The Academy (22 page)

“There’ve been some amendments since then,” Jody informed him.

This was the first Linda had heard of it. “We never voted on any amendments,” she said.

“Even if you had, they would not be recognized or valid,” Boyd explained. “The school board and the state approved a specific document, and it cannot be changed after the fact. You must abide by the charter you submitted.”

“There’s where you’re wrong,” the principal said with barely concealed contempt. “Article sixteen, paragraph GG, subparagraph twelve, specifically grants the charter committee the right to amend at their discretion any school rules pertaining to personnel matters, irrespective of district policy.” She smiled. “And they have done so.”

“It is illegal under California law to ban union—”

“Get out of here now,” Jody said, still smiling. “Or I will have you thrown out.”

Boyd took out his cell phone. “I’m not moving a muscle. And, moreover, I’m going to—”

The cell phone was snatched from his hand. Linda whirled around to see two Tyler Scouts standing directly behind them. Somehow, the two tall beefy boys had opened the office door and entered without either of them noticing. These scouts did not merely have patches on their shirts but were wearing full uniforms. They looked vaguely militaristic, with creased brown pants, lighter brown shirts and some sort of small badge affixed to the shirt pocket. Although they didn’t have side arms, their thick belts contained squarish pouches that resembled holsters. There were still patches on the scouts’ sleeves, more elaborate and detailed versions of the ones that had been proliferating over the past few weeks.

“Escort him off campus and make sure he does not return,” Jody ordered.

The two boys grabbed Boyd’s arms, turning him around.

“Don’t say a word!” he told Linda. “This is illegal!

“
You
are in big trouble!” He pointed at Jody as the scouts led him off.

“I don’t think so,” the principal responded. She waited until the doors had closed and then fixed Linda with an amused gaze. “Shall we go into the conference room?”

“The conference room?” Linda asked. “What about your office?”

“Not my office,” Jody said. She smiled cryptically. “Not yet.”

Linda was still fuming about the union rep—she was going straight to the teachers’ association headquarters after this and filing a formal complaint—but she refused to give Jody the satisfaction of acknowledging her anger, and she walked behind the counter. She had no intention of saying a word during this meeting. She was going only to listen, to hear what the principal had to say. She would report everything back to the union.

Jody picked up a folder from Bobbi’s desk.

Rather than going down the short hallway to the principal’s office—and she
didn’t
want to go down that hallway—Linda followed the other woman to a door to the right of the hall that led to the conference room. Jody opened the door and a motion detector turned on the light. There was a new table in the center of the room, Linda saw. It looked like mahogany. As did the stylishly designed chairs. On one otherwise bare wall was a flat-screen TV. “Nice,” she said. “I guess this is why we don’t have the money for new books, huh?”

Jody ignored the comment and motioned for her to sit down in one of the chairs, taking a seat on the opposite side of the table.

Linda folded her hands on the tabletop and sat there silently, waiting.

“Did you hear about Yvonne Gauthier?” Jody asked casually. “Our illustrious math instructor? She quit. Right in the middle of Back-to-School Night. Turned in her resignation effective today, without giving me even two weeks’ notice. Bitch.”

“Bitch?” Linda said. “That’s a very unprofessional thing to say, don’t you think?”

“She left us in the lurch, she’s gone and I don’t have to be nice to her.” She smiled. “Unlike with you.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Linda said sweetly.

“We’ll see.” Jody opened the folder and started sorting through the papers in front of her. Seconds later, Bobbi walked into the room and sat down in an adjacent seat. “Okay,” Jody announced. “Now we can start.”

“Wait a minute,” Linda objected. “I’m not allowed to have a witness, yet you have one of your people sitting in on the meeting?”

“You make it sound as though this is going to be adversarial. Do you know something we don’t?”

“I’m here in my capacity as administrative coordinator,” Bobbi said. “I am not a witness.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Linda offered Bobbi as placid a smile as she could muster. “I thought you were here in your capacity as secretary. In fact, I was going to ask if you could get me a cup of coffee before you started taking notes. Do you think you could do that, please? Black. No cream, no sugar.”

“That’s what I’m talking about!” Bobbi said, slamming her palm down on the table and looking imploringly at the principal. “That’s the attitude I’m talking about!”

Jody held up a hand to quiet her down, but her smile was forced, and it was clear she’d lost a little ground.

Hands still folded, Linda waited.

“Now, I realize,” Jody said, “that you were not in favor of Tyler High becoming a charter school, but you did choose to remain here rather than transfer to another school in the district, and that means that, like it or not, you are required to follow the same rules as everyone else.” She tapped the papers in front of her. “But according to these reports here, you have been consistently insubordinate since the beginning of the semester.”

Linda wanted to protest; her natural reaction was to defend herself. But she needed to follow Boyd’s advice and remain silent.

“During our first in-service day, I was informed that you refused to wear your name tag as required. All other attending staff members wore theirs. You did not.”

Bobbi smirked.

“You also neglected to turn in class sales estimates for our fund-raising drive. And either you did not take roll last evening or did not submit your sheets to the office, so we cannot accurately tabulate how many parents attended Back-to-School Night, a mandatory function.”

Linda did not respond.

“Individually, these lapses might seem inconsequential. But taken together, they show a pattern of insubordination that is very troubling.

“The question is,” Jody said, “should you be subject to disciplinary action?”

Bobbi smiled. “I believe she should.”

The suggestion of a frown passed over the principal’s face, and Linda could tell that she wished she had not invited the other woman to participate. Linda looked from one face to the other. Bobbi clearly saw this meeting as a huge boost to her power and prestige, but she was out of her depth, and Jody was embarrassed. This was a reflection on
her
. And for Bobbi, Linda hoped, it might be the beginning of the end.

“What do you think should be done? Would it be better, do you think, to forget these infractions and start over with a clean slate, with the understanding that from here on in there would be no more similar incidents?”

“No!” Bobbi said.

The principal looked at her coldly. “I was not speaking to you.”

Bobbi shrank back.

“Well?” Jody pressed.

Linda looked at her. “No comment.”

“You would prefer to be disciplined?”

“No comment.”

Jody was suddenly all business. Linda had the impression that she had just been given a test and that her answers were not the ones the principal had wanted. Or expected. “I will be placing a written reprimand in your file. You will, of course, have the opportunity to respond and that will be placed in your file as well.” She stood. “This meeting is over.”

Linda finally spoke. “I expect a copy of that written reprimand.”

“One will be placed in your box.” Jody closed her folder, picked it up and walked out of the conference room, Bobbi following deferentially after.

Linda remained seated, not for any particular reason, but because she wanted to mess with Jody’s head a bit. The principal didn’t seem to like it when things went off script, when people acted as they weren’t supposed to, and since she was probably expected to leave with the other two, Linda stayed in place, looking around the room, thinking.

The truth was, when Jody had said the word “disciplined,” Linda’s mind had gone to a far different place than “written reprimand.” She’d thought of beatings and torture and incarceration, and it was actually a bit of a surprise to discover that her punishment was so light and so . . . ordinary. It made her realize how off the charts was her perception of the school. That didn’t mean that she now thought things were normal here. It just meant that Tyler’s transformation was not as far along as she’d believed.

But she had no doubt that it would get there.

Finally, she stood and walked out of the conference room. No one in the office looked at her or spoke to her, and it was not until she was outside that she stopped and exhaled deeply. She had not felt as claustrophobicin there as she had before, but she’d still been nervous, and once again she was grateful to be outside.

From the other side of the office building, from the expansive lawn that fronted the school, came the sound of voices chanting. The voices were male, so they were not cheerleaders’, but they could have come from the pep squad or the choir or a music class. Somehow, though, Linda knew that this was nothing so benign, and, curious, she followed the sidewalk around the building.

She was greeted by the sight of several rows of high school boys marching across the length of the lawn. They were Tyler Scouts, what she’d started to think of as the principal’s own praetorian guard, and what shocked her was how
many
of them there were. She’d seen the scouts here and there, of course, in her class and on campus, but she’d never even thought about their numbers. If pressed, she would probably have guessed there were around ten or fifteen, all total, girls included. But there were a good fifty or sixty boys on the lawn, all of them marching in strict formation and shouting out unintelligible words in a martial cadence. Like the students she’d seen in the office, they were wearing complete uniforms rather than just patches on their sleeves, and seeing all that brown moving in unison sent a chill down her spine and made her think of Nazis.

She saw no adult supervising them, no leader or coach, but as she watched, they broke into smaller groups of six or seven each, as if they were being ordered to do so by someone she could not see. They were obviously in training, though for what she did not know, and they began to fight, group against group. It could have been wrestling or self-defense they were practicing, but there seemed to be a chaotic lack of rules as well as an unbridled ferocity to the boys’ attacks that made her think of commercials she’d seen on TV for Ultimate Fighting championships.

They were hidden from the street by the now partially constructed wall, and she wished that passersby could see what was going on. For she had no doubt that if members of the general public spotted high school boys hitting, punching and kicking one another with such focused intensity—and under the school’s aegis—they would be up in arms.

In the skirmish between the two groups of students closest to the office, two boys were ganging up on one, kicking him hard in the side as he tried in vain to roll over and stand up. A kid from one of her classes, Nolan Reese, kneed another in the groin.

She was about to walk into the fray and order them to put a stop to this—she was a teacher, after all, and seemed to be the only adult around—but as quickly as it had started, the fighting stopped. With a surprising economy of movement, the students were back in formation and marching across the lawn. Although many of them were no doubt in great pain, none of them limped or appeared even slightly out of step with their peers.

She didn’t want to see any more. The sight sickened her, and though she tried to imagine what possible use Jody could have for the scouts or what purpose they could serve within the context of an educational environment, she could not come up with anything.

The final bell had not yet rung, so she returned to the English department office and began correcting papers as she waited for Diane. School ended. There was a cacophony of voices, footsteps and other unidentifiablesounds as students surged through the halls toward freedom, and five minutes later her friend arrived.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Diane said. “How did the meeting with our fearless leader go?”