Substitute

by Nicholson Baker

  “Yes, but I don’t play it,” Prentice said. “I look at it.”

  What did he have for a first sentence?

  “Actually I’ve got nothing so far,” said Prentice.

  Leap into the unknown, I told him, like a parachutist from an airplane, and then I looked over at Courtney. She’d filled a page with writing about “To Build a Fire.” I asked her what she thought was the most impressive moment in the story. “It’s terribly tragic, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Mhm,” said Courtney. “I felt bad because of the dog.”

  “Pretty sad,” said Rita.

  I said, “Why don’t you tell the truth with your essay? You felt bad for the dog.”

  “You’ve got sparkle on your eyebrow,” said Rita to Courtney.

  “I know,” said Courtney.

  I read bits of her essay. The environment was so cold, to the point where his body was numb. He tried to keep warm by making a fire, but the snow put it out. I said, “Excellent.”

  Rita said, “I don’t have my story yet because I was out for three days sick.”

  Blake jabbed at Adam with the corner of an iPad case. I leapt up. “Okay, that’s the part I don’t like. I don’t like any poking at all. I hate poking! I literally hate it. And I will keep close tabs on that.”

  “You don’t like it?” Prentice said, laughing.

  “No, I hate it,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s painful and disruptive!”

  “Poking is painful?” said Blake.

  “Yeah, don’t even go there!” I said. “Here’s a broken pencil for you. If you jab at somebody another time, I’m going to physically write you up. And make your life unhappy. I don’t want to do that, because I actually like you. I actually think you’re funny. I want you to do this.”

  “I don’t want to have an unhappy life,” said Blake.

  “My life is great,” said Prentice.

  “I see so much conflict with iPad cases,” I said. “It’s like the case becomes a weapon.”

  “Mr. Monette’s teaching us violence with these gruesome stories,” said Blake.

  Trey came back. “I can’t do my thing because I looked in the cabinet and he must have moved my iPad or something.”

  “Here, dictate it to me,” I said. “Tell me what you want to write. I’ll type it out and email it to you.”

  “I don’t have email,” said Trey. “My iPad is all messed up. I don’t even remember what the story is.”

  “Mr. Baker!” Natasha called. “Do you want to read my essay?”

  “I do, very much,” I said, “and I’ll be right there.”

  “I took your advice and I wrote what I felt,” she said.

  I turned back to Trey. “What do you want to do right now? You’re obviously bored and idle.”

  “I want my iPad but I can’t find it,” said Trey.

  “Do you want to draw a picture?”

  “I want to know where my iPad is.”

  “It’s gone,” I said.

  “My ear’s itchy,” said Natasha, when I went over to read her beginning. The sniper, she said, wants to smoke a cigarette but he doesn’t want to get shot. Here is my evidence that supports my claim. Then she quoted from the story: “He paused for a moment considering whether to risk a smoke. It was dangerous. The flash might be seen in the darkness.”

  “I have a couple more paragraphs,” said Natasha.

  “Excellent,” I said. “Mr. Monette seems to like this phrase ‘external and internal conflicts.’ Is there a way to work that in?”

  “I will.”

  I glanced around. Sean was rapidly typing his essay on his iPad, using only his thumbs. Prentice was unscrewing something underneath my desk chair, trying to set up an April Fool’s prank. I shook my head at him. He stopped.

  The class was on the move, and the noise was increasing logarithmically. “Ow, stop it!” said Courtney. I looked up and waved my hands above my head.

  “All right, it’s starting to get above the plateau!” I bawled. “The plateau of misery where the SOUND IS TOO LOUD!”

  That settled them.

  Michelle was quietly drawing a tousle-haired anime boy, with huge eyes. She’d written her conflict essay and put it away. “I get it, but I don’t understand why we have to do it,” she said. She fished it out of her notebook.

  In the story “The Telltale Heart,” Michelle had written, the nameless main character shows that he is compulsive by his quick and determined decisions. He repeatedly asserts that he is in fact not a madman.

  The noise was bad. “How does Mr. Monette keep people quiet?” I asked her.

  “I have no idea,” said Michelle.

  “Does he beat a gong?”

  “No.”

  I read her description of the narrator’s murder. After he decapitated the body and cut the arms off, he shoved them under the floorboards, where later he dragged a chair onto that spot happily, talking freely with the officers.

  I said she’d given a very good précis of what happened. “Is the word conflict in your essay? Not that I personally care.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Well, if you’re happy, I’m happy.”

  I sat next to Natasha and said, “So we’ve got one story about a character freezing to death in the snow, one story about a guy trying to mug an old woman, one story about a sniper, one story about a girl trapped in a spaceship and she’s supposed to get killed.”

  Natasha nodded.

  “Mr. Baker, I’m going to the bathroom!” said Blake.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Go to the bathroom!” said Courtney.

  Prentice, who was sitting with his pals Sean and Trey in the middle of the room, wanted to talk about video games: Dead Space, Mass Effect, Grand Theft Auto V, FIFA, NFL.

  “I played Call of Duty for like nine hours straight,” said Prentice.

  “How did that go for you?” I asked.

  “My eyes hurt really bad,” said Prentice.

  “Your thumb was trembling?” I said.

  “No, my thumb didn’t bother me, my eyes hurt,” said Prentice.

  I asked them whether they liked having the iPads in middle school.

  “I hate the iPads,” said Trey.

  “I’d rather have a laptop,” said Adam.

  “Me, too,” said Rita, eavesdropping.

  “You can tell if someone’s playing a game on the iPads, whereas the laptops you can’t tell,” said Trey.

  “Dude,” said Sean, “Bruce has like thirteen missing assignments and he’s not blocked!”

  “Does it depend on the teacher?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” said Adam. “She checked it once and restricted some people and then she never checked it again.”

  I said, “So basically they get you hooked on the iPads and then they say if you don’t deliver the goods we will take away the thing that makes you happy.”

  “Yeah,” said Trey.

  Prentice nodded. “They took my iPad. I don’t really care.”

  I excused myself and walked over to Blake and Company. “Guys, I see frantic activity over here, and I don’t know what it’s all about.”

  Jessie the Catwoman said, “We’re doing a communal thing.”

  They were folding cootie catchers using old drafts of essays. I told them that making cootie catchers showed spirit and leadership but to please do it more quietly. It was time for the class to go anyway. “Is this it for you?”

  “Yeah, unless Mrs. Moorehouse lets us come in here for STAR,” said Blake. “She won’t let us. She is against fun.”

  “Blake, I know you have it!” said Roslyn.

  “I don’t have your iPad!” said Blake. “Why would I have your iPad? I don’t have your iPad.”

&
nbsp; A teacher’s loud voice came from the hall. “Go back into your class!” she said to Prentice and Sean. “Back into your class!”

  Bong, bong, bong.

  When everyone had left I sat in my room for a while without moving. Then I walked outside and around the far end of the building and got my lunch from the car. A woman was out for a stroll with her little dog. “Hello, little dog!” I said. I kept walking. “I give up with this shit,” I muttered. I went back inside to the office and apologized for not taking attendance in homeroom.

  Some teachers I didn’t know were in the teachers’ lounge, talking about which sub was going to cover a class in the afternoon. “There’s a group of boys that can be trying,” said one teacher.

  Another teacher said that after there had been a substitute in his class he deleted all the iPad assignments that the students had done.

  “You delete them without reading them?” said his colleague.

  “Yes,” he said. “They don’t do anything anyway.” The iPads had been a financial disaster, he felt. Any kid who messed up his iPad and had to have it restored should get a detention.

  I took my leave. Shane, in a gray T-shirt with a flying baseball on it, was sitting at a table in the hallway serving some sort of detention. I asked if I could sit down with him.

  “I don’t care,” said Shane.

  “We had some good times in that class,” I said. “But then you said your pills wear off in the afternoon and you get bad.”

  “It’s not that I get bad,” said Shane. “It’s just that I start to lose focus.”

  “Well, it’s a pleasure to see you again,” I said.

  “Yeah, nice seeing you,” said Shane.

  —

  I WENT BACK INTO the room and sat down and squirted some sanitizer on my hands and clapped them together.

  It was time for STAR class.

  “Hello, Mr. Substitute!” said Olivia.

  I gnawed more of my coffee-bean chocolate bar.

  “What is that?” said Olivia.

  I told her.

  “Soylent!” said Aaron.

  “Oh no, I got sparkles everywhere,” said Felicity.

  I said hi, hello.

  “Mr. Baker, I need to go to my locker,” said Harley.

  “I understand your pain,” I said, “and I want you to go to your locker.”

  “Hello, Mr. Baker, again!” said Bethany. “May I get a drink? It’s really steaming in here.”

  “What happens in this class?” I asked May.

  “We read until twelve-ten,” said May.

  “Twelve-ten or twelve-twelve,” said Michelle.

  “So it’s supposed to be absolutely quiet?”

  Michelle said, “We’re supposed to silent-read. Plus a few whispers here and there.”

  I tried a stage whisper to get the class into the mood. “All right, so this is one of those beautiful moments of the day, I guess—it’s actual silent reading.”

  “I don’t like reading,” said Victor.

  “When does the actual silent time begin?” I said.

  “Now,” said May.

  “Okay.” I stage-whispered, “It’s like we’re floating in a cloud of cotton!”

  The PA system came on. “Lacey Bissonette to the office to pick something up.”

  I closed the door. “Do you mind if I turn the lights off?” I whispered.

  “Go for it,” said Harley.

  I typed some notes. Everyone’s head was down. I could hear my stomach making digesting noises. How lovely to be able to hear one’s own digestion.

  Five minutes went by. The PA lady came on again. “Ashley Kimball to the office, please.” I read the Thesis Statement Checklist from the Constructed Response Graphic Organizer, which the students were supposedly using to write about conflict in their short stories. A thesis statement had to: (a) be a complete sentence; (b) take a stand; (c) have one main idea; (d) be specific; (e) generate discussion; and (f) not be a question.

  At noon I announced that it was noon—no more silence. Bethany, Kimberly, and Felicity began planning a group Wonder Woman selfie.

  Aaron and Harley and I discussed the selfie song and agreed it had a good beat.

  Rodney, who was playing Flappy Bird, told me he’d tried out the pickup line about the pile of sugar with someone on the way to lunch.

  “How did that work?”

  “They gave me a dirty look,” Rodney said. “They didn’t know if I was talking to them or not, so I kind of faced the opposite direction and walked away.”

  I sat down near another cluster of talkers. “So what’s happening? I feel I’ve lost touch with you guys.”

  “You want to get involved with our awkward conversations?” said Christopher.

  “I do,” I said.

  “We’re talking about cows,” said Todd.

  “Are there many kids who come from farms around here?”

  “Almost everyone here,” said Christopher.

  A kid showed a picture of a cow.

  “Oh, those udders!” said Todd.

  Payson asked if he could go to the bathroom. I said he could. James asked if he could go to the bathroom. I said he could. Bethany asked if they could take the Wonder Woman selfie out in the hall. I said they could if they didn’t make noise. I stood by the door.

  May came up, wanting to go to the bathroom. I asked her to hold on for a second, so there wouldn’t be too many people in the hall. “People are never like this when Mr. Monette’s here,” she said. “They’re like actually reading.” She told me I should tell them to get their work done and, if they didn’t, fill out “instance sheets”—reports that they had to take home to their parents itemizing their misbehavior.

  I said, “But don’t you think it’s kind of an unnatural situation to be cooped up in this classroom?”

  “Yes,” May said.

  “I figure my job as a substitute is to give people a little more latitude, because on the days when Mr. Monette’s here, they don’t get any. Does that make sense?”

  “Mhm,” said May.

  “Also, it’s hard for me to keep order,” I said. “I’m not very good at it, frankly. Thanks for the advice. I’ll think about it. You didn’t bring in your dollar today.”

  “I wasn’t in yesterday and I forgot it was Superhero Day. I didn’t realize it was today.”

  Payson, returning from the bathroom, mimicked May: “I didn’t wealize it was today!”

  I turned on him. “Hey hey, what was that? Please, say you’re sorry, there’s NO mimicry in this class.”

  “Sorry,” said Payson.

  “Good.”

  May said, “I wasn’t feeling well yesterday.” She left for the bathroom. I leaned out the classroom door and told the Wonder Women to wrap up their selfie. “I don’t want to be on the hook for having created a ruckus.”

  “I’m just waiting for them to get ready,” said Bethany.

  They smiled, arm in arm, and Blake took the picture.

  Back in the class Rodney called out, “Mr. Baker! Is this what you looked like in high school?” He flashed me a picture on his iPad of a proud, smiley middle school student at a science fair.

  Christopher tried to grab the iPad. “Don’t show him that! Don’t!”

  “What is it?” I said. “I saw a pickle there. Let me see.”

  I looked at the picture. Next to the smiley science fair boy, against a blue foam-core display board, was the headline “Things I’ve Shoved Up My Ass.” Besides the pickle, there were cutout pictures of a hairbrush, a toilet plunger, and a baby’s bottle.

  I had to laugh. Aaron peered at it, shaking his head.

  “Don’t let anyone else see that!” said Christopher, with genuine alarm.

  Felicity came up. “Mr. Baker, can we take the picture
again, but with the whole group of friends? It’ll be quick.”

  “Try to do it efficiently this time.”

  Blake, Bethany, James, Felicity, and their giggly friends posed for a popular-kid portrait.

  “Don’t let those morons get too loud,” Aaron said, meaning the popular kids. “Just tell them to quiet down. That’s what Mr. Monette does.”

  Rodney said, “Mr. Monette flips out.”

  Todd said, “He’s like—” He waggled his cheeks rapidly and made a sound like Curly of the Three Stooges.

  “He’s got steam coming out of his ears,” said Rodney. “His face is like on fire.”

  Michelle came up to show me another one of her drawings. “Isn’t this creepy?” she said. The drawing was of an anime girl with strange striped ribbons around her neck. I said how much I liked the ribbons.

  “Here’s another one she drew,” said Marielle, showing a picture of a girl with stitched-up Frankensteinian cuts on her face and arms, and a boy with a knife in his neck.

  “Woo,” I said. “Edgy.”

  “I need to go turn something in to the math room,” said Blake.

  “You just need to go see Miss Buckley,” said Felicity.

  “She’s really hot,” Blake said. He spun toward me. “You want to come?”

  “No, I don’t want to come,” I said.

  “Miss Buckley and the virgin little boy!” mocked Victor.

  “Victor!” said Kimberly.

  “What does Mr. Monette do at this point?” I asked again. I was running on fumes.

  “He just sits there doing his work,” said Felicity. “Yells at us, the whole class. He’s like, ‘You guys need to stop!’”

  Bethany leapt and pushed herself lightly off the wall. A pen twirled through the air.

  “Okay, the steam is going to come out of my ears,” I said. “I like conversation, I like friendly things, I don’t like plastic flying around, I don’t like feet making contact with walls.”

  “Sorry about that,” said Bethany.

  “I like drawing flowers,” said Olivia. “I’m really good at them.”

  In the back of the room Blake was shadowboxing with James. I told him to stop.

  An ed tech wandered in looking for someone. “It’s Superhero Day!” she said, and left.