“Our computer support team,” Jerome offered, his eyes shining with pride. “Here to assist the Langdon teachers in any and all technical support.”
What did Langdon teachers do? Launch weekly spaceships?
“Wow…,” Ashok breathed, then looked me in the eye for the first time. His face was slightly shiny and plump, and his eyes sparkled with good humor. “Even at Delhi I.I.T. we did not have such highbrow stuff!” I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not, but I was equally impressed.
“Our staff works hard to maintain teacher Web sites and other vital programs,” Jerome said by way of explanation. “And your laptops are…here!”
Three large boxes from the Apple store sat in a corner of the room. As if he read our minds, Jerome confirmed that inside, wrapped in plastic and accompanied by complicated-looking instruction manuals, were shiny white laptops worth close to $2,000 each.
“Brand new? To keep?” Doori breathed reverently.
“To keep, really? When do we give these back?” I questioned again.
“Never. They’re yours. Trust me, you’ll use them!” Jerome laughed casually. Four hours later, I had a Langdon e-mail account, [email protected], a teacher Web site, and enough knowledge to launch a rocket myself. On a laptop that cost more than a month’s salary.
Orientation had begun in earnest and I had no idea I had already accepted a bribe.
Day One was over. I had an expensive laptop in my tote and my new apartment was only walking distance from the school. I was on cloud nine. Well, more like cloud eight. Truth was, I was dying to call my parents. I missed them more than I cared to admit, and the eager child in me couldn’t fully enjoy the excitement of my new job without sharing it with them. I had informed them of the vitals through a perfunctory e-mail—address, phone number, location of school—and that was all.
Turning the corner of 84th Street and Third Avenue, I was so lost in thought that I failed to focus on the two people standing outside my apartment building.
“Anna!”
My parents!
And in that simple, magical way that you can go from despising your parents to absolutely adoring them, I melted. I ran toward them like a kid, arms wide open.
“Hey, there,” my father said gruffly, engulfing me in a bear hug. My mother was teary and equally emotional.
“We wanted to surprise you…see your place. Sweetie, if this is really what you want to do, then what can we say? We’re not going to lose our daughter just because she made one bad decision,” my mother said sweetly. I was more than a little annoyed at the “one bad decision” comment, but what the hell. I was too happy to see them to give it another thought.
“Look at the laptop they gave me!” I exclaimed, pulling out the iBook from my tote.
“Anna! Oh, my God, this is New York City! Put that back before we get mugged!” my mother exclaimed.
“Mom, this is the Upper East Side, for God’s sake.” I rolled my eyes.
“I don’t care. There are still rapists,” she sniffed. “Now let’s see your place. Your father and I have been waiting at the Starbucks across the street for the last hour. I’m dying to see your first apartment!”
I pulled out my keys and prayed the glass door was locked. Shit. It swung open before I even turned the key.
“It’s UNLOCKED?” my father exclaimed.
“I’m sure it’s a mistake…someone probably just walked out,” I replied weakly. My parents were deafeningly silent as they followed me up the five stories. Gone was my I’m just like Holly Golightly living chicly in her walk-up building fantasy. Enter reality: I was heading up an endless staircase followed by not one, but two executioners.
“ANNA!” Mom screamed, somewhere in the vicinity of the second story.
“MOM!” I shouted. “DON’T SHOUT! GOD!”
“Anna,” my dad huffed, his head suddenly emerging from the stairwell as he panted up the fourth-floor stairs, “this is barbaric. You cannot…,” he paused and breathed heavily, “cannot live like this.” He was right. The stairs were killing me. The laptop in my tote felt like a ton of bricks. Too tired to speak or shout further, I continued the climb.
“Jesus,” my dad stated, finally standing in the entrance to my apartment. There was nothing to do but let him in. He looked visibly pained as he started walking around the space, which he covered in a few strides.
“Oh, Annie,” my mother sighed moments later, sweating and breathless from the climb. Her eyes welled up with tears. That was the worst. My mother was crying because this is what her daughter had been reduced to. I wanted to cry as well.
“Anna, we’re going to Crate & Barrel. We’re buying you furniture,” my father declared firmly. I opened my mouth in shock. What happened to the you’re on your own lecture? The we’re not going to help you declarations?
“Dad, no, I’m fine, really. After a few paychecks I’ll have enough saved up,” I protested weakly. The truth was that I would have sold my soul for a couch.
“I know what I said, Anna. And I stand by it—I told you this would happen. I’m just buying you furniture so I can sleep at night. It’s not right, how they pay teachers, it really isn’t,” he seethed, inspecting my cracking ceiling. Silent again, the three of us left the apartment, and I swallowed my pride as I accepted a sofa, armchair, coffee table, lamp, bed, night table, rug, desk, and chair from them. What a hypocrite I was, living on my own and accepting huge amounts of money from my parents. A part of me wanted to dance in glee that I finally had furniture, but most of me wanted to curl up and die at the thought that all these gifts had been purchased as charity. For me. Anna the charity case. If only I had had a doorman apartment with chic furniture like Bridgette to show them. What was she possibly doing at Morgan Stanley that caused her to earn so much more money than me? Wasn’t she handling other people’s money while I was actually molding their children? Feeling a twinge of resentment, I trailed after my parents to an even more humiliating dinner during which all I could do was thank them humbly and profusely. The evening ended with my mother asking a question that had all the makings of a dirty bomb:
“How are the deliverymen going to get that couch into your apartment?”
5
To a new teacher, entering into what is to be her classroom is like experiencing Narnia for the first time.
“Oh, wow…” I breathed, standing at the entrance of room 805.
It was…huge. French windows allowed the September sunlight to pour in, and with a shriek of delight I noticed I had my own personal air conditioner. In a corner was…my desk! It was invitingly bare. I could hardly restrain myself from running outside and buying an apple to put smack dab in the middle. I ran my fingers across the wood lovingly, thinking about all the grading and student conferences my precious desk would witness in the coming months.
Mine was the only desk in the room. The students were to sit at a long, sleek conference table that looked like it belonged in the head office of a Fortune 500 company. It was easier to imagine suited-up corporate types sitting around this table than a group of seventh graders. Still, I could picture myself seated at the head with my students all around, eager little faces, hanging onto my every word. What an amazing place for our literary discussions!
Across from the conference table was a long, green chalkboard that looked like it had never been used. It held all the same excitement for me as my first box of Crayola crayons had when I was little. Impulsively, I took a piece of chalk and wrote MS. TAGGERT in cursive with big, sweeping strokes. Even the smell of chalk was thrilling. This was…my classroom. I never wanted to leave.
“It’s a nice room, isn’t it?”
I whirled around and found Gerard Zimmerman’s friendly Santa Claus face peering at me.
“The nicest,” I confirmed, still starry-eyed.
“Yeah, I guess we get used to these rooms. Takes a newbie to remind me how gorgeous this place is,” Gerard chuckled.
“I just love newbies,” a smooth voice sa
id, and with that a slender, black-haired man with wire-rimmed glasses and a pale face entered the room.
“Damian Oren.” He smiled, extending his hand.
“Anna,” I responded, returning his handshake. I smiled back even though I was a little grossed out by his clammy hand.
“So let’s begin,” Gerard announced, suddenly efficient. “I’m here to give you the background files on your students.”
“Files?” I asked, interested. The more information I could get at this point, the better. Despite my excitement, I was a little nervous that in just a week orientation would be over and I would be standing in this classroom as the head teacher with a room full of children.
“Yes, Anna, files. Every student has one. They are sources of vital knowledge. In addition to past school reports and medical updates, they also contain every e-mail, detention letter, and private note written about the child or parent by teachers over the course of the student’s years.”
As if on cue, a frail, gray-haired woman entered the room wheeling a trolley piled with files. Each file was the same hunter green, and each appeared stuffed to capacity with papers.
“Ah, Nancy, right on time. Thanks so much.” Gerard walked over to the trolley and patted one of the files affectionately. “Okay, Anna, it’s time to get acquainted with your fifteen homeroom children. I’ll go through the files for some of your more high-maintenance students, and then Damian can stay with you while you read the rest. I have to get to Doori and Ashok today as well.”
High-maintenance?
I glanced in Damian’s direction, spooked to find his dark eyes focused intently on me. I couldn’t read the expression on his face, but his lips were inexplicably twitching. Who was he, my babysitter?
“We never leave files unattended in a classroom,” Gerard explained, reading my mind. “Damian is here in case you need to take a coffee break or visit the ladies’ room.”
So he was my watchdog! Was he going to stare at me while I read each file? How creepy!
“Oh, and Anna?” Gerard added. “While our parent body is aware that these files exist, they are told only that they contain school reports and medical updates. They are never to actually be given access to the files themselves as…er…they contain other critical information that is meant for only our eyes.”
Understatement of the year.
The files certainly did contain “critical information” such as medical forms and school reports. But they also contained notes—some handwritten, some typed—from various teachers the child had had over the years. Some were signed, while others remained anonymous. These notes were often one or two lines, but their contents left me aghast.
Max Briggman:
Mother is a freakin’ lunatic who stalks the school.
Charlotte Robertson:
Gave bar mitzvah boy blow job in party bus.
Chase van der Reedson:
Made a pass at his nanny. Sexual deviant.
Jacob Stein:
Tutored in six subjects. Grandfather billionaire.
Michael Worthington:
Professional brownnoser.
Blair Partridge:
Made cover of Teen Vogue in sixth grade. Queen Bee Mean Girl.
Three hours later, and I had been escorted through only three files: Max Briggman, Charlotte Robertson, and Jacob Stein. Already, I had about zero desire to meet any of these children. In fact, the very mention of their names exhausted me. How would I ever be able to give any of these children the chance to make a first impression? Already I was filled with judgment and harsh opinions toward three of my homeroom students. Gone was any need for an icebreaker activity or a getting-to-know-you game. In these files my poor students’ lives were exposed and dissected like a frog in a ninth-grade biology class. Their contents smelled just as sickly, too.
“You know, I’m sure you and Damian have a lot of preparing to do for Monday. I could go through these on my own time. Maybe take them home and read them at night,” I offered generously. “I wouldn’t let anyone else see them.”
Gerard looked like he had been slapped across the face.
“Anna, these files are NEVER to leave the building, NEVER to be left unattended, and NEVER to be discussed with parents or students. This is HIGHLY sensitive material, and it is CRITICAL that you read them. Here. One by one.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled. Behind me I heard Damian make a sound that was a cross between a cough and a guffaw. Was he laughing at me? And Gerard was turning out to be Santa’s bipolar twin, given to strange bouts of anger that disappeared as suddenly as they came. Now he was calmly stroking his beard and reading the file on Benjamin Kensington.
“Benjamin Kensington has acute, life-threatening peanut allergies. You are responsible if so much as a peanut, or anything in the vicinity of a peanut, enters the classroom. He could die.” I opened my mouth to react but Gerard held up his hand. Unsurprisingly, there was more to young Benjamin. “He saw a therapist for most of fifth and sixth grade because his father had an affair with his yoga teacher.” I sat up straight. Poor Benjamin! Kids never recover from something like that! I made a note to look out for him. Gerard continued, “There was a slight altercation with his older brother, Eric, involving drug use—his lacrosse coach found some, uh, materials in the locker. All of this was handled very discreetly by the school. Benjamin was very upset by this incident, and his parents want to be alerted if he ever mentions it to you. They are very good friends of the school and his mother is on the board.” Friends? How can you be friends with a school?
I glanced at Damian. This time he was openly grinning at my discomfort.
“Let’s move on to Jessica Landau. Her mother is a lesbian.”
I sat there listening to Gerard go on and on, still weirded out by Damian’s presence. His eyes seldom left my face, but he had yet to make a single comment. As Gerard droned on about the Landau lesbian scandal (Jessica was in the fourth grade when her mother left her father for a core-fusion teacher from Exhale) I struggled not to roll my eyes and squirm in my seat. I could just imagine how messed up Jessica would be after such a scandal. Benjamin sounded like an overindulged child who would probably think nothing of the sacrifice I would have to make in giving up my peanut M&Ms addiction lest I so much as breathe on him. And how I was even going to have a proper conversation with Charlotte Roberston, the blow job queen, was way past me. How the hell did any teacher find out about that tidbit anyway? And what kind of person actually took the time to document it and add it to a child’s file? It was all so…invasive.
“Gerard, stop it. You’re killing her!” Both Gerard and I looked up, startled by Damian’s unexpected outburst. Thank God! He was going to put an end to this madness! Maybe he wasn’t such a creep after all.
“Oren, take it easy. She’s never been in this world before,” Gerard growled. Damian was undeterred. With a wicked glint in his eye, he reached into his satchel and slapped a magazine-sized booklet onto the middle of the table.
“What is that?” I asked curiously.
“That,” he smiled wickedly, “is the shortcut.”
“Oren, GET OUT OF HERE!” Gerard barked, now furious.
There, in the middle of the conference table, was a booklet entitled “Langdon Hall Friends.” Desperate for a distraction, I lunged for it and was flipping through the pages before Gerard could stop me. Turned out to be one big disappointment. Just rows after rows of names, like a directory of sorts. What was the big deal?
“Is this a directory?” I asked, completely confused. Gerard looked supremely uncomfortable.
“You could call it that.” Damian winked mischievously. “Or you could call it what I suggested…a shortcut.”
“To what?” I was still baffled.
“Ahhh, a virgin. I love private-school virgins.” Damian sighed dramatically. “If you look more closely, Anna—I can call you Anna, right?—you will see that above each page is a number. A very special number.”
“Oren…,” Gerard warned
in a low voice.
Damian ignored him and sat down beside me, his eyes dancing with excitement.
“That number indicates how friendly that particular family is with Langdon Hall. So, say it happens to read twenty-thousand dollars, right? Well, then all the names underneath that amount are names of people who have been friendly enough to gift the school that very amount!”
Twenty-thousand dollars? I picked up the book again and looked through the pages more carefully before inhaling in shock. The donor names did not start with $20,000. The book opened with friends who contributed $100,000 or more.
“But how is this a shortcut?” I asked stupidly. Six months later I could recite the entire booklet in my sleep, but my initial encounter had left me awestruck.
“The last names on the first two pages are all that matter,” Damian responded, deadpan. “If you have a student with one of those last names, give him an A. Hell, give him a fucking puppy. If her family name is not on the list, she’s fair game for any special kind of torture you want to concoct for that day.”
Was he kidding?
“Is this book sent to everyone in the school?” I was in shock.
“Try every family and every alum in the city.”
I shook my head in disbelief. Was it really possible that Langdon published the names and donations of all the families attending the school? Why would they do something like that?
“Okay, Damian, that’s enough. Get out of here!” Gerard boomed, finally springing to action. “Anna, please don’t listen to him. That’s not how Langdon Hall likes to think of itself. That is the last image we are trying to project here.”
Schooled Page 4