Clown in a Cornfield

by Adam Cesare

  Standing in Cole’s wake, Quinn heard someone whisper: “My mom says she can’t believe he’s not dead.”

  And someone else added, “My uncle says he ought to be.”

  The Neanderthal trailing behind Cole seemed to overhear that last comment. The big guy sneered in that direction, his job to squash all Cole criticism. He wore a rumpled football jersey with a picture of a mean-looking, steroidal goat on it. It must’ve been the Kettle Springs High logo, blue and gold the KSH colors.

  Quinn watched the pair of them go. Cole bounded up the stairs at the far end of the hallway. His bodyguard-friend was slower, using the handrail like he was too big to win the fight against gravity without it.

  “Wow. Who was that?” Quinn asked, trying to get Ginger to look up from working on her own lock.

  “Cole Hill. We used to be friends. Back when my hair was lighter,” Ginger said, then tossed an eye to the side and smirked. “And, yeah, he’s pretty cute,” she said, pausing before adding: “for an arsonist.”

  Three

  Quinn was late to her first class. Not a good start, but how the hell was room 207 located on the first floor?

  Her schedule listed the class as “Science.” Quinn had no idea what kind of science she was about to walk into. She took a deep breath outside the closed door for room 207, grabbed the knob, and . . .

  Inside, the lights were off and a diagram of a plant cell was being projected onto a pull-down screen at the front of the room. She’d taken bio twice now, both in middle school and high school. The transparency looked like it dated to before she was born, so she doubted Kettle Springs High was offering some kind of super-duper AP upgrade.

  In the darkness, faces turned to Quinn. Her plan for today had been to keep a low profile, and then repeat that for around two hundred more school days, until she was packing for college. It was only day one, and she was already doing a shitty job.

  “Close the door,” someone yelled, light from the hallway streaming in behind her.

  “As I was saying,” her new science teacher said, glowering at her. He didn’t ask for a late pass, didn’t ask for her name, so Quinn stumbled her way to the only open seat: the front row, next to the dusty hot vent of the projector bulb.

  “Just because it’s Founder’s Day Weekend doesn’t mean there won’t be a test on Monday,” the teacher said, crossing thin arms across his chest.

  The classroom around Quinn groaned as one. “But Mr. Vern . . . ,” someone muttered.

  “Stop it. Stop that,” Mr. Vern said, stepping into the spotlight of the projector, his mustached upper lip quivering. Mr. Vern wasn’t wearing a sweater vest, but Quinn felt sure that the man owned more than a few. He uncrossed his arms. “We’re a month into the school year. Exams happen. Time for all you juniors and seniors to grow up and deal with it.” Juniors and seniors? Wait, was this a mixed class? Were some of the kids around Quinn in the darkness juniors?

  The class groaned again. Someone in the back, hidden in the dark, let slip more loudly than he probably meant to, “What a dick . . .”

  “Okay,” Mr. Vern was quick to snap, leaning forward. “If that’s going to be your attitude, clear your desks and we’ll have the test today instead.”

  Sighs and scoffs surrounded her.

  “Mr. Vern?” a voice asked above the murmurs. Quinn turned to see a hand raised, phosphorescent pink nail polish glinting as Quinn’s eyes adjusted to the dim room.

  “Yes, Janet,” Mr. Vern said, exasperated. Quinn couldn’t see much, but from the outline of her profile Janet had smooth skin and glistening lips. A valley girl who’d found herself in the wrong valley?

  “Well, I’ve been looking over the syllabus,” Janet began, pausing dramatically to flip open the large, organized three-ring binder in front of her. The binder was as well put together as its owner, a reflection of exactitude. “And it says that the first exam will cover nutrition and, uh, we haven’t even touched on that yet. Nutrition is chapter 12 in the textbook. Were we expected to be reading out of order?”

  “That, that—” Mr. Vern started, his hands flailing as if trying to grab the answer out of the air just in front of him. “That must be a misprint. Must be from an old syllabus.”

  “Oh, I figured that. Just wanted to double-check,” Janet said, a smile in her voice like she’d just won the argument. No further questions, Your Honor. Quinn suspected the point wasn’t to be right so much as it was to fluster the teacher.

  “So, wait,” another voice cut in, this one behind Quinn’s left shoulder. She turned in her seat and saw the meathead guy who was walking behind Cole earlier. He somehow looked even bigger in the harsh shadows cast by the projector lamp. It was like he and his desk had fused together in the dark and become one big inky blot. “Mr. Vern. You mean to say that we aren’t going to be tested on nutrition?”

  “No,” the teacher said with a sigh. “No, Tucker, you aren’t.”

  “That’s not fair! I’ve been studying the wrong thing, then.”

  “You haven’t been studying anything!” Mr. Vern shot back. With a few stomps, the teacher crossed the room and flicked on the overhead lights. There was a smile on his lips as the class grumbled against the sudden burst of the fluorescent bulbs. Quinn thought he meant the lights to seem defiant, but really, to her, it felt like an admission of defeat, the house lights brightening when the show was over.

  “Mr. Vern!” Janet said, gasping. With the lights on, Quinn was surprised to see that Janet didn’t look at all like what she’d pictured from her voice. She was Asian, for one thing—the first hint of difference among what to this point had seemed like a pretty buttermilk school. Janet’s makeup was there not to conceal, but to accentuate natural beauty. She had shoulder-length black hair, a lightness around the edges that was either highlights or sun-kiss, and a cute, round face that probably helped her get away with gaslighting her teachers like this. “You can’t say he hasn’t been studying! You know that I tutor Tucker after school.”

  “It’s true,” the girl behind Janet said. Quinn bounced from Janet to the girl. She had blond ringlets and a side ponytail. Chewing gum snapping. White jeans and a T-shirt so tight it might’ve been body paint. She looked how Quinn had expected the popular girls in Kettle Springs to look, how she had imagined Janet looking, from her voice and lipstick.

  “Ronnie. Please stop helping,” Mr. Vern said, sighing, before swiveling around back to Janet and Tucker. “I . . . I’m sure you do tutor him, Janet, but the test has been on the syllabus since the start of the year . . .” Dark spots had grown under the teacher’s arms as he stood in the heat of the projector’s spotlight and struggled to control the class. Quinn didn’t usually have much sympathy for teachers, but she could see her dad reflected in this man’s anxiety.

  “It’s true,” Tucker said. “Mr. Vern. I’ve been studying all about nutrition.” The boy seemed to strain for some further proof, scratching one side of his weeks-old buzz cut. “Learning about what’s, uh, good to eat.” Mr. Vern looked away from the speaking boy and the lamp of the overhead projector, trying to gather himself.

  “Oh come on,” a final voice yelled from the back of the room. “Just move the test already, Mr. V, and let’s get on with class.”

  There, in the back corner behind her, a seat chosen to be out of the way or so the student could keep an eye on everyone in the room: Cole Hill.

  Quinn hadn’t noticed him on the way in.

  He had a pen in his hand and a notebook open in front of him. He seemed ready to work if the world would let him.

  “Oh, is that what you think I should do, Mr. Hill?”

  “I’m just saying . . . ,” Cole began, trailing off as soon as he realized that he had the whole class’s attention. “I’m just saying,” he repeated, continuing more quietly, “we’re wasting time. We should just push forward with the lesson.”

  “Well, now that I have your permission, maybe I will,” Mr. Vern said, then pointed both hands out, overlapping accusatory finge
rs. “But you and your friends won’t be around to see it.”

  “What?” Janet blurted, a record skip in her steely, lip-glossed composure.

  “You’re out, Ms. Murray.” Mr. Vern pointed to Janet. “You are disrupting this class on purpose by arguing about the test. You and Ronnie. Out. Tucker, too. Gather your books. Cole, you too. Go to the in-school room. Now. Have fun wasting your own time. Not your classmates’ time.”

  “I was trying to help! This is bullshit,” Cole said, standing.

  “You know what’s—” Mr. Vern stopped himself. He was upset, shaking. In the slapped silence of the classroom, Quinn swore she could hear his teeth grinding. “You will not talk to me that way. What’s upsetting is that you’re all”—he took a beat to point at each student who’d interrupted him—“you’re all out of control. You think the world was built for your amusement. And for years we’ve—the town has just taken it. But people are waking up. That you’re a b-b-blight on this community.” He took a deep breath, tried to slow his stutter. “And you’re not ruining my lessons for a moment longer.”

  Cole was standing now, closing his notebook, clicking his pen. “Okay, sure, fine. We’re going.”

  The fifteen or so kids who weren’t being sent out of the classroom all stared at Cole as he hitched up his bag and exited without further protest, followed close behind by Tucker.

  The tension in the room was so thick, so palpable, as the rest of the group made their way out that Quinn couldn’t help it: she laughed.

  It just came out. A small giggle. A perverse, nervous, involuntary response.

  “Oh, this is funny!?” Mr. Vern whirled, pointing to Quinn.

  It wasn’t funny. The tension, the absurdity of the teacher’s tantrum, the very fact that she was so far, so surreally distant, from her home: the sound slipped out before she could cover her mouth.

  The teacher moved to his desk to consult what must have been a roll sheet. “Maybrook? You find this funny?” Quinn felt the blood drain from her face. She didn’t know how to answer—or if she was even supposed to. “No, this isn’t funny. This isn’t one bit funny. This is insane! Your new friends are an impediment to learning at this school and that’s just in class. In the real world, on the internet, they are a . . . a . . .” Blight. She filled in, when he couldn’t find the word. Mr. Vern swallowed hard.

  Okay. Maybe Quinn had misjudged the situation. This was about something bigger than senioritis, fucking with a nerdy teacher, and not wanting to take a test. “I, for one, am fed up with their antics, with their videos and their . . . their . . . their bullshit.” There it was, it was out, the word he’d so clearly wanted to say earlier. He held three fingers to his lips, then hissed: “They’re probably filming this right now. Isn’t that right, Janet?”

  If they were, this guy was done. A filmed tantrum like this was the kind of thing that parents brought to school boards.

  “Isn’t it, Janet?” Mr. Vern repeated.

  Janet and Ronnie had been hovering at the doorway, Cole and Tucker already out in the hall.

  “Go! Detention! Now!!”

  “All Tucker did was ask a question,” Janet complained.

  “A question! A question—right. Well, you’ve got in-school suspension. Do you want to make it out of school?”

  Janet threw her hands up, resigned, started back out the door.

  “Wait. Come back here. Give me your phone. Now! You can pick it up at the end of the day.”

  “You can’t do that!” Janet snapped. “That’s private property!”

  “We weren’t even filming!” Ronnie seconded.

  “Yours too,” Mr. Vern said, beckoning Ronnie to return back down the center aisle.

  The two girls fumed, but both handed over their phones to Mr. Vern.

  “And take your new friend with you.” Mr. Vern tapped the edge of Quinn’s desk. “Make sure she gets down to the ISS room without getting lost. I’ll be calling the office to let them know you’re coming.”

  “Me?” Quinn asked, still astonished at the sudden turn her morning had taken.

  “Yes, you, Maybrook. Go giggle with the cool kids outside of my classroom. In fact . . .” Mr. Vern seemed to have an epiphany, his mood manic. “Janet, Ronnie?” he asked.

  The two girls stood at the doorway, arms crossed.

  “Tell the boys, who are no doubt standing right outside, snickering at me. Tell them you’re all banned from Founder’s Day,” Mr. Vern said, turning to the rest of the class with an Ain’t I a stinker? look on his face.

  There was silence in the room, nobody else wanting to react and earn themselves a ban from . . . whatever Founder’s Day was.

  “Like you have the power to do that. It’s a public event,” Janet said. Not a whine, just a statement of facts. Her phone was private property, this was a public event: Quinn had met girls like Janet before. Amateur lawyers.

  Quinn didn’t know what Founder’s Day was and didn’t care, not at this moment. She was being tossed out of class. She repeated that fact to herself in numb disbelief. Quinn grabbed her bag and stood to leave, her hands and arms not feeling like her own. She’d never gotten in real trouble—nothing worse than a few skipped gym classes marred her record at her old school, and with those there had been no punishment: she was a volleyball star.

  “Yes, tell yourself that I can’t,” Mr. Vern said, his voice more even than it had been. “I’ll let the sheriff know to be on the lookout for you and your friends. That you’re banned. That you’re unwelcome at the ‘public event.’”

  “Whatever,” Janet said, shrugging off the proclamation. She exited the room, Ronnie in tow.

  Still in a daze, Quinn followed them.

  “Come on, new girl,” Cole said, waiting for them all outside the class. Mr. Vern was right—he’d been listening and smiling. He didn’t seem at all troubled by what had transpired.

  Cole’s smile put Quinn at ease. Or, at least, it calmed her enough that she no longer felt like she might cry.

  “Follow me,” he said, closing the distance between them, leaving his crew behind.

  His hand touched the small of her back, guiding, gentle:

  “We’ll show you the way.”

  “Fuck me!” Tucker said. “I mean, who cares about Founder’s Day, but if they call home, my mom’s never going to give me the car on Saturday.”

  Quinn suspected that the in-school suspension room hadn’t been built to be the in-school suspension room. Instead of anything official-looking, it was a bare, unused classroom. They took chairs down from stacks in the back of the room to have a place to sit. Despite Mr. Vern’s threat of “alerting the office,” there was no adult supervision and seemingly none forthcoming.

  Security at KSH seemed lax, but maybe that was because back home at Quinn’s school, there were metal detectors at every entrance, security guards with zip ties poking from their back pockets.

  Even without disciplinary infrastructure and climate officers, Cole, Janet, Tucker, and Ronnie all acted like they knew the drill for in-school suspension.

  They took their seats to the front of the room, arranging the desks there in a half circle.

  “You can’t miss the party,” Janet told Tucker. “You’re my ride.”

  “Mine too,” Ronnie said. She had taken down her side ponytail and was now in the process of putting it back up on the other side, swapping out the neon band with one of the others she wore at her wrists. “I mean. It’s our party—”

  “Well, you helped. It was Janet’s idea,” Tucker interrupted.

  “I know,” Ronnie continued, pivoting. “Man up. Tell your mom, you’re taking the car. What’s she going to do?”

  “She’ll kill me,” Tucker said. “And anyway, what do you care, Miss Queen?” He said “Miss” like “Mizzz” and Quinn was unsure if it was a last name or a pet name. “Matt’ll drive you. Probably. If he didn’t just redo the seats.”

  Ronnie pouted. “Sucks. I had a cute outfit ready for Founder’s Day.”
>
  Quinn wondered if the ban extended to herself. Or if her punishment was just this detention. She could ask Mr. Vern later, if she stopped by his classroom, ready to apologize. But it was probably better to let it be for today, have a fresh start next class.

  “We’re still going. What about the phones?” Janet asked.

  “Oh,” Ronnie said, flipping an iPhone out of the waistband of her white jeans.

  “Yes, girl!” Janet smiled.

  “I hope Mr. Vern has fun with old 6s.”

  “Holy shit,” Quinn said. Again, she’d wanted to remain an observer, hadn’t presumed to angle her own desk into the group, didn’t know if she wanted to, but she couldn’t hide her amazement. “Did you really give the teacher decoy phones?”

  Ronnie smiled for a moment, taking pride, but then her grin disappeared, a look of realization that Quinn was the new girl. “I’m sorry, was I talking to you?”

  “Be nice,” Cole said. It was the first time he’d spoken since they’d arrived.

  Ronnie snarled, a Don’t tell me what to do look, but then turned to Quinn and apologized. “Sorry. That was childish.”

  “Maybrook, was it?” Cole asked. “Kicked out of class on your first day. That’s a hell of a statement.”

  “We got a badass over here . . . ,” Janet muttered. It didn’t sound like a compliment, but it didn’t quite sound like an insult, either.

  Quinn ignored her.

  “It’s Quinn. And it’s not usually how I like to start off. But the guy went crazy. He should be fired . . .”

  “Yeah, Mr. Vern’s a bit high-strung,” Cole explained. The others nodded. “But he’s old-school Kettle Springs.”

  “KSOG,” Tucker offered.

  “He grew up here. Never left. He thinks everything was better before kids started wearing ripped jeans in like 1983.”

  “And that satanic music they all love,” Janet said. Ronnie rolled her eyes in response. What was their deal? Not lockstep agreement like most mean girls, that was for sure. Competition with each other? Over Cole himself, maybe?