The boy sighed, zipped up his backpack, then walked out of the class without saying anything else.
“Okay, where were we?” Ray said once the room was quiet again.
“Ms. Phillips?” Celeste Rodriguez said, her hand raised.
“Yes?”
For every class clown, there was a student who wanted to make the class run as efficiently as possible. Ray refused to think of these kids as the Teacher’s Pet, although that was the opposite of the role Eric played. Whatever it was, Ray always had a special place in her heart for the student each year, usually a girl, who counter-balanced the troublemaker. This year, Celeste was going to be that girl.
But instead of reminding everyone what they had been talking about or asking a question about the end of the book, the girl only said, “Can I go to the restroom?”
“Yes, Celeste.”
“Do I need a hall pass?”
“No.”
Fourth of July
“Ray, did you send one of your students to my office yesterday?”
Principal Wachowski was leaning in close, trying to talk as quietly as possible so no one else in the teacher’s lounge could hear. The part that irritated Ray the most, though, was that Barbara knew Eric Tates had been sent to her office, and yet she still asked about it as if it were a cloudy area that was up for debate.
“He was being a nuisance. The class can’t function when he refuses to behave. As soon as he was gone, everyone else had a chance to learn.”
“I understand that. I really do.” Barbara reached out and put a hand on Ray’s shoulder. “But what am I supposed to do? Suspending the kid makes no difference. More and more kids are skipping out of school because they know that having a degree won’t count for anything in a couple years. Children are leaving with their families to go south. We can’t afford to push away any of the remaining kids, can we?”
Ray shook her head and said, “I can’t have him disrupting my class. It’s not fair to the other students.”
“You want me to teach the punk a lesson?” Al Flannagan said, somehow looking even older than normal. “I’ll take that kid out back and show him what respecting authority means. I’ll whip that kid’s ass!”
Ray smiled and said, “No, thank you, Al.”
She didn’t bother to add that Al had been saying similar things since she had been teaching there and she had never once seen him do anything more than tell the offending kids how children used to have better manners back when he was their age. She also didn’t add that if Al couldn’t beat up an out-of-shape Harry Rousner, he would never get a hold of an energetic kid. Eric Tates may be nothing more than a stick-and-bones teenager, but he would be able to run circles around the poor old Math teacher.
“You let me know if you change your mind,” Flannigan said. “That kid will never know what’s coming. I’d go Fourth of July on that brat! He’d be seeing fireworks, that’s for sure!”
“Thanks, Al.”
Flannigan threw a hook in the air in front of him, then a right cross, showing her where Eric’s face would be. “Like the Fourth of July.”
“I know, Al, thanks.”
“Listen, Ray,” the principal said, squeezing Ray’s shoulder in a way that made Ray, Harry, and every other teacher in the room, except for Al Flannigan, who was still busy shadow-boxing, all cringe. “Just be patient with him. When he acts out, remind yourself that his friends have probably gone south. Or maybe he has a younger brother or sister who’s a Block. Or his mom and dad have jobs that aren’t needed anymore because the population keeps declining. Just try to be patient with the kid, that’s all I’m saying.”
Al Flannagan put both of his arms in the air after having knocked out the imaginary troublemaker.
Harry Rousner looked up from his paper, sighed, and said, “I think the fireworks display is over,” then went back to the Sports section.
“Just be patient with the kid,” Barbara said again. “It must be difficult being a kid these days, seeing the schools shut down, seeing the classes a little more empty each year.”
“Tell me about it,” Ray wanted to say. Instead, reminding herself that it was important to pick her battles, she only nodded.
Fifth Kid
Eric was no better behaved the next day. When Ray tried to have the class share their thoughts about the ending of The Stranger compared to the ending of the previous book they had read, Eric kept talking about the Block Slasher, the serial killer who was going around killing as many quiet and motionless victims as he could get his hands on. When she asked the class how they would have liked to see the book end, Eric said it was a good thing those books were written when they were since there were no more Nobel prizes being given out for Literature, adding, “They would have written those books for nothing.”
Ray closed her eyes and remembered what the principal had said. There was no telling what was going on at Eric’s home. Maybe his parents fought every night, trying to decide if they should leave and head south, the way so many other people were beginning to do. Maybe he had a Block brother or sister who required all of his attention, never letting him have a chance to be the carefree kid he yearned to be.
When she re-opened her eyes, she closed her copy of the book and said, “Okay, Eric. What would you like to talk about today?”
There were only eight children in her class now. Celeste Rodriguez, the girl who Ray thought might become her best student, hadn’t shown up for school that day. The kids were already whispering that Celeste had texted them from a rest stop. She and her parents were moving south to be with the rest of her dad’s family. While Celeste was the first of Ray’s students to disappear, she was the fifth student in the entire school to fade away only days after the school year had started. Knowing this, Ray understood there would be no way to keep Eric and the others on the day’s planned lesson.
But instead of asking if she thought the Block Slasher would be caught or if she planned to relocate south as well, Eric said, “Ms. Phillips, what did you want to be when you were our age?”
“Excuse me?”
The boy smiled. “What did you want to be, you know, when you got older?”
She thought about telling him that she certainly hadn’t imagined spending her days having to put up with the likes of kids who wanted to make a joke out of everything. She thought about telling him she had wanted to be a teacher, even as a little girl. But she didn’t say either of those things or anything else. Instead, she remained silent, thinking. The fact was that she couldn’t remember what she had wanted to be when she grew up. Not when she was a little girl. Not even when she was a teenager like they were.
How was it possible to forget what her dreams had been? Was she unable to remember because she had settled on the life she knew she would have—a high school English teacher—or had the memory faded away once the initial indications appeared that all of mankind would slowly go extinct?
One thing was clear: her students, especially Eric, would know if she lied to them.
“I don’t remember.”
She looked around the class, from one face to the next. None of the kids said anything. Not even Eric.
“What do you want to be when you grow up, Eric?”
The class clown snorted. But as she watched, she saw the laughter and mockery quickly transition to something else. The boy, so eager to turn each classic book into a joke, the kid who wanted to distract the rest of the class any opportunity he had, looked down at his feet without saying anything.
In the front row, Kelly Abraham looked like she might start crying. Kevin Mathiason gazed out the window, trying to think of something more pleasant than the turn their discussion had taken. Candace Nieler looked at the portraits of Shakespeare, Hemingway, Salinger, and all the other legendary authors who were hanging on the walls around them.