“Belinda!” Mr. Greenleaf smiled and indicated with a graceful flick of his hand that Belinda should speak.
“You know my name?” Belinda said, confused. In the three months she had been coming to chemistry, Mr. Bowley had never remembered her name. He’d called her Betty, Betina, Barbara but never Belinda.
“Of course.” Mr. Greenleaf smiled gently. “I make it a point to learn every one of my students’ names. Chemistry is…?”
Belinda flushed in the face of the concentrated power of the substitute’s smile. She rose from her seat and fiddled with her heavy black-rimmed glasses for a second then announced, “Chemistry is the science that deals with the composition and properties of substances and various elementary forms of matter.” Belinda said this with the utmost gravity. Eyes were rolled throughout the classroom.
Mr. Greenleaf nodded gravely in response. “Yes. Absolutely. That is a very good textbook definition of what chemistry is. Thank you, Belinda.” Belinda sat down, blushing furiously. “A little bit dry, though, don’t you think? What does chemistry mean to us?”
Chester could always be counted on to make a smartass comment. “It means total boredom!” This aroused a few snorts of laughter from Chester’s cronies. Chester always had an audience to confirm his brilliance in the form of a gang of oafish boys who’d grown large seemingly overnight. Chester grinned and cracked his knuckles loudly, eliciting another round of laughter.
“Chester.” Mr. Greenleaf’s voice cut through the laughter like a knife. His grey eyes latched onto the large boy’s and held them. “There are no boring subjects, only boring people.” 27 He grinned and showed perfect white teeth. Though he was smiling, Mr. Greenleaf did not seem particularly amused. Something terrible and predatory in the smile made Brendan hope the substitute teacher never smiled that way at him. Indeed, even the thick-skinned Chester managed to realize he was in dangerous waters. Brendan’s nemesis visibly shrank back into his seat. Brendan couldn’t help feeling slightly gleeful. He turned to see if he could catch Kim’s eye but she was still focused on the teacher. The expression on her face was fierce. If she was a cat, she’d be hissing right now!
After what seemed like an age, Mr. Greenleaf barked a sharp laugh. “Ha. Boring indeed.” The threat in his face was gone, replaced with an amused smirk. “Chemistry may seem boring on the surface, but that is only because you are looking at the surface.” He picked up a piece of white chalk and tossed it in the air. He caught the chalk, closing his hand over it completely. “Chemistry allows us to change the nature of things and make them”-he opened his hand to reveal that the chalk had changed colour from white to pink-”different.” The class gawped in silence.
He closed his hand again, opened it, and the chalk was blue. Again, Mr. Greenleaf closed his long fingers over the chalk. “We can unlock the secrets of matter and transform it into something altogether new and wonderful.” He opened his hand to reveal a hummingbird, sitting calmly in his palm. The hummingbird rose from Mr. Greenleaf’s hand and hovered for a few seconds, the hum of its tiny wings thrumming in the sudden hush of the room. Then it flitted once in a circle around the teacher’s head as if in salute and flashed out the open window into the sunshine. The class gasped and broke out into spontaneous applause, cheering and hooting.
Brendan sat with his mouth open. He was at the back of the class and therefore farthest from Mr. Greenleaf when he executed the amazing transformation. Brendan looked at Dmitri and saw that the smaller boy was smiling involuntarily and clapping his hands along with the rest.
“That was completely awesome!” Dmitri said brightly.
“Totally awesome,” Brendan corrected in a whisper. “No one says completely awesome.”
“Totally awesome, then,” Dmitri corrected himself with a sigh.
Brendan wasn’t so sure. He thought what he’d seen was kind of spooky and disturbing. He looked over at Kim and saw that she also was not impressed.
He turned back to the front of the class to find that Mr. Greenleaf was staring right at him. The teacher raised a dark, elegant eyebrow and smiled in a lopsided, knowing way as if he sensed Brendan’s discomfort. Brendan’s stomach turned over. His hand rose involuntarily to his chest. The itch over his heart seemed to intensify. Brendan felt a wave of dizziness sweep over him.
Mercifully, the door to the classroom burst open to reveal Ms. Abernathy, the vice-principal of RD Academy. Her green flannel trouser-suit was practically bristling with indignation. Her perma-frown 28 was on full blast.
“What is going on in here?” Ms. Abernathy demanded. All noise ceased immediately, sucked into the black hole 29 of Ms. Abernathy’s disapproval. The children stopped clapping and lay their hands on their desks. Some sat on their hands just to make sure they wouldn’t be incriminated. Others looked as though they would like to make their hands disappear altogether-anything to avoid detention under the baleful 30 glare of Ms. Abernathy.
It never paid to incur the wrath of Ms. Abernathy. She was the second in command to Principal Singh who was a very jolly, easygoing sort of person. Ms. Abernathy handled all discipline. If a student crossed the line, that student ended up in her office and could suffer anything from writing lines, to extra assignments, to weeks of detention, or could even be expelled.
Her line of sight now rested squarely on the students of grade nine chemistry.
“I said… what is going on in here!”
“Uh…” Belinda started.
“UH is not a word, Miss Tindal! Write that out one thousand times! Have it on my desk tomorrow morning.”
Belinda gulped and fell silent. The rest of the class stared at their desktops and tried to find a way to exist without breathing.
“My dear Ms. Abernathy.” The warm tone of Mr. Greenleaf could not be more different from the harshness of the vice-principal’s voice. “I’m so glad you could come and look in on us.” He glided gracefully between the desks and placed his hand on Ms. Abernathy’s elbow. The VP’s face took on a blank, puzzled expression. “I’m so delighted to meet you!” Mr. Greenleaf added pleasantly. Ms. Abernathy looked down at the elegant hand of Mr. Greenleaf, pale on the green flannel of her suit jacket and then she looked up into those grey eyes. That look was her undoing.
She locked eyes with Mr. Greenleaf and he smiled a warm, lovely smile. Something happened then that no one in the class had ever seen before. Ms. Abernathy’s perma-frown seemed to waver and then melt away altogether. The corners of her mouth, so conditioned to dip downward, quivered, convulsed, and then, bit by torturous bit, turned upward. Ms. Abernathy, to the shock of the entire class, was smiling.
“Oh. I uh… oh.” Ms. Abernathy blushed and practically giggled.
“I’m sorry if the children were being noisy, but I must take responsibility for the hubbub.”
“You?” Ms. Abernathy said, bewildered.
“I’m afraid so. They were so excited by the ideas we were discussing that…” Mr. Greenleaf’s eyes swept the room and he continued, “they just couldn’t contain themselves.”
Ms. Abernathy seemed completely stymied by this idea, but another smile from Mr. Greenleaf seemed to stun her into acceptance. “Oh, I see. Well. I guess some enthusiasm for learning is a good thing.”
“Indeed, my dear Ms. Abernathy, indeed. Well put!” Mr. Greenleaf guided her to the door. “Well, this visit has been a treat. I’m sure you have many things to do.”
“Yes. Yes, of course, Mr. Greenleaf. Many things to do.”