As I take my seat, I catch a glimpse of the test paper on Elaine’s desk. I shake my head. I must be reading it wrong. That’s what I do. On the other hand, how do you scramble a single letter?
If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Elaine (rhymes with pain) just pulled an A.
Twenty
Jake Terranova
As I cruise along River Street with the top down, the red brick of Greenwich Middle School heaves into view. That place used to be a bad memory. I was never much of a student, but middle school was a really rough time. I was lucky to get away with a suspension over the cheating thing. If my dad hadn’t belonged to the same college fraternity as a couple of school board members, I probably would have been expelled. It was that close.
Now, though, Greenwich Middle School means Emma. She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Just the thought that she’s somewhere inside the building puts a smile on my face.
The smile disappears when I recognize the figure standing at the entrance to the driveway, glancing impatiently at his watch. Mr. Kermit, my old teacher. The man who has every reason to drink from the Haterade where I’m concerned.
Back in seventh grade, I was so happy not to be expelled that there wasn’t another thought in my head. It never crossed my mind that the episode might cause problems for my teacher. Why would it? Mr. Kermit was completely innocent. Who knew that better than the guy who was completely guilty?
But that’s only the half of it. According to Emma, Mr. Kermit’s life crashed after that. His reputation was shot. His engagement to Emma’s mom fell apart. And he got totally burned-out professionally.
Honestly, I had no clue until Emma showed me the article about the vuvuzelas. The fact that the scandal still sticks to Mr. Kermit after all these years is nuts. Not that I ever had the power to change anything. I was a middle school kid in big trouble. I followed my parents’ instructions to the letter—basically, shut up and keep your nose clean.
Now that I know the extent of it, I’d do anything to make things right. The problem is it’s too late. Sure, Mr. Kermit is letting me help with his class of Unteachables. And I’m getting along great with the kids. But as for the teacher himself, no dice.
I check the clock on my Porsche’s high-tech dashboard. It’s only two p.m. Why isn’t Mr. Kermit in school?
I pull alongside him and wave. Mr. Kermit scowls at me with what Mateo calls the Squidward-Grinch face. That kid’s pretty weird, but he’s usually spot-on. He’s nicknamed me Han Solo because both of us are “lovable scoundrels.” Maybe I walked away from the cheating scandal with a slap on the wrist, but lately it’s come back to haunt me in all sorts of ways.
“Everything okay, Mr. Kermit?” I ask.
“My taxi is late.”
Right. His “car” is in the shop. I volunteered to fix it no charge, but he wasn’t having any of that. To say he’s stubborn as a mule is an insult to mules.
“Hop in,” I invite. “I’ll give you a ride wherever you need to go.”
“No, thanks,” he replies formally. “I’ve been waiting forty minutes for this taxi. It’ll be here any second.”
“It’s not coming,” I persist. “Did you try Uber?”
He looks blank. I remember that Mr. Kermit has a flip phone that’s probably as old as his car. There are smart phones and dumb phones. His is a rock.
I unlock the passenger door. “Mr. Kermit—please. Let me give you a lift.”
When he reluctantly gets in and announces his destination, I nearly choke. He’s going to pick up his car—from Kingston’s Auto Works.
“Are you serious? You took your car fifteen miles out of town just to avoid my offer to fix it for free?”
The response is a heavy dose of the Squidward-Grinch face. “I don’t want to owe you anything.”
“You wouldn’t owe me anything!” I’m practically whining. “I would have been happy to do it.”
He’s sarcastic. “Well, so long as you’re happy.”
“That’s not what I mean and you know it. I enjoy doing favors for friends”—Mr. Kermit doesn’t like that, so I adjust my word choice—“for people I know. You used to be my teacher.”
“I remember.”
This is it—my chance to clear the air and apologize. But as soon as the thought pops into my head, I know he won’t let me. Better to shut up about it. Maybe, as the two of us spend more time together, I’ll get another chance.
And maybe the moon will fall out of the sky.
When the Porsche reaches Kingston’s Auto Works, Mr. Kermit takes out his wallet and tries to pay me for the gas. When I won’t accept it, he stuffs a twenty-dollar bill into the glove compartment and gets out, not bothering to say thank you.
I get out too, and receive a generous helping of Squidward-Grinch face.
“I can handle it from here,” he assures me.
“I’m going in with you,” I insist. “I don’t want you to get ripped off. These guys are all crooks.”
“Including you?” Mr. Kermit inquires innocently.
I run a totally honest shop, but still I feel my cheeks flush. “An old clunker like yours—the parts probably have to come from the third world. Who knows what they’ll try to charge you for them.”
It must make an impression, because Mr. Kermit actually allows me to follow him inside.
The place is a dump. You could probably catch plague just standing there breathing the air.
The mechanic behind the counter instantly recognizes me. “Hey, you’re Jake Terranova. What are you doing here?”
“My very good friend is picking up his car,” I reply pointedly. “I want to make sure he gets a fair deal.”
“We barely know each other.” Mr. Kermit sets the record straight.
The mechanic picks up a clipboard. “Which car?”
“The Coco Nerd,” the teacher tells him.
“The what?”
Mr. Kermit flushes. “It’s a Chrysler Concorde—1992. One of my students calls it that. He’s—different.”
I snap my fingers. “Parker, right? What’s up with that kid? He’s got a lot of mechanical ability. But ask him to read the name off a part, and it comes out pure gobbledygook.”
“It’s not gobbledygook,” he says, insulted on Parker’s behalf. “The boy has a perception problem. He sees all the letters, but his mind rearranges them—Concorde to Coco Nerd.”
“Like an anagram,” the mechanic butts in. “You should meet my boss—he’s an anagram maniac. You look at a word, and to you it’s just a jumble, but he can pick it out in a heartbeat.”
Poor Parker. The kid’s got real potential, but how’s he ever going to pass an engineering exam if he can’t read the questions? “All right, where’s the car?”
“Car’s not ready,” the mechanic tells us. “There’s a part coming from the Bahamas, and it’s held up in customs.”
Instead of getting mad, Mr. Kermit acts like he’s in a completely different world. “Anagrams,” he repeats slowly. He grabs my arm. “Let’s go.”
“You have to stick up for yourself,” I say sternly. I turn to the mechanic. “Is this what you call service? If I ran my shop this way, I’d be out of business in a week. How’s the part coming from the Bahamas—by manatee?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Mr. Kermit insists. “Take me to the bookstore.”
“The bookstore? You don’t need books; you need wheels!”
Back in the Porsche, he explains what all this is about. “Parker’s mind turns text into anagrams.”
“Yeah? So?”
“So anagrams are something you can get good at, like any other puzzle.”
I stare at him. “Solving anagrams can teach you to read?”
Mr. Kermit shakes his head. “Of course not. Parker needs a reading specialist. If I was half a teacher, I would have gotten him one weeks ago.”
I’m confused. “So where do the anagrams fit in?”
“The kid’s reading has been a disaster for so long t
hat he looks at it like it’s magic—something he’ll never be able to master. But solving anagrams will show him it can be done. So when I get him the help he needs, he’ll believe it can work.”
“Can you get him the help he needs?” I ask.
“The district has reading specialists,” he explains. “Nobody sends them to SCS-8 because they consider my students a lost cause. That ends now.” He glares at me. “The bookstore!”
I step on the gas and the Porsche surges forward. It’s amazing how Mr. Kermit’s whole face changes when he’s talking about the kids in his class. He becomes a totally different person—younger, more alive. He’s the teacher I remember from all those years ago.
At the bookstore, he’s a whirlwind, stacking up an armload of anagram puzzle books tall enough for him to hold in place with his chin. By this time, school is out, so he demands to be taken to Parker’s house.
“Can’t you just wait to see him tomorrow morning?”
“I want to strike while the iron is hot.”
The Elias family lives just outside the Greenwich city limits on a small farm that was designed to keep sports cars out. The long “driveway” is really just a pair of ruts worn into the unpaved ground by vehicles much higher and wider than the Porsche. I can actually feel the weeds brushing the low undercarriage as we jounce along. Eventually, we come to a low wood-frame home next to a shed amid fields of tall corn.
No sign of life from the house. I cut the engine. “Should I honk?”
“Let’s give it a while,” Mr. Kermit decides.
After about fifteen minutes, Parker comes roaring up the drive, his famous grandmother in the passenger seat of the pickup. I know a moment of agony as the kid pulls far too close behind the parked convertible.
Parker is pretty bewildered to see his teacher rushing across the front lawn toting a pile of books he can barely see over.
The grandmother spies me standing by my car. “I know you,” she calls. “You’re Jumping Jake Terranova.”
“That’s right, ma’am. Pleased to meet you.”
She beams. “I see you on television. You’ll jump through hoops to provide fast relief from painful athlete’s foot fungus.”
“That’s not me,” I tell her. “I get you a great deal on a new or used vehicle.”
She looks at me like I’m feeble-minded. “Why would I need that? I’ve got my grandson to drive me around.”
Mr. Kermit is having an animated conversation with Parker, holding up anagram books and talking a blue streak. They’re well into it when a small tractor chugs out of the field and an older, taller version of Parker hops off and joins the group. Parker’s dad is surprised that a teacher would make house calls, but as Mr. Kermit explains his plan, the man looks impressed and smiles with appreciation.
The contrast isn’t lost on me—Mr. Elias’s gratitude for a teacher who’s willing to move heaven and earth to help a student, versus my folks all those years ago. They rescued their son—and I’m thankful. But in the process, they hung the teacher out to dry.
Mr. Kermit deserved better. I hope someday I’ll get the chance to make it up to him.
Twenty-One
Kiana Roubini
NO BIKINI AURA.
That has nothing to do with bathing suits. It’s an anagram of my name.
Mr. Kermit has me working with Parker on anagrams to improve his reading. Parker’s getting pretty good, but for me, it’s just fun. It’s amazing the stuff you can come up with. For example, ZACHARY KERMIT can be scrambled into CRAZY TRAM HIKE, or ALDO BRAFF into FOLD A BARF.
Even Aldo laughs at that one, and he doesn’t strike me as someone with a great sense of humor—especially about himself. He looks pretty different when he smiles—like his face is going along with all that red hair instead of fighting against it.
Or maybe Aldo decides to be mellow because he doesn’t have a lot of choice. His reading partner is Elaine. It’s one thing to kick a locker. A locker can’t head-butt you down a flight of stairs, or any other of Elaine’s Greatest Hits, like chucking a fire extinguisher at your face, or giving you a new ear piercing with a fishhook.
To everybody’s surprise, Elaine turns out to be kind of a serious student, which nobody noticed before, since they were too busy being terrified of her. Mr. Kermit assigns them Where the Red Fern Grows, and Elaine is totally into it. So Aldo has to read it too, even though he claims the last book he finished was Hop on Pop.
The other reading group is Barnstorm, Mateo, and Rahim. This works because Mateo never shuts up, which keeps Rahim from falling asleep. Actually, Rahim is more awake lately anyway. Mr. Kermit talked to his stepdad, who agreed to move his rock band’s nighttime rehearsals to an “alternate venue.” Guess where—an empty storage garage at Terranova Motors.
Sometimes, I join those guys because Parker goes to a reading specialist three days a week. That makes four of us, but it’s usually just three, because Rahim isn’t around as much these days. Mr. Kermit got him accepted as a part-time art student at the community college on the other side of the river. Since he draws all the time anyway, it makes sense to send him somewhere that’s a good thing. It’s complicated, but it works. On any given day, Barnstorm might have three partners, or two, or just one. It doesn’t make that much difference, because the only thing he really cares about is puffy-tails.
Like any athlete, Barnstorm’s competitive. But since he’s sidelined from sports, all that competitive energy gets channeled into Goodbunnies. His parade of puffy-tails stretches past the basket of carrots, off the poster, and two-thirds of the way across the wall. He’s miles ahead of me in second place. Mostly, that’s because he won’t cash them in. He’s too greedy.
Whenever my line of puffy-tails reaches the carrots, I redeem them for a reward. Our class has already had two pizza parties, thanks to me. Plus, I lent Aldo a bunch so he could pay off the penalties for some late homework assignments. That was Mr. Kermit’s idea. He’s using puffy-tails to teach us how an economy works. We’re free to trade them, spend them, sell them, or lend them—but the lenders have to charge interest. Aldo owes me 10 percent every week, and he’s sinking deeper and deeper into debt.
“You’re a sucker,” Barnstorm tells me. “He’s never going to pay you back. It’s puffy-tails down a sinkhole.”
“He is so,” I defend Aldo. “And with interest.”
“Using what?” Barnstorm retorts. “He’s never earned a single puffy-tail.”
Aldo leaps up. “I have too! I just spend mine on fines and stuff.”
“Sit,” Elaine rumbles, and Aldo plunks back down onto his chair.
Barnstorm won’t let it go. “Name one thing you ever did for a puffy-tail.”
Aldo thinks hard. “I—I changed the bulb in the projector.”
“No, that was Rahim,” Mateo puts in.
In frustration, Aldo runs his hands through his red hair, which makes it even messier. “Big deal. Who cares about a bunch of rabbit butts?”
I glare at Barnstorm. “I have faith in Aldo.”
“Oh yeah?” he shoots back. “Why?”
It’s a good question. Why would I put my trust in a bad-tempered redhead and a straight-D student? Well, part of it is probably because I don’t care that much about puffy-tails to begin with. But I think the other part might be Vladimir. Eight classes a day make their way through room 115, and that lizard doesn’t squeak his head off for any of them. He loves Aldo—only Aldo. And aren’t animals supposed to have instincts about people who are good at heart?
I turn on Barnstorm. “At least Aldo’s not a tight-fisted cheapskate like you. When the year’s over and we’re in high school, all those puffy-tails will be worthless.”
“You can’t take it with you,” Elaine adds philosophically.
Barnstorm is smug. “At least I’ll be rich.”
“You’re a Ferengi,” Mateo tells him. “That’s a race of aliens from Star Trek. They worship money and profit above all things.”
“Settle d
own,” Mr. Kermit says mildly. “We’re free to spend—or not spend—our puffy-tails however we choose. That’s how a market economy works.”
As we settle back to work, I can’t help thinking about what I said to Barnstorm: When the year’s over and we’re in high school . . .
I’m not going to be in high school with these kids. I’ll be gone before the end of the semester. How many times can Mom’s movie get struck by lightning?
But at the moment the words were coming out of my mouth, I meant them. I actually saw myself finishing out the year in this class I don’t belong in, in this school I don’t really go to. And in this town where my only connection is the fact that my parents grew up here.
Oh man, I’ve got to get back to LA—and fast.
Twenty-Two
Mrs. Vargas
In all my years in education, the greatest teacher I’ve ever worked with was a young man named Zachary Kermit. Oh, sure, we were all dedicated back then—fresh out of college and convinced we were destined to change the world one student at a time. Zachary was different. All teachers dream of changing lives; he really changed them. The kids had no way of knowing it, but being placed in Mr. Kermit’s class was like winning the lottery. It actually got to the point where I’d look out over my own group and feel a little sorry for them because there was a much better teacher just down the hall.
That was before the Terranova incident turned him into a zombie. He went from best to worst. If I were doing my job, I’d have fired him long ago, because heaven knows he wasn’t doing his job. Maybe I didn’t see things clearly enough because he was a friend. Or maybe I was waiting for the teacher he once was to reappear. But after twenty-seven years, even I had to know that the old Zachary Kermit was gone forever.
Well, guess what: he’s back. And it took the worst group of kids in the whole district to make it happen.
That’s what brings me to the district offices this afternoon. The first semester progress reports are out, and I can’t wait to share the big news with Dr. Thaddeus.
The Unteachables Page 11