Something clenches inside him. Chase tells her he’s late.
“When are you ever on time?” And then she sighs when he doesn’t say anything. “Listen, my flight gets in at two tomorrow. Can you pick me up?”
Chase passes the lime-green sign for Centennial High and tells Julia, “Don’t I always? When haven’t I?” but also that he has to go.
Last semester some kids in Chase’s class wanted to nominate Chase for Teacher of the Year. It was Chase’s first year at Centennial and he was full of steam and driven from the talks he had with Julia about their future. Chase was never going to stay at Centennial long (that had never been part of the plan) but he was good at what he did: he brought in xeroxed articles from Artforum and took the kids to galleries and had models come in to pose. (Michele modeled once and Chase made the class pledge secrecy if he allowed nude figure drawings. So the shades were drawn and the door was locked and Michele dropped her robe.) And there were faculty who said some supportive things and the principal called Chase in and asked if he’d address the school board about the importance of funding the arts or something like that. The principal mentioned the newspaper articles written about Chase and the murals he had painted on walls around the city when he was in high school. The principal said that Chase was an example Centennial needed to promote. So the kids nominated him and Chase was supposed to present a statement before a panel about why what he taught mattered. But a week before the panel presentation a girl committed suicide. Her body sat slumped against a wall in a bathroom stall for an entire day, and kids came and went, saw her feet and legs under the door and either figured she was sleeping or passed out, and if anyone had gone over to ask if she was okay, they would have seen the pools of blood all over the floor from the gaping wounds in her wrists. A custodian eventually found her. A week later a kid named Rush threw a party (complete with a bonfire) out in the desert and circulated invitations throughout the school: “This event is in honor of the strong only: criers, whiners, bitches, and bleeders stay home!”
Chase told Julia about the suicide the night it happened. He told her about Rush and the plague of desert rats that haunted Centennial. He told her he wasn’t sure he could take it anymore. “What does that mean?” Julia asked him. And he closed his eyes—jaw tight, teeth clenched—and tried to picture something precise that he could no longer accept and all that came was color: a throbbing white rage. When he opened his eyes and exhaled he said that he would quit Centennial. When Julia asked what he was going to do about an income Chase didn’t mention that Michele had offered him money again. And he didn’t tell Julia that he was considering taking it. Michele had said “thousands” though Chase wasn’t sure how or why it would be so much. Michele said the money would come his way “over time” in irregular installments based on nothing more than Chase saying “fine.” The only thing Chase told Julia was that he was finished with teaching and ready to go and he made up some shit about this Mormon girl who got freaked out and told her parents about the nude figure drawing (in this scenario it was Hunter and not Michele who was the model) and that Chase was called into an endless meeting with her parents and the principal and they wanted to fire him but since he was popular with the kids they didn’t.
After a long silence, Julia said, “You’ve been there a long time.”
Chase never wrote the statement. He skipped the panel and a middle-aged phys-ed coach—whom none of the students gave a crap about—became Centennial High’s Teacher of the Year.
Chase pulls the Mustang into his parking space and walks quickly toward the massive beige building that seems to effortlessly blend in with the sand and mountains surrounding it. Centennial opened two years ago on Annie Oakley Drive and had originally been built as a prison. After construction began, the overwhelmingly white population in northwest Vegas threatened a lawsuit against the county, arguing that property values would plummet and so instead of a prison the massive beige building became the largest high school in the valley. But there are no windows at Centennial High and the center of it is a hollow courtyard: a place where the inmates would have spent their recreation time.
After he declined Teacher of the Year, Chase gave up trying to teach anything. So now Chase works on his sketches during class and tells his students that they can sit quietly and finish their homework for other classes or sleep if they aren’t too obvious about it. His students are all seniors and the ones who graduate will go to UNLV or CCSN or nowhere in the fall. They’re mostly white, mostly tan, and drive their own cars. They smell like coconut oil and sour candy and cigarette smoke and weed. They’re like every other high school class: a few have potential and two or three offer something intelligent to say, but most of them have no ambition and no opinions about anything and they’re there only because they have to be. Chase hates them all. The only thing that gets him through the day is the thought that he’s leaving Centennial in six weeks. Not one of these kids, he has finally decided, will go on to do anything worthwhile in this world. That every teacher Chase had when he was in high school thought the same thing about him occurs to Chase for some reason this morning when he finally gets to class, twenty minutes late for second period.
Leaning against his desk Chase takes a deep breath and exhales as he tries to think of something to say.
“You look like shit,” someone calls out from the back of the room.
“I feel like shit,” Chase says.
“Look a little loco, actually, dawg.”
“What’s that mess on your shirt?” someone else says.
Chase looks down at the droplets of tomato sauce and the white paint.
“You’re not going to shoot us, are you?” someone asks and people laugh.
“Would it make a difference?”
“You should shoot yourself.” Another voice he doesn’t recognize.
Chase glances at the clock. Someone notices and calls out, “Yeah, that’s right: twenty-one more minutes of this shit.”
Laughter.
Chase takes another deep breath and closes his eyes. When he opens them he looks out over the fluorescent-lit room filled with tan eighteen-year-olds and says, “You’re not going anywhere.” He pauses as he scans the room. “Maybe you, Isabel, if you focus and stop hiding, and Anthony, yeah, you could do something. But the rest of you …” Chase stops. There’s an uncomfortable silence. “Look, you can sleep or do whatever it is you want to do the rest of the period. I’ve got a headache, so please keep it down.”
“Teacher of the Year!” someone calls out and the room laughs.
“Thank you. Stay the course. Keep hope alive. Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss you’ll be among the stars. Now please leave me alone for the next …” Chase looks back up at the clock and someone calls out, “Eighteen minutes.”
There is a long silence before someone in the back row says, “Thanks for not shooting us.”
In celebration of their one-month anniversary, Bailey suggested that they skip summer school and head to the shooting range. It had only been thirty days but Carly and Bailey were now inseparable. In that one month Bailey convinced Carly to bleach her hair blond. He convinced her to double-pierce her ears. He convinced her to go down on him in the parking lot of Wet ’n Wild. He convinced her to fight a girl he swore had come on to him repeatedly, just to see if she’d actually do it (Carly did). The new clothes that Bailey made Carly wear were trendy, and sexier than what she usually wore. Most of the clothes that Bailey bought Carly in that one month were designed primarily to show off her prematurely large breasts. On that Tuesday when Bailey decided to celebrate their one-month anniversary by skipping school, he talked his father into driving him and Carly and Chase (Michele was sick; she was bleeding; it wouldn’t stop) in his Suburban to the Line of Fire shooting range on East Flamingo. Before they were picked up at the house on Starlight Way, Chase got worried watching Carly apply too much eyeliner. Chase told her she was lucky Mom wasn’t home because Mom would never let Carly go anywhere dressed l
ike that: a short-short denim skirt, a tight V-neck T-shirt, the black bra that showed through—none of it would have been acceptable. “If you’re going to be a fag the whole time,” Carly said, inspecting her face in a mirror, “stay at home.” Bailey rode shotgun with Carly in between him and his father. Chase rode in back, alone, and watched Bailey’s father occasionally glance at Carly’s tan legs and then at the breasts squeezed into the T-shirt that his son had bought for her. Chase had to look away each time this happened. He wondered why he had even come along. It was a hot clear day and the city was all black asphalt and dirty brown and gray concrete. School would have been the better option.
The four of them spent two hours at Line of Fire, outside in the sun. For some reason there weren’t enough earplugs, so when Chase wasn’t shooting he had to cover his ears and watch as Bailey shot cutout targets of faceless black silhouettes, his eyes burning from the dust and the outrageous heat. Bailey’s father wrapped his arms around Carly and pressed against her, holding her hands steady and pulling the trigger over and over again. Carly would bite her lower lip and close one eye tightly. She was determined. They spent half an hour in the gun shop where Bailey’s father bought Bailey, Carly, and Chase black T-shirts that read FROM MY COLD, DEAD HAND. For himself: a new $750 Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifle. (Chase was amazed at the purchase.) They stopped at Del Taco, where Bailey’s father told a story about the heroic actions of the eighteen-year-old son of the proprietor of the Line of Fire shooting range. The proprietor’s son was in a Circle K when it was held up by a couple of Mexicans. The proprietor’s son had a brand-new Glock .22 “standard issue,” Bailey’s father said, as though this should have impressed them. “The same kind they give to DEA agents.” The proprietor’s son shot and killed the men. It took only two bullets: both to the back of the head. The son had just come from the shooting range his father owned. The son said he felt like God put him there for a reason. The boy said that God had sent him for that can of Red Bull at that Circle K on that particular Friday afternoon. The story made Chase queasy: there was no point to it, there was no lesson, it was meaningless. The only thing he took from it was the mental image of two men’s heads exploding. But Bailey seemed to interpret the story as a challenge. For him it was something that needed to be sorted out and he seemed to have located the story’s point. Bailey kept nodding. And because Bailey was convinced of something by this story, so was Carly.
Between second and third period the wide bright hallway is crowded and the din of conversation and laughter is amplified as it always is this time of semester: late spring, the end of a school year, summer close. As Chase leaves the classroom to find coffee he realizes that he forgot to put on deodorant. This happens when he notices the sweet smell of a familiar girl’s perfume passing too closely and her soft arm brushes against his and then she pinches his waist. This girl who touches him is Rachel. She’s sixteen and passes Chase with a pack of girls in low-cut jeans and tight T-shirts revealing tan hips smeared with body glitter. Rachel wears a short checkered skirt and pink sandals. The crimson streaks in her straight black hair are new and something Michele recommended. Rachel looks over her shoulder at Chase, who mindlessly watches her long enough to notice her bare legs and for an instant wonders what it would feel like to slide his hand between them.
Suddenly a fist hits his chest, hard, and Chase flinches out of the fantasy. He hears the voice and laughter. It’s Rush, with his cocky half-smile, roaming the halls, and his crew of white boys—in pressed collared shirts worn purposefully too long and silver rope chains around their tan necks—stand in a posse behind their leader. Rush has the same smirk he had two weeks ago when he stumbled out of his white Escalade in the Double Down parking lot, high on sticky weed. This was the night one of the blonde girls Rush was with vomited at Hunter’s feet, splattering his pant leg, when Chase and Hunter were on their way out of the Double Down. Rush told the girl to make it up to them (“Hey, that dude is one of my teachers, bitch”) and unzipped the top of her Abercrombie tracksuit and clumsily pulled one of her breasts out, squeezing until it bulged grotesquely, and Rush told Chase and Hunter that she would blow each of them if they had any meth. Chase hung back. Hunter actually paused and seemed to contemplate the offer. When Rush saw that Hunter was taking this seriously, he grabbed the girl and walked away laughing. Now, this morning in the hallway, grinning, Rush points at Chase and then says something to the crew, who all laugh as Rush brings a ringing silver cell to his ear and answers, “Yo.”
Chase shakes his head and grins back. Rush’s high-pitched laugh and manic green eyes compel Chase to take three quick steps forward. Chase gets close enough to smell Rush’s hair gel. Chase tells Rush to put the goddamn phone away. Rush just laughs and says something Chase can’t hear because the hallway seems more crowded than usual. Suddenly someone pushes someone else into Chase from behind and he stumbles into Rush and Rush raises his hand to strike out—or Chase thinks he does—and as Chase regains his balance he instinctively lunges forward, slamming Rush into a locker, sending them both flailing to the ground. Things escalate quickly. Chase has a handful of Rush’s shirt in his fist while Rush grabs Chase’s throat and squeezes. For this one moment everything is frozen. Chase can hear himself telling Rush to “Let it go, just let it go, it’s okay, let it go” while pinning Rush’s head to the floor. The only sound coming from Rush are rapid short breaths interspersed with whining.
“This is what you fucking want, isn’t it, bitch?” Chase is so lost in the moment he will not recall ever saying this. “You like being a little bitch, don’t you? Fucking little bitch.”
“Hey man, you’re really hurting him,” one of the crew calls out.
Chase immediately starts to apologize. He eases the pressure against the boy’s head. Rush turns to stare up into Chase’s eyes. Their faces are inches from each other. Someone calls out for them to kiss. Rush starts to grin. Chase exhales, relaxing. Chase closes his eyes and hears a hocking sound. A thick glob of warm saliva hits the bridge of Chase’s nose and slides quickly toward his mouth.
This activates something in Chase and he slams Rush’s head against the ground three times in quick succession. Kids start to cry out and there are high-pitched shrieks coming from the girls. Someone yells, “Let him go!” Chase shouts, “I’m not the one!” Chase is surprised at how little resistance he’s getting and it makes him feel powerful knowing how much stronger he is than Rush. But then Chase realizes something.
Rush is bluffing. Rush is waiting Chase out. This is an act.
Shrill whistles sound somewhere down the hall. Chase whips his head around, looking left and right, but there’s too much fear and rage and adrenaline to let go of Rush. To get up and walk away is impossible. The sickness and disgust Chase has managed to keep just beneath the surface are why he’s still on the ground with Rush under him, pinned to the floor.
Chase doesn’t want to be the one to let go. He’s waiting for another teacher to pull them apart. Chase wants this to end, but one of Rush’s boys starts kicking Chase hard in the ribs, which prompts Chase to grind Rush’s head harder into the floor as if this would act as a warning to the boy to stop kicking Chase.
Chase growls at Rush through his clenched teeth, “Tell him to stop.”
But Rush, crimson-faced, just stares up at Chase, and the boy backs away as the whistles become louder and start closing in, until finally Chase hears authoritative voices commanding them to break it up. Chase’s eyes burn from pepper spray.
One of the security guards pulls Chase to his feet but it’s too fast and they twist his arm behind his back, thrusting it upward until he feels a ligament tear. Chase screams. He spins around and throws an elbow at the security guard’s jaw and watches the guy fall before Chase is thrown back to the floor and hit twice with a baton by the other security guard. Through the tears in his eyes everything suddenly looks calm again and voices seem to be telling Chase to fucking chill out, chill out, dude while everyone’s asking Rush if he’s o
kay. From where Chase lies he sees the tan thighs and pink sandals of Rachel, who had passed him what now feels like days ago, watching the scene from a safe distance.
* * *
Chase has been sitting in the small administrative office since eleven o’clock answering questions and filling out incident reports.
He nodded after each question was asked.
Did he strike a student?
Did he initiate the confrontation?
Did he feel his actions were inappropriate and/or would be deemed criminal in nature if they occurred outside of a school setting?
He was fired.
He leaned back in his chair. His heart raced and his throat tightened.
“I need this job,” he finally managed. “I think I can stay and be okay.”
He was hardly convincing.
They couldn’t imagine why he would want to stay.
“I fucked up.” He corrected himself. “I messed up. There’s a month left. Let me just …” And then the words spilled out. “Look, that kid’s a fucking monster.”
This sentence was met with silence.
“If you knew him you’d have wanted to do the same thing every fucking day.”
They speculated openly about the reasons.
Maybe it was Chase’s age. He was Centennial’s youngest teacher.
Maybe there was something else he’d be better suited for.
They mentioned words like “patience” and “maturity” and “perspective.”
Chase laughed.
This was deemed an “inappropriate” response.
Chase repeated the word “inappropriate” as a statement, then a question.
But their definition of the term was somehow fixed and universally accepted.
Their definition of the term was not open to interpretation.
Chase was still smiling as they stood and left him alone in the room.
The Delivery Man Page 4
