Getting Warmer (26 page)

The windows were sealed shut, eliminating any possibility of a cross breeze. There was some disinfectant cleaner and a rag in my desk. I doused the chair and rubbed furiously, even though nothing from the bag had spilled. Had the perpetrator spared me on purpose, or had he simply run out of time?

The perpetrator. I stared at the student desk in front of me, front row center. The perpetrator had a name.

I couldn’t be expected to like all of my students equally. Or, to like some of them at all. Professionalism, however, dictated that I treat each student with respect.

Unless a student crossed a line.

I walked over to Jared’s desk and stood there for a moment, as if I could conjure up his image. With a hissing noise, I spat. My saliva landed on the edge of his chair. The spit looked like venom to me. Like hatred. Like desperation. Without warning, my eyes filled. One tear, then another, dropped on Jared’s desk like those first fat raindrops that fall seconds before a monsoon hits.

I wiped my eyes angrily on my sleeve. I grabbed the disinfectant and sprayed Jared’s desk and chair. With the rag, I rubbed and rubbed until my tears were gone—along with my spit and any lingering essence of Jared. I rubbed and rubbed until the desk was just a piece of metal and wood.

Monday morning I wore my charcoal gray suit and arrived at school five minutes before the first bell. That would allow me enough time to ensure there were no more surprises waiting in my classroom without forcing me to spend too much time thinking about what had happened on Friday.

Robert was sitting on the floor outside my room, talking on his cell phone. He glanced up at me, said, “Gotta go,” folded up the phone and stuck it in his pocket. He scowled.

“What?” I said. I yanked on the doorknob. It didn’t give. I relaxed somewhat, fished keys out of my bag and stuck them in the lock.

“I’ve been here twenty-five minutes.”

“Did we have an appointment?” I did a quick scan of the room. It looked fine. More important, it smelled fine.

Robert heaved himself off the floor. “It’s
Monday
.”

I looked up at him—way up. He must’ve grown an inch since the school year began. “Last Monday you said you didn’t have time to meet before school,” I said evenly. “Same with Tuesday and Wednesday.”

“But I didn’t say it about
today
.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and trailed me into the room. Now that the weather had turned cooler, Robert had traded his basketball shorts for athletic pants that made
whooshing
noises when he walked. “Over the weekend, you know, when I was working and stuff, Suzette and me were talking about school and stuff, and she said it’s really important that I graduate.”

“
Suzette and I
,” I interrupted.

Robert rolled his eyes. “Right. Whatever. Anyway, Suzette said maybe I could go to cooking school someday, but they’re gonna want to see how I did in high school. Plus, she said it’s important when talking to clients to sound, you know, educated. And to be able to write notes and letters without making any mistakes.”

“Those are all good points,” I said, not adding that I’d made them countless times before he’d ever even met Suzette.

“So, anyway, I got up extra early today, and I remembered my notebook and everything, and you weren’t even
here
.”

I dropped my bag on my desk. “Look, Robert. I have over a hundred students. I have no personal life and I hardly ever sleep. If you want to come in for extra help, great—let’s set a time, and I’ll be here. But I’m not going to get up an hour early and drag myself over here on the off chance you might show up.”

“Forget it,” he said, heading back out the door. “I’ll just hire a tutor.”

“You don’t have to do that,” I said.

“I wouldn’t want to take up any more of your precious time,” he said, slapping the door frame on the way out.

The day didn’t get much better. My first class was Freshman Honors. Over the break, they had finished
Lord of the Flies
. Jared sat in his assigned seat, front row center, and stared at me with his reptilian eyes. I stood next to my desk, wondering which was worse: to sit in the chair, knowing what Jared had placed there, or to stand up the whole time and give Jared the satisfaction of knowing that he had frightened me.

I pulled the chair out from behind my desk and dragged it to the front of the classroom, creating a shrieking sound that caused several students to moan and cover their ears. “How about we do something a little different today,” I said. “You’re probably sick of hearing me talk.” I smiled. Claudia smiled back, even laughed a little. Claudia’s suck-up reflex was flawless. “I’d like to give someone else a chance to lead the discussion.” I glared at Jared. He glared back. “Jared. Why don’t you take a seat up here? In my chair.”

He pulled himself out of his seat and slithered over to my chair, slipping onto it without hesitation. He was nothing if not cold-blooded.

“Jared. Tell us this. What part of the book did you find most compelling?” I kept my voice even, unemotional.

“You mean, what part did I like?”

“Sure. Or what you found the most interesting.” I’d be shocked if Jared had even finished the book. I expected him to comment on the cover or to proclaim total ignorance with a sick kind of pride.

“I liked the part where they kill the fat kid.”

“Piggy?” I said.

“Yeah. Where the boulder hits him and stuff. That part was really funny.”

The palms of my hands were sweaty. My armpits, too. “Most people,” I said, “most people don’t find that part funny.” After three months of talking to the kids about the subjective nature of literature, I had backed myself into a corner. Jared’s opinion wasn’t wrong; it was simply unusual. Which meant that Jared wasn’t a raging sociopath; he was just an original thinker.

“Cody,” I said, abandoning the idea of letting Jared lead the discussion. “What about you? What was your favorite part of the book?”

“I didn’t . . .” He mumbled something I couldn’t hear.

“Excuse me?”

“I didn’t read it.”

I blinked at him. “Why not?”

“I just didn’t.”

“None of it?”

“No.”

I closed my eyes for a moment and sighed in exasperation. “Okay. Cody, you get a zero for today and for every day until you finish your reading. Let’s move on. Sarah? What were your thoughts on
Lord of the Flies
?”

“I had an orchestra concert,” she mumbled.

“Excuse me?”

She kept her eyes on her desk, her voice low. “I had an orchestra concert. I play the clarinet, and I had a solo, so I had to practice. But I’ll finish the book tonight, I promise.”

I snatched my grade book off my desk. “And a zero for Sarah, too. Anyone else?”

During my first free period, I went to talk to Dr. White about Jared. She was on the phone when I knocked on her door, but she held up a finger to let me know she’d be off in a moment, finally ending the conversation with, “Yes, yes, I understand your concerns.” Dr. White had a knack for understanding people’s concerns without actually agreeing with them.

I sat down in one of the two chairs on the far side of Dr. White’s desk. Like Jill, Dr. White had enough chairs for one (truant, antisocial, drug-addicted or otherwise self-destructive) student and for his or her (failed) parent. The principal’s office was surprisingly stylish for a school: black laminate desk, stainless steel chairs, potted succulents. Student art framed on broad white mats hung on pumpkin-colored walls.

When she hung up the phone (which was silver and looked really cool on her black desk), she smiled and leaned forward. “I’m glad you’re here. I need to talk to you.”

“You do?” Was she going to fire me? Effective when? What kind of unemployment check could I hope to draw?

“You know about Lars, of course.” She stopped smiling.

“I do.”

“It was a shame. And we’re going to miss him. But we have to move on.”

I nodded. I had no idea what she was getting at.

She looked me straight in the eye. “I’d like you to take over the drama program.”

“Me? I’m—I’m honored, but the truth is, I don’t know anything about drama.”

She shrugged. “Neither does anyone else around here. At least you have some experience from the last play.”

“Lars did everything, really. I mean, I helped the kids run their lines, rounded up some props—that’s about it. I couldn’t direct or anything.”

“Natalie.” She sat back in her chair. “I understand how you feel. But this isn’t Broadway. This isn’t even off-off-off-Broadway. You’ll be fine.”

I opened my mouth to protest further, but then I shut it. That was that, and I knew it. Dr. White wasn’t asking me to take over the drama program. She was telling me to. At Agave, each teacher had to take responsibility for at least one extracurricular program. Drama was intimidating, but it could be worse. I could get hit with detention duty, parking lot patrol or the knitting club.

“Now that we’ve got that settled, what did you want to talk to me about?”

I blinked at her. Oh, right. The bag o’ poop.

“It’s about Jared Spitzer,” I said. “There was—an incident. Over the weekend.” I took a deep breath. “I came in on Friday to pick up some work, and I found a bag of feces on my desk chair.”

She stared at me. “Human feces?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t look that closely.”

“In a paper bag?”

“Plastic. A baggie. The zipper kind, with a holiday decoration—maple leaves.” She looked at me, awaiting more information. “It was a freezer bag. One quart.” There. I’d said it. Now the security crew could go find Jared and haul his butt off to reform school.

She asked how he had gotten into the room. I explained that the lock was a little funny, that you had to pull on it a certain way or it didn’t catch. I didn’t mention that Nicolette had locked up for me. I didn’t want to get her in trouble. Besides, I wasn’t really supposed to ask Nicolette to take over my class. I was supposed to go through the “approved channels,” which basically meant talking to the vice principal, who would then talk to Dr. White, who would then talk to Dawna, who would then tell Nicolette to take over my class.

“How do you know it was Jared?” she asked.

“I just know,” I said after a pause. “I can tell by the way he looks at me. Like, like he hates me.”

“We need something more than that,” she said softly. “What did you do with the bag? If we give it to the police, they can probably get some fingerprints off it.”

“I threw it away.”

She stared at me. “Why?”

Why? Because it repulsed me. Because it mocked me. Because it made me feel despised, like a failure. I cleared my throat. “I didn’t think we’d need it.”

She fluttered her eyes in exasperation. “Don’t you ever watch
CSI
?”

My throat hurt from withholding a sob. “Is that a TV show?”

She laughed, a deep, rich sound. “Oh, Natalie, you’re working too hard. I’m sorry this happened, and if we could catch the kid who did it, he’d be in deep—well, you know.” She smiled wryly. “But without any kind of evidence, we can’t just assume it was Jared. Keep your eyes open. If he does something again, we’ll be ready.”

“Does something again?” My heart sped up. The possibility hadn’t even occurred to me.

 

 

I ate lunch with Neil Weinrich. As if that weren’t pathetic enough, I was actually glad to have his companionship. He caught my eye when I walked into the faculty dining room. Jill was sitting with a couple of the history teachers. She looked up when I walked in the door; I looked away. I felt so pathetic, standing there alone with my insulated lunch bag while all the voices around me echoed off the cinderblock walls and the cold tile floors. There were kids who felt like that, kids for whom lunchtime was a daily torture. There’s something peculiar about working with adolescents. Even as you have to be more mature than the average adult—more dignified, less easily amused, a better role model—you can’t help but fall into adolescent patterns. Who’s cool? Who’s not? Where do I fit in? Maybe it’s a case of osmosis. All those hormones. All those insecurities. You can’t help but be affected.

Neil Weinrich was sitting with a few other math teachers. Generally, math and English teachers don’t mix much, but Neil flashed me a yellow-toothed smile. I smiled back, questioningly, until he motioned for me to join him.

“Hello, Miss Quackenbush,” he said as I placed my lunch bag across from him. “Do you know Miss Rothstein and Mr. Smith?”

“Call me Natalie.” They smiled but didn’t tell me to call them by their first names. Miss Rothstein was about my age, with a plain face and a pear-shaped body. She wore a pale pink blouse with navy, pleated trousers, demonstrating even less fashion sense than I had. A small diamond sparkled on her left hand.

“Pretty ring,” I said. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks.” She didn’t smile.

“When’s your wedding?”

“June eleventh. We wanted April, but we couldn’t get the hall until then.”

“Hotel rooms will be cheaper,” Mr. Smith said. “Your guests will thank you.” He picked up a tiny carton of milk and took a swig. A line of white liquid dribbled down his chin. He wiped it off with the back of his hand.

Miss Rothstein scowled. “Nobody’s thanking me. Everybody keeps saying, why can’t you just do it when it’s cool outside? Why can’t you get married someplace with normal weather? Brad—that’s my fiancé—said his brother’s wife told him she isn’t even coming. She said she can’t take the heat. Brad says you just have to let people do what they’re going to do and not let it get to you.” With a plastic fork, Miss Rothstein stabbed at her Tupperware bowl full of salad: lettuce, cucumber, radish, tomato. No meat. No cheese. No dressing. Miss Rothstein had a wedding dress to fit into. I pitied her students. As a rule, hungry women are not nice people.