The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman

Ms. Finkleman
was not the most popular teacher at Mary Todd Lincoln Middle School.

She wasn’t the most
unpopular,
either, of course. Never would she be ranked, for example, with famously horrible teachers like Mr. Vasouvian, the cruel gym instructor, or creepy Ms. Pinn-Darvish, the art teacher with the streak of purple in her jet black hair. But nor was Ms. Finkleman adored the way that some teachers are adored: teachers like gentle old Mrs. Howell, who brought brownies every second Friday, and who included a bonus question on every test relating to her cats, Jackie O and Mr. Spock.

No, Ms. Finkleman, who taught Band and Chorus, was considered neither awful nor excellent—indeed, she was hardly thought of at all. Her hair was a boring shade of brown, her face neither beautiful nor ugly, her speaking
voice timid and plain, her clothes drab and conservative. A kid could pass her in the halls a hundred times and never know it—quiet, anonymous Ms. Finkleman, hurrying from the music room to the teachers’ lounge, her head down and her violin case clutched tightly to her chest.

In short, Ms. Finkleman was one of those people so totally unremarkable as to be essentially invisible.

She was until the Seventeenth Annual All-County Choral Corral, that is.

Until Little Miss Mystery and the Red Herrings.

Until Bethesda Fielding and Tenny Boyer got caught cheating and were very nearly expelled.

But as anyone can tell you—at least, anyone who has taken English Language Arts with Ms. Petrides—a good story starts at the beginning and ends at the end, no two ways about it. And the story of Ms. Finkleman’s shocking emergence from obscurity begins midway through second semester, in seventh-grade Social Studies with Mr. Melville.

Bethesda Fielding was enjoying the American Revolution.

She got to class first and snagged her favorite seat in
the front row. Mr. Melville’s class didn’t have assigned seats, but Bethesda usually sat in the front—it was kind of dorky, but she was short and hated feeling like there were things going on she couldn’t see. As she dug out her Social Studies notebook (which was almost full, even though it was only February and seventh grade still had four months to go), Mr. Melville was already writing today’s lesson in big, sloppy, red capital letters across the board.

Yesterday morning Paul Revere had charged through the night to warn his countrymen about the British advance. Today, according to what Mr. Melville was scrawling on the dry erase board, someone named Israel Putnam would be leading the ragtag colonial forces in the Battle of Bunker Hill. Bethesda was a smart girl with a secret sense of herself as exceptional, and she got a certain flush of pleasure from stories of important people and the important things they had done. She waited impatiently, pencil poised above her spiral notebook, one sneakered foot squeaking against the leg of her chair.

Mr. Melville finished writing and stood at the front of the room, arms crossed, watching unsmilingly as Braxton Lashey rushed in thirty seconds after the second bell.

“Ah! Mr. Lashey! ” Mr. Melville exclaimed haughtily.

“You have decided to favor us with your company! What a pleasant surprise! ”

Mr. Melville was a large man of late middle age, with a wild mane of thick white hair, a thick white beard, and thick white eyebrows that were forever arching upward to express sarcasm, mock bewilderment, or scorn. The Eyebrows of Cruelty, as they were known to all at Mary Todd Lincoln Middle School, weren’t the only remarkable thing about Mr. Melville. It was also well known that he never spoke to other teachers and spent the lunch period alone at his desk, eating tuna salad and listening to jazz music. A third famous fact was that every semester he gave one huge test that determined 33.33 percent of your grade—and he never announced when the test would be until the night before. He called it the Floating Midterm, and when students complained, as they often did, he would say, “Whatever is the problem?” with an expression of exaggerated innocence. “If you’re paying attention in class, why would you need to study at all?”

Mr. Melville wasn’t the most popular teacher at Mary Todd Lincoln Middle School, either.

Braxton Lashey fumbled his way to his seat. “Please, Mr. Lashey,” said Mr. Melville, his tone thick with sarcasm, his eyebrows dancing wickedly. “Do take your time.”

When at last poor Braxton was settled, Mr. Melville began. “Before we are introduced to Generals Putnam and Howe, and discover that the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought on a different hill entirely … I have for you a Special Project.”

Bethesda Fielding grinned and flipped to a fresh page in her Social Studies notebook as reaction to Mr. Melville’s announcement burbled through the classroom. Chester Hu poked Victor Glebe in the arm and made a thumbs-up; Shelly Schwartz smiled brightly at Violet Kelp, who smiled brightly back; Rory Daas muttered, “Oh, sweet,” under his breath; Pamela Preston bounced giddily in her seat; Natasha Belinsky clapped three times and said, “Yay! ” Braxton Lashey, who had been digging through his backpack, pretending to search for a pen while he waited for his blush to fade, looked up and smiled.

Special Projects were another famous fact about Mr. Melville, and the only one that wasn’t something bad. Even kids who hated school (like Chester Hu) or were generally terrible at it (like Natasha Belinsky) got excited about Mr. Melville’s Special Projects. The only kids who
didn’t
were those who were totally spaced out—kids like Tenny Boyer, who always sat in the back row, doodling guitars on his jeans with a highlighter pen.

Special Projects were totally random assignments that had nothing whatsoever to do with the approved Social Studies syllabus. They were invented by Mr. Melville personally, in accordance with no curricular requirement or Board of Education guidance. Special Projects were weird, cool, and interesting. Best of all, Mr. Melville suspended regular homework while a Special Project was under way.

Every year parents grumbled about the projects (which took valuable time away from preparing for all the federally mandated standardized tests), and wondered why Mary Todd Lincoln’s principal hadn’t put a stop to them. The truth was that Principal Van Vreeland, like everyone else, was frightened of Mr. Melville and talked to him as little as possible.

The last Special Project, back in December, had been on family trees, which most students thoroughly enjoyed—especially lucky Pamela Preston, who discovered that her great-great-great-great-uncle was the person who shot Jesse James. There had even been a picture of her in the newspaper, beaming, posed next to a scowling Mr. Melville.

Now, beneath BUNKER HILL, Mr. Melville slowly wrote three words in thick blue marker: THE GREAT UNKNOWN.

Bethesda Fielding carefully copied down this intriguing phrase, her sneaker squeaking more insistently, as Mr. Melville explained.

“Life is a mystery,” he said slowly, heavily enunciating every word. “An endless dance of secrets and ambiguity. The things you
know
and the things that you
think
you know are but tiny pebbles when set against the towering mountain of that which you
do not
know, and which you can never
hope
to know. My question for you, intrepid youth, is this: Do we cower in terror before the great unknown? Do we hide our heads? Are we mice? Or are we human beings?”

Pamela Preston’s hand shot up. “Human beings.”

“That was a rhetorical question, Ms. Preston, though your enthusiasm is appreciated,” Mr. Melville replied wearily. “Today’s Special Project is simple. Pluck out a loose thread from the vast tapestry of your existence, and follow it where it leads. Peer into the bottomless chasm of the great unknown, reach out for the hand of truth, and grab it! In summary, find a mystery, and
solve
it! ”

“Can I go to the bathroom? ” asked Chester Hu.

“No,” snapped Mr. Melville, giving Chester a baleful glare before he concluded. “By Monday! Seven hundred fifty words! Using primary sources! Yes? Good?”

“I don’t get it,” said Natasha Belinsky.

“I am terribly sorry, Ms. Belinsky,” said Mr. Melville, looking not at all sorry. “But we must press on.” And with that, Mr. Melville turned back to the board, uncapped his red dry-erase marker, and returned his class to Bunker Hill.

Meanwhile, at the end of Hallway C, in the Band and Chorus room, Ms. Finkleman was leading her first-period sixth graders through an off-key assault upon John Philip Sousa’s “King Cotton”—wholly unaware of Mr. Melville’s Special Project and the particular mystery Bethesda Fielding already had it in her head to solve.

At lunch,
Bethesda Fielding sat quietly at one end of a long table, sipping a strawberry melon Snapple, while her fellow seventh graders loudly considered various approaches to the Special Project.

Shelly Schwartz and her twin sister, Suzie, were considering why hot dogs are sold in packages of twelve, but hot-dog buns are sold in packages of eight. Victor Glebe was going to solve the mystery of whether Mr. Happy, the diving dolphin at Stinson Aquarium, was really happy, or just faking, in hopes of earning his freedom. “Oh my god,” said Chester Hu to Victor Glebe. “I love that idea! That’s such a good idea! Can we work together?” Hayley Eisenstein thought she might solve the mystery of why her mother no longer spoke to her uncle Allen. Braxton Lashey said he didn’t know what he was going to do, didn’t have any ideas, and he had left
his lunch at home, so could anyone loan him a couple bucks?

Todd Spolin, who was eating a taco, said he was going to solve the mystery of what they put in the tacos.

“What about you, Bethesda?” asked Pamela Preston, who, ever since the whole great-uncle-shot-Jesse-James thing, sort of considered herself the queen of Special Projects. “What are you thinking?”

“Hmm? ” said Bethesda.

“What are you going to do your Special Project on?”

“Oh. Well,” Bethesda answered, “I think I’m going to do Ms. Finkleman.”

Pamela narrowed her eyes and tilted her head a little. “You’re going to do
what?”

“Ms. Finkleman,” said Bethesda, taking a sip of her Snapple. “That’s probably what I’m going to do. I’m almost positive.”

Everyone looked at everyone else, and then at Bethesda, and there was a long silence; from the next table over they heard Tenny Boyer singing quietly to himself, oblivious as usual, bobbing his head to his iPod and reading a magazine. Then there was a loud crunching sound as Todd Spolin took an enormous bite of taco.