Lost Boys (20 page)

Step reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the folded-up assignment sheet DeAnne had armed him with. "I've looked and looked on this assignment sheet you sent home, and it says nothing about a poster. It just says, 'A depiction."'

"Well, you see," said Mrs. Jones, "that means a poster."

Step looked back at the blue ribbon. "Ah," he said. "And how was I supposed to know that? I mean, the Mona Lisa is a depiction, isn't it? And yet it isn't a poster. And wouldn't you call Michelangelo's David a depiction?"

"All the other parents managed to figure out that a poster was what was intended," said Mrs. Jones. Her tone was getting quite frosty now.

"I see," said Step. "Perhaps they knew the local custom. But we're new here, and we did not."

"Obviously," said Mrs. Jones.

"But surely you're not telling me that Stevie's project was given a C because it wasn't a poster, are you?" asked Step.

"Not at all. As I said- it was creative."

"Then I still need your help to figure out what Stevie did wrong."

"And I keep telling you, Mr. Fletcher. You don't have to do something wrong to get a C. That signifies average. It was an average project."

Short of calling her a liar right now, there wasn't much Step could say to that, not directly. It must be time to talk about the ribbon. "Well, Mrs. Jones, it makes me wonder why Dr. Mariner would give the first-place ribbon to an average project."

"Dr. Mariner has her judgment, and I have mine," said Mrs. Jones.

Yes, thought Step. She is definitely sounding quite cold. "Oh, of course," said Step. "But you see, you didn't give your grades until after Dr. Mariner had made her decision, did you?"

"My judgment was completely independent."

"But wouldn't you say, Mrs. Jones, that for you to give the lowest grade in the class to the very project that won first place, you must surely have found something wrong with it?"

He faced her. Her expression was hard, but she was holding her hands together in front of her very tightly.

Oh, yes, she's afraid. She's very much afraid. Because everything that Stevie told me was true.

"Very well, Mr. Fletcher," she said, ending the silence at last. "I will tell you what was wrong with Stevie's project. It was the writ ten portion of the project, the report. The other children turned in reports of five or six pages. Stevie's report was only two pages."

With great difficulty, Step controlled his rage. "Stevie's paper was typed. Was anyone else's paper typed?"

"That hardly matters," she said.

"They were all written in big letters, weren't they- like these papers on the board. Right?"

"Of course. This is the second grade, Mr. Fletcher."

"My rough count here gives me ... let's see ... about fifty or sixty words per page, handwritten. Is that right?"

"Oh, I suppose."

"But Stevie's paper was single-spaced, and that means he got between four and five hundred words to a page. So each of his pages was about the same amount of content as-"

"A page is a page!" said Mrs. Jones.

"And the assignment sheet," said Step, "said nothing about a minimum number of pages."

"Everyone else managed to figure out that four or five pages were required! And they didn't have their mothers type it for them-they used their own handwriting."

"The assignment sheet didn't say anything about penmanship being part of the assignment," said Step. "So naturally Stevie thought he should do the same thing I did with my dissertation. He went to my computer, turned it on, brought up WordStar, and typed every letter of every word himself. Then he printed it out and stapled it- himself."

"That was another problem," said Mrs. Jones. "The other children's reports all had very nice plastic covers, and your son's report was nothing but two sheets of paper with a staple. It showed a lack of respect."

"The assignment sheet didn't mention a cover," said Step. "If it had, there would have been a cover. But in graduate school, you see, I turned in my papers with a staple in the corner. So of course Stevie thought that that was the grown- up way to do it. And in fact, Mrs. Jones, it is, isn't it? Surely you're not telling me that the difference between an A and a C is a twenty-nine-cent cover?"

"Of course not," said Mrs. Jones. "It's just part of the difference."

"Don't you think that computer literacy and college- level presentation should count for him rather than against him?"

"Other children don't live in wealthy homes with computers in them, Mr. Fletcher. Other children don't have fathers who went to college. I'm hardly going to give one child an advantage over others because of money."

"I'm not rich, Mrs. Jones. I work with computers for a living. I have a computer at home the way car salesmen sometimes bring new cars home." Watch it, Step. You're letting her sidetrack you. "What matters is that Stevie's paper was probably ten times as long as any of the other children's papers. He did all the work himself, and he did not violate the assignment sheet in any way. Now, why did the first-place project get a C in your class?"

"I don't have to justify my grades to you or anyone else!" said Mrs. Jones.

"Yes," said Step mildly. "In fact you do. You can justify it to me, today, or you can justify it before the school board."

"Are you threatening me?" asked Mrs. Jones.

Step almost brought out the tape recorder then, to confront her with it. But he knew that the moment she saw it, she would say nothing more-and there was more that he needed her to say.

"No, Mrs. Jones. I wouldn't dream of it. If my son earned a C, then he earned a C. I'm not trying to get you to change the grade. I just want you to help me understand it."

"This discussion has gone on long enough. It isn't right for you to be here alone in this room with me anyway, Mr. Fletcher."

"Perhaps you're right," said Step. "Let's go get Dr. Mariner to join in this conversation with us. I haven't mentioned Stevie's C to her yet, but I'm sure she'll want to know the reason for that grade as much as I do."

Mrs. Jones glared at him, then sat down at her desk and began rummaging through a file drawer. She came out with Stevie's paper. Sure enough, there was a big red C at the top.

And not another mark.

"I guess all the flaws in the paper are on the second page," said Step.

"What?" she said.

"There aren't any marks on the first page, so the errors must all be on the second page. I'd like to see them."

She handed him the paper.

He opened it. There was only one red mark on the second page. Mrs. Jones had circled the word octopuses and in the margin had written octopi.

"Oh, but you must be making a little joke here," said Step.

"A joke?"

"Look," he said, showing her the paper. "You must be kidding, right?"

"I'm not kidding when I correct errors on my students' papers."

"But Mrs. Jones, surely you know that the plural of octopus is either octopus, with nothing added, or octopuses."

"I think not," said Mrs. Jones.

"Think again, Mrs. Jones."

She must have realized that she was not on firm ground here. "Perhaps octopuses is an alternate plural, but I'm sure that octopi is the preferred."

"No, Mrs. Jones. If you had looked it up, you would have discovered that octopi is not the preferred spelling. It is not a spelling at all. The word does not exist, except in the mouths of those who are pretending to be educated but in fact are not. This is because the us ending of octopus is not a Latin nominative singular ending, which would form its plural by changing to the letter i. Instead, the syllable pus in octopus is the Greek word for 'foot.' And it forms its plural the Greek way. Therefore octopoda, not octopi. Never octopi."

"Well, then, octopoda. Your son's paper said octopuses."

"I know," said Step. "When he asked me the correct plural, I told him octopoda. But then he was still uncertain, because my son doesn't think he knows something until he knows it, and so he looked it up. And to my surprise, octopoda is only used when referring to more than one species of octopus, rather than when referring to more tha n one actual octopus. What Stevie put in his paper is in fact the preferred dictionary usage.

Which you would have known, too, if you had looked it up."

"So I'm human, Mr. Fletcher. I made a mistake."

"As did I, Mrs. Jones, as did I. But the fact remains that the only red mark on this C paper is in a place where you have taken a correct plural and replaced it with an incorrect one. Isn't that right?"

"If you say so," said Mrs. Jones.

"So I'm still baffled," said Step. "How can I possibly help Stevie do better next time? You haven't really pointed out a single thing wrong with his paper-oh, except that he didn't put a plastic cover on it."

"There won't be a next time," said Mrs. Jones. "Your son will never have to do another second grade project as long as he lives. So it doesn't matter, and therefore you're wasting my time as well as your own. Good afternoon, Mr. Fletcher!"

"One more question, Mrs. Jones."

"No," she said. "I have to go home, right now."

"It's just one more question," said Step, mildly. If she didn't stop, however, the tape recorder would definitely come out. She would not be going home anytime soon.

"Very well, what!"

"Who is going to take that ribbon home?"

Mrs. Jones looked at the ribbon that Step was pointing to.

"That is the first place ribbon for Stevie's project, isn't it?"

"It might be," said Mrs. Jones.

"Then who will take it home?"

"If it's the particular ribbon you're referring to, then of course Stevie will take it home at the end of the school year."

"Ah," said Step. "Then what in the world are you going to tell J.J.?"

She blanched.

Stevie's story was completely vindicated now.

"What do you mean?" she said.

"Why, I mean that Stevie's whole class is under the impression that J.J. received that award."

"That's impossible," said Mrs. Jones.

"Is it? Let's call J.J.'s parents and see," said Step.

"I certainly will not bother my children's parents over such a thing."

"Then I'll go to Dr. Mariner's office right now and she and I will place that phone call together," said Step.

"You won't mind, will you?"

Mrs. Jones was barely holding herself together now, Step could see that. She was wringing her hands and he could see that she was trembling. "It's possible that someone might have gotten a false impression. That perhaps someone made a mistake and ..."

No, thought Step. You aren't going to weasel out of this. You're going to say it outright. "You stood in front of the class and announced that J.J. won the prize, didn't you?" he asked.

"Oh, now, don't be silly," she said.

"What if lawyers representing the school board came to your students and asked them how they got the idea that J.J. won the ribbon? What would they say?" Step knew that of course such a thing would never happen, but he figured that Mrs. Jones was not going to be confident of that, not in the state she was in right now.

"I may have said something that gave that impression," said Mrs. Jones.

"May have, or did?"

She looked toward the window, weaving and unweaving her fingers. "I thought that Dr. Mariner had judged very hastily, and so she missed the superior merits of J.J.'s project."

"Ah," said Step.

"If you want," said Mrs. Jones, "I will change Stevie's grade. And of course I will correct the mistake about the ribbon."

Yes, I'm sure you will, thought Step. And then you'll torment and ridicule Stevie even more mercilessly every day until school ends. "No," said Step. "I don't want you to change Stevie's grade. In fact, I insist that you not change it. I want it there on the books, just as it is now."

Mrs. Jones looked at him narrowly. "Then what is all this about? Just the ribbon? Very well."

"The ribbon- yes, that would be nice. You can tell the students that there was a mistake and in fact the ribbon belongs to Stevie."

"Very well, I will do that tomorrow."

"But that's not all," said Step.

"I think it is," said Mrs. Jones. "Unless you changed your mind about the grade."

Step pulled the tape recorder from his pocket, pressed rewind for a few moments, and played it back. It was fuzzy, but it was clear. "... the superior merits of J.J.'s project." Then Step pushed stop.

Her face turned white, and it occurred to Step that perhaps he had overplayed this moment- it wouldn't be very good for anybody if the woman fainted right now.

But she didn't faint. And when she did speak, her voice was stronger than he expected. "That's illegal," she said. "To bug a conversation like that."

"On the contrary," said Step. "It's only inadmissible when it was obtained by a government employee without a warrant. I'm not a cop. I'm just a man who carries around a tape recorder. Besides, I don't intend to use this in court. I only intend to play it for Dr. Mariner and every member of the school board as I put an end to your career."

"Why are you doing this to me?"

"The real question is, why have you been doing all the things you've been doing to Stevie?"

"I haven't been doing anything to him," she said defiantly. "Go ahead and use that tape."

"All right," said Step. He put it back in his pocket and walked around her, through the door, and down the corridor toward Dr. Mariner's office. With each step he became more uncertain. Maybe she really could talk her way out of this. Maybe she understood the system here better than he did, and even this tape recording would end up being worthless. Maybe he had broken his promise to Stevie, that he wouldn't make things worse.

"Mr. Fletcher!" she said. Her voice echoed down the empty corridor.

"Yes?" he said, not turning around.

"There was one more thing that I forgot to show you about Stevie's work."

He turned around and headed back down the hall.

When they were alone again in the room, she looked tired, defeated. "I didn't mean anything by it," she said. "Is that thing off now?"