The Book of Lost Friends(8)

“As long as you’ve read the book, there are no wrong answers,” I correct. “As long as you’re thinking about it.”

“I’m thinkin’ ’bout lunch,” an oversized kid in the annoying pileup says. I cast about for his name from roll call, but all I can remember is something with an R, both first name and last.

“That’s all you ever think about, Lil’ Ray. Your brain’s wired direct to your stomach.”

A retaliatory shove answers. Someone jumps on someone else’s back.

A sweat breaks over my skin.

Wads of paper fly. More kids get up.

Someone stumbles backward and falls across a desk, a nerd’s head is grazed by a high-top tennis shoe. The victim yelps.

The swamp rat girl by the window closes the book, lets her chin bump to her palm, and stares at the blackened glass like she wishes she could pass through it by osmosis.

“That’s enough!” I yell, but it’s useless.

Suddenly—I’m not even sure how it happens—Lil’ Ray is on the move, shoving desks aside and heading for the swamp rat section like a man on a mission. The nerds abandon ship. Chairs squeal. A desk topples over and strikes the floor like a cannon shot.

I hurdle it, land in the center of the room, slide a foot or so on the ancient speckled industrial tile, and end up right in Lil’ Ray’s path. “I said that is enough, young man!” The voice that comes out of me is three octaves lower than usual, guttural, and strangely animalistic. Never mind that it’s hard to be taken seriously when you’re five foot three and pixieish; I sound like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. “Get back in your seat. Right now.”

Lil’ Ray has fire in his eye. His nostrils flare, and a fist twitches upward.

I’m aware of two things. The classroom has gone deadly silent, and Lil’ Ray smells. Bad. Neither this kid nor his clothes have been washed in a while.

“Man, siddown,” another boy, a skinny, good-looking kid, says. “You crazy or something? Coach Davis is gonna kill you, if he hears about this.”

The rage drains from Lil’ Ray’s face like a fever breaking. His arms go slack. The fist loosens, and he rubs his forehead. “I’m hungry,” he says. “I don’t feel so good.” He wobbles for a second, and I’m afraid he’s going down.

“Take…take your seat.” My hand hovers in the air, as if I might catch him. “It’s seventeen…it’s seventeen minutes until lunch.” I try to collect my thoughts. Do I let this pass? Make an example of Lil’ Ray? Write him up? Send him to the principal’s office? What’s the demerit system at this school?

Did anyone hear all the noise? I glance toward the door.

The kids take that as an excuse to depart. They grab backpacks and make a beeline for the exit, tripping over desks and chairs, bouncing off one another. They push, shove, elbow. One student attempts to escape the chaos by using the desktops as stepping-stones.

If they get out, I’m dead. The singular rule most emphasized during the teachers’ meeting was No kids in the hall during classes without adult supervision. Period. Too much fighting, skipping, smoking, adding graffiti to the walls, and other acts of delinquency, which the weary-looking principal, Mr. Pevoto, left to our imaginations.

If they are in your classroom, you are responsible for keeping them there.

I join the stampede. Fortunately, I’m nimble and closer to the exit than most of my students. Only two get loose before I plant myself in the doorway, my arms stretched across the opening. It’s at that point I revisit The Exorcist. My head must be turning 360 degrees on my neck, because I see a pair of boys sprinting away down the hall, laughing and congratulating each other, while at the same time I observe stragglers bumping into the logjam I’ve created at the exit portal. Lil’ Ray is at the front and fairly immovable. At least he’s averse to mowing me down.

“I said, get back in your seats. Now. We still have…” I glance at the clock. “Fifteen minutes.” Fifteen? I’ll never make it that long with this bunch of miscreants. They are by far the worst of the day, and that’s saying a lot.

No amount of money is worth this, and certainly not the pittance of a salary the school district has agreed to pay me for being here. I’ll find some other means of repaying my student loans.

“I’m hungry,” Lil’ Ray complains again.

“Back to your seat.”

“But I’m hungry.”

“You should eat before you come to school.”

“Ain’t got nothing in the pintry.” A sheen of sweat covers his coppery skin, and his eyes are weirdly glassy. I’m struck by the sense that I have bigger problems than the stampede. Standing in front of me is a fifteen-year-old who’s desperate in some way, and he expects me to solve the problem.

“All the rest of you, get in your seats!” I bark out. “Put those desks back where they belong. Plant yourselves in them.”

The area behind Lil’ Ray slowly clears. Sneaker soles screech. Desks clatter. Chairs scrape the tile. Backpacks drop with muffled thuds.

I hear a commotion in the science room across the hall. There’s a new teacher over there, too. A girls’ basketball coach, fresh out of college and only about twenty-three, as I recall. I at least have a little more age on my side, having worked my way through undergrad and then piddled along to a master’s degree in literature.