Falling Over Sideways

by Jordan Sonnenblick

  Mrs. S would say, “Well, I thought of my daughter, Meredith, and that put me in my happy place.”

  Then the reporter would say, “Remarkable. And what gave you the brilliant idea of placing the students in their lab groups?”

  Mrs. S would grin her slightly demented grin, leap up on top of the news desk, and say, “Because you never know when you might have to analyze the mass of a bunch of different minerals using the water-displacement method, and if it came down to that, I wanted the kids in their most experienced configurations. Plus, I hate everyone at Claire Goldsmith’s table and wanted to make them suffer.”

  The reporter would raise one eyebrow, inch her chair slowly away from Mrs. S, and say, “So there you have it, America. One brave teacher, an inspiring daughter, and a bunch of wet rocks.”

  My group ended up smushed against a super-hot radiator, in case the general stuffiness of the room, and the sweat of a class of panicking eighth graders, weren’t uncomfortable enough. I also noticed that someone—or quite possibly several someones—wasn’t a big fan of deodorant.

  So, yay for lockdowns.

  I held my phone way down behind Leigh’s back and texted Matthew:

  Tell G-pa to forget about picking me up. School on lockdown, don’t know why. You go right to hosp. Hug Dad for me.

  Because I am a hero.

  Then I tried to cry quietly. Because I was overwhelmed and terrified.

  I wasn’t the only one crying or texting. A bunch of kids were laughing, or complaining about how they were going to be late for after-school stuff if this went on too long, but several kids had covered their faces with their hands, and I could also detect the telltale blue glow of phone screens coming up from laps.

  It was pretty obvious with the lights off, even with the rotating light patterns on the walls from outside.

  Kids were also whispering about the texts they were getting. Here are some of the things I heard within the first three minutes:

  “There’s a shooter in the building!”

  “There are bombs in both gyms!”

  “False alarm!”

  “There’s a terrorist attack going on downtown. City hall is under attack!” (Yeah, because the world’s terrorists are keenly aware that the nerve center of America’s might is the city hall of Bethlehem, PA.)

  “Some lady is giving birth in the cafeteria!” (Which would cause a lockdown how?)

  “The principal’s toupee is on fire!” (Funny, but again—how would this result in a lockdown?)

  Then Mrs. S announced, “Turn off your cell phones!”

  Leigh said, “What? You can’t make us turn off our phones! Our parents make us carry them for emergencies, and this is an emergency!”

  “But you are using them during class, and that’s against the rules! Now, don’t make me come over there, Leigh Monahan!”

  Regina muttered, “I bet Meredith never used her phone during class.”

  “WHAT did you say, Miss Chavez?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Excellent. Now turn off your phones.”

  Like five different kids said, “But—”

  “NOW!” Mrs. Selinsky screeched. I was sort of hoping she would attempt to jump up on a table, miss, and do a Cabrillo. Because there was no way I was turning my phone off.

  Some of the other students must have obeyed, but at least one kid on the other side of the group didn’t, because a few minutes later, Mrs. Selinsky yelled, “Is that a glowing rectangle in your pocket?”

  “Or are you just happy to see me?” Ryder mumbled.

  A bunch of us snickered, and then Mrs. S really lost it. She started screaming and yelling at the top of her lungs about disrespect and how she was sick of having her authority undermined, blah blah blah, Meredith, yada yada. The only good part of this insane tirade was that I figured she was distracted enough that I could sneak a peek at my phone again. Sure enough, there was a message from Matthew:

  Nothing to worry about at your school. Just a bank robbery on Easton Ave. Crazy. Bad news here, tho. Dad got a breathing treatment and oxygen, and is still having trouble breathing after. They are sending him in for a scan now. Everybody rushing.

  I tucked my phone into the pocket of my hoodie and looked up to find that Roshni was arguing with Mrs. S. I knew she had said she would eventually, but this was still extremely unusual—Roshni got the best grades in the class and never, ever got in trouble. She said her parents would kill her if she did. The day was turning out to be special for everybody.

  “What did you say to me, young lady?”

  “I said, should you really be yelling right now? Aren’t we supposed to be quiet during a shelter-in-place drill?”

  “You are. I’m the teacher.”

  “Okay. So if a maniac with a gun is running around and hears you screaming, he won’t come in and kill us all because you’re the teacher? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  I was like, Whoa, Roshni. Mrs. Selinsky lifted her arm way up over her head, as though she was planning to fling a lightning bolt down at Roshni, but then she just dropped her arm and turned away. The whole class was silent for a while after that, because (A) I think that level of student-teacher confrontation is sort of scary, and (B) so is the idea of a school shooter. I wondered whether I should tell everyone what Matthew had written. But then I realized I couldn’t, because then Mrs. S would take away my phone.

  Mrs. S had moved as far from the class as she could, and my group was in the corner of the class farthest from her. Leigh’s head was only a few inches in front of mine, and Ryder and Regina were between me and the corner of the room. Christopher was on the other side of me; I suddenly noticed that his arms were hugged tightly around himself. I realized this must be a nightmare for him, because he hated being too close to other people so much. I whispered to him, “Christopher, it’s okay. I just found out that the school is safe. I bet we’ll get let out soon.”

  “What is soon? A week? A day? An hour?”

  “I bet we’ll be out in less than an hour.”

  “How do you know?” Christopher said, too loudly. He had never really caught on to the whole concept of whispering. In elementary school, our teachers had constantly been telling him to use his inside voice.

  “Shhh! Don’t say anything after I tell you this, but my brother texted me. He must have checked online. He doesn’t go to this school.”

  “NO TEXTING! NO TEXTING IS A RULE!” Thankfully, a new bunch of sirens had started wailing just as he started to say this, or I’d have been doomed.

  “Shhh! I know, but my dad is in the hospital.”

  “Your dad is an author. He writes books.”

  “That’s true.”

  Ryder tapped me on the shoulder. “Why is your dad in the hospital, Claire?” he asked.

  I bit my lip. On a normal day, Ryder wasn’t exactly my first choice of confidant. On the other hand, this wasn’t exactly a normal day. “He has pneumonia. It’s really bad. Matthew says they’re doing some kind of scan right now. I don’t know what’s happening. They were on their way to get me when the lockdown started, and now—”

  My phone vibrated again in my pocket. I took it out. I had a new message from my brother:

  I don’t think the scan was good. I’m not sure, but I think they are taking Dad to surgery.

  Regina leaned over Ryder and read the text. “Wow, Starbuck,” she said, “this is serious. What can we do?”

  I couldn’t believe it. Regina was offering to help me. But unless she was secretly a lung surgeon with teleportation powers, I wasn’t so sure how much she could actually do. I realized I was crying again.

  Great.

  Christopher started tapping on my shoulder repeatedly. I looked at him.

  In the same semi-robotic tone he always had, he said, “I am patting you. My mother says that people pat their friends during times of great distress. And she says crying is a sign of great distress. Do not worry. I will protect you.”

  �
�Thanks, Christopher,” I managed to choke out. Then Mrs. S appeared and demanded, “Phone. Now!”

  “Shhh!” Roshni said from across the room.

  While Mrs. S was looking over there, Ryder got up and stood between me and Mrs. Selinsky. “You don’t understand,” he said. “This is a real emergency. Please don’t take Claire’s phone. Her father is in the emergency room. He’s about to go into surgery.”

  Even in the dim light, I could see the sneer on Mrs. S’s face. “Rules are rules, and you were all warned,” she said.

  “Then take my phone. I don’t care. But let her keep hers.”

  “Were you using your phone?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Then I don’t want your phone. I want Claire’s phone.”

  “You can’t do this. Listen. When Meredith was in school, if you were in the hospital, would you have wanted a teacher to take away her phone?”

  “How DARE you bring up my daughter to me?” Mrs. Selinsky was in full-on scary mode again. I mean, she had only been, like, half a heartbeat away from lunatic status this whole time, but now it was on. “Don’t you ever mention her name again. Now get out of my way and sit down!”

  But Regina jumped up and stood next to Ryder. “He didn’t do anything wrong. Now, why don’t you just walk away? Where’s your heart? All you have to do is let this girl keep her phone on so she knows what’s happening to her dad.”

  Mrs. Selinsky stood there, glaring at Regina and Ryder. I noticed that Regina had put her hand on Ryder’s shoulder, and that all three of them were breathing hard. Meanwhile, Christopher was still frantically patting me, almost hard and fast enough to distract me from the pounding of my heart.

  Then my phone lit up again.

  Mrs. Selinsky moved so fast, I wasn’t even sure until afterward that I had seen her hand coming at me. She snatched my phone before I could even read the message on the screen. I reached for it, and she slapped my hand. The sound was like a shot in the enclosed space, which made me realize the sirens had all stopped.

  Ryder began to grab at Mrs. Selinsky’s hands, but Regina’s voice was faster than his fingers.

  “Hey, give her the phone back, you crazy BEEP!” Regina said. Well, she didn’t exactly say BEEP, but the word did start with a B.

  If the whole class hadn’t already been staring at us in horror after the slap, they were definitely staring now. It felt to me like the whole world stopped for a moment, until finally Mrs. Selinsky said, “She will have to see the principal for it tomorrow. You will all be seeing the principal tomorrow. I would imagine some suspensions will be in order.”

  About five minutes later, we got the all-clear signal. Nobody said a word on the way out of the room, but several kids ran up to me in the hall to offer their phones. By then I felt like I would explode if I didn’t leave the building, so I just ran home without even stopping at my locker, and called Matthew from there.

  Grandma came to get me. My grandparents’ house is only about seven minutes from ours, but those seven minutes felt longer than the entire lockdown had. And the thirteen-minute trip to the hospital was even worse. I kept wanting to scream, This car has a gas pedal—use it!

  Because if your dad were in the intensive care unit, hooked up to oxygen machines and feeding tubes, and you had been kept away from him all day, you’d be in a hurry, too. It’s funny—before this year, getting suspended would have been, like, my greatest fear in the world. But the fear of getting suspended tomorrow means nothing if your father might be dying today.

  The longer you sit there watching someone you love struggling to breathe, the worse it gets. The suspense just builds and builds. By the way, when you hear that cliché—“struggle to breathe”—you probably don’t really appreciate what it means unless you’ve watched someone do it. The sounds are awful. You’ve got the nonstop, low-level hiss of the oxygen, the cracking and wheezing as the person inhales and exhales, and the booming, wet, splatty sounds when he bursts into coughing fits every few minutes. Those fits are generally followed by loud beeping as the machines all go haywire because of the coughing, which brings the nurses running in to check and then reset everything.

  So everybody settles back in until the next spasm of choking hacks.

  Oh, and there are the visuals. Aside from the blinking machines and dripping tubes, there was the awful gray color of my father’s skin, the exhausting contortions his shoulders and ribs went through every time he inhaled, the blue of his lips, and the sweat running down his shrunken-looking face.

  He almost didn’t even look like my dad. He looked like a voodoo-doll puppet of my dad that some horrible evil magician was torturing. But then, once in a while, when he opened his eyes and groaned, the tone of his voice and the little bit of that panicked look we had all learned to recognize forced me to admit that—yes—this was really happening to my real-life dad.

  It wasn’t voodoo, it was just the delayed end result of Dad’s Thanksgiving smoothie.

  Mom didn’t look or sound much better than Dad at this point, but she still kept sending me to school every morning. Somehow, Matthew and I got booted out of the room when visiting hours ended, but she never seemed to leave Dad’s side. Grandma and Grandpa might as well have installed a taxi meter in their car and a hotel reception desk in their front hall, because they became our transport and room-and-board system again.

  I figured it was best not to mention the whole Selinsky debacle when I finally got to the hospital after the lockdown. Mom seemed relieved I hadn’t been shot, held hostage, or blown up, so I just left things right there for a while. She did say something about how I should call her from my cell if I needed anything, and I sort of nodded and smiled on my way out with my grandpa.

  It seemed rather unlikely that Mrs. S was going to use my phone to call Mom, because my phone was password protected, but I was pretty sure this would all catch up with me in the morning. Still, when I closed my eyes to go to sleep, I didn’t think about her or school. I heard my father’s raspy, strained breathing in my head, and prayed and prayed that he would have the strength to keep on going.

  I was not hugely surprised when my entire science group got called out of first period to the principal’s office. Roshni grabbed my hand and squeezed it as I walked past her desk on the way out, but strangely, I didn’t really feel like I needed to be comforted. I didn’t much care about what happened to me, although I did want my phone back. Maybe I was too tired, or maybe I had been through too much, but this almost felt as if it was happening to somebody else.

  It was definitely happening to Christopher, who looked miserable. He kept pulling up his pants—although if they went any higher, he was going to hang himself with his belt—and muttering under his breath. I said to him, “Christopher, what are you saying? Are you worried? Everything is going to be all right. You didn’t do anything wrong yesterday.”

  “I know,” he said. “But you are going to get in trouble. My mother told me that protecting friends is a rule, and I did not protect you.”

  “You tried, though. Listen, it’s impossible to protect people sometimes, but you were there for me.”

  Leigh snickered. “Oh, that’s sooo dramatic! You were there for me. Someone get me a bucket. I’m going to throw up.”

  Ryder stepped out in front of all of us, turned, and blocked Leigh’s path. “What’s wrong with you, Leigh?” he asked. “Just because nobody actually cares about you, that doesn’t mean we’re all as lonely and bitter as you are.”

  “For real,” Regina said, and we all kept walking. Leigh didn’t say another word.

  “Hey, Starbuck, how’s your dad?” Regina asked.

  “Not good,” I said. Then, because I didn’t want to sound mean, I added, “But thank you for asking.”

  And then we were at the office. I had never been in trouble like this before, so I was pretty hesitant about entering, but Regina banged the door open and announced, “Mr. Thompson called us down.”

  “What’d you do this tim
e, Regina?” one of the secretaries said in an oddly friendly voice.

  “Mayhem, destruction, you know.”

  “Why? What was your reason this time?”

  “It was Mayhem Monday. I kinda had a theme going on.”

  The secretary half laughed and half sighed. “I’ll let him know you’re here. But I really wish you’d start controlling your temper. You’re such a smart girl.”

  After the secretary got up and turned her back, Regina rolled her eyes. But I think she was secretly pleased, because she wasn’t scowling like she usually did after adults talked to her. Ryder smiled at her, and she said, “What? Shut up! She’s friends with my mom at church!”

  “What?” Ryder asked, looking innocent. “I didn’t say anything. I really wish you’d start controlling your temper. You’re such a—uh-oh.”

  Mrs. Selinsky came out of the principal’s office and walked past us, smirking. Then the secretary stepped into the doorway and gestured for the five of us to come and sit in a conference room. It looked like a police interrogation chamber from a bad movie. There was absolutely nothing in there aside from the table and chairs, although there was a plain tin bowl full of miniature candy canes in the middle of the tabletop. It was like, “Happy holidays from all of us at youaredoomed.com!”

  As soon as we had gotten in there and seated ourselves, the principal appeared in the doorway. I wasn’t sure what to do—were we supposed to stand back up? I mean, it’s not like he was the American flag or anything, but he was the boss of us.

  I decided that sucking up was a good career move—not that I cared—so I stood partway up. Christopher and Leigh did, too. Regina stayed in her seat, and Ryder started to stand, then stopped awkwardly halfway up. Ryder was always so cocky. If even he was unsure of himself in front of Mr. Thompson, I figured there was about a fifty percent chance I would say or do something incredibly dumb or embarrassing. Or, you know, get myself kicked out of middle school and end up working the garbage-bin detail at McDonald’s the rest of my life.