance to Pierce who just shrugged.

"Same thing. Troy-Thomas-Tyrone. They're all the same." Pierce said with a dismissive shake of his hand.

"Ah! That is so racist! And besides the point." Annie said as she shook her head and her left hand; her body swiveling in her chair to face Mary once again. "Why are you even here? Can't you speak Spanish? I mean obviously, you can speak some the way you disrespected Señor Chang like that."

"Tu atuendo no respetó mis ojos." (Your outfit disrespected my eyes) Mary said with an emotionless look on her face as she and Annie stared at each other; waiting for the other one to back down. "And Abed invited me. If you gotta problem, talk to him, pencil pusher."

Annie let out another high pitched gasp, her back falling flush against the chair. Annie and Mary just stared at each other just waiting for the other one to give up. Mary already didn't like her. An outgoing, goody two shoes, who holds everyone to her high standards. The complete opposite of who Mary was.

Abed titled his head between the two women, confused by the interactions. "Are we missing something?"

"Annie is. A lack of fashion sense."

"Okay! Why don't we relax? Try to study a bit?" Shirley said, trying to dull the arguing, in a high pitched tone that people used when talking to dogs or small children.

Even though Shirley's voice pushed Mary's annoyance to another level, she gave in and sat down. This was not going how she wanted it to.

Everyone glanced at each other, waiting for someone to take charge and do something. Just as Pierce was about to open his mouth, the door swung open, and in walked who Mary assumed was Jeff Winger. He gave a curt nod to everyone as he advanced to his chair, pulling it out and sitting down.

"All right. Look at this crew! All ready to study," Jeff smiled, dragging out both 'alls', causing everyone to do their own thing to show they were in agreement with his statement; Mary just continued to sit there silently as she stared at Jeff. He couldn't be serious. This group couldn't be dumber; all Jeff Winger did in Spanish was sit and play Candy Crush on his phone and he had a study group?

"But," Jeff began to trail off, immediately confirming Mary's suspicions. Jeff was stalling so he wouldn't have to do anything. Smart. "Who studies with strangers, right? We're all in the same class and we don't even know each other, my name is Jeff."

"Jeff, it's a pleasure, my name is Pierre Hawthorne, and yes, that Hawthorne as in Hawthorne Wipes, the award-winning moist towelette." The old guy said with pride lacing his voice

"Insane," Mary mumbled as she rolled her eyes.

"I was just going to ask," Jeff added with a nod. Even though their remarks were painfully obvious sarcasm, Pierce seemed to take them as compliments.

Pierce held his hand out as if to say 'thank you', before he began speaking again. "I'm also a Rotarian and no stranger to public speaking so maybe I should make the introductions. You already know Britter. Brittles?"

"Britta."

"My apologies Britta, you also know A-bed, A-bed the Arab." Pierce continued as he motioned to Abed who was sitting next to Britta. "Is that inappropriate?"

"Sure," Abed responded monotony as he looked back at Pierce.

"We've got Roy, Roy, the wonder boy I call him, -"

"Troy," The man next to him cut off as he sent Pierce a look of annoyance.

"You are correct," Pierce then turned to look over at Mary, who was just waiting for his racist remark. "And then we have Martha. Mexican Martha."

"Die."

"I'm gonna assume that's not your name," Jeff said as he diverted his attention to the young woman next to him. "I'm Jeff." He held out his hands with the words.

Mary didn't answer Jeff, giving him a glance over before her eyes filled with disgust; turning her body so she faced the table instead of Jeff.

"Okay then," Jeff muttered under his breath.

"My name is Mary and I'm Satan's daughter and Pierce is going to hell." Mary shot back; the words barely affecting Pierce.

"Thank you, Martha, and then we have little princess Elizabeth, -"

"Annie."

Annie speaking brought Mary's eyes to her. Mary watched the smallest flick of anger pass over Annie's eyes, and a light rosy pink flush presents itself in her cheeks. Somehow Mary ended up staring for too long; long enough for Annie to lock eyes with Mary, a look of confusion replacing the once angry. For a split second they just stared at each other, but Mary was quick to look away. Thankfully before anything else can happen between them, Pierce begins running his mouth again.

"Very sorry, and finally this beautiful creature's name isShirley." Pierce finished as he nodded at the other woman next to him, smile big on his face.

"Is that even close?" Jeff questioned as he turned his head to look at Shirley. She hugged her bag tightly, glancing one at Pierce then to Jeff, before quickly nodding.

As if Pierce hadn't run out of anything worse to say, he began talking once more. "One does not forget Shirley, she is a very, very fascinating, very gorgeous young woman."

An awkward silence fell over the group as they looked between each other; trying to figure out what the hell to do or say.

Annie was the one to break the silence. "I'd like to know why I had to find out about this group on accident." She demanded, placing both hands on the table.

Mary couldn't even contain her eye roll as she scoffed, falling back in her chair. Annie took a second to look back at her at the sudden noise and movement.

While Annie was practically glaring at Mary, Abed gave a quick nod as he looked around the table. "Oh, this is getting way more like Breakfast Club, now."

"Why don't we get to studying-" Britta started, getting cut off by Jeff.

"You know, I've been a part of lots of study groups that have fallen apart due to unaddressed tension. Shouldn't someone address Annie'sconcern? Did we not invite her?" He asked, his hand gesturing over to Annie.

Shirley was the first to defend the group, making small movements of her hand to get her point across. "Well, Annie, sweetie, I guess it didn't occur to anyone-"

Annie began quickly talking over Shirley, offense lacing her voice as she oh so loudly voiced her concerns. "That's strange because I remember the first day of class, I asked if anyone was interested in starting a Spanish study group, and passed around a sign-up sheet, and when it came back, all that was on it was a drawing of a unicorn with a wiener instead of a horn, a guitar for a wiener and a dog emerging from its rear."

"Haha, yeah. I drew the dog." Mary chuckled as she nodded. When everyone turned to look at her she mumbled a "what", which everyone responded with a shrug.

"Yes, and then gathered behind my back for a study group!" Annie exclaimed as she threw her hands in the air.

Shirley was next to speak, obviously attempting to be nice to Annie, even if she was being dramatic. "Pumpkin, it's not behind your back, we just didn't think about you."

"Can we stop with the pumpkins and the sweeties? Being younger doesn't make me inferior, if anything, your age indicates you've made bad life decisions." Annie challenged, causing Mary to cringe and Shirley to bite back her tongue so she wouldn't say anything.

Jeff, obviously happy that his plan to divert the group's attention, pointed to Shirley. "Shirley has a response to that."

"No, I don't,"

Along with the others, Mary was quick to tell Shirley to go off on Annie. Thankfully, Shirley was taking this opportunity. This ought to be good.

"Well, I'm sure I've made bad life decisions," Shirley started in a calm sweet voice. "I decided to spend twenty years raising children and cleaning up after a man who ran out the door ten minutes after winning one-oh-two-point-seven thousand dollars ina radio contest. That was a bad decision. And maybe Annie's decisions will be better. And I think she should decide whether she wants to be considered a child or an adult, because a child gets pity, but not respect, and adults can get respect but they can also get grabbed by the hair and have their faces put through jukeboxes." She ended, more angrily than she started.

Mary watched Shirley in admiration, gaining a completely new level of respect for her. "Please adopt me."

"That's sweet-Oop!" Shirley's words were immediately cut short as Pierce ran a hand through her hair in a sad attempt at being comforting and affectionate.

Spinning his pen around his fingers and then pointing said pen to Pierce, Jeff began stalling yet again with a smirk. "Pierce, let's discuss this creepiness."

Pierce stared back at Jeff, a confused look now plastered on his face. He really saw no problem with what he was doing. Mary hated old people. They were all the same, and they always smelled just...weird.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Are you unaware Shirley finds your advances inappropriate?" Jeff questioned, getting a small, slow nod of agreement.

"Yeah. You're creepy and smell like mothballs. Why would Shirley even think about getting with you?" Mary asked with a slight tilt of her head.

"What? What advances? How am I being creepy?"

"You have been sexually harassing me since the first day of class!" Shirley exclaimed.

"'Sexually harassing?' That doesn't make sense, why would I "harass" someone that turns me on?"

This time it was Troy who spoke up. "Saying she turns you on is the harassment, buddy."

With Troy's sudden adding to the conversation, Pierce slammed his fist on the tabletop.

"I am a business leader and a community pillar and I don't take courting advice from a teenage boy!" He complained, everyone just letting out a sigh of annoyance at his words.

"Well this teenage boy is a quarterback and a prom king, so maybe you should!"

"You're not prom king anymore, Troy, this isn't Riverside High," Annie said with a sweet giggle.

Troy's body immediately froze, sending Annie a deeply confused look. "How did you know I went there?"

Annie stared back at him, trying to figure out if he was joking or not. When she realized he was serious, she quickly started talking in an offended tone yet again. "Because you're still wearing your stupid letter jacket and more importantly, I sat behind you in algebra!"

"Wait, are you the girl that got hooked on pills and dropped out? You're Little Annie Adderall!"

"And you're a stupid jock who lost his scholarship by dislocating both shoulders in a keg stand!"

And as if someone had just insulted his favorite thing in the world, Troy sucked in a breath and began raising his voice. "Keg flip! They're very hard to pull off."

"Don't talk to me."

"You don't know, I'm a legend."

This sent the whole group into arguing amongst each other, Mary joining in to throw a couple of insults around, which ended up being mostly directed towards Pierce. They argued for a solid minute until Abed was slamming his fist on the table, catching everyone's attention instantly.

"You know what I got for Christmas? It was a banner year at the Bender family. I got a carton of cigarettes. The old man grabbed me he said, "Hey, smoke up, Johnny." No, Dad, what about you?!'" He shouted, waving his fingers and getting up out of his chair. Once he finished his weird movie thing, he sat back down with a smile on his face.

The group stared at him with a wide range of emotions plastered on everyone's faces. Some were confused, some were worried, and some were downright shocked.

"Glitch in the system," Mary mumbled under her breath. Out of all the people to yell, Abed would've been her last guess. Hell, he would be everyone's last guess.

"Well," Jeff trailed off, trying to ease the silence and find something to say at the same time. "That was...from The Breakfast Club."

Abed looked happy that someone got his reference as he moved around in his chair, before blurting "Nobody puts Baby in the corner."

Jeff curtly nodded, glancing down at his lap when his phone started ringing. "That's Dirty Dancing-I have to take this. I'll be right back. But while I'm gone, you guys need to hash this stuff out. No stone unturned. Go."

And with that, Jeff walked out, causing World War Three to explode upon the remaining seven students.

While the group was going at it, they didn't notice Britta leave to go and get Jeff. Annie and Mary were currently going at it, throwing out words like bouncy balls.

"Why do you hate me, Mary! I did nothing to you!"

"Have you met yourself?! You are the walking definition of a spoiled, annoying, smart, jerk!"

Annie let out one of her high pitched gasps, going to say something when Jeff walked back in. He clapped his hands, quickly gaining everyone's attention.

"All right, everybody! I wanna say something. Sit down."

Shirley immediately retaliated, still fired up from the previous arguing. "Well, you don't have to yell. I don't appreciate your tone."

"You know what makes humans different from other animals?" Jeff questioned, ignoring Shirley. At this point, everyone had hesitantly sat back down in their seats, positioning their bodies so they could hear what Jeff had to say.

Without skipping a beat, Troy said "Feet".

Pierce scoffed. "No, no. No. Come on. Bears have feet."

"Lethal injections. Prison." Mary added, giving Troy a nod.

"Snake venom."

"Shut up, Pierce. I hope you get injected with snake venom."

Jeff shook his head at the childlike banter before continuing on with his speech. "We're the only species on earth that observes "Shark Week." Sharks don't even observe "Shark Week," but we do." Jeff said as he reached down, picking up a pencil from the table. "For the same reason, I can pick up this pencil, tell you its name is Steve and go like this,"

Not even giving everyone a minute to process what he had just said, Jeff effortlessly snapped the pencil in half. He held it up and moved it so everyone could see what he had just done.

The majority of the people let out a pained gasp or put up a small protest. However, Mary grinned and shook her fist, mumbling "pencil murder" as she did so.

"And part of you dies. Just a little bit on the inside. Because people can connect with anything," Jeff continued on as he threw the now broken pencil to Abed. "We can sympathize with a pencil, we can forgive a shark, and we can give Ben Affleck an Academy Award for screenwriting."

"Big mistake," Pierce said, causing the others to mumble in agreement.

"I agree with mothballs. It should've been the people who wrote The Wonder Pets. Real American heroes I say." Mary added.

Jeff kind of smiled at Mary, before directing his attention back to the group. "People can find the good in just about anything but themselves. Look at me. It's clear to all of you that I am awesome. But I can never admit that because that would make me an ass. But what I can do is see what makes Annie awesome. She's driven. We need driven people, or the lights go out and the ice cream melts. And Pierce. We need guys like Pierce. This guy has wisdom to offer."

The words almost made Mary laugh. Wisdom and Pierce should not even be fifty feet close to each other, let alone in the same sentence.

And just like that Pierce opened up his mouth to say something stupid. "The Dalai Lama and I-"

Not wanting to go down another Pierce rabbit hole, Jeff cut him off. "We should listen to him sometime! We wouldn't regret it. And Shirley. Shirley has earned our respect; not as a wife, not as a mother, but as a woman. And don't test her on that, because that thing about the jukebox was way too specific to be improvised. And Troy. Who cares if Troy thinks he's all that? Maybe he is. You think astronauts go to the moon because they hate oxygen? No. They're trying to impress their high school's prom king. Mary, you care about others and put your foot down when you need to. You don't know Shirley, but you acknowledge that she's gone through stuff. You're trying to put up walls, but when you let them down you can be pleasant to hang around. And Abed." Jeff said, swinging around to face Abed. When he heard his name be called, he placed down the two pieces of the broken pencil he was trying to fix.

Even though Jeff was already onto Abed, Mary kept staring at Jeff. His words just didn't sit right with her; she didn't know how to feel about them. A quick side glance was giving Mary a short view of Annie. She was watching Jeff talk with a look of admiration on her face. Like she all the sudden had the hope that this group could become something more. Or that could just be how Mary was feeling after Jeff's speech.

"-Abed's a shaman. You ask him to pass the salt, he gives you a bowl of soup, because you know what? Soup is better. Abed is better. You are all better than you think you are. You were just designed not to believe it when you hear it from yourself."

"Soup?" Pierce asked. His question was quickly covered up by Jeff, however.

"I want you to look to the person to your left. Sorry. Look at the person sitting next to you.
Yeah. I want you to extend to that person the same compassion that you extend to sharks, pencils, and Ben Affleck. I want you to say to that person, "I forgive you."

Jeff turned to Mary with a soft smile. "I forgive you."

"Okay," Mary said as she quickly spun back to face the group.

"Mary," A voice said next to her, catching her attention.

Her eyes trailed up and were immediately met with Annie's eyes. A sweet smile made its way onto her face, her hands folded neatly in front of her.

"I forgive you," She said simply. Yet what the words actually meant held a lot more raw emotion and actual feelings than anyone else's apologies.

Mary faltered for a second as she stared over at Annie. Eyes scanned eyes, and before she could stop herself she was mumbling an "I forgive you."

With content smiles, both girls turned back to face Jeff who was trying to get Pierce to say it to Troy.

When Pierce finally coughed the words up, Jeff picked the perfect ending for his heartwarming speech. "You've just stopped being a study group. You have become something unstoppable. I hereby pronounce you a community."

Shirley grinned and said something while the others clapped, proud of themselves. Pierce was the only one who just sat there, however. Mary just assumed he had died sitting up and didn't question it.

"This isn't like the Breakfast Club anymore. Uh, now it's like Stripes or Meatballs; anything with Bill Murray, really. Yeah." Abed commented as he looked around at his peers.

"I agree with Abed that tonight has been very special. And now if you'll excuse me, I have a dinner engagement with Britta." Jeff grinned as he stared at the blonde. And it all came right back to Mary. Jeff didn't care about them; he was just doing it to sleep with Britta. Disgusting.

A smirk was placed on Britta's face as she stood up and slung her bag over her shoulder. "I lied. Thanks for calming everyone down, but since you're not a Spanish tutor and just a lying creep who purposely upset everyone in an attempt to get with me, I'd appreciate it if you left and stopped wasting all of our time. Everybody ready?"

"Fine. And I'm happy to report that one of the benefits of being a lying creep is having all the answers to tomorrow's test. And I'm happy to share them with anyone whose time I've wasted more than they've wasted mine." With the words, Jeff held up an orange envelope covered in duct tape. It was the same thing he came back with after the phone call. And Mary thought he couldn't get more shallow.

"Uh, Jeff, if you have all the answers, why the hell did you start this study group?"

"I don't have a study group Pierce, I made it up."

"But what about the "look left" speech?" Annie asked. Mary watched as all the hope for new friendship drained from her eyes.

"Made it up! That's what I do, I make things up, and I got paid a lot of money to do it before I came to this school-shaped toilet. I was a lawyer."

Everyone collectively groaned in disgust. Of course, he was a lawyer. All Mary was getting from him was snake vibes. With a roll of his eyes, Jeff picks up the envelope and makes to leave.

Before Jeff's hand can push the door any farther, Abed's speaking up. "You know, I thought you were like Bill Murray in any of his films, but you're more like Michael Douglas in any of his films."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Jeff nodded as if thinking. Placing a hand on the door, he smiled and pointed to Abed. "Well, you have Asperger's."

Jeff left, and Abed immediately started talking. "What does that mean?"

A laugh drove everyone's attention to Troy. "Ass burgers."

While Mary laughed, Annie glared at the two of them as she went to defend Abed. "It's a serious disorder."

"Oh yeah. Annie's right Troy; it is serious." Shirley backed Annie up.

Pierce was the next to open up his mouth, throwing his hand in the air for added effect. "If it's so serious, why don't they call it meningitis?"

"Yeah."

"Pierce has got a point." Mary agreed. Something she would never see herself doing again.

"Ass burgers."

Mary joined in on the chuckling, mumbling 'ass burgers' to herself.

"Burger for your ass."

After talking amongst each other for a little bit, planning if they should actually meet to study, the rest of the group walked outside. Troy and Pierce had head out before them, something about Jeff. Mary's first guess was that they were going to get test answers. Mary thanked Annie for holding the door open with a smile, it immediately falling when she saw Jeff.

"Shouldn't you be rolling around on a bed covered in test answers?" Britta questioned as the five walked up to the three on the steps.

Without a word, Jeff tossed the envelope full of papers onto the ground for everyone to see. Instead of rest answers, the pages were absolutely blank. It of course was well deserved, but the group honestly felt bad.

"I don't have any of the answers." Stopping his words, Jeff put his head in his hands. He let out a sigh muffled by his hands. "I'm gonna- I'm gonna flunk the test."

"You just, like, study for, like, an hour, it's not that hard. You seem pretty smart, you got a sports coat." Troy explained as he pointed to Jeff's outfit.

"Well, the funny thing about being smart is that you can get through most of life without ever having to do any work. So, uh... I'm not really sure how to do that."

Mary was standing at the top of the steps watching everyone else. Jeff had his head in his hands, so he couldn't see Shirley, Annie, and Troy start wordlessly miming to Britta that she should allow Jeff back into the group because they felt bad. Britta was quick to mime back a no and then pointed to Jeff, before making a gesture as if she was gagging. Even though everyone could tell what was going on, Abed hadn't picked up on it. Which didn't shock Mary; she was more shocked that they weren't more careful around Abed.

"What's going on? Can you guys hear me? Am I deaf? Can you hear me talking right now?"

Immediately everyone started saying yes, trying to cover up they were talking about Jeff literally right behind his back. He didn't seem to mind though, just keeping his head in his hands.

"Yes? That's good."

"You know what, Jeff, actually we didn't get that far without you, so if you wanna come back upstairs..."

Jeff turns back to face a smiling Britta. With a matching smile on his face, he gives her a quiet 'really?'.

"Well, it is your study group, so..."

"C'mon, let's study."

"Sounds good."

"Vamos an estudiar." Mary said with a smile.

"Yeah..whatever Mary said!" Annie said with a shake of her fist before following Mary and the rest of the group into the library.

The two young women exchanged a smile, as they passed the doors to the study room, before splitting up to sit in their seats. Not as enemies, not as friends.

As a community.

authors note,

chile. this is a whole 6,217 words and its really bad but yolo