He turned and left the way he had come.
When he reached the lounge again he found Danny Fisher already there. Ron and Jean were picking themselves up, dusting themselves off, preparing for another period of teaching.
“You’d better get going,” Danny said when he saw him.
Kevin shook his head, not understanding.
“The lab,” Danny said. “I saw your schedule. You’re on the ground floor, all the way at the far side of the building. You’ll be late.”
“Lab?”
Danny gave him another one of his sarcastic, knowing grins, and he clapped him affectionately on the shoulder. Kevin wondered if the man realized how much force he was putting behind this casual gesture.
He’d knock me down with that if I weren’t squarely planted.
“Not about to teach computer programming without a computer lab, are you?”
Kevin’s eyebrows shot up. His job was almost starting to sound interesting.
“And the kid’s going to be there,” Danny added. “You were going to show up early, remember?”
No, I don’t remember. I don’t remember shit, Danny.
“Which kid?”
“The kid. You were so excited about him, the son of that big shot. The engineer you kept trying to tell me about, Pascal Bow? So smart that even his grade-school kid would probably know more about computers than you. That’s what you said.”
Kevin put his hands up. Now Danny had his full attention. “Pascal Billaud?”
“Right, that’s what I said. A real big shot, right?”
“His son goes to this school?”
Now I’m interested. Fully interested.
“His son’s in your class,” Danny corrected him. He glanced at his watch, then back at Kevin. “Your 8th grade Java Programming class that starts in about 45 seconds. You need to go all the way downstairs, then take a left and keep going until you – ”
Kevin grabbed his papers off the snack table, and he was out the door before Danny could finish speaking.
He found the lab with ten seconds to spare. The students were there already, each one of them sitting quietly in front of a computer. Every computer had an arcade game of one kind or another loaded up and running at full tilt.
“Shut that stuff down,” Kevin said briskly. He didn’t bother looking through his stack of papers for a lesson plan. Whether it was there or not, he knew exactly how he would run this kind of class. “I’m Mr. Brooks. Are there Java compilers on these machines?”
Silence from the class. Blank stares as some of the students turned to look at him. Go back to speaking English, their expressions said.
But one of them had understood him perfectly.
“Metrowerks is pre-installed,” said a small boy at the far end of the lab. “There’s also a NetBeans shortcut on the desktop.” The boy was speaking quietly, with the barest hint of an accent. “Either one would work, but I recommend NetBeans. Much better pre-compiling features.”
The other students in the class turned to look at the one who had spoken. One of them whispered, not very quietly: “Who the heck is that?”
Kevin tried to keep himself from smiling. “I agree. We’ll go with NetBeans. Tell me your name?”
“Anselm Billaud.”
Another boy, this one bigger than the others, leaned back in his chair so that he could get a better look at the new kid. “Anselm?” The bigger boy had khakis that were frayed at the cuffs, and he had made a calculated effort to pull his tie down, keeping it as loose as possible without actually violating the dress code. “What the hell kind of name is that?”
Kevin frowned. “And your name, please?”
The bigger boy turned with exaggerated slowness to face the teacher. “Connor Feeney.”
“Mr. Feeney, watch your language.”
Connor scowled. “Sorry.”
“Put your chair flat on the floor.”
A heavy, drawn out sigh from Connor as he returned his seat to a flat position.
“Connor?” The small boy at the end of the lab had spoken again. He was trying to get Connor’s attention.
Connor leaned his head back, careful not to tip his chair. “Huh?”
“Anselm is a French name. French is a language, and France is a country in Europe.”
“I know that,” Connor said scornfully. “I’m not – ”
“You are, though,” Anselm interrupted, and he nodded slowly. There was a little spark of amusement in his eyes.
Connor’s face reddened, and now he slid his chair backwards on the rug so that he could face Anselm directly. Having been the biggest child in his grade since kindergarten, Connor Feeney was not a boy who was accustomed to being interrupted. Certainly not by a little kid like this. And absolutely not by a kid who was not only little, not only new, but foreign. No, thank you.
“What’d you say?” Connor asked slowly.
“I’m sorry?”
“What did you just say to me?”
“I said you are.”
The class was silent. The other students were watching this exchange with a breathless fascination, many of them wondering whether the new kid realized just how close he was coming to a full-fledged beating. A full-fledged pummeling. He was near the line. Actually, many of them believed he had already jumped right past that line.
Far past it.
Don’t you understand? Don’t you see that Mr. Brooks won’t always be here? The school day will end. You’ll have to leave this building. Connor Feeney will be waiting for you. And then the pummeling will begin.
Connor glared. He took an extra moment before speaking again. “I am what?”
Anselm smiled brightly at him. “Well, I suppose that’s up to you.”
“What?”
“You don’t understand me?”
Kevin broke it up. “Enough,” he said. He thought it would be best for the two of them to work this out on their own (even though he, too, worried that Anselm might have a pummeling not too far in his future), but this was not the time. There was work to be done. “Everybody with your eyes on your own computer,” he announced, speaking loudly now. “Open up that NetBeans shortcut.”
The rest of the period went fast, just as the others had. And this one was more fun than the others. They were fearless with computers, these boys. They didn’t worry that something might go wrong. It wasn’t like math class, in which the students volunteered solutions with hesitation, nervous that they would be embarrassed. They were willing to experiment. To poke and prod and try things they thought might not work. Even Connor Feeney seemed to be getting into the spirit of it. Kevin heard him congratulating himself more than once. “There it is,” Connor said under his breath. Kevin grinned, and he reminded himself that Connor was still only a teenaged boy. There were few creatures more naturally suited to programming; it was a discipline that rewarded bravado, that encouraged reckless confidence. His own life with computers had started at age nine. Everything about these machines had always made sense to him.
He glanced over at Anselm. The boy had not spoken since the beginning of the period, and Kevin found himself wondering just how much the son of Pascal Billaud already knew. He also wondered whether he might be able, somehow, to get an introduction to the boy’s father.
Imagine having the chance to speak with Pascal Billaud. Even for a minute. Holy shit.
But that would have to wait.
When the period ended, Kevin was surprised to see Emily Beck standing at the entrance to the lab.
“Hi,” he said, too eagerly.
She nodded silently and gave him a tight, polite smile. Kevin felt something drop in his stomach. She was being too formal with him; he had offended her somehow. He should not have gone up to the roof. He had made her cautious of him. He was –
“Mr. Brooks?”
Anselm was trying to get his attention. Standing before him now, the boy seemed unreasonably small.
Kevin forgot himself. “Wait, you’re in 8th grade?
Seriously?”
Anselm paused. Tilted his head to the side. “No, 5th.”
“Oh.” He caught Emily giving him a strange look, and he cursed himself.
Idiot. Of course he’s in a class above his grade level.
“How can I help you?”
Anselm smiled. “Could you give me extra stuff?”
“Extra?”
The boy nodded vigorously. “Projects,” he said. “Something interesting. I’ve done a lot of programming already, is the thing.”
“Have you?” The temptation to bring up the boy’s father was very strong. Kevin resisted it, but only barely.
“Yeah. So could you?”
Kevin smiled. “Give me until tomorrow to come up with a few things.”
“Great.” The boy grinned again, and off he ran.
Kevin watched him go, hoping Anselm wouldn’t be intercepted by Connor Feeney anytime soon. Kevin looked around the lab, and now he noticed that there were far too many students in here. Every computer was taken, and there were still twenty small boys milling around, looking lost. Emily noticed, too. She looked about her with a troubled expression. Kevin supposed he should be moving onto wherever his next class was, but his legs didn’t seem to want to move.
“Hold on,” Emily said. “All of you are in French Three?”
One of the boys without a place to sit came over to her. He shook his head solemnly. “Art,” he said. He spoke the word as if it were something very heavy. Very difficult to say. “Clemson Art.”
A look of understanding crossed Ms. Beck’s face, and she nodded seriously at the student. “Okay,” she said gently.
At that moment Ron Clemson appeared at the door to the lab, and he made his presence known. Forcefully. “What’s all this?” he bellowed. He was breathing hard, and he put one hand on the doorframe to support some of his weight. He took several deep, loud breaths, as if to emphasize that trudging all the way down to the computer lab was not something to be taken lightly. “There are three teachers here when there should be only one,” he added, and he shook his head with disapproval.
“My class is gone,” Kevin said. “I’m on my way out.”
“Excellent,” Ron said gruffly.
“Not me,” Emily said. Her voice was light and conversational. Unconcerned. “I reserved the lab for this period.” She turned her bright eyes to Ron Clemson. “Did you?”
“I teach an art class,” Ron said, not quite meeting her gaze. He adopted a tone of righteous formality. “We do much of our design work on computers.”
Emily smiled sweetly at him. “Yes,” she said. “Naturally. And I teach French, and we use lots of games on the computers for repetition and drilling. More importantly, I reserved the lab. Which brings us full circle, doesn’t it?”
Ron grimaced. He looked as if something he had eaten was not agreeing with him. He stared at the floor. “Are you going to take your class out of here?” he asked her.
“Certainly not.” Still in that easy, friendly tone.
Ron muttered under his breath.
“Sorry?”
“Nothing,” he said quickly. With an effort, he raised his head. “My class!” he bellowed. “4th graders! Clemson Art! Follow me! We’re going back up to the classroom.” He sighed heavily. “All the way back up.”
Half of the students in the room stood and turned reluctantly, and then they began filing out of the lab behind Mr. Clemson. They moved slowly, many of them looking wistfully over their shoulders as they left the room. They had briefly been sharing an actual classroom with Ms. Beck. The Ms. Beck. Most of them had never been in a class with her, because she taught only the 6th, 7th, and 8th grades, but they had all heard about her.
And of course they had all noticed her.
Ms. Beck began speaking to her class. Her students were happily setting up their computers, sitting up and listening carefully, ready to do anything and everything she might request of them. Her voice was a song. She smiled at them. She touched them on the tops of their heads – only on the tops of their heads, but still that was something to hang onto – and she praised them for the littlest things, for conjugating the simplest verbs, for taking an extra moment to try saying the French ‘u’ more carefully than last year. And they were constantly trying to do more, trying to impress her, trying to get her to smile at them, look at them, anything.
One 4th grader, a boy who was at the point of leaving the lab on the way to his fate in Clemson art, stopped walking suddenly. He was a very small 4th grader, and he had a too-short back-to-school hair cut. He was near the end of the line of Clemson students, and now he took a moment to look ahead of him. Mr. Clemson was clearly visible, shuffling along slowly and painfully, doling out a steady stream of barked criticisms and complaints to any student within earshot. The boy glanced back at the scene he was leaving behind. The lab, Ms. Beck, her light blue skirt and her pretty eyes. Already she was in the process of telling her class that she could not believe, could not possibly understand how she had managed to get, yet again, a class of such brilliant boys. She was absolutely jumping with excitement over everything they would be doing that year together, she said.
The student with the too-short hair, whose name was Elias Worth, decided he had had enough. It had been a difficult first day back at school. Everyone had made fun of his hair, his shoes didn’t fit right, and he had tried to be funny during first period but no one had laughed. And now he had been tricked, faked out. He had been presented with the possibility of Ms. Beck, only to be given Mr. Clemson instead. It wasn’t fair, and it was too much for this particular 4th grader to handle. Too much for Elias Worth.
He would not take another step.
It was suicide, suicide in an all-boys school, but he couldn’t help himself: very quietly, Elias began to cry.
Kevin felt himself on the verge of taking drastic action. He had no experience with how to handle such a situation, but he knew that this boy needed support of some kind. And fast. A diversion, perhaps. He could pull the fire alarm. He could call in a bomb threat. He could –
But Emily was already there. She put herself quickly and gracefully in a position to create privacy; the others could not easily see Elias’s distress. Then she began speaking to him gently. Reassuringly. Whispering that she hoped Elias could work on homework with her later today. During study hall this afternoon. I run a study session with a group of students, she told him in a whisper. They’re mostly older, but you could come too today. If you want. We meet in the library. Sound good?
The effect was immediate. Elias Worth was comforted. Saved. He nodded gratefully.
“Okay,” Emily said, so that everyone could hear her now. “Off you go.”
Kevin watched this exchange without saying a word. In another moment Emily had returned to teaching her class, and Kevin slipped silently out of the room. He hurried back up the stairs, past the slowly moving line of Clemson Art scholars (and Ron Clemson himself, who was still muttering curses), back toward the lounge.
Emily Beck glanced once, furtively, over her shoulder after Kevin had left. She shook her head gently. An expression that might have been sadness passed briefly over her face.
Then it was gone.
A Rising Sense Of Dread
When the last student had left Kevin’s classroom for the day, he stood for a few seconds in silence, wondering if there was anything else he was supposed to do. He made a conscious effort to avoid looking at the clock.
He hoped it was still moving.
After another moment he left the room and made his way down to the teacher’s lounge one more time. It knew it was only 2:30, and he worried he might be expected to coach something. The lounge was empty when he arrived, so he sat down in one of the chairs and waited. He wondered if Ms. Stewart might be about to come striding through the door to ask him why he wasn’t already on his way to the football fields, the buses were waiting, and why wasn’t he in his coach’s uniform, and what was wrong with him anyway?
To
which, again, he would have cheerfully replied that he had no idea.
But no one came. There were no knocks on the door, no sounds of running steps, no shouts from people searching for him.
The building suddenly seemed deserted.
Where do teachers go after their last class? Not the lounge? Are they all at a bar somewhere?
He sat there in silence, waiting. For what seemed like a very long time.
Undetectable (Great Minds Thriller) Page 4
