“Huh-uh.”
“Barely looks up from the page. And when she’s taking an essay test she mouths what she’s writing the whole time. My grandmother in Florida, who my mom says is totally going senile, does the same thing while watching Wheel of Fortune or writing checks.”
“Well,” said Donnamara Chase, leaning forward in her seat, “Cindy Willard told me this morning that Leulah Maloney announced to her entire Spanish class that…”
For some reason, it perpetually slipped both Lucille and Donnamara’s meager minds that my assigned seat in Ms. Simpson’s AP English class was, and always had been, immediately behind Donnamara’s. The girl handed me The Brothers Karamazov handouts still warm from the Faculty Lounge copier and seeing me, nervously bared her long and pointy teeth (see “Venus Flytrap,” North American Flora, Starnes, 1989).
“Wonder if she’ll leave school,” mused Angel Ospfrey, four seats away.
“Absolutely,” whispered Beth Price. “Expect some announcement in the next few weeks that her dad, Account Executive for Whatever Corp, was recently promoted to Regional Manager of the Charlotte branch.”
“Wonder what her last words were,” said Angel. “Hannah’s, I mean.”
“From what I hear Blue doesn’t have too long to say hers,” said Macon Campins. “Milton detests her. He said, and I quote, that if he ever meets her in a dark alley, he’ll ‘Jack-the-Ripper her ass.’”
“Ever heard that old wives’ tale,” asked Krista Jibsen in AP Physics, “that it’s okay never to be wealthy or famous or whatever because if you never had it, you won’t miss it? Well — and I bet this is how Blue feels — if you’ve tasted fame, then lost it, that’s like, extreme torture. You end up with a cocaine addiction. You have to spend time in rehab. And when you come out you make vampire movies that go straight to video.”
“You got that off the Corey Feldman True Hollywood Story,” said Luke “Trucker” Bass.
“Well, I heard Radley’s mom is over the moon,” said Peter “Nostradamus” Clark. “She’s throwing a Return-to-Power party for Radley because after undergoing such an ordeal, the girl won’t be able to hold on to Valedictorian.”
“I heard from a very reliable source — wait. No. I feel bad spreading it around.”
“What?”
“She’s a full-scale lesbian,” sang Lonny Felix that Wednesday during Physics Lab 23, “Symmetry in Physical Laws: Is Your Right Hand Really Your Right Hand?” “The Ellen kind, by the way. Not the Anne Heche kind, when you can go either way.” Lonny pony-tossed her hair (long, blond, the texture of Wheaties) and glanced toward the front of the room where I was standing with my lab partner, Laura Elms. She hunched closer to Sandy Quince-Wood. “Guess Schneider was one, too. That’s why they went off together in the middle of the night. How two women get it on is beyond my comprehension but what I do know is that something went fatally wrong during the sex act. That’s what the police are trying to figure out. That’s why it’s taking so long for them to have a verdict.”
“That same thing was on CSI: Miami last night,” said Sandy distractedly as she wrote in her lab manual.
“Little did we know what’s going on on CSI: Miami is happening right here in our physics class.”
“For gosh sakes,” said Zach Soderberg, turning around to look at them. “Would you guys keep it down? Some of us are trying to figure out these laws of reflection symmetry.”
“Sorry, Romeo,” said Lonny with a smirk.
“Yes, let’s try to keep things quiet, shall we?” said our substitute teacher, a bald man named Mr. Pine. Pine smiled, yawned and stretched his arms high over his head revealing sweat stains the size of pancakes. He resumed his scrutiny of a magazine, Country Life Wall & Windows.
“Jade’s trying to get the Blue girl kicked out of school,” whispered Dee during second period Study Hall.
Dum scowled. “For what?”
“Not murder, but like, coercion or brute force or something. I heard her pleading her case in Spanish. I guess Hannah was all bueno. Then she goes off with this Blue person and five minutes later ends up muerto. It’s all not going to hold up in court. They’re going to declare a mistrial. And no one can use a race card to get her off.”
“Stop acting like you’re all Greta van Susteren with an eyelift because here’s a breaking headline for you. You’re not. Neither are you Wolf Blitzer.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Dum shrugged, tossing her crumpled copy of Startainment on the library table. “It’s like so obvious. Schneider pulled a Sylvia Plath.”
Dee nodded. “Not a terrible assumption actually. Think about my last Intro to Film class.”
“What about it?”
“I told you. The woman was supposed to give us an essay test on the Italians, Divorce Italiano Style, L’Avventura, Eight and a Friggin’ Half—”
“Oh, yeah—”
“But when we showed up, all prepared and everything, yet again she was all flailin’ and flappin’. It’d totally slipped her mind. She played it off, said not having the test was our surprise, but everyone was creeped out — it was obvious she was blowin’ those excuses out the wazoo. She plain old-fashioned forgot. So she hastily puts in Reds, which isn’t even Italian, right? Plus we’d already seen it nine times because three days in a row she forgot to bring in La Dolce Friggin’ Vita. The woman had no teach cred, was hopelessly ding-headed, suffered epizootics of the blowhole and was full of booty-cheddar. But what kind of teacher forgets their own essay test?”
“A bugged-out teacher,” whispered Dum. “One who’s mentally unstable.”
“Damn straight.”
Unfortunately, my instinctive response to overhearing campus-wide chitchat of the aforementioned kind was not The Pacino (godfather-styled vengeance), The Pesci (urges to stick a ballpoint pen in someone’s throat), The Costner (flat, frontierlike amusement), The Spacey (scathing verbal retaliation accompanied by a blank facial expression) nor The Penn (blue-collared bellows and moans).
I can only compare how I felt to being inside an austere clothing store when one of the workers silently follows you around to make sure you don’t steal anything. Though you have no intention of stealing anything, though you’ve never come close to stealing anything in your life, knowing they see you as a potential shoplifter unexpectedly turns you into a potential shoplifter. You try not to peer suspiciously over your shoulder. You peer suspiciously over your shoulder. You try not to look at people sideways or sigh artificially or whistle or shoot people nervous smiles. You look sideways, sigh, whistle, shoot nervous smiles and put your extremely sweaty hands in and then out of your pockets over and over again.
Not to complain all of St. Gallway was hashing me over like this, and certainly not to whimper about such abysmal treatment or feel sorry for myself. There were some extraordinary kindnesses, those first few days back at school, such as the moment my old lab partner, Laura Elms, who at four-feet-nine and approximately ninety to ninety-five pounds typically exuded the personality of rice (white, easy on the stomach, went well with every kid), suddenly snatched my left hand as it was copying down F = qv x B from the dry-erase board: “I totally know what you’re going through. One of my best friends found her father dead last year. He was outside on their driveway washing their Lexus when he just collapsed. She ran outside and she totally didn’t recognize him. He was this really weird blueberry color. She went crazy for a while. All I’m saying is if you ever want to talk I’m here for you.” (Laura, I never took you up on your offer, but please accept my thanks. I apologize for the rice comment.)