Substitute: Going to School With a Thousand Kids

DAY FIVE. Friday, March 21, 2014

LASSWELL MIDDLE SCHOOL, EIGHTH GRADE

TOAST

BETH CALLED ON FRIDAY, sounding peeved, and said that a science teacher had suddenly gotten sick; they needed me again at the middle school. I said okay. I probably shouldn’t have, because I’d hardly slept. My joints hurt, and I’d lain awake for hours writhing over a phone call I’d gotten on Thursday morning from Mrs. Fallon, Lasswell Middle School’s assistant principal, about what she referred to as a “blood incident” from the day before. Several students in Ms. Nolton’s class had mentioned that there had been an “issue with blood in the classroom,” Mrs. Fallon said, and a custodian had noticed traces of blood in the sink of the boys’ bathroom. And, she added, “Ms. Nolton said that there was a drop of blood on one of the whiteboards.”

“Oh my god,” I said. A whiteboard? I’d definitely been carrying around one of the personal whiteboards at one point. I must have bled onto it.

Mrs. Fallon had some advice. “I know it was your first day in the building, and by all accounts everything went really well,” she said. “In an event like that, don’t hesitate to go to the next-door teacher.” It would be better, she said, not to use the boys’ bathroom; I should use one of the teachers’ bathrooms instead.

I apologized for bleeding all over the school.

“That’s all right, it happens,” she’d said. “We disinfected everything.”

In any case, they wanted me back. I stumped downstairs to start up Mr. Coffee and frowned at the clock. It said twenty after the hour. Plenty of time to take a shower, I thought. But in my sleep-robbed brain fog, I misread the hour: it wasn’t five-twenty, it was six-twenty. Still believing I was comfortably early, I made some sandwiches and drove north. Things weren’t that bad, I reflected. I’d had a nosebleed. It happens. Get back on the horse.

The phone rang while I sat waiting for a stoplight. It was a secretary from the middle school. “Are you substituting for us today?” she asked. I said I was, I was on my way. “Because school starts at seven-thirty,” she said, “and it’s ten to eight now. We’re just wondering where you are.”

“Oh, no!” I said. “I misread the clock. I’m terribly sorry, I’ll be there in a jiffy.” I swore and gunned the engine up a long hill.

I’d screwed up again. Couldn’t even read the clock. What was I thinking?

The parking lot was nearly full, but there was a slot near one of the far snowheaps. I was huffing and puffing by the time I reached the office. “It’s unforgivable, really,” I said to the secretary.

“Trust me,” she said, “it’s not the first time it’s happened.” She pointed me in the direction of Mr. Lyall’s science class over in Team Ganges. It was a long yellow cinderblock room with lab tables that were filled with eighth-graders who had gotten to school on time, as I had not. However, as it happened, my presence was not yet needed: homeroom that day was devoted to something called “Advisor/Advisee,” or AA, led by some sort of kindliness specialist, a Mrs. Dunne, who wanted everyone to study a handout from the Southern Poverty Law Center. “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!” Mrs. Dunne said, over a steady hum of conversation. “LET’S TAKE A LOOK AND SEE WHERE WE’RE SIMILAR AND WHERE WE’RE DIFFERENT.” The handout was meant to teach tolerance — it was about “friendship groups” versus cliques. Friendship groups were okay, but cliques were bad, because they often “exerted control over their members.” Together she and the class went through a set of multiple-choice questions: I ______ sit with the same people at lunch every day. (A) always, (B) sometimes, (C) never. Most students answered “always.” When someone I’ve never talked to before speaks to me, I feel ______. (A) annoyed, (B) afraid, (C) excited. Many said “annoyed.” One said “afraid.” I ______ meeting new people! (A) hate, (B) don’t care about, (C) love. Some said “hate”; one girl said “sometimes.” According to the answer key at the bottom of the page, if you answered mostly A’s you should “ask yourself if you’re in a clique.” Everyone was talking at once. “SHHH,” said Mrs. Dunne. “If I said hi, and I’ve never talked to you before, that’s going to annoy you?”

“If I’m in a bad mood,” said a girl, “yes.”

“I’m fine about everyone,” said a boy.

Further murmurs of dissent. Mrs. Dunne said, “I’m going to agree with you: the selections here kind of stumped me. I think we need a (D) answer—‘I’m fine about meeting new people.’” After a while, she gave up on the tolerance lesson — the class just was not into it. She left.

It was my homeroom now. This was the moment to introduce myself and take command, but I had a strange attack of sleep-deprived shyness and didn’t. I turned toward several kids sitting nearby. “So now normally what happens?”

“We have, like, free time,” said Olivia, a short, bouncy girl.

A boy, Sean, asked me how long I’d been a teacher.

Not very long, I said — I’d taught some college writing here and there.

“Yeah, you look like a writer,” said Sean.

“You kind of look like the guy on the back of The Giving Tree,” said Prentice. He had small, puffy, amused, wicked eyes.

“Well, I’ve got a white beard.”

“Can I call you Santa Claus?” said Olivia.

“Please don’t,” I said. “You can think of me that way.”

“Do you give out presents?” Prentice said.

“No.”

“You don’t bring Jolly Ranchers in? You should, next time you sub at this school.”

“That’s a good idea,” I said. I stood up and cleared my throat. “So — guys. I just want to say I’m sorry I’m late to your class. Mr. Baker is my name, and — um — I’m the sub.” Bad, dumb, wrong. I flapped the tolerance handout. “I’m interested in this survey,” I said, “because I have found, when I go into a Maine school, that the kids are nice. When somebody comes into your group, it’s kind of a tricky thing. It’s a delicate balance. You’ve got some friends and some people who are maybe a little bit new to the group, and they’re not totally accepted but they’re somewhat accepted. Everybody’s trying to figure out their position. It doesn’t seem to me that this is a terribly cliquish place. Do you think it is?”

“Yes,” said Olivia.

“You can’t say hi to everyone,” said Sean. “Hi, Olivia!”

“Hi, Sean,” said Olivia. “See, now we’re in a clique!”

“Anyway,” I said, “I don’t know what they want you to do with these survey questions. I guess they want you to think about them and sort of become better people?” I stood for a moment. The class, having satisfied their curiosity about me, which was minimal, resumed their much more interesting conversations. They were a clique, and I was not a member. Why fight it? “And now you have a free moment to, ah, live your life,” I said.

One of the secretaries came by to give me a batch of photocopied letters from the superintendent’s office, urging parents to fill out a form that they’d recently received from the Military Interstate Children’s Compact Commission. “The DOE”—Maine’s Department of Education—“feels it would be helpful to know how many students we currently educate dealing with a parent/guardian serving overseas or based here in Maine and the unique difficulties these students face,” said the letter. I handed out the letter; the kids stuffed it in the side pouches of their backpacks as the next-period bell bonged.

Mr. Lyall was in the middle of a unit on the periodic table and the chemistry of matter. The homework for the night before had been to choose one element from the periodic table — a poster of the table was on the wall — and build a small, three-dimensional construction-paper cube covered with fun facts about that element, held together with Scotch tape. Some kids had thrown themselves into the project, making minutely detailed drawings on the facets of their cubes, using many colors of markers, and some had barely begun. Nobody was finished. I went around the room asking people about their elements, and making cries of wonder and admiration: “Wow, that’s beautiful. That’s amazing.” One kid, Stephen, had made a yellow paper cube about neptunium. On one of its facets, he’d written, in tiny, careful letters, Where you would “Bump Into” it: neptunium, because of its high radioactivity, is only used in laboratories. If you are not a scientist, you will probably never see it in your life. A cheerful boy named Bruce, who had chosen selenium, was making some repairs to his cube. “It kind of got smushed cause my dog stepped on it,” he explained. Melissa, a big girl dressed in purple, had made a cube about argon, with the chemical symbol in fat purple letters. Even though it’s not poisonous, she wrote in yellow, it can still cause suffocation. Ryder, a boy in a blue button-down shirt, had chosen magnesium, which was used to make JET ENGINES—he’d surrounded the words with red flames. Over a drawing of a saucepan on a hot stove, he’d noted magnesium’s boiling point: 1,994 degrees Fahrenheit, 1,090 degrees centigrade. Plus it doesn’t stink, he wrote, in green letters outlined with black.

“My element was boron,” said May, who was obviously organized and got all A’s.

“Nice choice,” I said. “Did you find anything interesting out about boron?”

“It’s used in bleach, soap, and ceramics,” she said promptly.

“Great work,” I said. “What I like about this assignment is that for the rest of your life you’ll feel a special affinity for boron, right?”

“Yes,” she said, doubtfully.

After they’d deposited their element cubes in a plastic tray by the windows, they were supposed to read two chapters from a textbook called The Nature of Matter and answer some questions, but because of Mrs. Dunne’s anti-clique survey, there wasn’t time to do the reading. While they were putting final touches on their cubes, I skimmed the textbook to learn about the differences between physical and chemical changes. Crumpling paper is a physical change, a burning match is a chemical change. Got it. A rotting apple is a chemical change, and rust is also a chemical change, because the iron reacts with oxygen in the air. I read one of the questions: What kind of change occurs on the surface of bread when it is toasted — physical or chemical? Explain. But… wasn’t it both? The heat dries the bread, making it crunchy, which is a physical change, and the bread turns brown, which is a chemical reaction.

A peppy, bifocaled ed tech named Ms. Shrader appeared — actually she was a substitute, filling in for the regular ed tech, who worked one-on-one with Lisa, a quiet, affable girl who had a learning problem. Ms. Shrader helped Lisa with her element cube — she’d chosen copper — and then she came over to talk to me. She’d taught language arts, social studies, and gifted-and-talented at the middle school for twenty-five years; after that, she’d worked as an ed tech for high-functioning autistic students, which was a dream job. “That was the most fun I ever had,” she said. Now she was a substitute. “This is what I did and who I was.”

I asked her if getting her certificate had prepared her for being a teacher.

“Nope,” she said. “My ed classes did not prepare me.”

“Teaching is a whole new world,” I said.

“It’s so not what people think it is,” Ms. Shrader said. She waved her arm at the students. “It’s very easy to say you can do this, this, and this. But get in a classroom with twenty-five kids and find out how easy it is. It’s not. Some things are possible, though. Kids want somebody to tell them what to do. You have to read the crowd. Some of these kids are on the bus at six-ten in the morning.”

“It’s a long day for them,” I said.

“A very long day,” she said. She checked the clock. “OKAY, GUYS, YOU CAN GO. SEE YOU LATER, HAVE A GREAT DAY!” Out in the cacophonous hallway, I heard her say, to another teacher, “Lord, have mercy.”

I had a moment of stillness between classes, and a quick bathroom break, before twenty-two more fourteen-year-olds filed in, holding their fragile paper element cubes. Arsenic. Gold. Silver. Neon. “Why does neon glow?” I asked Tamara, whose cube was covered with bullet points and boiling points.

“Um, I can’t remember,” she said. I talked to Raymond, a smart kid, about depleted uranium weapons. Shelby told me about lithium. “It’s found in the Earth’s crust,” he said. “When lithium touches water it lights it on fire. I’m not really sure how that works, since it’s found in the Earth’s crust.” One of the tape dispensers ran out of tape and was refilled, but the new tape was not very good — it wasn’t sticky enough. The students watched their newly taped cubes self-destruct several minutes afterward, seam by seam. We set that dispenser aside.

The students colored, they taped, they talked; I said, “Nice job, excellent, good going.” The pile of finished cubes grew like a heap of alchemical treasure in the homework bin. This was a nifty assignment — there was something about having to turn a list of inert facts into a three-dimensional, decorative, faceted object that seemed to help kids think better.

I made a stab at teaching what was in the textbook, rather than merely ordering the class to read it, per the sub plans. If you make a smoothie, I said to them, is that a physical change, or a chemical change? Physical, they said. Good. If you take a bite of an apple and put it on the windowsill and wait for a while and it turns brown, is that a physical or a chemical change? Some said physical, some said chemical. I explained why it was chemical. “So — when you’re done with your cube, just read the two chapters and answer the questions on page seventy-two and eighty-seven.” I casually knuckle-tapped the numbers of the questions they had to answer on the whiteboard, as if I were a real teacher. Bethany was smiling to herself, working her thumbs on her cellphone. “Or just text your friend,” I said. About two-thirds of the kids got to work on the assignment. Rodney and Bradley played catch with a uranium cube. I marched over, feigning sternness. “You want to come to the front and explain how depleted uranium works?”

“No,” said Rodney.

“If it was a real cube of uranium, you wouldn’t be able to bat it around like that, right?”

“Because it’s one of the heaviest metals,” said Bradley.

“Right.” I opened Bradley’s textbook and pointed out the questions they were supposed to answer. Nearby, Eileen, polite and deliberate, had carefully balanced her element cube on a marker set vertically on end inside an empty, dusty aquarium. “It’s drying,” she said. “It’s inside the fish tank so no air will knock it over.”

The tide of noise began to rise. Olivia, the bouncy, tiny girl in short shorts from homeroom, was flirting outrageously with the two uranium-cube tossers. “He’s blushing,” said Olivia. “Look at him, he’s turning red!” I turned to talk to a kid named Winston in a Patriots T-shirt about nitrogen. “They used to have nitrogen tanks in paintball,” he said. “It was so powerful they went to CO2.”

I asked him if he was a paintball man.

“I’m more of a snowboarder,” Winston said. “My last run is tomorrow.”

Next to him, Sam, a quiet kid, was using orange Sharpie to jazz up the Kr on his krypton cube.

“Does krypton make you weaken and fall to the ground?” I asked.

“No, it’s a noble gas,” he said. “It’s highly unreactive.” Math was probably his best subject, he told me.

Olivia came over. “I have a question,” she said. “Can I get a Starburst?”

“No, but thanks for asking. What element are you working on?”

“Chlorine,” she said.

“My best subject is tech,” said Winston. “In tech, you can build stuff. I’m a hands-on person. We built a car out of wood, and we had to send it down a ramp a couple of times. And there was an egg in the car, a raw egg.”

“First it was a hard-boiled egg,” said Olivia. “They were trying to teach us you shouldn’t text and drive.”

“Then it was a raw egg,” Winston continued, “and when the car hits sometimes the egg splatters. If you crash like that, it’s going to be bam, you’re gone. You have to protect the egg. I went down three times, and then I did the hill of death.”

“The hill of death is where you have to stand on a stool,” said Olivia. “I had to stand on my tippy-toes, that’s honest.”

“I had to stand on my tippy-toes,” said Winston. “I lost my bumper, but the egg survived. I got a T-shirt for winning.”

Class over. Twenty-two more students, twenty-two more backpacks, twenty-two more iPads in their black padded cases, sixteen more element cubes. “Top o’ the morning!” I said, clapping my hands together.

“I’m walking on sunshine this morning,” said a boy, Harley, with exaggerated zest.

“I’m Mr. Baker,” I said. I successfully avoided saying I was the substitute—they knew that. While I was taking attendance, Renee stopped chewing gum, opened her large mouth, and yelled, “QUIET!”

“Don’t say quiet, just be quiet,” I said to her.

“Can I take the attendance down?” asked Harley, smirking.

“Don’t trust him,” said Renee, resuming gum-chewing.

They still had work left to do on their element cubes. Christopher, a gamer, wrote that chlorine was a murderous gas. The French had used it first, in World War I, he said: The only problem was when the wind changed. Joy had chosen tin. “It’s very rare,” she said. “Rarer than copper.”

I asked her why it had that strange two-letter symbol, Sn. “Just to make life difficult?”

“It’s because it’s from the Greek,” she said.

Courtney, the girl next to Joy, said, “My dad is a history teacher.”

“Congratulations, Courtney,” said Joy sarcastically.

Courtney had covered her gold cube with sumptuous stripes of golden crayon. “It’s used in medications,” she said, “and it’s used in chips, in iPhones, that sort of thing.”

“And you would never know,” said Joy.

“This tape sucks,” said Felicity, who was next to Courtney.

There was a scuffle across the room. “Ow, Lizzie, stop!” I felt like a waiter in a crowded Greek diner.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“We’re massaging our necks,” said Jessica, who had her hands around Lizzie’s neck.

“These ladies are hurting each other,” said Harley.

“IT’S A CHICK FIGHT! YEAH!” said Todd, who was shrimpy and high-voiced.

Nearby, Victor had drawn a large black spiral on one side of his cube. I asked him if it was a picture of the death spiral of the hafnium electron. “I don’t know,” he said.

Harley grabbed a textbook and slammed it on the table.

“Why would you slam the book?” I asked him.

“I don’t know,” said Harley.

“I don’t know either,” I said. “It makes a loud slamming noise if you slam it.” I pointed out the question on page 87, the one about toast, and told him to answer it. “This question sums up the whole problem,” I said.

Courtney, Felicity, and Joy came up. “Mr. Baker, can we work out in the hall?” said Courtney.

“People always ask me that,” I said.

“We’ve got a bad class,” Felicity said.

“You’ll miss the social whirl,” I said.

“I don’t like the social whirl,” Felicity said. “I like my friends.”

“I did oxygen,” said James, in a hockey shirt.

“What happens when oxygen comes into contact with the human brain?” I said. I laughed demonically, startling the boy. “Never mind.” I took a huge breath. “WHEN YOU’VE FINISHED YOUR MAGIC CUBES—”

Harley was making a scene.

“Shut up, Harley,” said Todd.

“No,” said Harley.

“WHEN YOU’VE FINISHED YOUR MAGIC ELEMENT BOXES, THEY GO UP—”

“They’re magical?” said Harley.

“Yes,” I said, “because when they’re done, you get a mark.”

Todd had discovered the cube from an earlier class balanced inside the dry fish tank. “It’s drying,” I said. “It’s got sparkles on it.”

“I want to touch it,” said Todd.

“No,” I said.

“Stop it!” said Elizabeth.

More kids crowded around.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” I said. “Perfectly balanced in its own little aquarium.”

“That’s Eileen for you,” said Elizabeth.

“Did you see how he threw my pencil on the floor?” said Todd, pointing to Harley. “I should get him arrested.”

Lyle, in baggy sweats, imitated a fussy teacher. “That is none of your concern, Harley. Turn around in your chair and return to your work.”

Harley said, “I’m sharpening my pencil.”

“He’s sharpening his mechanical pencil,” said Todd.

“So, what is a physical property?” I asked Lyle.

Lyle’s eyes strayed to an open textbook. “A physical change is one in which the form or appearance of matter changes, but not its composition,” he read.

“You’re artfully reading the textbook,” I said.

“I have it memorized,” he said.

“So if you have a rock,” I said, “and you take a hammer to it—”

“That rock’s going down,” said Lyle.

We laughed and talked about blowtorches and states of matter.

“I’m so tired of winter,” said Marielle, looking out the window. She had a long braid and a gentle, unformed face.

“I saw crocuses the other day,” I said. “That means spring.”

“It should be like ninety degrees outside by now,” said Marielle. “We should be wearing shorts.”

There was an odd momentary hush, one of those coincidental clearings in the verbal jungle that sometimes occur.

Todd promptly spoke up. “Get to work, children.”

Harley said, “Todd’s doing nothing but causing trouble.”

“Is he disturbing the intellectual content of the class?” I said.

“I don’t think there is any intellectual content,” said Marielle. “You forgot, you’re teaching eighth grade.”

“Inner-lectual,” said Harley.

“I like that,” I said. “Innerlectual and outerlectual.”

“Yummy,” said Todd, rubbing his stomach.

“Inter-what? What’s inter-lectual?” Jessica asked.

“Look it up,” said Lizzie.

Todd was taking pictures of me with his iPad. I told him to stop.

Harley said, “iPads are stupid. I don’t like them.”

“Time to go,” said Lyle. “I don’t want to go. Can I just stay here?”

A general zippage of backpacks. The girls fixed their hair. I asked Todd what his next class was.

“Reading, with Mrs. Simmons.”

“Whooo!” said a girl.

Class over; new class. Twenty-one children, each with a future life, each with a name to be called out. I signed and dated the attendance sheet.

Katylynn’s hand shot up. She had a ring on her thumb. “Can we bring that down?”

“Yes, you can.” Time to take control. “So I’m Mr. Baker, and WE ARE DOING SOME SCIENCE. And you’ve got some cubes, right? I have been really impressed by these cubes. Everybody picks an element and just goes wild with the art. And if you haven’t gone wild with it, don’t worry, you’ve just gone slightly wild.” I turned to Katylynn and Roslyn, the two girls who were taking the attendance sheet to the office. “And gals? We need some Scotch tape that actually works. This Scotch tape is terrible. So if you could ask them if they could tell me where in the class the Scotch tape is, or if they maybe have some Scotch tape? Here we are talking about the scientific properties of matter. Scotch tape is actually supposed to be sticky. So we’re going to get some better tape.”

The noise was moving and growing.

“GUYS! If you’ve finished your cubes, that’s tremendous, and if you haven’t finished them, just pour your soul out into that cube. Everything about selenium or uranium or whatever it is you’re doing. And then, when you’re done, there are some pages to read in the textbook, and some questions, all about physical and chemical properties. Like when you take a bite of an apple is that a physical change or a chemical change?”

“Physical,” said Anthony, a plaid-shirted polite kid.

“Right, and if you take a bite of the apple, put the apple on the counter, walk away, watch a TV show, and come back and the apple is brown, is that a physical or a chemical change?”

“Chemical,” said Rita, with long straight hair.

“Okay! And let’s say you’re a miner and you carve out a bunch of stuff from a hillside and you melt it down and you end up with iron.”

“Chemical?” said Anthony.

“Ah, but you’re melting it,” I said. “The difference between ice and water is physical, right? If you melt iron ore to make iron, that’s sort of like melting ice to make water. Now, if you build a bridge with the iron and the rain comes and it reacts and turns to rust, what’s rust?”

“Physical,” said Anthony.

“Rust is a tricky one,” I said. “You should know rust. Rust is a chemical change because the oxygen in the air is reacting with the metal. If you know rust, you’ve got the right answer to a question. Rust is a chemical change. So you’re already there, practically. Just read that part of the textbook, firm up your knowledge, and answer the questions. Okay?”

Frederick, a charismatic boy in a baseball T-shirt, raised his hand. “Mr. Baker, I have a completely off-topic question. How tall are you?”

“I’m six four.”

“Whoa, six four!” said Frederick.

“It was just the hormones in the meat,” I said.

“Are you a basketball player?”

I said I’d played basketball, but not in school.

“Our team won the championships,” Frederick said.

Frederick’s friend Payson said, “Were you a science teacher at one point?”

“No, I never was a science teacher,” I said, “and I never will be a science teacher.”

“Except for right now,” said Payson. “Right now you’re a science teacher.”

“You’re right, my god, I’m a science teacher!”

Another hand went up, from a malicious cherub with spiky blond hair. “Misterbater?” he said. His name was Shane. His voice was just beginning to change.

“Mr. Baker,” I said.

Immediate uproar. “That’s Shane! Don’t pay any attention to him!”

I didn’t. I circulated, handing out compliments. “Iridium!” I said, admiring Aaron’s cube. “What is iridium?”

“It’s just a rock,” said Natasha, willowy and impatient, sitting next to him.

“It’s in meteors,” said Aaron.

“It’s in meat?” said Shane.

John was sniffing a quarter to figure out how silver smelled. He handed it to me. “Would you say that smell is ‘musty’?”

I smelled the quarter. “It smells like old finger oil and dirt. I’m not sure if silver has much of a smell. But sure, why not? Musty.” John wrote, Smell: Musty, on his cube.

“How do you like my K?” said Payson.

“Potassium! Beautiful K! Nice stripes!”

They went away for lunch and returned. Shane, having bellowed for half an hour in the cafeteria, had become a demon child. He drew on the floor with a Sharpie and then squirted a big plop of dish detergent on the black marks and began scrubbing the spot while trying to make an iPad movie of himself cleaning the floor, laughing.

“Whoa, stop, stop, stop,” I said. “You’re on the floor, Shane. That is a physical change in your altitude, and it will result in a chemical change to your grade. So please don’t do that. Sit in your chair. Just do some work, okay? I have my eye on you.”

As I walked away, I heard Shane say, “I hate that guy.”

Class ended, and then, mercifully, it was STAR time. Some familiar faces were back, including Shane. They all, even Shane, “read” silently — meaning that they mostly poked at their iPads and listened to music — for twenty minutes. Then Shane raised his hand.

“Mr. Bakersfield,” he said, innocently. “Can I call you Mr. Bakersfield? Like the Hell’s Satans of Bakersfield?”

“No.”

“Mr. Bakersfield,” said Shane, “are you trying to grow your hair out on top?”

“My hair’s pretty much gone on top,” I said. “What about you? Are you trying to grow your hair out?” A girl laughed. That made Shane mad.

He began covertly jabbing a plastic ruler under his neighbor’s backpack, trying to make it fall off the desk. “Stop with the ruler!” I said. Moments later he was silently pretending to whonk someone on the head with a textbook. I went over and pulled up a chair and lowered my voice. “What is the problem, Shane?”

“I’m ADHD,” he said. “My pills begin to wear off around now.”

“Oh, come on,” I said.

“I swear to god!” said Shane. “Ask anybody.”

I said, “Do you want not to be ADHD?”

“I don’t want to be, but I am.”

“Look, you’re obviously smart,” I said. “Just pull it together, okay? Just dial it back a notch. Can you do that? Thank you.”

He calmed down a bit after that.

The secretary’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “Please excuse the interruption for the afternoon announcements,” she said. “There was a bracelet found today in the gym locker room area. Please come to the main office and claim it if it is yours. Students who are part of the cast of Oklahoma! will have a mandatory practice Monday through Thursday next week. Today’s jazz rehearsal has been canceled.” She read a long list of students who had messages in the office — parents were forbidden to text their children in middle school. I sat for ten minutes and watched the class chat and joke and raise minor hell. Let them. I wanted the day to be over.

But there was still forty minutes to go — end-of-day homeroom. “Hi, Santa Claus,” said Olivia, the bouncy girl in short shorts. She began flirting with a serious, proto-gay boy named Michael. “You’re so abusive, Michael!” she said.

“I am not,” said Michael.

Olivia grabbed Michael’s water bottle.

“Let my water go!” Michael said.

“Are you having a baby?” Olivia said. She turned to me. “There’s ice cream in the freezer if you get hungry. I’m trying to lose weight.”

“You can’t lose weight,” said Michael. “If you try to lose weight your body will compensate. Your body will just hold on to the fat.”

“You’re so abusive,” she said to Michael. “Why did you tell Rodney to give James a lap dance?”

“I didn’t tell him to do that!” said Michael. “He said he’d give me five bucks if I gave a lap dance to Melissa.”

“How tall are you?” Bruce asked me.

“Six four.”

“Wow, six four!”

“It means nothing to be tall,” I said.

“WAVE ONE, YOU ARE DISMISSED,” said the secretary. Six kids left the room. It was quieter now.

“You know how short I am?” Olivia said. “I’m just shy of five feet.” She turned back to Michael. “Do you really want to be a teacher?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Michael. “Like from kindergarten to fifth grade.”

“I like kids a lot,” Olivia said. “I like little kids, one-year-olds. One through like five.”

They stacked some chairs on tables and picked up some stray pencils and I thanked them. “It’s been a pleasure having you in class,” I said.

“And people say I can’t be nice!” said Michael.

“He can’t,” said Olivia. “He’s abusive to me.”

“I’m not abusive unless you’re abusive to me,” said Michael.

I asked what abusive meant.

“When you hit me, you’re getting hit back, two times as bad!” said Michael.

I felt drained, numb, brain-dead. In the back of the room three of the remaining kids had begun playing hockey with a balled-up piece of paper, using their iPad cases as hockey sticks. “This is a long day,” I said.

“A really long day,” said Olivia. “I wish we’d start school at nine o’clock. They don’t understand how crazy I am if I don’t sleep. On Sundays I sleep till nine-thirty.”

“You talk a lot when you don’t sleep,” said Michael.

“I talk a LOT,” said Olivia. “Boys are always talking about… never mind.” She looked at me. “Are you new here?”

“Yes, I’m very new here,” I said.

“Do you like it?”

“Yes, I do. I like you guys. You seem like good people. Although sometimes things get a little out of control.”

“I was listening to what you said this morning,” said Michael. “You’ve got the wrong idea. Kids here are not what they seem. They spread rumors about me — bad stuff.”

“So all that clique business they were talking about is true?”

“It’s not cliques, it’s more like gang warfare,” said Michael.

“There are four girls in my class who are snobs,” said Olivia.

“DUDE, DON’T OPEN YOUR LEGS, WHATEVER YOU DO!” said one of the hockey players.

“Hah-hah, please,” said Courtney.

“Excuse me for a second,” I said. I went to the back of the room. “What is this, air hockey, brain hockey? Just crank it back, okay? Keep the volume down.”

I went back to Michael and Olivia. “So what are people snobby about?”

“Everything,” said Olivia. “They think that they have everything, and they really don’t. I’m kind of snobby myself.” She asked Michael, “How do you think I am? I can be really nice, but I am very snobby sometimes.”

I felt it was time for a platitude. “If everyone at school can find one or two people they get along with, that’s enough, right?” I took a bite of an apple.

“I hate apples,” said Olivia.

“There’s one kid, you even say something disrespectful to him, he’s going to punch you,” said Michael.

“Do you know I got grounded for punching my mom?” said Olivia.

“Why did you do that?” I asked.

“She was being annoying. She was behind me and I was trying to go out the door, and she pushed me, so I turned around and smacked her, and when I got home she was like, ‘You’re grounded.’ So I called the cops on her. I said, ‘My mom’s grounding me for punching her and I didn’t punch her.’ I lied about that.”

I said, “You called the cops on your mom?”

“WAVE TWO, YOU ARE DISMISSED.”

“Take it easy!” I said. They left.

I drove home. Day Five, check. At least I hadn’t bled on a whiteboard.