Substitute

by Nicholson Baker

  Rodney made a disgusted expression. “She is so nosy. It can be dead silent in here, and she’ll walk in here and be like bleh bleh bleh bleh bleh! I was suspended three times last year because of her.”

  “So there’s bad blood between you?” I said. “Grudge match?”

  “Basically,” said Rodney, “because she’s always looking over our shoulder and telling us what to do. And she’s not even a real teacher.”

  “She’s like a demon toad,” said Todd. He pointed at Rodney. “He’s a cactus, prickly on the outside. But full of water. And juices.”

  “You’ve got cactus milk,” said Aaron. “Cactuses have milk.”

  I told them they needed to learn how to work under the radar. “You can have fun and do crazy stuff,” I said, “but you have to not make noise that goes above a certain altitude.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to say!” said Aaron.

  “I was kicked out of two mental hospitals,” said Rodney. “I had sharp objects on me. I hid them in my bathroom and they found out.”

  “You gotta have protection,” said Todd. Aaron laughed.

  “No, shut up—this is a true story!” said Rodney. “I was rooming with a twelve-year-old at the time. In the middle of the night, he stands up, halfway between our beds, and he just goes—” He made a long raspberry sound.

  “Mr. Baker?” Payson asked me if he could go to his locker. I sat down next to Marielle and May. They had worksheets in front of them. “We’re studying for art,” one said. “We have a test tomorrow.”

  “Art history,” I said, “or art?”

  “Art, like clay.”

  “And you have a test?”

  “We have to describe the process of making clay.”

  I said, “You’d think that one class, like art, you’d get a vacation from having to do worksheets.”

  “Nope,” said Marielle.

  Payson opened a YA baseball book called Plunked.

  Felicity was imitating Mr. Monette’s stare. “‘What are you doing, Felicity! Get back to work!’ He goes, ‘Come here. What you said to me today in class really upset me!’”

  I turned to Payson, who looked up from his book. “This is an amazing thing, this class,” I said. “It’s like watching fireflies at night. The little lights come on, go off, come on, go off.”

  Bethany was swiping through the superhero selfies. “Ew, look at how fat I look in that. I look like a fat blob!”

  James twirled a calculator and Blake pounced on it. I said, “Sit down and don’t make loud, sudden, crazy explosions.”

  “How long have you been a sub?” asked Bethany.

  “Way too short a time to know what I’m doing,” I said.

  “But you’ve been our sub twice,” said Felicity.

  “Yeah, and I’m not getting any better at it.”

  Blake said, “Yes you are—you yelled at me today.”

  I picked up a sheet of paper on the floor, a worksheet filled with words, called “Find the Noun.” I let the class be loud. They were keyed up because of the costumes and the photos and flirting and joking. I walked over to May, the girl who’d forgotten it was Superhero Day.

  “I’m circulating,” I said. “That’s what teachers are supposed to do. I just wander all day.”

  “I’m just bored,” said May. “I’m just sitting here being bored.”

  “You don’t seem bored,” I said. “You still seem attentive.”

  “I’m just so quiet all the time.”

  Todd said, “She’s quiet because she was born from an egg. An egg that came from a bear. May of the Forest, kind of like George of the Jungle. The birds are her friends.”

  May smiled.

  The three Wonder Women were really getting annoying—they were laughing loudly, talking baby talk, calling each other from across the room, full of the knowledge that they were favored by fate. Blake, meanwhile, was swinging around an iPad case and making chimp sounds. Soon he would be eating his own vomit. I thought of a white paperback that I’d read in college: Asylums, by Erving Goffman.

  “Can I go get a pencil out of my locker?” asked May. I think she just wanted to be out of the class.

  I hated how completely I’d given up. I didn’t want to scream and yell to quiet them down, but I didn’t want them to be loud, either. I wanted the day to be over so that everyone could go home and end this charade.

  Rodney took Blake’s calculator. “I don’t care whose it is, it’s mine now,” he said.

  “Did you do time in prison, seriously?” I said to him.

  “Not prison,” said Rodney. “Psycho ward.”

  “I’ve been to Parkeways once,” said Todd.

  “Clear Island Center for Youth,” said Rodney. “I got in a fight in the cafeteria with a kid. I’ve been in a police program since I got out. I’m in a police program right now. Cadets.”

  “To learn how to be a policeman?”

  Rodney nodded. Harley began pestering Todd. “Stop it,” said Todd. “I will bring a piece of raw chicken into school and put it down your shirt.”

  “Do it!” said Rodney.

  “I’ll put lasagna in your pocket,” said Harley.

  “Okay, I’ll eat it,” said Todd. “I’ll bring a gallon of milk to school and pour it all over you.”

  Bethany said, “I think it’s time to go.”

  “Bye,” called Rodney.

  “Have fun, guys.”

  I had a free period and I sat and breathed and moaned and tried to get collected. The PA system came on. “Please excuse the interruption for the afternoon announcements. There will be no intramurals today. Student council has been canceled. Grade six, seven, and eight boys’ lacrosse meeting tomorrow evening. There is no detention today. And now for a message from our student council.”

  “Hey, LMS, don’t forget,” said the student council member, “tomorrow is Sports Day. You’ll be able to wear your favorite sports team’s jerseys and gear.” Again we heard about the school in Cameroon with no running water.

  With twenty minutes to go before the end of the day, some students returned and there was big noise again. I asked Melissa what the worst moment of the day was.

  “Mile run,” she said. They’d run for a mile around the gym.

  “I didn’t run a mile,” I said. “I walked around this room.”

  “That counts as your own little mile,” said Melissa.

  The PA lady said, “FIRST-WAVE STUDENTS, YOU ARE DISMISSED.”

  “Ow! Ow, my hair!” said Tamara.

  Harley appeared in the room and walked quickly to my desk.

  I said, “How’s it going?”

  “Good,” said Harley. “Got a detention.”

  A grim-faced guidance counselor appeared in the door.

  “What?” said Harley. “I was talking to him.”

  “And how would I know where you would be?” said the guidance counselor.

  “I was talking to him,” said Harley.

  “You stopped in here when you saw me coming in the hallway.” The guidance counselor led Harley away.

  I was shell-shocked. I felt I’d missed several boats.

  “Why is there glitter all over?” said Marielle.

  I asked her, “What do you think I should write in the note to Mr. Monette?”

  “We were really good,” said Marielle. “We were a funny group.”

  “You were a funny group. How did the art thing go for you?”

  “It was good. We had to pick an artist and we had to write about him.”

  Prentice put on some hip-hop and offered me a piece of gum. Everyone was mortally tired, counting down the minutes.

  “Please excuse the interruption,” said the PA woman. “Second-wave students, you are dismissed. You may walk to your buses.”

  �
��Take it easy, guys, bye,” I said.

  I turned in my ID at the office. Walked to my car. End of Day Nine.

  DAY TEN. Thursday, April 3, 2014

  LASSWELL MIDDLE SCHOOL, SEVENTH GRADE

  DON’T KILL PENGUINS CAUSE OTHER FRIENDS GET SAD

  I WAS TRAPPED BEHIND a garbage truck on the way to the middle school, but I made it on time, almost. It was Pajama Day, and I was Mrs. Painter, a seventh-grade science teacher in Team Orinoco. In homeroom Brock, wearing baggy red pajama pants with hockey sticks on them, sang “Turn Down for What.” I was determined not to screw up and forget to take attendance. I started shouting names and checking them off: CALEB. JASON. BRITTANY. REGAN. EVAN.

  “Do you want me to bring that down for you?” said Brittany.

  I nodded.

  “Yesss!” said Brittany.

  Outside a teacher said, “Guys, that was the seven-thirty bell. YOU NEED TO BE IN YOUR HOMEROOM.”

  “Can I go get a pencil?” Caleb asked.

  “Why is everyone out in the hall?” I asked.

  “Homeroom’s boring,” said Cayden.

  “LUKE. TRINITY. GEORGIA. RUSSELL.”

  “He’s not here,” said Cayden.

  “ARLENE.”

  “She’s not here,” said Cayden.

  “As sickness ravages the school,” I said. “BROCK. MANDY. ALEC.”

  “He’s right there.”

  “Not even listening. Isn’t that shocking? They just don’t care.”

  A girl said, “GUYS, LISTEN!” There was no reaction. “Nah, they won’t listen,” she said.

  “DANA. OWEN.”

  Owen said, “Oh, you’re the awesome teacher!”

  Ms. Nolton, the Team Orinoco math teacher—in whose room I had lately bled—opened the door that connected her classroom with ours. “Boys and girls, can I have your attention for just a moment? A reminder. Your field trip money and permission slips—many of you have not brought those in yet. Keep that in mind, for our field trip. Thank you.” She disappeared.

  I asked where they were going to go.

  “Boston,” said Georgia. “We’re going to Quincy Market.”

  The PA lady told us to stand and say the pledge. Liberty and justice for all. The lunch menu was Mexican taco salad made with seasoned taco filling and corn tortilla chips, shredded cheese, shredded lettuce, chopped tomatoes, onions, salsa, and hot pinto beans. Plus a warm cinnamon puff, and pineapple, and milk choices. “The Lasswell boys’ swim team ended their season with a stellar performance yesterday, beating Portland, Massabesic, and Saco at the Boys Swim Festival.” She read off the first-place finishers. “If you see a swimmer today, give them a high five, because they swam swimmingly last night.” There followed announcements about Spirit Week, drama rehearsal, band tryouts, chorus tryouts, and softball tryouts, all delivered in a cheerful singsong.

  “This is the longest announcement I’ve ever heard,” I said to Alec, who was staring into the middle distance.

  The movie Frozen was going to be shown at two p.m. in the auditorium. “Students who are attending the movie, be sure you have all your stuff ready to go. And that will conclude our announcements for today. Thank you and have a wonderful day, everyone!”

  I asked Alec if he was having fun.

  “I’ll have fun in seven hours,” he said.

  “There are cinnamon puffs for lunch,” I said, trying to joke him out of his dejection.

  “The food they have here isn’t good food,” Alec said. “They don’t cook it good, so it doesn’t taste good. It’s all frozen stuff from Walmart.”

  Brock corrected him. “It’s not from Walmart, dude, it’s from the USDA.”

  I asked why some of the chairs had green tennis balls over their casters and some didn’t.

  “Cause kids are bad,” Brock said. “Kids throw them.”

  Then it was STAR class and we talked about what people were supposed to be reading. “We have these huge packets every day to read,” said Sage.

  “I read what the teacher assigns me when I’m trying to fall asleep,” said Darryl. “The other day I was reading for homework, and I fell asleep on the couch.”

  “I think you should expand the notion of reading,” I said.

  “You are awesome!” said Mackenzie.

  “I’m not awesome,” I said. “I just don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “The last class with you all we talked about is One Direction, and we threw the socks,” said Mackenzie.

  “Oh, right, the socks,” I said. “Good times.”

  Everyone went mum for silent reading. Mandy whisper-asked me if she could please just draw. I said she could draw a sentence and then read it—that amounted to silent reading. She seemed to like that idea and went off to get some markers.

  I glanced at the sub plans, which were about some kind of math project, plus the five, no, six kingdoms of living things on planet Earth and something called a “dichotomous key.” There was a picture of Linnaeus tacked to a corkboard on the wall, so I read up on him and on the history of classification, trying to dredge up what I remembered from junior high, which was outmoded anyway. The class’s code of conduct was taped to the cinderblock near my desk, above the ever-present learning taxonomy poster, near a flowchart of learning targets. One target read: “Understands how changes in an organism’s habitat and population size can influence the survival of a population.” A big yellow arrow pointed to the target: “You are here!” The code of conduct was long and detailed, written in five colors of marker and decorated with tulips and smiley bears. It said: I will not spread gossip. I will be honest and accountable for my own actions and behavior. I will pay attention to others when they talk and keep eye contact. I will look forward to learning. And: I will expect the unexpected.

  When silent reading was over, Ms. Nolton came in from the adjoining room to supervise the class. She made an announcement. “There are three or four surveys! You need to take the survey RIGHT NOW! The rest of you are working on your fraction flip books!”

  “Sage, take my survey!” said Mackenzie, waving her iPad, where the survey software resided on a “learning management system” called Educate. “We created the surveys,” she told me. “Once we get the results back, we’re supposed to make graphs. My survey’s about ‘Would you rather.’ Like, would your rather have to drink a stranger’s saliva, chicken juice, hot sauce, or ocean water? I think a lot of them will say ocean water.”

  I asked her if by chicken juice she meant cooked or raw.

  “Not cooked,” said Mackenzie.

  “Oh.”

  It was time to perambulate. Max was working on his fraction flip book, made of red construction paper. On each of the top flaps was a percentage, and when you flipped it up, it was supposed to show the equivalent fraction. “When you know how to do that, you are king of the world,” I said. Max began spinning one of the lopsided, sliced-open tennis balls that had once covered the bottom of a chair leg. I told him to stop. Darryl wrote my name on the whiteboard, because I’d forgotten to. She underlined it with a curvy scroll, decorated with a flower. Dabney and Richard were talking about Power Rangers. Regan was playing hip-hop from his iPad speakers. Jade shouted, “Stop, you’re going to rip it!” It was a relief to see that these seventh-graders were just as wiggy under Ms. Nolton’s credentialed eye as they were with me.

  “Are you taking a survey?” I asked Sunrise.

  “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t get on Educate.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. Educate. I wondered for a moment about how much money RSU66 had spent to lease and customize and troubleshoot this fancy, colorful software, plus Edmodo, Infinite Campus, IXL, and others. Probably a fair amount. Educate, a company founded in Alaska by a group of homeschooling data analysts from the oil industry, had sold its “mass personalized learning” system to low-test-score distri
cts all over the country. “On the oil field everything had a meter. Lights, engines, pipes, even people, all had some sort of meter,” said the company website. “The founders took a deep look at the needs and started to see that concepts behind finding and making optimizations with the oil industry were also applicable to education, with one major difference, the moral purpose behind enriching education versus enriching the wallets of the oil companies.” Educate believed in the “personalized mastery paradigm.” If you could log on to the website, great. If you couldn’t, you couldn’t.

  Luke and Evan were reviewing the preliminary results of the poll they’d designed. “Six voted old age,” said the boy, “and one voted being impaled by a narwhal horn.” The other choices were drowning, having a heart attack, or getting shot.

  “Why would I choose how I want to die?” asked Chase, who was still taking the survey.

  I stopped near William. “I’ve taken all the surveys,” he said.

  “Was it fun?”

  He shrugged.

  I tried to get William going on the percentages flip book. “Let’s say that it said I have twenty-five percent of all the stuff I need to graduate,” I said. “How do you get from that to a fraction? What does twenty-five percent mean?” He’d cut out and glued the method he was supposed to follow from a worksheet. The wording wasn’t terribly helpful: The place value of the last digit becomes the denominator. Then you were supposed to simplify the fraction.

  William said, “It would be like twenty-five over a hundred?”

  “Right! You just move the dot over two places and put it over a hundred.”

  Mackenzie interrupted with her interim results. “Five for chicken juice, ten for salt water, and one for a stranger’s saliva,” she said, reading off her iPad. More results were streaming in.

  “I like saliva,” said Chase.

  Darryl said, “Oh? You would want to eat my saliva?” She was wearing a pair of huge Bigfoot slippers along with her pajamas.

  Mackenzie said, “Now three for a stranger’s saliva, eleven for salt water, and six for chicken juice.”

  Over the tumult, Ms. Nolton yelled from the doorway that one group from Team Orinoco still had not finished designing their survey.