The Fourth Stall Part II (8 page)

M
onday and Wednesday mornings are when my regular class goes to the gymnasium for physical edu-cation class. On that particular Monday I saw firsthand what those jocks had come to me complaining about the week before.

We got there, changed clothes in the locker room, and then headed out to the gym, where we found our gym teacher, Mr. Fields. He was short and very muscular. But he was almost too muscular for how short he was because, instead of looking like a normal tough guy or an action-movie star, he mostly just looked like a troll on steroids. He always wore these really short gym shorts that you'd have had to pay me a ton of money to wear in public. And he always had his whistle either hanging from his thick neck or tucked into his mouth somewhere under his huge mustache. His mustache was so huge that it seemed to have a life of its own. All the students called it “The 'Stache.” One kid even swore that it talked to him once. He said it made fun of his own measly attempt at a mustache. But what did the 'Stache expect? The kid was only an eighth grader.

Mr. Fields was a typical gym teacher, which meant basically all you could ever count on him for was yelling at kids to take showers, screaming the word “hustle” repeatedly, and blowing his whistle at random moments. I sometimes wondered if gym teachers became gym teachers because a school gym was really the only place where they could just be themselves without being thought of as complete weirdos.

On that Monday Mr. Fields was standing next to another gym teacher, Mrs. Dumas. She was known around school for always wearing these bright orange-and-pink psychedelic spandex pants with ugly, fluorescent track jackets. It was hilarious how much she loved neon colors and spandex.

But it wasn't funny now because with her was a class of older kids. Not just older kids: older girls. I didn't like at all where this was headed.

“Gentlemen,” Mr. Fields yelled—he always called us gentlemen—“today, you are going to learn how to dance!”

I wasn't sure why that was worth shouting about, but he was a gym teacher: they were always shouting about something. I wondered if gym teachers were like that at home, too. I could just see Mr. Fields at the dinner table with his family. He'd blow his shrill whistle and then scream, “Pass me the peas!” Then as his wife's shaking hands passed the bowl of peas, he'd blow his whistle again and scream, “Hustle, hustle, hustle!” and cause her to drop the bowl. Then he'd get really mad and shout, “Okay, no slacking allowed here! Drop and give me fifteen push-ups, Mrs. Fields!” She'd probably do the push-ups, too, after which Mr. Fields would blow his whistle yet again and say, “Okay, hit the showers!”

Anyway, the class groaned after Mr. Fields's announcement.

“But dancing is for sissies,” one of my classmates whined.

Mr. Fields blew his whistle and then approached the kid who'd made the comment. He got right in the kid's face, since Mr. Fields was short enough that he really didn't have to bend over to do it.

“What was that, Mr. Schmidt?” Mr. Fields yelled, spraying the kid's face with spit and mustache. Even the 'Stache looked angry.

The kid shook his head.

“That's what I thought,” Mr. Fields said, turning to address us all again. “Dancing is not for sissies. Cheerleading is for sissies, marching band is for sissies, theater is for sissies, swimming is for sissies.
Dancing
. . . is for men. Dancing is the way to win that girl you've got your eye on. Does that sound like a sissy pursuit to you?”

Nobody answered, and the gym was dead silent. It felt pretty uncomfortable. Some kid coughed, and Mr. Fields took a breath, but Mrs. Dumas spoke before he could.

“Well, Mr. Fields, why don't we dive right in, yes?”

He looked at her as if he'd forgotten she was there, and then he nodded and blew his whistle. They paired us up with the older girls so they could teach us individually. And I just about hit the floor when I saw who my partner was.

“Well, hi there, Mac,” Hannah said with a grin so sweet that it was likely just meant to numb me so I couldn't run.

“Oh, hey, Hannah,” I said.

She giggled. “Are you ready to learn the jitterbug?” she asked.

I rolled my eyes, and she giggled again. I'd never seen her act so nice before. It was alarming and kind of pleasant at the same time. I didn't know what to make of it.

“Here, you start by putting your left foot here.” She pointed at a place on the floor.

I did as she told me. She gave me another series of directions, and I had to say, whatever that jitterbug thing was, man, was it lame. And hard. I kept tripping myself. And tripping Hannah, which I thought for sure would get me in trouble, but she actually didn't seem to mind. She just giggled. So at one point I figured I might as well show her that I could be funny, too. It wasn't just Vince who could get a laugh around here.

“Hey, this is kind of like my godfather Bruce always says, ‘If you're awake, then it ain't ever too early to start hailing Mary,'” I said.

My godfather did say that, too. I wasn't quite sure what he meant by it, but whenever he said it, my parents would groan and exchange looks. I figured that was just as funny as the things Vince's grandma sometimes said.

Hannah gave me a funny look, and then she snorted. “What?”

“Oh, um, never mind,” I said quickly. I guessed my godfather wasn't quite as funny as Vince's grandma after all.

“No, seriously, Mac. What did you mean by that? Was that supposed to be funny?” she asked. That snakelike glint was back in her eyes, and I suddenly wished I'd just kept my mouth shut.

I shook my head.

She could have kept teasing me, but instead she just chuckled. “Mac, don't try so hard.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “This jitterbug thing isn't easy.”

Hannah grinned at me and then rolled her eyes.

I didn't know what to do next so I just smiled and nodded. “Okay then, Ms. Von Parkway—or Ms. Carol—after you.” Then I led her in another round of the lame jitterbug that ended in us crashing into the kids next to us, which started a domino effect of falling dancing couples. It ended with Mr. Fields blowing his whistle over and over as if that could somehow stop kids from falling. Hannah and I could barely hold in our laughter.

We did the jitterbug for the rest of class, and I didn't think I'd ever seen so many kids hit the ground. We were all bruised and limping and whining by the time class was over. If it hadn't been for Hannah, that would have been the worst gym class in history.

Gym class that day taught me three things: 1) Maybe Hannah wasn't so bad after all; 2) Gym class had become a joke. Dancing? Since when do middle schoolers do dancing in gym class?; and 3) Gym teachers are insane. What kind of sadistic psychopath would pair up sixth-grade boys with eighth-grade girls? The school was lucky that nobody got puked on or seriously injured.

B
usiness was steady at early recess that day just as it had been on Friday. And the majority of kids were coming to me about the SMARTs. It seemed that more and more kids were hearing rumors about both how hard they were and how important it was to pass them. One kid told me he'd even heard that if you failed them, you could get held back a year instantly, just like that, no matter what your grades were.

I now had offers on the table from over two dozen kids telling me that if I could make sure they passed, they'd pay me big bucks. There certainly seemed to be a lucrative side to these SMARTs, but messing with standardized tests was risky; it was something I'd never tried before. So I needed to know more about the SMARTs before I seriously considered all of the kids' offers.

Which is why it was awesome that near the end of early recess Tyrell came to my office with information for me, just like he'd said he would. I was hoping he'd at least help me get closer to putting the whole Mr. Kjelson mystery behind me, if not give me a lead on the SMARTs. Turns out those would be the least of my worries that day, but I'll get into that more in a bit.

“So what do you have for me?” I asked Tyrell after he sat down across from me in the fourth stall from the high window.

“Pretty much everything on the girl. The teacher was a little tougher, but I got some stuff on him, too, as well as the SMARTs.”

“Let's have it,” I said. He handed me a professional-looking dossier complete with vital statistics and surveillance photos.

According to Tyrell, Hannah Carol hung out mostly with seventh and eighth graders since she'd started about halfway through the school year. She had a lot of friends, but as far as Tyrell could tell, she didn't really belong to any one certain group or clique. The only after-school activity she participated in was the Theater Production Team/Audio Visual Club. They basically did everything that required lighting or sound effects, such as plays, assemblies, and eighth-grade graduations, and some kids in the club even helped out with sound equipment for school dances, PTA meetings, and any school meetings open to the public.

Both Tyrell and I thought it was pretty strange that
that
was the one extracurricular activity she was into, as it was normally designated for geeky kids. And Hannah didn't really strike me as the geeky type, despite her
Star Wars
reference the week before. But at the same time the girl could be so perplexing that her one strange activity actually made sense a little bit. She was pretty weird. Other than that Tyrell said he'd found out nothing too out of the ordinary for Hannah.

“What about Mr. Kjelson?” I asked.

“He checked out okay, actually. As far as I can tell, there's nothing too unusual going on with him. I mean, I saw him leaving school with some lab animals yesterday just like you guys did, but that doesn't prove much of anything—maybe they're his and he just brings them to class each day? I also saw him yesterday with a big packet of documents that had
SMART
stamped all over them, but that could mean a lot of things.”

So there
was
a connection between Kjelson and the SMARTs. But what exactly was it? Was he just another teacher who would administer them later this week? Or was it more than that? This bit of news was especially interesting considering the weird look on his face when I'd brought up the tests the week before in his classroom.

“I couldn't find a whole lot else because he's so new here. He started teaching here just after the school year started. I did discover that he taught at Oaks Crossing private school last year. While there he won teacher of the year twice.”

“Oaks Crossing . . .” I said, and looked through my Books. That was supposedly where his son went to school, according to Hannah. It seemed odd to me that he'd transfer away from his son, since Oaks Crossing is almost twenty miles from here. “So he transferred away from where his son goes to school? Any way you might be able to find out why?”

“Wait a second, Mac. Who said anything about a son?”

“Well, that's the whole reason I'm even looking into this. Apparently Hannah dated Kjelson's son for a while and it caused problems and blah, blah, blah.” But it was already dawning on me where this was headed.

“Mac, Mr. Kjelson doesn't have a son,” Tyrell said.

I heard Vince shuffle his feet outside the stall. He must have heard Tyrell and was likely trying to keep from falling over from shock. Were I not sitting down, I'd surely have been on the floor right then myself.

“What?”

“I'm sorry, Mac, but it's pretty solid. I found this biography thing he wrote and posted to the school website when he got hired. He doesn't mention a son in it at all, and he goes on and on about everything else in his life, so why would he not mention a son?”

I nodded.

So Hannah had been lying to me all along, it seemed, at least about one thing. And just when I was actually starting to like her. But why? What did Mr. Kjelson have against her, then, if anything? Why did she even make up a story about Bryce at all? Everybody knows that I don't ask questions that don't need answering. If she'd just said, “Hey, this teacher is a jerk to me,” that would have been enough. I'd thought I couldn't get more lost in this problem, but now I really felt helpless. Plus, if Kjelson was such a great guy and teacher as he seemed to be, then why was Hannah constantly in detention? Who was putting her there? What explanation could there be for the heated exchange they'd supposedly had in the hallway?

“What about the SMARTs?” I asked, eager to move on to a subject less confusing than girls.

“Well, it seems like they're a pretty big deal,” Tyrell said.

I nodded. I was beginning to suspect as much with the way teachers and kids had been acting lately. The question was how big of a deal were they?

“They're, like, a really, really big deal, Mac. I did a little research, and I found out that another school in the southern part of the state got closed down in the middle of the year because of how poorly they did on the SMARTs. They're that huge.”

That was pretty huge. I'd never heard of such a thing.

“And here's the thing,” Tyrell continued, “the tests are pretty hard. That school that failed, well, their other standardized test scores in recent years have been pretty similar to those at our school, Mac. So if they could fail, then potentially so could we.”

I tried to envision my school, our school, closing down overnight in the middle of the school year. The thought seemed ridiculous to me but also scary in a weird way. I mean, isn't that every kid's dream? For his school just to be shut down one day? Then why did the thought bother me so much? Either way, I decided we definitely could not just ignore this SMART thing coming up. If all of the kids offering me money weren't enough for me to take action, the possibility that my school and business could be shut down certainly was.

“Okay, Tyrell, I need you to get everything you can for me on this test. What day we're taking it, what's the procedure, the format, everything. You think you could get all that within a day or two?”

He breathed in sharply but then grinned. “Well, it won't be easy, and therefore it won't be cheap. But if anyone can do it, then I'm going to.”

I nodded. That was vintage Tyrell, confident to a fault, if he wasn't too good to have faults. “Okay, let's outline a payment schedule here—” I wasn't able to finish because I heard Fred calling my name from the first stall.

“Mac! He's coming this way. Dr. George is coming down here right now!”

This was good news and bad news. The good news was that the expensive investment in those security cameras was actually paying off. The bad news was, obviously, that we were all screwed.