by Dave Connis
Because we don’t really know each other.
Are you okay?
Is Jack okay?
Me [7:10 PM] Ashton?
A Celebratory Announcement
To: All Students, All Faculty, All Parents
From: [email protected]
Subject: A Celebratory Announcement
Dear Lupton Family,
It is my pleasure to write to you today and tell you that after many years of negotiations, the Lupton Academy board has reached an agreement to purchase the Stringer and Peerless Alliance area behind Lupton Academy. The purchase was made possible, in part, by a generous donation from an anonymous donor.
Though, at this time, the sale of the SPA land will make a much-needed expansion of LA possible, there is still much to do. Contracts to be signed. Permits and planning. A fund-raising campaign. Our community will have the opportunity to play a big part in the future, both physical and directional, of Lupton Academy.
Sincerely,
Principal Milton Walsh
Tomayto, Tomahto, Prohibited, Banned
Graphite scratched on paper. The old world strained to hear; the new world simply moved closer.
—Lukas Gebhardt, Don’t Tread on Me
I showed up early Wednesday morning, battling mist, fog, and spilled coffee on my pants, to track down Mr. Walsh before he started his daily dodging act. I walked by the SPA fence, it and the lamppost still busted and bent, the tap dance of rain on my jacket increasing in speed and sound. There was so much fog that I couldn’t see the rickety SPA houses I’d spent years looking at and hearing about. And, of course, I couldn’t help thinking about the amount of money the anonymous donor had dropped for them when all I wanted was for my car to stop making coughing noises when I turned it off. And maybe a pair of pants that didn’t have an Antarctica-shaped coffee stain near my crotch.
After a fuss so ritualistic and ancient, and downright historically embedded, the donation had been sudden. SPA and LA had been going back and forth for years, even before Principal Walsh had fluttered into the picture, and suddenly we had a donor swooping in from the ether with the millions needed to expand LA? I might have been barn-raised, but at least I hadn’t been born yesterday. It didn’t take much of a brain to figure out that some whispers, a compromise, and two hands shaking in a corner had gotten us here. A sixty-seven-and-a-half-million-dollar game of footsie under a table.
My only question was, What did you sell, Mr. Walsh?
God, it was sad. Questioning everything. All the time. It was exhausting tapping on everything thinking it was solid wood and learning it was veneer. I walked back toward campus, wishing I could cram all the fog in an old shopping bag and toss it in the trash. Fog days were the worst. It was like as soon as I swallowed a pinch of mist I became a broody lump despite any attempt at being anything but. On that misty paver path, even past the roundabout, there were no birds singing. The fresh smell of rain was drowned out by the massive globs of rainwater, which now hurled themselves straight at my face, forgoing my hood altogether.
I slogged through puddles and clumps of grass clippings that were wet-stuck to the pavers, hitting my rain boots on the doorframe before walking inside Lupton Hall. The only good news was that the coffee Crotcharctica was gone. Instead my pants looked like I’d pulled them out of a kiddie pool. Wet and splattered with grass.
Everything was quieter than normal, but mostly because the rain was louder than normal. How that worked, I didn’t know, but it seemed symbolic of the day.
I practiced what I’d say. Saying it in my head over and over and over. Motor memory almost took me past his office, my feet marching on autopilot straight toward the library. I stopped, then took a few deep breaths, brushed the leftover grass off my pants, then went inside. His door was open, but only by the tiniest of slivers. He was inside—so was his ugly desk—so that was good. What was not good was that he was on the phone. And, for reasons we’ve already established, I listened in on the conversation.
“Yes. Yes, that sounds good. We’ll see him soon. Glad we could work it out. Mm-hmm. Yes. Great. Thank you so much.” He hung up the phone, and I waited a few seconds before knocking so it didn’t seem like I’d been listening. A good command of sneaking is crucial to even the most innocent of plans.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Clara Evans.”
“Ah, Clara Evans.” He opened the door wide, stuck his head out to see if his assistant was sitting at her desk, which she wasn’t, and nodded toward the hall. “Let’s talk in the hall, shall we?”
I nodded and we stepped outside.
“Mr. Walsh, I read the student handbook to see about the banned books?”
His eyes deepened, but his face remained static; his features, including that one freakishly long eyebrow hair, uncharacteristically still. “The prohibited media, yes.”
I tossed up my hands in a show of exhaustion. Of pure confuddlement. “I looked everywhere, but there wasn’t a list. There was a statement saying to check with your student-body president for a list, so I did, and she said she didn’t have one, so I’m not really sure what to do?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Ah, well, uh, only use the school library when on campus. If it’s in the school library, then it’s not banned. Prohibited, I mean. Very simple. Takes the guesswork out of it for you.”
It was so obvious he’d never gotten to this point with a student that he was off his script. His predetermined buzzwords and cleverly crafted vagaries were empty.
“Okay, but that’s still not helpful. If I don’t know what’s banned, I can end up with something on my record simply because I brought it on campus and didn’t even know it was a problem. Can you post the list somewhere?”
“Oh, well. Well. Well, warnings are typically given to students if they bring anything prohibited on campus. It’s not an immediate strike. You’ve even experienced this exact sort of situation. Nothing to worry about. Now, I must get back to work. I have a lot to work out with the SPA purchase. Exciting, isn’t it?”
“Mr. Walsh, I don’t think—”
“Principal Walsh. Ciao, Ms. Evans! Let me know if you have any more questions!”
“I do have—”
He walked back into his office and closed the door. I heard a telltale click. Locking me out.
I stood there for a few minutes. Just staring at the door. Eventually I took my broody-lump self to the library and did more work on the processing room. I set a timer on my phone to yell at me a full ten minutes before Honors Lit so I didn’t get carried away.
Lest You Be Circus Trash
Destroying things is much easier than making them.
—Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
I arrived to Honors Lit five minutes early to make up for the last disaster, but I wasn’t the only one who’d come back from the edge of the world. I saw him as soon as I walked in, which was saying something, because there wasn’t much that could compete with the bright, highlighter-orange pencil skirt (I had to give her this one tiny, tiny thing: at least she was repping orange highlighters) standing at the front of the classroom.
Jack Lodenhauer sat next to Ashton as if it was nothing but a Wednesday. Sitting. Just sitting. As if he hadn’t gotten an underage DUI. Hadn’t been suspended. Somehow, he was there. I got a warning for something I didn’t even know about, but, in a week and a half, he came back from alcohol on campus, damaging school property while drunk, and getting an underage DUI. The last kid who got busted for drinking during a football game didn’t come back for a month. LA has a war against student drinking almost as intense as the one against student reading.
I admit, I stood in the doorway longer than I should’ve, and I knew it, but I was attempting to convince myself of the vow I’d made.
Not a word about Jack Lodey or his deeds, Clara Evans, lest you be circus trash.
Not a word.
But in the same manner as she greeted me last time, Skirty SkirtSkirt made a ver
y aggressive come in and sit down motion. The recipe—the gloom, me being a broody lump, the period, the confusion, the attempt at not being a jerk, the time limit the doorframe apparently had—all of it made her movements louder than the class-wide scolding she’d given me the first time, and words were coming out of my mouth before I could stop them.
“Who the hell are you even?” I asked. “Where’s Ms. Croft?”
Yes.
I asked a teacher, without a single note of gentleness or respect in my voice, “Who the hell are you?”
In my defense, my pants were really, really, really cold from the air-conditioning, and that alone would make anyone snippy.
All-American Idiot
I was back in Mr. Walsh’s office. It was my new house. I’d been here so many times that I began to think maybe his desk wasn’t as ugly as I’d initially thought. The place was one step up from my barn.
He stared at me, wordless and near blinkless; it all felt like a play. It was as if he put on the I’m not angry, just disappointed demeanor like he’d put on a coat. With enough sugar for me to assume that he wasn’t actually disappointed. You typically didn’t have to act like you were something unless you weren’t that something in the first place.
“Third time I’ve seen you this week, Ms. Evans,” he said. “You’ve never been an issue until this year—what’s going on?”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. I’d graduated from “contained brainwash-ee” to “issue” simply because I’d talked to him about a nonexistent policy he said was a policy. What a thrill.
He took my silence and paid me back with more “acting disappointed.” “I’m going to give you a strike for this one. Swearing and yelling at a teacher.”
“I didn’t yell at her,” I said. “I asked her who she was after she’d been unnecessarily mean to me for the second time. Who is she?” I asked. “She just showed up. Where did Ms. Croft go? Administration hasn’t said a single thing about it.”
“That’s because what happens behind the scenes doesn’t concern students. Your job is to learn. Our job is to administer. We trust you to do yours. You should trust us to do ours. Focus. Knowledge. Impac—”
“Yes, Mr. Walsh. I get it.”
He shook his head, ruffled from being interrupted in his script.
“Would you like to tell your parents about this incident or do I have to call them?”
I thought it funny. My parents were going to get a call from my principal, telling them that their daughter, whose biggest flub to date had been being late to a class because she’d poured chicken-noodle soup on a binder, had cussed out a teacher. It was an easier way for them to get an update about my life than any other option, I guessed. I hadn’t been very open since school started. I’d had a continual lack of desire to tell them anything since I’d started the Unlib.
I laughed. “You know what? Can you call them?”
“I don’t think this is funny, Ms. Evans. Why do you?”
Suddenly, an epiphany struck me.
That morning, when Mr. Walsh had been on the phone, he’d said, “We’ll see him soon.” And then, Jack Lodey.
Sitting in Honors Lit.
Very soon.
So that was it. The Lodenhauers had bought SPA for LA to get Jack back in school. Would there be anything on his record? Even if that wasn’t the reason the Lodenhauers had bought SPA, I’m sure it was a side benefit. What did that mean? Did it matter? If Jack was living above the law, did that matter? Maybe? If that was really how this school played, we were all going day in and day out being duped into believing our voices mattered. And that our learning helped us craft how they mattered. And that we could change our surroundings. That we could have “impact.” What do you do in a place where all the gears that make it work behind the scenes have rusted over? What do you do in a place that tells you over and over that you matter, but once you take a step into the open to try to matter, you’re pushed back into your cage?
“Because this is weird. It’s all weird,” I said, and I wasn’t sure if my answer was for him or for myself.
Mr. Walsh pursed his lips, then spent a good minute or so silently scribbling on a document that would go in my “file.” I was a criminal now. Maybe it had all been a plan of my subconscious. Distract the principal by swearing at a teacher; then I’d be the girl who swore at teachers, not the girl who was running a black-market book op. Very rarely had those two problems been connected to each other in lab studies.
I sighed, listening to the scratch of writing. Wishing for the day to be over. Dreading leading Queso that night, as I hadn’t even gotten around to rereading Perks. It was funny how little time you had to read when you were busy helping other people read.
Strangely, the part of the day I was least dreading? Going home to my parents.
What a plot twist.
Mojovation
And this you can know—fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.
—John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
I walked into Mojo and straight into a group of people all clustered in front of the door looking clueless and confused, blocking me from getting to the queso part of the book club. The people part I could take or leave. In my defense, the day had been fairly miserable, so I was holding on to any smaller beauty I could find. On that particular day, it was queso.
Standing among the confused, I realized that the massive group of people were my people. The normal Quesoians, plus Ashton, Jack, StuCab, LiQui, and (surprise!) about half the kids from Honors Lit, and (double surprise!) Ms. Croft.
“Uhhh,” I said. “Whoa?”
“Yeah,” LiQui said. “You’re welcome.”
“For?”
She held out her arms. “I emailed Ms. Croft and asked her to show tonight. Also hit your class up. I’m not finding answers in contract-law research, so I figured, why not get the dirt from the lady who was fired?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I said, groaning. “I’m not mentally prepared!”
“You were too busy swearing at teachers? You weren’t even at lunch. What gives?”
“A. Fair. B. I had too many books to hustle. C. We can talk about that later. So, we have like fifteen people for tonight?”
“When I come, I bring mass. You’re welcome.”
“Okay, lay off, Maui.” I sighed. “We need more space.”
And we wouldn’t find that at Mojo, so I guessed that meant moving away from queso.
No queso.
I was fresh out of smaller beauty.
“We’ve gotta go to Bookies,” I said. “They have a big room in their basement. It’s only ten minutes from here.”
“I’ll drive because we need to talk about you swearing at teachers,” LiQui said.
I looked toward the door, knowing in my heart I had to leave quesoless, but trying to figure out if there was a way to beat the burrito line. Maybe all that was left was drastic action. Dive over the counter and stick my whole fist in the queso container and run out the door? What was the point of dignity if you didn’t have queso? A fist covered in cheese was better than dignity by a long shot.
I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Okay, everyone. Uh, we’re too big a group for here. Not, like, fat, but in collective size. Does that make sense? We need to migrate like birds. Let’s make like the birds and head to Bookies. I mean, make like the birds and migrate. To the bookstore. To Bookies.” I took a big breath as if I was in the middle of a workout. “Let’s go to Bookies. Everyone know where that is? Yeah. It’s on Main Street. Okay. Let’s go.”
“Clara,” Ms. Croft said as I held the door open for all the Quesoians. “I hope it was okay I came. You seem surprised.”
I shrugged. “I’m not surprised I’m surprised.”
Ms. Croft looked at me blankly.
“Sorry, it’s been a long day. It’s fine that you came. Seriously.�
�
“Okay, thank you,” she said, walking toward her car. “I’m excited to hear how things are going for you. I’ll see you at Bookies.”
Ashton held back from the crowd. Jack hung with him too. Then, when the last person was out of the door, Ashton leaned over and said, “Is this a drug front? Be honest.”
“Who even knows anymore. I’ll see y’all at Bookies.”
I walked to LiQui’s green Isuzu Rodeo, and, in order to get into the passenger seat, I had to go through the rear passenger door and then climb over the center console. I’d sat in the back before instead of putting in all the work to get to the front, and it always felt like an awkward mom/Uber situation. However, this time, as I crawled to the front, my foot slid off the console and wedged into the no-man’s-land slice of space between it and the front seat. My momentum carried me forward, and I fell headfirst into the cavity below the glove compartment, an arch of shame, foot in the seat, head on the floor.
“This feels right,” I said, pushing myself off the floor.
“You’re one big struggle recently, aren’t you?”
“I’m glad it’s bad enough for you to have noticed.”
“Spill,” LiQui said, report face on, before I could even buckle my seat belt.
So, on the way to Bookies—to talk to a million people about whatever—I told LiQui the whole story: about how I came to swear at whoever that teacher was, about my theory of the Lodenhauers buying Jack back into school, about the weirdness of it all. About how the Unlib was getting to be a demand on my time. About having Jack in freaking Queso and all the complications with Ashton and him and books.
Maybe that was the underlying current of what I’d felt since school started. Things seemed messy, muddled, and complex. It was like the feeling I had when I’d walk into my room and see the shirt hanging off a sconce on the wall or the expanding family of dirty coffee mugs on my nightstand, or when I’d find one running shoe under the bed and not have confidence that its brother was even in the room. I couldn’t think or move without noticing more chaos. Once you realize something is messy, you can’t go back. That’s all it will ever be. That thing that’s a mess.