The quiz forced them to do work, to stay structured and keep up a semblance of normality as the society around them began to erode. But it also let them acknowledge that the Great De-evolution, as scientists were calling it, was a real thing. To her, the quiz seemed like the best of both worlds.
When class started that day, however, there were only three students remaining. Debbie Vandenphal, one of the juniors. Kelly Abraham, the girl who looked out the window each time she wanted to cry. And Eric Tates, her class clown.
“There was another migration last night,” Eric said, as if she needed an explanation for why even more seats were empty.
She figured there would be fewer students. Word in the teacher’s lounge that morning was that Harry Rousner, the Biology teacher, was in one of the cars that was heading south. But only three students remaining? She was sure each of them saw the cringe of pain that made the corners of her mouth curl inward.
“Okay,” she said, nodding her head. “No big deal.” She handed out three copies of the quiz.
“What’s this?” Eric said.
Ray smiled and said, “A pop quiz.”
Before she could say anything else, before she could explain what she intended, Eric groaned, crumbled the paper into a ball, and tossed it across the room. If Zack Childers were still one of her students and not travelling south on a major highway, the quiz would have bounced off the side of his head.
“This is lame,” Eric said. “This is like, what, the tenth quiz we’ve had this year.”
“Eric—”
“No one cares about your stupid quizzes. Give me an F. I don’t care.”
“Eric—”
“Do you think it’ll impact what college I get into?”
Kelly’s eyes darted toward the window and her lip started quivering. Everyone had known, prior to the school year starting, that all of the colleges and universities around the country had already stopped accepting new admissions. Her students’ formal education would end with their high school diploma.
Eric was shaking his head and blinking over and over.
“Are you going to put this on my permanent record?” he said. “Well, let me know if you do. At least something I do will be around forever, right?”
Debbie Vandenphal put her hands to her face and began to tremble.
“Eric, it wasn’t that type of quiz,” Ray said quietly, her words barely audible.
She wanted to explain her intention, to inspire them while acknowledging what was going on around them, to help them get through being a teenager with as little damage as possible. But instead, she said nothing.
“Screw this,” Eric muttered, standing from his desk, hauling his backpack over his shoulder, then walking out of her classroom.
Kelly Abraham was still looking out the window. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, collecting at her chin, then dripping onto her desk. Debbie Vandenphal’s face was still buried behind her palms.
Ray picked one of the many empty seats, halfway between either girl, and sat down. From where she sat, the teacher’s desk seemed impossibly far away. Traces of things that had been written on the chalkboard over the years, only to be erased, offered glimpses of a different world. Sitting there, she tried to think what she would want a teacher to tell her if she were a teenager facing all of the problems they knew were coming their way.
Then, with a sigh, she said, “Class is dismissed. Have a good day,” and she watched the two girls collect their things and leave, just as Eric had done.
Eleventh Drink
She got roaring drunk. Of course she did. It wasn’t something she normally did, or even something she planned on doing, but no one could blame her for stopping by the liquor store after a day of teaching like the one she had just had.
Her cat—not really her cat but the cat that had shown up on her doorstep after being abandoned when its owner left during one of the migrations—walked back and forth over her lap as she sipped from the next can of beer.
In a way, the cat was no different than her students. It had shown up in her life one day, needing to feel as if everything would be okay, and she had done her best to make that happen. It was much easier with the cat, however—a bowl of food, a gentle rub under its chin—than it was with her kids.
With another can empty, she put it on the table beside her and popped open the next one.
What was she supposed to tell her students, that everything was going to be okay? They all knew that wasn’t true. Sure, there was no war or starvation or suffering, but mankind was slowly disappearing from the world all the same.
Why was she bothering to teach them about classic literature while the human population kept declining? In another few years, the population would dip below five billion. Then four billion. It could only end one way. Would any of her students care about The Awakening or The Stranger when they were wrinkly and old and alone? Definitely not. So why was she insisting on teaching them about those things instead of the few subjects that would really matter to them for the rest of their lives?
Another can was empty. She put it aside, scanned the cans next to her, counted ten, then opened the eleventh.
On Monday, she would go back into her classroom, toss a copy of a book, any book, out the window, and ask her three remaining students what they wanted to learn about. If they named something that she didn’t know anything about, well, then they could look it up on the internet and she would learn about it along with them. Or they could just talk about life, about everyone they knew who had headed south so far, about the people they knew who refused to migrate even if it meant they would eventually be all alone. They would talk about anything the kids wanted.
That was the last coherent thought she had before the room started wobbling. When she closed her eyes, the room still felt as if it were spinning around her. With all the proof she needed, she knew it was time to fall asleep and worry about the future another day.
Twelfth Call
“Ray, honey, if you’re there, please pick up. It’s your mother.”
All of the messages had been similar. As if Ray needed her mom to identify herself on the voicemail twelve different times.
She hadn’t bothered to turn her ringer back on the next morning until her headache went away. After listening to one message after another, each more worried and anxious than the previous one, the pain in Ray’s temples started to pulse again.
She was still in the process of getting the nerve to call her mother back when the phone rang again. The cat, her cat, jumped off her lap and disappeared.
“Hello?” she said.
“Ray?”
“Hi, mom.”
“Ray?”
“Yes, mom, what do you need?”
“I’ve been trying to call you all night and all morning. I thought something might be wrong.”
“You’re talking to me now, mom. What do you need?”
“I thought something might be wrong.”
Ray pulled the phone away from her ear, took a deep breath, then put the receiver back up to her mouth.
“Nothing’s wrong, mom. I didn’t want to be bothered. It’s been a long week.”
“You’re telling me. We just had two more caravans arrive.”
“That’s good, mom.” But even as she said it, she knew what was coming next.
“When are you coming down, honey?”
“I don’t know. I guess after the school year is done. I don’t want to abandon my students.”
“When will it be done?”
“I don’t know, mom. When it’s over.”
When she closed her eyes, she thought of Eric storming out of her class, of Kelly and Debbie doing their best to be quiet while they cried. When she re-opened her eyes, her cat had returned and was rubbing against her ankle.