She seemed to have forgotten to return my paper, and I raised my hand, but she didn’t call on me, so I put it down. I wasn’t going to interrupt; it would be better to wait until it was my turn. Chris’s paper was about the importance of sports in school; Aspeth’s was about how travel expands your horizons; Dede’s was about how she’d become pro-choice. (Since the day Dede had passed me the ratings sheet, I purposely hadn’t sat next to her, but I had watched to see if she and Aspeth had done it again, and they had; they’d done it daily. I was too far away to read what they wrote, but on the day Ms. Moray wore a kilt, complete with an oversized safety pin, I knew they’d trash her-a kilt was another idea of boarding school that only an outsider would have.) Jenny’s essay was about how her best friend in second grade had died of leukemia, which didn’t exactly seem like a strong belief she had, but it was so sad that I thought she deserved an A anyway.
I was beside Jenny, and when she had finished reading, Ms. Moray said, “Jeff, you can go ahead.”
“Ms. Moray?” I said.
“You’re not going,” she said. “And you know exactly why.” Her face was flushed. I could feel the other students watching me, and I turned to Jeff, as if to give him my blessings to go ahead, as if I had any idea what was happening. The only thing I could imagine was that this was somehow related to my refusal to read back in the second week of school.
When the bell rang, Ms. Moray said, “We’ll pick up here tomorrow. Darden and Martin, remember to bring your papers back to class. Lee, stay here, and the rest of you are dismissed.”
After everyone had gone, she took something-my paper-from under her grade book and shoved it down the table toward me. It slid about halfway and stopped, still out of my reach. I glanced at Ms. Moray before leaning in to take it, and something in her expression made me freeze.
“I could flunk you for the term if I wanted to,” she said. “Your lack of respect for me as a teacher and your lack of respect for this classroom-I’m dumbfounded, Lee. I don’t know if this is something we can work through.”
I waited to see if there was more, and when it seemed almost definite that there wasn’t, I said very quickly, “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
She raised her eyebrows disbelievingly, but I held her gaze. The longer I held it, I imagined, the more likely that I might persuade her of my ignorance. She was the one to look away, and when she did, I reached for the paper. The title I had chosen, which now had a red F circled above it, was “Prayer Is Not A Good Idea In Public Schools.” Next to the title I’d put an asterisk, and beside the asterisk on the bottom of the first page I’d written, “This is not an issue I truly care about, but I believe it fulfills the assignment.” This remark was surrounded by a jungle of red writing, which I scanned, though not all the words were legible: Then why did you bother to write it?! Do you not understand… your glibness and utter lack of regard for… because this assignment, the entire purpose of which…
I looked up. “I didn’t mean that I don’t care like I don’t care at all, I just meant I don’t care about it.”
“That makes no sense.”
“I was just telling the truth.”
“Then why didn’t you pick another topic?”
“I couldn’t think of one.”
“There’s nothing you feel strongly about? Here you are, you’re going to this incredible school, being given every advantage, and you can’t think of anything that matters to you. What do you plan to do with yourself?” She waited, and I realized it was a question I was supposed to answer.
“You mean for a job? Maybe-” It had occurred to me that I might like to be a teacher, but surely this would seem suspect. “Maybe a lawyer,” I said.
She made a scoffing noise. “Lawyers stand for something. They believe in something. At least the good ones do.” She refolded her arms. “I don’t know what to do with you, Lee. I don’t understand you. You’re a cipher. Do you get anything at all out of coming to this class?”
“Of course.”
“What?”
“I’m not sure what you’re asking specifically.”
“I’m asking if you get anything out of coming to this class. It’s a pretty simple question.”
Neither of us spoke, and as the silence stretched, I felt further and further from the last thing she’d said. Perhaps I could change the subject entirely, reply to a different topic-I could say, And that’s why parrots make really good pets. Or, It’s because I’ve always wanted to visit New Mexico. When I thought about it, it seemed a little ridiculous, a little arbitrary, that this was the conversation we were having; fighting with Ms. Moray felt inorganic.
But I couldn’t say those things. It would be bizarre. She would think there was something wrong with me, something more wrong than what she already thought.
“I like the reading,” I said. “I think it’s interesting.”
“What book has been your favorite?” I could hardly finish speaking before she was barking another question.
“I like, um, Song of Myself.”
“What do you like about it?”
“I don’t-” I made a kind of involuntary gulping sound. I was not about to cry, but it sounded like I was, and immediately, Ms. Moray’s expression softened. “I don’t know,” I said. “The words.”
“I like Whitman, too,” she said. “That’s why I assigned him.”
She was staring at me-with less hostility than before but still staring-and I looked away, at the chalkboard, at the window, down at the table. When I looked back at her, her stare had not wavered.
“You can go through life disengaged,” she said. “You can be a person who always says no, who’s not interested, not enthusiastic, who’s too cool to be part of things. Or, at some point, you can say yes. You can develop interests, take a stand, reach out to people. I see the way you don’t talk to your classmates before or after class. People want to be friends with you. Dede and Aspeth want to be friends with you, and at some point, I hope you’ll give them the chance.”
I felt the corners of my lips twitch. To smile at this moment would be the worst thing I could do; it would enrage her. But she was so wrong. She was wrong about everything, and her wrongness was, if absurd, also flattering. I was not disengaged, I was not disinterested, Aspeth certainly did not want to be my friend, and I was one of the least cool people I knew-all I ever did was watch other students and feel curious about them and feel dazzled by their breeziness and wracked by the impossible gaping space between us, my horrible lack of ease, my inability to be casual. And not feel strongly about things? I felt strongly about everything-not just my interactions with people, their posture or their inflections, but also the physical world, the smell of the wind, the overhead lights in the math wing, the precise volume of the radio in the bathroom if it was playing while I brushed my teeth. Everything in the world I liked or disliked, wanted more or less of, wanted to end or to continue. The fact that I had no opinion on, for instance, relations between the U.S. and China did not mean I didn’t feel things. As for whether I was a cipher, that was more difficult to say because I didn’t know what the word meant. But I would definitely look it up in the dictionary when I got back to the dorm.
“Are you hearing me?” Ms. Moray asked.
“Yes.”
“I mean, do you get what I’m saying?”
“I know. I-I get it.” She wanted more from me. She wanted me to talk as much as she was, to confide. But I had nothing to say. I was not what she believed me to be except at this moment, with her, because she’d invented me. “Do you want me to rewrite the paper?” I asked.
“This isn’t about the paper. Yes, the paper pissed me off a whole lot, but this is, and I know this sounds dramatic but the stakes are high here, this is about your life. About you making something of your life. I want you to remember this conversation.”