The Book of Lost Friends(9)
“Anyone who’s not in a chair in the next sixty seconds owes me a paragraph. In ink. On paper.” Owes me a paragraph was the go-to form of intimidation of Mrs. Hardy, my mentor educator. It’s the English teacher’s version of Drop and give me twenty. Most kids will do almost anything to avoid picking up a pen and writing.
Lil’ Ray blinks at me, his cherub-cheeked face sagging. “Miz?” The word comes in a hoarse, uncertain whisper.
“Miss Silva.” I already hate the fact that the kids’ default word for me at this school is a generic Miz, as if I am some random stranger, maybe married, maybe not, and with no last name worth remembering. I have a name. It may be my father’s name and, given our relationship, I have my resentments about it, but still…
A man-sized hand reaches out, grasps air, stretches farther, closes over my arm. “Miss…I don’t feel so—”
The next thing I know, Lil’ Ray is slumped against the frame, and we’re going down. I do my best to break the fall as a million things run through my mind. Overexcitement, drugs, an illness, theatrics…
Lil’ Ray’s eyes moisten. He gives me the terrified look of a toddler lost in the grocery store, searching for his mom.
“Lil’ Ray, what’s going on?” No response. I turn and shout into the classroom. “Does he have a health problem?”
No one answers.
“Are you sick?” We’re nose to nose now.
“I get hun…gry.”
“Do you carry medicine? Does the nurse have medicine for you?” Do we even have a school nurse? “Have you been to a doctor?”
“I don’t…I…jus…get hungry.”
“When did you eat last?”
“Lunch yesterday.”
“Why didn’t you have breakfast this morning?”
“Nothin’ in the pintry.”
“Why didn’t you have supper last night?”
Deep creases line his sweat-soaked forehead. He blinks at me, blinks again. “Nothin’ in the pintry.”
My mind speeds full throttle into the brick wall of reality. I don’t even have time to put on the brakes and soften the impact. Pintry…pintry…
Pantry.
Nothing in the pantry.
I feel sick.
Meanwhile, behind me, the noise level is rising again. A pencil takes flight and hits the wall. I hear another one clatter off the metal filing cabinet by my desk.
From my pocket, I snatch the half-eaten bag of peanut M&M’s left from my morning snack, stuff it into Lil’ Ray’s hand, and say, “Eat this.”
I stand up just in time to see a red plastic ruler shoot through the half-open door.
“That is it!” I’ve said this at least two dozen times today. Apparently, I don’t mean it, because I’m still here, in this outer realm of Dante’s inferno. Just trying to survive Day One. Either it’s mere stubbornness or a desperate need to succeed at something, but I start retrieving copies of Animal Farm from the floor and slamming them onto desks.
“What’re we s’posed to do with these?” That complaint comes from the right side of the room.
“Open it. Look it over. Get out a piece of paper. Write a sentence telling me what you think the book is about.”
“We got eight minutes till the bell,” a punk-rocker girl with a blue-streaked Mohawk notes.
“Then hurry.”
“You crazy?”
“There ain’t time.”
“That’s not fair.”
“I ain’t writin’ no sentence.”
“I’m not readin’ no book. This’s got…one-hun’erd forty-four pages! I can’t read that in fiv…four minutes.”
“I didn’t ask you to read it. I asked you to look at it. Decide what you think it’s about and write a sentence. With that sentence, you will buy your passage through my classroom door and the privilege of proceeding on to lunch.” I move to the exit, where I’m just now noticing that Lil’ Ray has disappeared, leaving the empty M&M’s wrapper as a thank-you.
“Lil’ Ray didn’t write no sentence. He got to go to lunch.”
“That’s not your problem.” I stare them down and remind myself that these are ninth graders. Fourteen-and-fifteen-year-olds. They can’t hurt me.
Much.
Papers rattle. Pens smack desktops. Backpacks are zipped open.
“I don’t have no paper,” the skinny boy protests.
“Borrow some.”
He reaches over and snatches a blank sheet off a nerd’s desk. The victim sighs, reopens his backpack, and calmly gets out another piece. Thank God for nerds. I wish I had an entire classroom full. All day.
In the end, I win, sort of. I’m presented with rumpled papers and copious amounts of attitude when the bell rings and kids storm the door. It’s not until the last group is draining the funnel I’ve created by combining my body and an empty desk that I recognize long, thin braids tipped with red beads, acid-washed jeans, and a color-block shirt. The girl who walked the little lunch box kid away from the intersection this morning. In all the chaos, I never even picked up on the fact that she was in my room.
For an instant, I foster the notion that she hasn’t connected me with the near-miss crosswalk incident. Then I flip back through the last few papers on my stack, read sentences like: