The Academy (16 page)

“I’ll be back,” Luke promised. “My dad’s a lawyer. And once he hears about this, he’s going to sue the school.”

I hope he does,
Linda thought, but she could not say such a thing aloud. She took his textbooks, signed him out and wished him luck.

After Luke left, Linda looked out over her class, noting the empty seats, feeling discouraged. She thought for a moment. “We’re going to do something different today,” she said. “A creative-writing exercise.”

Groans greeted her announcement, but not as many as she would have expected. Several students actually looked at her expectantly.

Her mood brightened a little. Maybe she was making progress.

“When I was in high school, one of my English teachers played a fun game with us. She turned out all of the lights, played a piece of instrumental music—sometimes it was classical, sometimes rock, sometimes jazz—and had us listen. Afterward, we had to tell her what images the music conjured in our heads. We’re going to do a variation on that here today. Only I’m going to ask you to write down your impressions instead of saying them aloud. You might write a story, a poem or a descriptive paragraph. You could even write down individual words that correspond to what you feel when you hear the music. It’s up to you. Now, I’m going to play three pieces. I’ll play them each twice. The first time, I want you to just close your eyes, listen and let your mind go. When it’s done, I’ll play it again, and at that time I want you to write. Ready?”

The students nodded, closing their eyes.

She chose three instrumentals that she enjoyed and that happened to be in her CD stack here in the room: a Rick Wakeman song her older brother had turned her on to when she was a kid, a Keith Jarrett improvisation she’d discovered on her own and a Daniel Lentz composition she’d first heard in a music-appreciation class in college. She started with the Wakeman piece, “Anne Boleyn” from
The Six Wives of Henry VIII,
and although everyone was supposed to remain quiet and reflect individually on what they’d heard, the second the music stopped, the students started talking.

“It reminds me of a bad acid trip,” Roland Nevins said. Several other kids nodded sagely in agreement.

“It makes me think of being raped,” Tiffany Leung offered.

“Yeah,” another girl said. “Exactly.”

Linda frowned. These were not the responses she’d been expecting, and she found the students’ observations more than a little disconcerting. Her goal with this exercise was to get them to use their imaginations, and the last thing she wanted to do was dictate the type of response they should have to the music, but the piece was supposed to be a musical portrait of Henry VIII’s most famous wife, and the dark descriptions that were being expressed were definitely at odds with what she perceived as the lyrical tone of the music.

What bothered her most was that the kids seemed to be speaking from experience.

“Being raped
while
on a bad acid trip,” Tiffany said definitively.

Linda looked out at the faces before her as she pressed the replay button on her CD player. All the students who’d spoken up, she realized, had those Tyler patches on the sleeves of their tops or shirts.

“Start writing now,” she announced. “You have until the song is over, and then we’re going on to the next one.”

The situation was repeated with the next two pieces she played, and once again it was the students with those patches who seemed to be the ones expressing strange and seriously off-center opinions.

She’d heard from some of the other teachers that the patches indicated their wearers were “scouts,” part of some new hall-monitor program Jody had set up. That was fine; there’d always been students in school who had been given the opportunity to police their peers to a greater or lesser extent. But she suspected an ulterior motive on the part of the principal. Something was up here, and she found herself wondering exactly how and why these particular students had been chosen.

The class continued to write their impressions of the Daniel Lentz piece.

She was very curious to read what they had written.

At lunch, Diane said she had some paperwork to catch up with. Since she was on a diet anyway, she was going to skip eating and work in the department office, so Linda went with Suzanne to the lounge. She had just heated up some leftover spaghetti and was starting to eat when Paul Mays, the EH teacher, stormed into the room and slammed down his briefcase on the table, startling Suzanne and causing her to spill her coffee. Linda quickly grabbed a handful of paper towels and began soaking up the mess. All the teachers in the lounge looked over at the angry EH instructor.

“They’re putting up walls around the campus. Did you hear that? I can’t get enough textbooks for my class, and they’re putting up a nine-foot wall because Enrique is too lazy to clean graffiti off the buildings. This is a high school, for God’s sake! There’s going to be graffiti.”

Linda hadn’t heard anything about this. “What do you mean, a wall?” she asked. “Like a chain-link fence?”

“No. A brick wall. Which of course will soon be covered with . . . graffiti!” Paul grimaced.

“They could use barbed wire,” Alonso Ruiz suggested. “It would keep people out and you can’t write on it.”

Everyone looked at the woodshop teacher.

“I’m just saying,” he mumbled embarrassedly.

“Is the point to keep people out . . . or keep people in?” Linda wondered aloud.

Paul sat down heavily. “A brick wall. I can’t believe it. Linda’s right. It’ll be like working in a prison.”

“Jody could use her new ‘scouts’ as guards,” she suggested.

“You laugh now,” Alonso said, “but that might be on the menu.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“I’m not either,” Paul said. “I’m pissed. Jody and her stupid committee have turned down every single request I’ve made this semester. Even for necessities. But they can waste who knows how many thousands of dollars on a brick barrier that’s going to enclose the whole school? Just because Enrique’s too goddamn lazy to do his job?”

“I don’t think that’s why you can’t get books,” Suzannesaid quietly. “I think they’re trying to phase out the EH program to bring up test scores.”

“What?” Now Paul was screaming. He jumped out of his seat. “Where’s Art? Where’s Joseph? Where’s Nina? I want to talk to one of those assholes on the charter committee! I want some answers, goddamn it!”

“I think part of it
is
Enrique,” Trudy Temple said. “The other day, in the gym, he refused to clean the gum off the bleachers when I asked. I had to get Hung to do it.” She nodded at Paul. “
I’m
pissed because I can’t get my girls new volleyballs, yet, like you say, they have money for this fence.”

“I’ll ask Carlos or Rakeem about it,” Ray Cheng promised. “I know they’re not thrilled with Enrique these days. They’ll tell me what’s going on behind the scenes.”

“I think they’re both on night shift,” Alonso said.

“Mike, then.”

As if on cue, Mike walked into the lounge. The custodian walked straight to the sink, where he started washing out his coffee cup, and was about to get something out of the refrigerator when he noticed everyone looking at him. “All right,” he said, facing the group. “What’s going on?”

“The wall,” Paul said angrily.

Mike held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I had nothing to do with that. Out of my jurisdiction.”

“Whose idea was it?” Paul asked. “Enrique’s? I heard that he thinks this’ll keep kids out and cut down on graffiti.”

“He does have a bug up his butt about graffiti,” Mike said. “But this order came from the top. I don’t know—maybe Enrique had something to do with it. Maybe he told Principal Hawkes that we needed it or something. But she’s the one made the decision.”

“ ‘Principal Hawkes’?” Linda said. “You’re not a student. You don’t have to call her ‘Principal Hawkes.’ Call her Jody. Like that pig in
The Amityville Horror
.”

“Linda!” Suzanne said, laughing.

“We’re all friends here.”

Mike was smiling. “We all think the wall’s a stupid idea. All of us except Enrique.” He turned around, took a half-filled two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew out of the refrigerator and poured some of the drink into his coffee cup. “And there’s going to be
more
graffiti because of the wall. It gives the kids a bigger surface to tag on.” He put the bottle back into the refrigerator. “You ask me, Principal Hawkes . . . uh, Jody . . . suckered Enrique with that graffiti argument. I think she wants a wall so she can lock the kids down here.”

“I think you’re right,” Linda said.

Mike waved, heading toward the door. “Gotta go. Maybe Enrique can disappear for hours on end, but the rest of us gotta take up the slack.” He put a hand to his mouth and widened his eyes in mock surprise. “Oh! Did I say too much?” Grinning, he walked out. “Later.”

Linda’s food was cold by now, but the lunch hour was passing quickly, and she took a bite of her spaghetti. She turned toward Paul. “The wall aside, Suzanne might be right about dismantling the EH program.” Between bites, she explained about her missing students and the plan she’d heard about replacing them with ringers. “I think Jody’s remaking Tyler into her idea of a perfect high school.”

Paul scowled. “Well, I won’t stand for it. She’s got a fight on her hands, whether she wants one or not.”

“Good!” Linda said. “I’m with you.” She looked around as the other teachers nodded their support. “We’re all with you.”

Before going back to class, she stopped by the women’s restroom. Pushing open the door, she saw a flash of movement on her right. Then Bobbi bumped against her, practically pushing her into the doorjamb on her way in. Linda expected to hear an “I’m sorry” or “Excuse me,” but the other woman continued forward, heedless.

Maybe it was an emergency, Linda rationalized. But Bobbi didn’t head into one of the stalls; she walked over to one of the sinks and began leisurely patting down her hair while looking at herself in the mirror.

Linda felt a small twinge of anger at that.
She bumped into me on purpose.
“Hey!” she called out.

Bobbi glanced over at her. “I did not get your completed fund-raising estimates.”

“No. You didn’t.”

“I need them today. I needed them yesterday.”

Linda smiled, saying nothing.

“You will have them on my desk by this afternoon or disciplinary action will be taken.”

“I’ll take it into consideration.”

Bobbi whirled on her. “You will do it! I am this school’s administrative coordinator. It is my job to make sure that you comply with all rules and regulations. I am
above
you in the campus hierarchy—do you want me to show you the flowchart?—and when I tell you to do something, I expect you to do it. Believe me, I can make life very difficult for you.”

“You know,” Diane said from the closed stall, and Linda was surprised to discover her friend was in there, “I don’t think I’m getting you a present for Secretary’s Day this year.”

“I am the administrative coordinator!” Bobbi shouted. “I am not a secretary!”

Linda leaned forward. “Bobbi? I think Jody needs someone to take a memo and make some coffee. Do you think you can hurry along and do that for her?” She smiled, batting her eyelashes.

She thought for sure that the woman was going to slap her. The rage on that face was unlike anything she had ever seen, a furious distortion of features that made her appear almost deranged. But instead of lashing out, she stalked away, slamming the door against the wall as she threw it open.

Diane giggled.

Linda went into the far stall to use the toilet. When she emerged, her friend was standing in front of a mirror, putting on lipstick. “That was funny,” she said.

“Wasn’t it?”

“Crawls out of a hole and thinks she rules the world.”

“What do you think Her Royal Highness will do if I fail to turn in my estimates?”

“Give you thirty lashes.’

“She’d sure like to.”

Diane paused. “Listen,” she said. “All joking aside? You really should turn those things in. As department chair, I’ve been getting pressure on this. Jody’s likely to take it out on both of us.”

“What can she do? We have tenure.”