The Unteachables

by Gordon Korman

  “Ribbit . . . Ribbit . . . Ribbit . . .”

  Mr. Kermit doesn’t even notice. Either that or he thinks it’s a compliment.

  As a teacher, he stinks—not that I’ve had any good ones. He never gives lessons. In fact, he hardly ever speaks out loud. He just passes around these stupid worksheets all day long. Boring doesn’t even begin to describe it.

  With a normal teacher, if you don’t do the work, you get in trouble. Not Ribbit. He acts like he couldn’t care less if we do his worksheets or not.

  “I’ve turned in every assignment and he’s never graded a single one or handed it back,” Kiana complains. “What’s he doing with them?”

  “Maybe he’s eating them,” I suggest. “He’s weird enough.”

  She rolls her eyes at me.

  She’s annoying, but it’s not like the other kids in SCS-8 are any better. There’s Parker Elias, who has to be the dumbest person in the whole school. Remember the kid in first grade who, when he got picked to read aloud, everybody else wanted to drink bleach? Well, Parker still reads that way today—one word at a time, at the speed of molasses, sounding out every letter. This is the idiot they give a special driver’s license to. No one is safe.

  There’s Barnstorm Anderson, super jock. Super jerk would be more like it, but I guess he’s both. He’s an unstoppable running back, an amazing point guard, and a lights-out pitcher, which is why the school gives him an automatic get-out-of-jail-free card. That makes me mad—why should scoring touchdowns mean you get special treatment? But here’s the thing: last spring, Barnstorm blew out his knee. He’s on crutches now, banned from sports for a whole year, and by that time, he won’t be in middle school anymore. So all the teachers have suddenly started to notice that the last time he turned in a homework assignment was never.

  That’s the kind of person who lands in our class. Like Elaine Ostrover, who sits in the back row. She has to be six foot two and is solid as an oak tree. She hardly ever opens her mouth, but when she does, her voice comes out a low rumble, like a subwoofer.

  Kiana asks me about her.

  “That’s Elaine,” I reply. “Rhymes with pain.”

  She frowns. “Everybody says that—‘rhymes with pain.’ What does it mean?”

  “You don’t want to mess with Elaine,” I advise her seriously. “Last year she head-butted this kid down the stairs because he was looking at her funny. Wiped out, like, fifteen people. The line outside the nurse’s office stretched halfway to the cafeteria. If that’s not pain, I don’t know what is.”

  Kiana checks out Elaine’s head, which looks like one of those giant statues on that island from the cover of our world geography textbook.

  “She has to register her head as a deadly weapon with the FBI,” I put in.

  Kiana skewers me with a sharp glance, so I say, “Well, not really. But she definitely tore the door off one of the bathroom stalls and used it to crush the laminating machine.” I add, “I mean, I wasn’t there, but everybody knows it.”

  “You’re scared of her,” Kiana decides.

  “I’m not scared! I can handle Elaine—rhymes with pain.” If you don’t say the full name, it increases your chances of being the next victim. “I just—don’t want to get in trouble for fighting, that’s all.”

  She nods. “Because you’re the big expert at not getting in trouble.”

  By the time I realize that I’m mad at her for saying that, she’s on the other side of the room, and the chance to yell at her is lost forever.

  Rahim Barclay is supposed to be this amazing artist, although all I’ve ever seen him do is doodle. I guess his doodles are pretty good, if you’re into that kind of thing. He drew one of Ribbit that’s a dead ringer for our teacher—the sunken cheeks and dark circles around the eyes. Just the right amount of gray in the thinning hair. Rahim blew one part of it—he drew the coffee mug too big, almost the size of a trash barrel. Maybe that’s how he ended up in SCS-8, which isn’t exactly for geniuses. It doesn’t help that Rahim’s stepdad is in a rock band. They practice all night, so Rahim sleeps most of the day.

  One day Mateo welcomes me to class with a whole story in this deep, throat-clearing gibberish that sounds a lot like he’s trying to spit out a bug he swallowed by mistake.

  I don’t appreciate being messed with—especially when I’m not even sure how I’m being messed with. “What did you say?” I demand.

  “It’s a Klingon greeting!” Mateo explains cheerfully. “It means, ‘May you die well.’”

  My eyes widen. “You want me to die?”

  “The Klingons are a warlike race!” Mateo says quickly. “Dying in battle is an honor. They love that!”

  “But I don’t! From now on, if you’ve got anything to say to me, say it in English, not some phony language—”

  “Klingon is not phony!” Mateo cuts me off, outraged. “It may have started out on Star Trek, but it’s turned into a legitimate language with a dictionary and an alphabet. There are even regional accents, depending on which part of the Klingon home world you come from. In the south, for example . . .”

  He keeps talking—lecturing—clueless that my blood is boiling. And the other kids are laughing! Like it’s a big joke that this little creep is making fun of me!

  “What’s the matter with you?” I shout at them. “Doesn’t anybody have my back?”

  Kiana steps forward, struggling to keep a straight face. She reaches for my arm. “Aldo—”

  It’s the last straw—that this California girl, who isn’t even from around here, thinks I’m the entertainment.

  A soupy fog swirls around my head, tinged with orange, until I can actually feel the heat from it. I’ve got to get out of here before I explode, leaving bone fragments and bits of skin all over the walls of room 117.

  “I hate this class!” I pick up my backpack and hurl it through the open door—just as Mr. Kermit walks into the room. The heavy bag misses his head by about a quarter of an inch. At that point, I’m so mad I don’t even care. In my white-hot haze, it would make no difference to me if the backpack knocks the teacher’s block off and I get suspended, expelled, and banished from the town. I do notice, through my rage, that Ribbit doesn’t flinch—not even when I storm past him, slamming the door behind me hard enough to raise the school off its foundation.

  And just like that, I’m alone in the hall, barely sure how I even got there. I slam my fist into a locker. It hurts, but I hope it hurts the locker even more. The locker is attached to the wall, and the wall is part of the school. And it’s the school’s fault that I’m so mad. I hit it a few more times—with an open hand, because that hurts a bit less. I don’t feel better, exactly. It’s more like every blow lets off a little more steam, so the pressure inside my head goes down. I’m still ticked off, but I can live with it. I slump against the lockers, breathing hard.

  The guidance counselors say I have anger management problems. They don’t know what they’re talking about. I manage to get angry better than anybody else in the whole school. No problem.

  The door of room 115 opens and this lady walks up to me. At first, I think she could be another eighth grader—that’s how young she looks. But no, she’s definitely an adult. And the way she takes hold of my wrist—gentle but with authority—screams teacher. I’ve never seen her before, so she must be new.

  “Come with me.” She knocks on the door of SCS-8. “Mr. Kermit?”

  I shoulder my backpack and stand behind her. We wait at the door, but there’s no answer.

  “He’s probably in the middle of a puzzle,” I offer in a subdued voice.

  “Puzzle?” she echoes.

  “Like a crossword. Ribbit—uh, Mr. Kermit—is really into them.”

  She knocks again and then opens the door. It sticks a little, and she has to put her shoulder into it. I guess I slammed it really hard. She leads me inside. Kiana is looking right at me. I feel myself starting to get mad again, but only for a second. It doesn’t usually happen twice in a row.
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br />   “Mr. Kermit, I’m Emma Fountain,” the woman introduces herself. “I have the class next door.”

  So far this year, not a single thing has gotten a reaction out of Ribbit. That streak ends here. The puzzle forgotten, he rises to his feet really slowly, never taking his eyes off her. They’re practically bugging out of his head!

  He blurts, “I’d know you anywhere!”

  She smiles, which makes her seem even younger. “Mom said to tell you hi. But that’s not why I’m here.” She indicates me. “Is this your student?”

  Mr. Kermit looks blank. It hits me—he doesn’t have a clue, even though I nearly took his head off with my backpack ninety seconds ago! My own teacher doesn’t know me from Jack the Ripper.

  “Of course it’s your student!” Kiana pipes up. “It’s Aldo!”

  “Well, he’s making a lot of noise in the hall,” Miss Fountain announces. “That’s not being a bucket-filler.”

  Mr. Kermit goggles. “A what?”

  “A bucket-filler is someone loving and caring, who fills other people’s invisible buckets with good wishes and positive reinforcement that make them feel special.” She regards Aldo disapprovingly. “Someone who creates a disturbance and makes it impossible for other children to learn is not a bucket-filler. That’s a bucket-dipper.”

  Suddenly, I realize what she’s talking about. It’s from this picture book that’s supposed to teach little kids to be nice to each other. It’s really big—in about first grade.

  “It’s an elementary school thing, Mr. Kermit,” Kiana supplies helpfully.

  “Just because this is middle school doesn’t mean we shouldn’t treat one another with respect,” Miss Fountain says earnestly. “It worked for my kindergarten class last year, and we should have higher expectations for children who are even older. Right, Mr. Kermit?”

  I wait for our teacher to give her the brush-off. Good old Ribbit could brush off World War Three. But for some reason, he doesn’t. With great effort, he tears his eyes off her and swivels to me. “Were you—dipping?”

  I stare at my sneakers. “I guess.”

  Mr. Kermit turns back to Miss Fountain. “You look just like your mother.”

  She smiles. “I’ll take that as a compliment.” To me, she says, “You should apologize to your classmates too. You wasted their learning time as well as your own.”

  “Sorry,” I mumble. “You know—about the learning time.”

  “Relax,” Rahim drawls. “Who learns?”

  “Thank you, Mr. Kermit,” Miss Fountain says uncertainly. “I’ll give my mother your regards.” She backs out of the room, shutting the door quietly behind her.

  “Weird lady,” Barnstorm puts in, waving a crutch dismissively. “All that bucket-filler stuff. Like we’re six years old.”

  “Hey!” Mr. Kermit shoots him a sharp glance. “Miss Fountain is not ‘weird.’ She’s a teacher.”

  “Can’t she be both?” Rahim wonders out loud.

  Kiana won’t let it drop. She’s not just bossy; she’s nosy too. And the combination makes her like a bloodhound. “What gives, Mr. Kermit? What’s the deal with you and Miss Fountain?”

  For the first time all year, he actually looks annoyed. “Did I or did I not distribute worksheets?”

  A paper airplane does a loop-the-loop in front of him. There’s a chorus of ribbits, including one from Elaine that sounds like it came from the underworld.

  Parker chimes in. “Face it, Mr. K. You’ve barely looked away from your puzzles since school started. But the minute she shows up, you hit the ceiling.”

  “She’s your kryptonite,” Mateo puts in.

  Kiana snaps her fingers. “It’s her mom, right? You and Miss Fountain’s mother used to be a thing.”

  Mr. Kermit, who couldn’t even be riled by a roaring bonfire in his wastebasket, picks up his crossword puzzle, rips it into a million pieces, stomps on them, and stalks out.

  Even though I can’t stand the guy, at that moment, I actually relate to him a little bit. He may be the worst teacher in the world, but we have something in common.

  He has anger management problems too.

  Five

  Mr. Kermit

  Emma Fountain! I can scarcely believe it. Of all the classrooms in all the schools, she has to walk into mine!

  She’s a time machine—that’s what she is. The spitting image of her mother. It brings back memories I thought were buried forever.

  I can still see the engagement notice in the newspaper—Fiona Bertelsman and Zachary Kermit, the photo of the happy couple cheek to cheek, eyebrows perfectly aligned. Smiling like nothing was ever going to come and rain on our parade. How innocent we were then. How blind. How foolish.

  It was all over in a heartbeat. The test. The scandal. The breakup. Since then, I’ve only seen smiles like that twice: seven months later, when Fiona lined her eyebrows up with Gil Fountain in the engagement notices; and today, when their daughter, Emma, stepped through the doorway of room 117.

  Fate has a way of sticking it to you twice, resurfacing like a bad burrito. This morning was my second shot. Every day draws me twenty-four hours closer to early retirement, but the last lap isn’t going to be a cakewalk. First Thaddeus and the Unteachables, and now Fiona’s clone in the room next door—a living, breathing, bucket-filling reminder of the life I missed out on.

  If that poor kid tries to teach middle schoolers the way she ran her kindergarten classes, her students will have her throat open by Columbus Day. I should sit her down and explain a few things, but that would mean I care. Caring is where the trouble starts—hard experience taught me that. I didn’t make it to the cusp of early retirement by caring. I made it by keeping my head down, regardless of whether they give me honor students or Unteachables or the zombie apocalypse. All I have to do is endure.

  There are small satisfactions. The hiss of the air-controlled closing of the school entrance behind me as I exit the building. The crunch of my shoes on the bad pavement of the parking lot. The stab of pain in my sore shoulder as I open the ill-fitting door of my 1992 Chrysler Concorde—the one Fiona and I bought to start our new life together. Sky blue, although now it’s mostly rust. I don’t know why I’ve kept it so long. For sure it isn’t the money. The repair bills alone would have bought me a Lamborghini.

  I turn the key in the ignition, and the motor coughs and dies. A few minutes later, the hood is open, and I’m staring in at who knows what. Suddenly, there’s a screech of tires and a pickup truck is reversing across the parking lot at top speed, hurtling toward me. My one thought is that, if I’m crushed to death here and now, Dr. Thaddeus and the school district won’t ever have to pay for my early retirement.

  The pickup roars to a stop with its rear bumper six inches from my legs.

  Eyes blazing, I shout, “Are you crazy—?”

  The door opens and the driver gets out. I blink. It’s one of my students! I know the Unteachables are a rough crowd, but I never expected one of them to steal a truck and use it to try to kill me!

  “Sorry, the gas pedal sometimes sticks a little.” When my shocked expression doesn’t fade, the kid adds, “It’s me—Parker from class. What can I do to help?”

  “To start with,” I rasp, “you can stop reversing at ninety miles an hour. Why is a middle schooler driving at all?”

  As he launches into a whole story about his grandmother, the family farm, and a provisional license, I conjure up a picture of him in a front-row desk, examining worksheets from point-blank range like he’s staring through a jeweler’s eyepiece.

  “Wow, that’s a pretty old car,” he tells me. “I mean, mine’s old, but yours is like—classic.” He squints at the name in raised chrome letters. “It’s a—Coco Nerd.”

  “Concorde,” I correct impatiently. Didn’t anyone ever teach this boy to read? “Never mind that. Any idea how I can get it started up again?”

  Give Parker credit—he’s better with cars than he is with words. He tinkers around under the hood, a
nd pretty soon the motor is running again, although it’s belching gray smoke all over the parking lot.

  “Stop it!”

  A silver Prius pulls alongside. The window is open, and through the billowing clouds, we can just make out Miss Emma Fountain.

  “Turn it off! Turn it off!”

  Parker rushes behind the wheel and kills the engine.

  She gets out of the Prius, waving her arms to clear the air. “Do you have any idea how much carbon is in that smoke?”

  “Mrs. Vardalos is the chemistry teacher,” I reply, deliberately misunderstanding the point she’s trying to make. “I’m in charge of—well, you know which class I’m in charge of.” I indicate Parker with a slight nod.

  “I’m bucket-filling,” Parker tells her proudly. “You know, helping Mr. Ribbit—I mean Kermit—”

  “Mr. Kermit,” she asks, “how old is this car?”

  “Your mother picked it out,” I inform her with an oddly defiant smile.

  Her eyes widen. “Oh, wow, that’s old. It’s just that people didn’t understand emissions back then. It was before everyone started putting the environment first—recycling, composting, installing solar panels . . .”

  A long speech forms in my mind—about how this is a free country, and it’s none of her business what anybody drives, or how old it is, or what it spews into the atmosphere. But for some reason I can’t say it. Not to her; not to that face that looks so much like Fiona’s.

  She softens. “Well, maybe you can keep it. But you definitely have to put in a catalytic converter.”

  “It’s on my list,” I assure her. “Right after a new floor for the back seat, just in case I ever have passengers.”

  Parker peers into the back. “Whoa, is that the ground?”

  “Air-conditioning,” I supply, tight-lipped. “Old-school.”

  Emma regards me with pity.

  On the plus side, she and Parker manage to get the motor running again—minus the smoke this time.

  “Wow, Miss Fountain,” Parker raves. “You’re really good with cars.”

  “I learned from my mom,” she explains. “She took a course in auto mechanics because she bought a real lemon once and . . .” Her voice trails off as she frowns at the old Concorde, connecting the dots.