As I’m walking to fourth-period English, I know that she’s just on the other side of the school—down the hall, turn left, cross the breezeway, left again, through the double doors on the right—that’s the cafeteria where she’s sitting down with her little brown lunch sack. I know she’s there, eating and talking and breathing.
Of course, I can’t even think about going to see her, because if I think about it, I’ll end up doing it. And deep down, I know exactly what I really need to do about Grace. I know—I’m just not sure I can manage.
Because what I’ve got to do is…nothing. Stay away from her; let her be the one to crawl first, for a change. That’s the smart thing. After all, most people would say that she’s the one who’s not good enough for me. I mean, Grace is good-looking—but I am too. It’s a simple fact: I’m a stud. I’ve been out with plenty of other girls, while I’m the only guy Grace’s ever dated. So I know a lot of stuff, while she’s lived a pretty protected life, guywise. Her dad’s real strict, so she couldn’t even go on a real date till she turned fifteen. Her first date was me, her second date was me, all the dates she’s ever had have been me. I’m all she knows.
There’s no need to break down and call her like I always do. No point in humiliating myself by hunting her down at school. She’ll come around, if I can just lay off.
I go on to fourth period alone, walk in the classroom, sit down. My desk is by the window because I do better in wide-open spaces. Or at least next to them.
The bell rings. Mr. Hammond walks in a moment later. Damn. If there was any mercy in the universe, we’d have a substitute today.
Mr. Hammond’s okay, as far as teachers go. His only bad point is that he hasn’t cut me any slack yet. My mom about had a stroke when she saw that 68 he gave me for the first six weeks.
Grades aside, Mr. Hammond’s got some good points. He doesn’t call my mom and complain about me. He lets me run errands for him, which most teachers don’t once they get to know me. He doesn’t say stuff like “This is easy, Colt, it’s simple,” so that I feel like an asshole when I don’t get it.
So I like Hammond okay, and though I’m not doing too good in here at the moment, I have hopes that he won’t play hardball when the next progress reports come out.
“Open your books to page ninety-seven—‘The Chimney Sweeper,’ by William Blake,” Mr. Hammond says. “I think you all are going to like this one.”
He starts reading it out loud, with lots of pauses and expression. Grace would love it, all that expression in his voice. Me, I think it’s pitiful. A grown man devoting his whole life to trying to get teenagers to care about literature.
It’s hard to watch sometimes, how bad Mr. Hammond wants everybody to love this stuff, this English stuff. Sometimes I think how happy he’d be if he could have a bunch of students like Grace in here, who’d appreciate all his hard work.
Because to a guy like me “The Chimney Sweeper” is some piece of shit. It doesn’t make a bit of sense. Of course, it would to those High Academic Program types. They’d take one look at it and see the secret meaning that Mr. Hammond has to explain to the rest of us, that it’s about boys who clean chimneys for a living.
He says how the boys are like lambs. As in baby sheep. That’s right…baby sheep. It doesn’t say that, of course; you’re just supposed to know.
“What are some words in the poem that could be associated with lambs?” Hammond is asking.
“His hair curls like a lamb’s back,” some girl says.
“Yes!” Mr. Hammond’s fist pounds the desk. He’s like one of those motivational speakers. “Any others?”
He looks around the room. Everybody else is like me; nobody raises a hand, nobody makes a sound.
Still, Hammond waits, like if he gives us a little thinking time, we’ll all suddenly turn into geniuses.
“Look at the verbs,” he hints after a moment.
Still nothing. It’s so quiet, I can actually hear a cricket chirping outside.
“If you saw a group of lambs out in a field, what kinds of things would they be doing?”
The girl next to me yawns so wide, her jaw creaks.
Hammond’s in a tailspin, poor guy. I feel sorry for him—I’m having a bad day too; I know how it feels.
So now I take a look for some lamb words in case it might cheer him up to see me looking. And God, can you imagine if I was actually the one who found a lamb word? He’d retire on the spot. He’d have reached the peak of teacherhood.
I’m looking for something like “Baaa,” I guess, but there’s nothing there. Just regular words.
“What about ‘down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run’?” Mr. Hammond presses. “‘And wash in a river, and shine in the sun’—they used to wash sheep by taking them to the river. Once the sheep were clean, they’d take them in for shearing. Look at the fifth stanza; ‘Then naked and white—’”
I perk up a little at the word naked, and find it on the page.
“‘—all their bags left behind, / They rise upon clouds and sport in the wind.’ How do you think a sheep would feel, to be rid of all that heavy fleece? What do you think it would do, once the shearers released it?”
Silence in the classroom. It’s like the man is speaking a different language. Nobody has any idea what he just said.
“To ‘sport’—what does that mean?” Hammond asks, but this time he gives up and answers himself. “To frolic, or play. Can’t you see the lambs frolicking, playing once they’re relieved of their burdens? ‘Sport in the wind’?”
He quits with the questions and starts talking again. About child labor laws or something. I like him okay, but I hate this class. English has always been a nightmare to me. It’s a battle for me to stay in regular and not get stuck in remedial. I’ve always kept ahead of the game, but I still hate English, I hate books, I hate school in general. Always have. Any minute somebody could be expecting you to read out loud, or to explain something.
“Mr. Trammel,” Mr. Hammond says. “How do you think you’d feel, spending all your days inside dark, cramped chimneys, breathing soot and coal dust?”
“Like Santa Claus.”
A couple of giggles behind me. Mr. Hammond just looks at me and waits. Unlike all the other English teachers I’ve ever had, he only asks me stuff I can answer.
So I give in. “Bad,” I tell him. “I’d feel bad.”
“That’s right,” agrees Mr. Hammond, nodding. Then he moves on, going off on another subject, blah blah blah, blah blah blah. And after a while I forget to try to listen, and look outside. I’d rather be someplace that doesn’t have a ceiling or floor, where the air is fresh and not canned. I’d rather be anywhere, walking around or running or hitting balls, than be in here having to sit in the same place and keep my comments to myself and my hands and feet still.
Hammond’s on the other side of the room, still talking. I pick up my pencil, hunch over my folder so my body looks like I’m taking notes.
The grass outside is the same color as honey. The sky’s got no clouds, it’s blue like the soft little sweater Grace wore last night, the one with no sleeves.
I wish I could not care about her at all. Just until she gets over being mad.
Anybody besides me, he’d have already moved on—or he’d be able to at least act like he had.
It ought to be easy to move on. Grace wouldn’t know how to flirt if you handed her written instructions. Her number-one handicap is that she’s very intellectual and serious-minded.
Me, I do know how to flirt, and I’m about as unserious and unintellectual as you can get. I can hardly keep up with all her bullshit talk about writing and books and movies, excuse me, films.
Maybe that’s why I’ve got to prove to myself and everybody else that I can have her.
A hand gently comes down on my pencil—and I realize I’ve been tapping it on the desk. Ratta-tat, ratta-tat, ratta-tat. Like a very small machine gun.
“‘He was energy itself,’” Mr. Hammond�
��s voice booms, because he’s the one looming above me—Pay attention, Colt!
I put my pencil down and Mr. Hammond’s hand leaves, but he stays there, inches from my desk, reading from the piece of paper in his hand. “‘…and shed around him a kindling influence, an atmosphere of life.’”
He always does this—somehow he knows when I’m not really paying attention, so he brings his lecture over right in front of my desk.
“‘He was a man,’” Mr. Hammond reads off the printout, “‘without a mask.’”
I do what I always do—I stare right at him, so nobody knows I have no clue what he’s talking about, and nobody can complain how I’m not paying attention. It’s an old trick—just look the teacher right between the eyes, just keep your own eyes glued to that one spot on the bridge of their nose, and then your mind can wander wherever it wants.
Where my mind wants to wander is Grace.
That’s the story of my life. The same thing’s always going to happen. No matter what I do or don’t do, I’m always going to end up right back where I started, with Grace stuck inside me like an arrowhead broken off the whatdyacallit. The stick part with the feathers.
Fifth period, I’m an assistant. That means instead of taking a regular class, you sign up to help some teacher; grading papers, running errands, whatever. Usually you have to be an honor-roll student before you get to be somebody’s assistant, but Coach Kline talked Miss A., who teaches English, into taking me on. Coach knows I don’t do too good in some of my classes, and his thinking was that I could use this time as a study hall, plus get help from Miss A. if I need it.
At first I thought it was cool. Not only would I have a free hall pass, but Miss A. also teaches journalism, so I get to be all by myself in this little room that joins Miss A.’s classroom. It’s the one where the newspaper staff has their meetings. There’s a door that opens out into the hall, and there’s also a phone in here.
It’s not so cool now. There’s usually nothing to do because Miss A. doesn’t let me run errands anymore. Not since the time she sent me to the attendance office and I forgot to come back. And it turns out the hall door’s always locked to keep people from coming in and messing with the newspaper stuff, so I can’t sneak out. And I’m not supposed to use the phone; Miss A. caught me the only time I tried, and she told Coach and he made me run laps during sixth.
After that, Coach said he’d bench me if Miss A. complained one more time, and maybe even get me moved to a real class instead of assistant.
My guess is Coach Kline and Miss A. have a thing going, but I haven’t gotten up the nerve to ask.
Now I mostly just put my head down and sleep in here. Nobody bothers me, except every once in a while Miss A. has some homework she wants me to grade. She won’t let me grade tests, although I’m good at that—I like checking off other people’s mistakes.
Today, as usual, nothing to do. I put my head down on my arms. I like this room, even if those High Academic Program types do work and write in it. It’s in the old part of the building, the part that was built back before sheetrock and particle board, so it has a little personality. There’s wooden cabinets all around the walls, ceiling to floor, and the floors are wood, too, and the air smells like musty shellac. It’s cozy, too—the sun comes straight in the windows and the only thing moving is the dust in the sunbeams.
It’s a great place to sleep. Usually.
Today I’ve just shut my eyes when I hear the door to Miss A.’s classroom open.
“Colt, you have a helper,” she says.
No sleeping today. I raise my head and take a good look at my “helper.”
It’s Greenland. “Oh, great,” I say, and drop my head back down on my arms.
“This is Corinne,” I hear Miss A. say. I don’t look up. There’s a pause, where Miss A.’s deciding whether it’s worth the time involved to make me sit up and be polite.
She decides it’s not worth it. “Corinne, the gentleman with the fine manners is Colt Trammel.”
“We’ve met,” I hear Greenland say, in this voice that makes it clear we didn’t exactly hit it off.
“Good,” says Miss A., grimly. “Then you know what to expect. Just have a seat anywhere.”
There’s the slow squeak of footsteps coming over to the table, and a chair screeching back on the wood floor.
“I don’t really have anything for you two to work on today,” Miss A. adds. “Can you wisely handle some free time?”
I don’t have to see her to know she’s aiming that at me.
“I’ve got some homework I can do,” Greenland tells her.
“Good. Colt,” Miss A. presses, because I haven’t answered, “you doing all right?”
What she means is, you do anything bad and I’ll tell my boyfriend and he’ll bench your butt.
“Yeah, I’m all right.” I mumble it at the tabletop.
Miss A.’s little heels click click click out of the room. The door shuts.
I hear the thunk! of a backpack hitting the tabletop. A zipping sound.
There’s not any point in even trying to sleep, not with another person in the room. Especially this person. She was practically begging me to flash her earlier. God only knows what she might do if I go to sleep.
Besides, what if I snore? Or drool?
I sit up. Stretch. Make a big show of looking her over. She’s digging in a backpack that looks like it’s been dragged behind a car. I open my mouth to make some crack about it—but then I remember Coach Kline. I don’t want to be in a real class. And I don’t want to get benched.
“Look,” I tell her, “you leave me alone, and I’ll leave you alone.”
She ignores me, pulling out an eyeglass case. I notice she’s got light-brown freckles sprinkled on her nose and cheekbones. She might look half human if it wasn’t for that hair. And those clothes.
She takes out these little half glasses, like something an old-lady librarian would wear. She puts them on, but barely; they look like they’re about to fall off the tip of her nose.
But her actual face is kind of delicate-looking. No zits. Yeah, she could be almost decent-looking. Too bad she dresses like a bag lady. With fluorescent hair.
“You probably don’t know Coach Kline,” I tell her. “He said if there’s any trouble in here, he’ll kick my ass.”
She doesn’t say anything.
“He’ll kick yours, too,” I add. “So don’t think you can get away with anything.”
“Coach Kline.” For just a second she glances up over the rim of her glasses. “Twentysomething, black hair, blue eyes, unshaved look?”
“Yeah.”
She’s busy again. “In that case,” she says, pulling one of her textbooks out of the backpack, “I might go for a little ass-kicking.”
If she was a guy, I’d know that was a sexual remark. However, she’s not a guy. She’s a girl and I’m not sure what she meant. She might be one of those feminists, and want to take on Coach for real. Like arm-wrestle him.
“Whoa,” I say. That seems like a good neutral comment.
She flips the book open. It’s an English book. She’s got the place marked with a piece of notebook paper, torn in half. It’s the top half. With writing on it.
Not much. Just a few words on each line, sprinkled down the page. It’s upside down, to me.
But I’m staring at that piece of paper, and I can feel the hair standing up on the back of my neck.
“What’s that?” I point, to show there’s no way I’m actually going to touch it.
She’s giving me that look again, over her glasses. “It’s a poem,” she says, in her boy-are-you-stupid voice.
Of course—a goddamn poem. I’d recognize one a mile away. Not just from English class, either. I’ve seen a ton of them, in Grace’s books, in her notebooks, on the margins of her papers. She’s practically dripping with them.
But this is not Grace, and I don’t have to pretend to be sensitive.
“Jesus,” I say in disgust. �
�A poem. I knew it.” I look away and make this big shudder, like “get that thing away from me.”
“Jesus,” Greenland says, even more disgusted. “A Philistine. I knew it.” She makes an even bigger shudder.
We don’t even look at each other after that. We’ve both made our point. Although I don’t know what hers is.
She goes back to her book; I lay my head back down on my arms without saying another word. I act like I’m going to sleep, so she doesn’t get the urge to tell me she wrote the poem. I don’t even want to know.
Girl writers. I attract ’em like shit attracts flies.
After sixth-period athletics I go straight home. I pull my car up in the garage, next to the utility room. I get my stuff off the floorboard, then buzz the garage door down while I’m turning off the security system.
This whole day has sucked big-time, on account of I’m not going to get any sleep in assistant anymore—thank you, Greenland!—and on account of I’m a Grace addict who didn’t get my fix today.
When I walk in, the house is quiet like always. My sister, Cass, Little Miss Perfect, is still at school.
Mom’s at work. She works too much—it’s like ever since the divorce she can’t get enough money. For a while there, when Dad didn’t want to split and Mom did, money was this major issue between them. She’d always slam the phone down when she got through talking to him. And now, even though they get along okay, she still works like somebody’s got a gun to her head.
On my way through the family room, I see the cordless phone. It’s right there, on the end table. The answering machine’s next to it, with the light blinking—and for a second hope rushes over me. Hope that it might be you-knowwho.
“Don’t be an asshole,” I tell myself, and hit the button and listen to the message. Of course it’s not Grace, it’s Whorey Dori, this sophomore girl whose last name starts with a K, but it’s hard to pronounce and I can’t remember it. What I can remember is that she used to sleep with Jordan Palmer, a senior who plays first base for the baseball team. He’s told some really mind-boggling stories about her, and you’d think it’d be a good thing that a certified nympho is leaving me messages, wanting me to call her if I get a chance.
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