The Academy (23 page)

Linda explained about the reprimand, and the amendment banning unions that Jody and her cronies had surreptitiously added to the charter.

“That’s bullshit!”

“That’s what I said. I’m stopping by the association headquarters after this to find out what can be done.”

“We have to let everyone know.”

“And we have to tell them to be careful. They’re changing the charter without telling us, and they’re not even giving us updates.”

Diane’s mouth was set in a straight line. “Well, that’s going to stop. We need accountability. I’m head of the English department, and I’m going to get all the other department heads—”

“Except those on the charter committee.”

“—except those on the charter committee, and we’re going to demand that we be kept abreast of any changes. As I understand it, keeping us in the dark is against charter rules.”

“Unless they changed that, too.”

“This is getting out of hand.”

“I saw something else weird,” Linda confided. “You know how I said those scouts came and took Boyd away? Well, they were wearing uniforms, full uniforms, not just patches on their sleeves. And after I came out of the office, before I came here, I saw a whole troop of them training on the front lawn, first marching in formation, then going through some sort of fight exercises or conflict preparation. There were no teachers there, though, only the kids, only boys. Seniors mostly, by the look of them. I don’t know what exactly the point of it all is, but it seems to me that Jody’s putting together her own private security force.”

Diane frowned. “How many of them were there?”

“That’s what freaked me out. A lot. How many kids are at this school? Two thousand? Figure half of those are boys. Well, nearly a hundred of them are now scouts. And I’m sure that number’s growing. They’re being recruited, like the military, and they’re
behaving
like the military. It was like they were getting ready for battle or training to quell a riot. The whole thing gave me the creeps.”

“What about the girls?” Diane wondered. “Do you think she’s starting a similar program for the girls?”

“No doubt. I have girls in my classes wearing those patches, too. But I don’t know what they’re up to or what Jody has planned for them.”

“I’ll talk to the other department heads about that, too.” She grabbed a pen and a piece of paper from the desk. “In fact, I’m making a list of questions we need answered. And I’m going to point out to everyone that there’s a lot less communication between administration and staff than there was
before
we had the charter—which is exactly the opposite of what we were promised.”

“Good,” Linda said.

“Speaking of that . . .” Diane stopped writing and took a blue sheet of paper from the metal in-box on the shelf above the desk. “Did you get the memo about merit pay?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I forgot to check my mail.”

“Well, it’s out. The idea’s been scrapped.”

“No great loss.” Linda had been against merit pay from the beginning. The idea that teachers should be rewarded by how their classes performed on standardized tests was ludicrous. Obviously, those instructors heading the advanced-placement courses would rack up better scores than those teaching the remedial classes, and those who taught to the test would have students who scored better than those who were more freewheeling and, to her mind, more interesting. Merit pay rewarded conformity and compliance.

“That’s not the point,” Diane said. “It’s the same root problem as the lack of communication. After all those promises Jody made, she’s reneging on nearly every single one of them.” A mischievous smile played across her lips. “Besides, as department chair, I could have stacked the decks in our favor, given us all the smart kids. We’d’ve made out like bandits.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Of course not. I’m just saying.” Diane sighed. “The frightening thing is what she’s offering as incentive instead of merit pay.”

“What?”

“Loyalty pay.”

Linda stared at her. “You’re joking.”

“I wish I was.” With a dramatic flourish, Diane handed over the blue memo and Linda scanned it quickly. “As you can see, it says that those staff members who are sufficiently proficient in kissing Jody’s ass and obeying her every whim,
and
who sign a ‘loyalty oath’ that she’s going to be passing around, will be eligible for a monthly bonus on their paychecks.”

“I thought loyalty oaths were illegal. Weren’t they outlawed in the 1950s?”

Diane started writing on her list. “Another question to ask.”

“I’ll ask the union about it, too. I’m going to stop by the association’s office on my way home and see what they plan to do about all this.”

“Want me to come?” Diane looked up.

Linda shook her head. “I’ll call you tonight and let you know what comes of it. You get busy with the other department chairs and try to put some pressure on Jody and that charter committee.”

“This is turning into one big headache,” Diane said.

From outside the building came the sound of footsteps marching on concrete as a seemingly endless parade of Tyler Scouts passed by.

“It’s a nightmare,” Linda said.

*

Tired, Linda dropped her purse on the hall tree. “I’m home!”

Frank sat up on the couch, where he’d been lying down and watching CNN. “Hey!” he called. “How’d things go? See anything weird in your classroom?”

“No . . . ,” she said slowly, sitting down next to him. “But I’m a test case.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

She told him about the memo that had been delivered to her in class, the disciplinary meeting with Jody, the fact that she was denied representation. “I stopped off at union headquarters after school. They were already up in arms about what happened and have meetings scheduled with lawyers and people from the state organization. They’re acting like this is it, the big showdown, and it’s going to decide once and for all the rights of unions and associations to represent the employees of charter schools. They’re ready to go all the way to the Supreme Court with this because either way it plays out is going to have lasting consequences for California teachers.”

“Jesus.”

She sighed. “It’s been a long hard day.”

“What do you say we go out tonight? We’ll have a nice dinner at a nice restaurant, and you can relax and forget all about this.”

She placed her head on his shoulder. “That’s thoughtful of you, but I couldn’t forget about this if I tried. Why don’t we just order pizza and eat in and watch a movie? Preferably a comedy.”

He put an arm around her. “Anything you want.”

“Wow. I should be harassed and threatened and reprimanded every day if it’s going to get me treatment like this.”

“Maybe you will,” he said.

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Fourteen

Sean Bergman sat on his bed, staring at the blank wall of his bedroom. Downstairs, from the kitchen, he could hear his mom and dad discussing something. He couldn’t make out specific words, but he could hear their tones of voice, and he knew they were talking about him.

He tried not to listen, concentrated on the wall. He’d wanted to tack posters on that wall. Movie posters. His friend Max, who used to work at a Block-buster, had taken a stack of them when he’d quit, and he’d let Sean have three or four for himself. But his mom had never let him put them up. She hadn’t liked the movies he’d picked. Old exploitation flicks would have been okay, or horror or kung fu or something by Quentin Tarantino, but the posters for popular mainstream films that he’d chosen were not acceptable to her, not hip enough. So, in defiance, he’d left the wall blank.

Sean glanced down at the bandages on his wrists, flexing his fingers. Ever since he’d gotten out of the hospital, he’d been doing that. A lot. He told himself it was exercise, but it was more like a ritual, a compulsion. He flexed his fingers again. The adhesive tape felt tight on his skin, but below that, the still-healing cuts hurt, and he remembered how it had felt when he’d sliced into his wrists and the blood had begun to flow. In his mind, he saw now what he’d seen when he’d made those incisions—his mom, naked on top of a table in front of Mr. Swaim’s class, holding her breasts, spreading her legs and smiling out at the students ready to draw her—and once again he was filled with shame and humiliation.

Did his dad know what his mom had done?

Sean wasn’t sure. He certainly hadn’t brought it up, but maybe the doctors had. Or maybe his mom had even come clean, although she’d no doubt put her own spin on it in order to justify her actions.

Would his dad even care?

Again, Sean wasn’t sure. His parents had always prided themselves on not only being cooler than all of the other parents but being cooler than his friends as well. Every once in a while that ended up working out, but for the most part it was just embarrassing. More than anything else, it made him feel as though he were a third wheel. It had always been clear to him that they were uncomfortable in the roles of mother and father, that the responsibilities of parenthood put a serious crimp in their lifestyle. Half the time, he thought that they’d be happier if they’d never had him.

They were selfish. He’d known that instinctively, but it was not something he’d been able to articulate until now, and he found that he was looking forward to discussing it with the new psychiatrist he was supposed to see.

Downstairs, he no longer heard the bored drone of his dad’s voice, but his mom’s shrill annoyance came through loud and clear, even if the words didn’t.

Had she given even a second’s thought to how
he
would feel if she posed nude in front of his class?

Obviously not.

He remembered the way he’d felt, sitting in his seat, when Mr. Swaim had not let him leave, when the teacher had forced him to sketch
all
of his mom’s body instead of just her head and shoulders, as he’d originally attempted.

“Your old lady has a nice twat,” Todd Zivney had said after class. He grinned. “She keeps that thing trimmed, doesn’t she?”

And that was only the beginning of it. At lunch, nearly everyone he saw commented on his mom’s body, even people who hadn’t been in the class, even people he didn’t know, and by the end of the day all he wanted to do was hide. But he didn’t want to go home. The thought of seeing his mom made him feel queasy, and he had no idea what to say to her. He could hide out at one of his friends’ houses until his dad came home, but he didn’t want to see his friends either, didn’t want to answer their questions, didn’t want to endure their looks. Even more overwhelming was the thought of returning to school tomorrow and spending the whole day as an object of attention.

He didn’t want to do anything, Sean realized.

He didn’t want to be anywhere.

He didn’t want to be.

It was then that he’d come up with the idea of slitting his wrists, and while he was kind of glad now that he had not succeeded in his attempt to kill himself, he was kind of not. He was stuck in some sort of limbo where he didn’t really know what to do or what he wanted, or what not to do or what he didn’t want.

He heard his mom’s too-precise footfalls coming up the stairs and down the hall to his room. Sean experienced a flare of panic, and briefly considered getting up and doing something, pretending to be busy, but the feeling passed as quickly as it had come, and he remained on his bed, staring at the wall.

She came in, not knocking—she never knocked—and stood before him. She didn’t speak for a moment, but if she was waiting for him to break the silence, she was out of luck. He continued to look past her at the blank wall where his movie posters should have been.

“What were you thinking?” she finally demanded.

He shrugged, said nothing. He flexed his fingers, feeling the tape tighten, feeling the cuts burn.

“I’m on three committees this year,” she said accusingly. “How am I supposed to give them the attention they deserve if all of my time is taken up with taking care of
you
?”

The way she said
“you,”
in a voice filled with resentment and disgust, made him wonder if she would have been happier if his attempt had been successful.

Then you shouldn’t’ve showed my class your crotch. Which, by the way, Todd Zivney said was nicely trimmed.