Sam was silent. No words were able to form in her head. Her mouth felt dry.
“Sam?” Rose said.
“Who do you want me to call?” said Sam. There had to be a solution to this problem not involving her stepping into an actual classroom and dealing with a hoard of teenagers. Sam could now handle one teenager at a time. Sitting in on a class was a completely different thing.
“It would take at least twenty minutes for a sub to get here. Everyone who has prep period this early isn't in yet. They’re not getting here until 9:00 a.m.,” said Rose.
Sam grumbled to herself about bad planning. She hated herself for being struck with fear when Rose was simply asking for some help.
“Which classroom?” Sam said. Her voice came out as a scratchy whisper.
“17,” said Rosie. She hung up the phone with a click.
Sam put the phone down. She raised her body from the chair slowly. It fought back every inch of the way up. Sam wanted to run out the front door of the school and as far away from here as possible. Her feet defied her. She headed to Room 17.
The lights were still shut off from the afternoon before, and the room was cool. Sam tread along the carpet, past the empty desks, to the front of the room where Della had her desk. Class was going to start in about two minutes. Students had slowly started to pad into the room. Sam sat in Della’s chair. She didn’t make eye contact with any early students. She stared at the DVDs on the desk.
She picked up the movies from the desk and looked at the options, all documentaries. A couple looked pretty interesting. Sam decided she’d let the class vote on it. She nodded her head and placed the films back on the desk.
That would involve talking to them more than you need to.
A silent panic began to rise from her stomach into her throat. She looked down at the films and considered just picking one now to avoid chaos.
The bell rang. Sam took a deep breath and walked to the front of the class. She looked up. About a fourth of the desks were empty. This flu thing was really going around. Some of the faces in the class looked up at her, others seemed to be doodling notes, or busy with their phones.
Their lack of interest was fine with Sam, as long as they didn’t make too much noise.
She took a deep breath. She noticed the girl sitting in the front row. Her black plastic rimmed glasses popped against her bronze skin. She had perky curled hair. Sam hadn’t even known it was possible to have perky hair, but this girl pulled it off with flying colors.
The girl was also watching Sam with what Sam could only read as intense fascination. The girl didn’t blink, she didn’t move, she only watched. Strangely enough the girl’s mesmerizing gaze brought a sense of calm to Sam. It was the boost she needed in the moment.
She cleared her throat.
“Mrs. Ryan went home with the flu. I’m here with you all for class today,” Sam said. She was about to hold up the documentary she’d picked, she wasn’t even going to attempt to take roll when she noticed her tiny stalker had raised her hand.
“Yes.” Sam pointed at her, instantly regretting it. This girl was probably the class know-it-all and had been sizing Sam up, not admiring her well straightened locks, or panache for fashion.
“Did you really work for a museum in L.A.?” she asked. Sam blinked at her. Her summer job at the museum seemed so long ago.
“Yes, I worked for the contemporary art museum there for a summer,” Sam said, looking at the girl with interest. The girl’s gaze never moved, and Sam could have sworn she saw her eyes get wider.
Sam looked up toward the rest of the class, nervous. Sure, it was cool to work in the art scene in L.A., but no one cared, no one knew what the L.A. art scene was in Grover.
She saw forty sets of eyes staring at her. Sam realized these students seemed older, calmer than the kids who’d mutinied on her first day of subbing. They seemed more focused, and bigger. She noticed many of the boys barely fit in their desks, much different from the hyper pipsqueaks she’d encountered on her first day.
They're seniors.
She glanced down at the class's roster sheet. This was an AP Humanities class. These kids were serious seniors.
Sam looked out at their faces. She recognized their hungry stares. She understood them. She’d been like them once, when all she wanted to do was get the heck out of Grover. These were the kids who thought working in an art museum in the city was cool.
The girl in the front raised her hand again. Sam pointed at her. Sam figured she could do roll later. Based on the roster sheet there were twenty students, and due to the flu, it looked like there were fifteen students in the classroom. She'd ask Layla to help her with the specifics after class.
“What was the coolest thing you did while you worked there?” she asked.
Sam thought she noticed the kids slide to the edge of their seats. She could tell them about being up close and personal to artworks by the greats, so close you could see the brushstrokes, the dabs of paint, or the fact that working in Los Angeles meant getting to sometimes work with celebrities.
She figured this group could handle both.
“Well, there’s something fulfilling about being around amazing art. You don’t feel so alone with your emotions when you see a piece of art and you identify with it. It’s almost as if the piece recognizes how you’re feeling simply through colors and lines, and that’s an awesome sense of connection. Also, it’s always fun if you get to meet some celebrities while working in LA.”
Sam name dropped a few stars, something she had never done except with Holly, Layla, and her mother while talking about gallery tours she had given and attending galas with fashionably famous guests of honor.
The students were spellbound.
Sam looked down, trying to hide the relieved grin forming on her face. She noticed a textbook with notes open on the desk of the girl with the glasses in the front row.
“Was this your lesson for today?” Sam asked.
The girl nodded.
“We were actually supposed to have a lesson on art history today,” she said.
Sam raised her eyebrows.
“You’re only having one lesson? Isn’t there a class you can take?” she said. There hadn’t been a class when she’d been a high school student either. She had hoped this fact had changed since she'd been gone from Grover.
A few students shook their heads, as Sam looked over to the cabinet where the slides and projector were housed. She wondered how long it’d been stuck there.
“Can someone tell me what you usually do for art history lessons?” Sam asked. A boy with shaggy bangs raised his hand. She called on him.
“We usually go around and read out of the book,” he said in his most helpful grunt.
Sam nodded as she headed for the cabinet. Once upon a time, she remembered coming across slides of paintings and architecture in such a closet. Maybe she'd get lucky today. So far, she had to admit things were going pretty decent.
“Could somebody else tell me what type of art this lesson was going to be about?” she said.
She turned her back to them as she opened the cabinet and pulled out the projector.
A girl’s voice from somewhere in the middle of the classroom explained they were learning about the modern art being made at the same time authors were writing existentialist works in the nineteen teens and twenties after World War I.
Sam pulled a box of slides from the cabinet and quickly began dropping them into the projector round. Each slide clinked in the satisfying old fashioned way of something non-digital. The slides were clunky yet functional.
“Perfect. That was a great time for art,” said Sam. She attached the round to the projector, and wheeled the projector to the back of the room. She asked a student sitting by the projector if she could borrow his book just to get a general idea of what she was supposed to be telling them.
“Feel free to take notes if you think that’ll be helpful to you,” Sam added as she quickly flipped through the
chapter.
She asked the girl in the front, who Sam learned was named Jenna, to pull down the projector screen, as Sam walked back to the light switch to darken the classroom. She flipped on the projector. It began to buzz. The fan began to flap and warm up. Sam took this as her cue to start talking about the works and lives of the people who became known as the canon of modern art.
Luckily, there was lots of scandal, misguided emotions, and sex amongst the creators of these artworks. The images, or lack thereof, in the art was exactly what the class craved. The students were enthralled. Some asked questions, some only stared at the slides in wonder, and others scribbled furious notes. Sam continued speaking, guiding the class from year to year, and artist to artist.
Midway through the class it dawned on her that the teenagers were like movie stars on a gallery tour. You had to give them the information along with the juicy gossip to really bring the art to life.
Sam went to switch slides. In a heartbeat, her ease was ambushed by a small, niggling feeling of panic. What was she doing? What if she lost the students’ interest at any second and they went crazy on her? What if—
Stop it.
She shook her head no. She’d deal with the chaos if it happened, and so far it hadn’t. There was an assertive feeling welling in her chest. It shoved the panic down the stairs. This was important information. If the kids didn’t want to be honored with it, that was their problem, and she would deal with it.
She quickly glanced across the entire class. The kids seemed to only be waiting for the next slide. Many of them rested their chins in their hands, as if listening to a story. She hit the button to progress the next slide and continued on about how Picasso was a totally wacky character.
There was a tiny part of her hoping Otto would appear in the doorway. She was rocking this, and she found a part of her wanting to share the moment with him. She shook the feeling away. She was fine. She didn’t need Otto looming in the doorway, or anyone for that matter. She continued on, telling the class about Picasso and his many lovers.
* * *
Otto returned to his office after his meeting. He took note Sam wasn’t there, but it didn’t bother him out too much. She could have gone to a late lunch, or something. He headed over to the English prep period.
“Have you had your flu shot Otto?” asked Mrs. McPhee, a teacher who would be a tremendous loss to the school when she retired in a few years. Her first name was Rose, but Otto had never gotten used to calling her by her first name. Randy and Holly had always called her Mrs. McPhee from their days as students, and it worked for Otto too.
Otto looked up at her surprised.
“Actually no, why?” he said.
“It’s going around. Della had to leave today she was feeling so sick.”
Otto crinkled his eyebrows. His stomach caught, and he wasn’t exactly sure why.
“Did she get a sub?” he said, rubbing his forehead.
“The subs are all used up because of this dreadful epidemic, so no. She called Sam, her last hope. She convinced Sam to sit with her class while they watched a movie,” Mrs. McPhee said as she took a drink of water from her faded Weight Watchers water bottle. She watched Otto carefully.
Otto stared at her. He tried his best not to look panicked, and was sure he was failing. He wanted the details, or to run over to Room 17 to make sure Sam was still alive. She’d told him the other night what’d really happened the morning he found her in his office. While he’d assured her classes getting out of control happened to all new teachers, Sam had been really hard on herself about the whole thing.
“She’s subbing for Della? She’s in Della’s class right now, in charge of it? You know she’s not on the sub list anymore,” he said. He attempted to keep his voice deep and calm.
“Yes. Yes, and actually no, she is on the sub list. Looks like she forgot to take herself off,” said Mrs. McPhee.
Otto wanted to bang his head against something, but high school principals really weren’t allowed to do that, no matter how often he wanted to, and it was more often than he'd like to admit. He closed his eyes for a moment and then turned to look at Mrs. McPhee.
“Is everything all right here for right now or do you need me for anything?” he said.
Mrs. McPhee waved her hand at him.
“We’re fine. We always are, and we’ll let you know if we have any concerns,” she said.
Otto nodded in a knowing way. There were always concerns from the English teachers, and they were always more than happy to voice their opinions, but he didn’t dare say this piece of common knowledge out loud. He had somewhere to be.
“Ok, great. Yes, contact me if you need anything. You know where to find me,” he said.
Otto shot out the door, trying to move as fast as he could to Della’s classroom without running through the halls.
* * *
Midway to the classroom Otto broke out into a run. He argued to himself that this was acceptable for the situation. He had to run sometimes in cases of emergencies, and there was a high likelihood that this already was, and if it wasn’t already, it could potentially become an emergency. He almost ran past the darkened classroom where he heard Sam's voice saying something about lines and expressionism. His feet skidded against the hallway tiles to stop his momentum. He'd figured he’d be running toward a classroom on the verge of chaos with shouting students.
He braced himself against the doorway and squinted into the darkness. He heard the flutter of the projector. He hadn’t heard that sound in years.
All the students had their backs to him. No one had noticed his abrupt halt to his sprint. They were all glued to the image on the projector screen.
Sam, at ease in a way he had only caught her in at glimpses at a time, talked over the hum of the projector to explain the image shining on the screen before them. She also took the time to ask the students what they were seeing, how they were feeling about the artworks.
Every once in a while she would inject some tidbit about the artist's life, usually something scandalous. The kids loved it. She was treating them like adults, Otto noted, and from the looks on their faces, and the ease to their bodies, they were rising to the occasion.
Watching her, Otto couldn’t believe how much he missed teaching. He also loved how when it came to explaining art, Sam was a natural.
The bell for the end of class rang. Everyone in the room seemed surprised, especially Sam. It was as if they’d been woken up from a dream. She flipped off the projector, and thanked everyone for being a great class, as the students, at the sound of the bell, jumped up and began to pack their things.
* * *
As the students walked out, Otto walked into the classroom. Sam didn’t hear or see him. She seemed to be having a moment to herself behind the projector.
Sam now finally let the grin spread across her face. She had done it. She had led a class and it hadn’t ended in complete disaster. She was still a little in shock from it all. She was in a blissful dazed state. At the same time it was as if the tiny beads of anxiety that had been jumping around in her stomach and on her shoulders had floated away, and all she had left was calm.
She took a deep breath. The lesson was over. Strangely, she was glad the nerves had been there in the first place. She felt even better for beginning with them, and then having them lifted away through her own doing. She felt better than she had ever felt. This topped moments when she was fearless in the city, or assertive in grad school.
When it came to work and school, she’d never needed courage before because she had never felt like she was going to lose. Somehow overcoming a demon was more satisfying. In this moment of jubilation, she felt up for other demons if defeating them would make her feel like this.
“Good job in there. I think you actually taught them something,” Otto said from the doorway.
His voice made her jump, and her nerves returned. These ones though, were definitely more pleasant.
She turned to face him. In t
his moment of her triumph, flushed with her own vulnerability in light of her new self-image, she couldn’t help but feel drawn to him.
She was so happy to see him. He had a way of making the moment even more perfect. He had a way of making her feel more whole, if it was possible. He was the icing on a really decadent cake. It was overwhelming and intoxicating all at the same time.
“Della got sick and they couldn’t find anyone else to sub so I had to fill in. I’m sorry I totally forgot to leave you a note. How did you know where I was?” she said.
Otto stuttered.
“I heard,” he managed.
Sam gave him a searching look. Her stomach caught, and she tried to deny the wary feeling beginning to bubble inside her.
“Did you need me for something?” she said.
Otto swallowed. He cleared his throat. He looked into Sam’s shining eyes.
“Um, well Mrs. McPhee mentioned Della had gotten sick, so I came over just to check out everything,” he said.
He winced. Sam caught the caution in his voice, and her stomach continued to knot.
“Did she mention I was watching the class for Della?” she said, watching him.
"Yes," he said, hanging his head.
“So I doubt you were expecting to see what you just did, you know, me instructing students, the students listening, heck, maybe even interested in what I had to say,” she said.
Her voice was rushed, her eyes were lasers through his head.
“I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, quite honestly,” he said.
He held his breath when her lips pressed together into a thin line. She opened her mouth to speak. She looked lost, but he knew the words were coming.
“You know, I fended for myself for the past ten years of my life. I don’t need a knight in shining armor to get me out of trouble,” she said.
Her stomach dropped as she said it. She was attacking him, and claiming he was her knight all at the same time. She wasn’t quite sure which more mortified her more.
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