Seven Days in June(11)

Are you just like your mom?

Genevieve curled up tighter on her side, trying to make herself smaller. She was exhausted. All she wanted was to escape this repetitive, redundant hell.

Her eyes shut. She had only a few more minutes to pull herself together. She had to get ready.

Today was her first day at her new school.





MONDAY





Chapter 4





Mantra




“YOU GOTTA LET ME TALK TO TY, PRINCIPAL SCOTT.”

The beleaguered woman leaned forward on her paper-strewn desk. “Mr. Hall, last time you ‘talked’ to Ty, I found him sitting in a fifth-floor window with his feet dangling down the side of the building.”

“His writing was flat. He needed a perspective change.”

“He’s thirteen. You encouraged a child to engage in potentially fatal behavior.”

“Ty spent last year in a maximum-security juvenile detention center. You think that window was the most colorful moment of his life?” He smiled pleasantly, belying the panic he really felt.

Shane Hall wasn’t where he was supposed to be. According to the itinerary issued by his publisher’s publicity department, he was due at the airport five minutes ago. But Ty was his favorite student. And healthy, functional people didn’t leave town without saying goodbye.

At thirty-two, Shane was new to being healthy and functional. When he woke up twenty-six months and fourteen days ago, clean for the first time since he was under five feet tall, he realized that he finally knew how to stay sober. But he wasn’t sure how to be a responsible adult. The program encouraged therapy, but fuck no. He was a writer—why would he give his shit away for free? Instead, he ran five miles a day. Drank his weight in water. Added chia seeds in things. Avoided red meat. And sugar. And hookers.

Patiently, he waited for the day it’d all make him feel normal.

The only thing Shane could ever do well was write, but he’d only ever done it drunk. He’d become a critic’s darling while drunk. He’d gotten rich while drunk. He’d churned out four “hypnotic, ecstatic elegies to shattered youth”—according to the New York Times—while drunk. He’d won the National Book Award while drunk. He’d never composed even one sentence sober, and frankly, he was scared to try. So the writing was on hold for now. He began doing what every nonpracticing writer does—he taught. Because his name opened doors (and attracted donors) at high-paying private schools, he became in demand on the “visiting-author fellowship” circuit.

Shane taught creative writing to elite little shits in Dallas, Portland, Hartford, Richmond, San Francisco—and now Providence, Rhode Island. He was usually hired for a semester only. Just enough time to shake them up, poke holes in their privileged worldviews before they slid back into complacency. Fine, but these weren’t the real reasons he booked teaching tours.

Whenever Shane landed in a new city, he asked his Uber driver where the worst neighborhood was. He’d go and find the most underserved school in the area—the kind of school that made seven-year-olds line up in the cold at 7:15 a.m. for a security check that took almost an hour to pass through, making them late to class, only to then expel them for tardiness. The kind of school that turned a blind eye to school security officers who maced kids for “obscene language.” The kind of school that allowed traumatized, abused, underfed, uncared-for, often homeless children to be carted off to kiddie prisons for made-up infractions.

They’d receive their real education at juvie. And by eighteen, they’d realize that the thing they were most qualified to be was an inmate.

Shane would find a school like this in each city and then practically throw himself at the principal, offering after-school tutoring, mentoring, anything. Shane had a restless urge to help these kids. Actually, he wasn’t sure who was helping whom more.

Shane stood on the other side of Principal Scott’s desk, taking in the dank closet-sized office. And for some reason, his eyes lingered on a yellowing poster plastered to the puke-green painted wall:

Forbidden items: Electronics, Sunglasses, Clothing in Gang Colors.



“Gang colors” was written in red ink, presumably to target any Bloods with big ideas—the cluelessness of which embarrassed Shane. Was that Principal Scott’s idea? He was sure that twenty years ago, she’d taken the gig thinking she could save the youth, like Morgan Freeman in Lean on Me. But today, she was extremely over it—and sporting a violet bruise on her cheekbone where a student had hurled a pencil sharpener at her. Shane had seen it happen.

“Mr. Hall,” she said wearily. “Would you have pulled the window stunt with one of your private-school students?”

“No, ’cause I don’t give a fuck about them.” He froze, realizing what he’d said. Christ, he had to be better about blurting out whatever he was thinking. “I mean…I care. I’m just not as invested. Those kids are legacy at Ivy schools; they’re good. They’re using me for recommendation letters and selfies.”

“You take selfies with your students?”

Was that unethical? Shane didn’t understand social media; he honestly didn’t know. In terms of civilized behavior, he had so many blind spots. Shane wasn’t far removed from the man he’d been when he passed out on Gayle King’s shoulder as Jesse Williams announced that he’d won the 2009 NAACP Award for Outstanding Fiction.