“Ready for the onslaught?” She turned and saw a gray-haired woman. She was wearing jeans, a faded T-shirt with the name of a band on it, and sandals. She looked like she was still on vacation and it was a warm day in New York. She smiled when Victoria turned around with a startled look. Victoria had worn a short black cotton skirt, a loose white linen top, and flat shoes. The baggy top hid a multitude of sins, and the reasonably short skirt showed off her legs. But she wasn’t looking to seduce them, only teach them.
“Hi,” Victoria said with a look of surprise. She had seen the other woman at the teachers’ meetings, but hadn’t met her and couldn’t remember what department she was in, and didn’t want to ask her.
“I’m social studies. I have the classroom next to you, so if they start a gang war, I can help you. My name is Helen.” She was smiling as she came to shake Victoria’s hand. She looked to be around Victoria’s mother’s age, somewhere in her mid to late forties. Victoria’s mother had just turned fifty. “I’ve been here for twenty-two years, so if you need a cheat sheet or a guide, just ask me. They’re good people here, except the kids and their parents. Some of them anyway. Some of them are great kids, in spite of the privileged circumstances they live in.” As she said it, a shrill bell rang, and a few minutes later they could hear footsteps pounding up the stairs. It sounded like everyone was running.
“Thank you,” Victoria said, not sure what else to say. The statement she had made about the students and their parents was pretty damning, and an odd position to take for a woman who worked in a school full of rich kids.
“I love my students, but sometimes it’s hard to get them to deal with reality. How real is it when your parents have a boat, a plane, and a house in the Hamptons, and you spend every summer in the South of France? That’s the way it is for these kids. What the rest of the world deals with is pretty remote to them. It’s up to us to introduce them to the real world. And sometimes it’s not easy. Sooner or later you can get there, with most of them. But not very often with their parents. They’re past it, they don’t want to know how the other half lives. I guess they figure it’s not their problem. But the kids have a right to know and make choices.” Victoria didn’t disagree with her, and she hadn’t thought a lot about the lifestyles of these kids and how it would affect their view of the world. But Helen sounded faintly bitter about it and resentful of the kids. And Victoria wondered if she was jealous of the privileged lives they led. And as she thought it, the first student walked into the classroom, and Helen went back to her own.
The first student was a girl called Becki. She had blond hair to her waist, and was wearing a pink T-shirt, white jeans, and expensive Italian sandals. And she had the most beautiful face and body Victoria had ever seen. She took a seat in the middle of the classroom, which meant she wasn’t anxious to participate, but she wasn’t one of the shirkers in the back row either. She smiled at Victoria as she sat down. She had a casual air about her and looked as though she thought she owned the world. She had the cockiness of seniors Victoria had seen before. There were only four years separating the two young women, and Victoria felt a tremor sensing Becki’s self-confidence, but she reminded herself that she was the boss here. And they didn’t know exactly how young she was. She realized that she was going to have to earn their respect.
As she thought about it, four boys bolted through the door, almost at the same time, and sat down. They all looked at Becki, and obviously knew her, and glanced in Victoria’s direction with mild curiosity. A flock of girls entered the room then, laughing and talking. They said hi to Becki, ignored the boys, glanced at Victoria, and took seats in a block at the back of the room. That meant to Victoria that they wanted to keep talking and exchange notes, or maybe even text each other throughout the class. She would have to keep an eye on them. More girls then, more boys, a few stragglers who came in alone, and several in groups. And finally, after a full ten minutes, her first class had arrived. Victoria greeted them with a big smile and told them her name. She wrote it on the blackboard and then she turned to them.
“I’d like you all to introduce yourselves so I can put the faces with the names.” She pointed to a girl in the front row, to her extreme left as she faced them. “Let’s go all around the room.” And they did. They each said their name as she looked at the list she had on her desk for that class. “Who knows where they want to apply to college?” Less than half the hands in the room went up. “How about telling us?” She pointed to a boy in the back row who already looked bored. She didn’t know it yet, but he had been Becki’s boyfriend the year before, and they broke up before the summer. Now both of them were unattached. Becki had just gotten back from her father’s villa in the South of France. And like many of the students at Madison, her parents were divorced.
The boy Victoria had asked about the colleges he was applying to reeled off a list. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Duke, Dartmouth, and maybe MIT. He had every top school on that list, and she wondered if he was telling the truth or pulling her leg. She didn’t know the cast of characters yet at all. But she would.
“What happened to the circus college in Miami?” she asked him with a blank expression, and everyone laughed. “That might be fun.”
“I want to take chemical engineering, with a minor in physics, or maybe the other way around.”
“How are your grades in English?” she asked him. He was the kind of boy who would think an English comp class was a drag. But it was a required course, even for him.
“Not so good,” he admitted sheepishly in answer to her question. “I’m stronger in science.”
“What about you?” she asked the others. “How are you at English comp?” It was a reasonable question, and they were honest with her. Some said they sucked and others said they were good at it, and there was no way for her to know the truth, particularly not this soon.
“Well, if you want to get into those colleges, and I assume that several of you do, then you’re going to need decent grades in English. So let’s work on it together this year. I’m here to improve your writing skills. It should help you with the essay on your college app, and I’ll be happy to assist any of you with those applications, if you like.” It was an interesting spin on the purpose of the class, and the point hadn’t been lost on them. They sat up and listened to her more closely for what came next.
She talked about the value of being able to write clearly and coherently, not in flowery prose, but to be able to write an interesting story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. “I think we ought to have some fun this year too. Writing doesn’t have to be dreary. And for some people, I know it’s hard.” She glanced at the boy who wanted to go to MIT-English comp was clearly not his thing. “You can add some humor to what you write, or write it tongue-in-cheek. You can write social commentary on the state of the world, or a story that you invent from beginning to end. But whatever you write, make it simple and clear, and make it something special that others will want to read. So in that vein, I’m going to ask you to write something that we’ll all enjoy reading.” As she said it, she turned around and wrote on the blackboard that ran the length of one wall of the room, behind her desk. She wrote in a clear hand that they could all read easily: “My summer vacation.” And as she did, everyone groaned, and she turned around to face them again. “There’s a twist to it, a little spin. I don’t want to hear about the summer vacation you did have, which might be as boring as mine with my family in L.A. I want you to write about the summer vacation you wish you’d had. And when you’re finished writing it, I want to wish I had that vacation too. And I want you to make me understand why. Why was that the vacation you wanted to have, or wished you had? You can write it as an essay in first person, or as a story in third. And I want some really great stuff. I know you can do it if you try.” She smiled broadly at them then, and said something they didn’t expect. “Class dismissed.” For a moment they looked at her, a little stunned, and then they let out a whoop and got up, and started shuffling out of the room. She tapped her desk once, and told them that the assignment was due the next time the class met, in three days. With that, they groaned again, and she got more specific. “And it doesn’t have to be long,” she said as they beamed.