Standing Up to Mr. O.

by Claudia Mills

  Maggie nodded. “I mean, I told her I’m not doing the dissections. But—is there anything else I could do instead? Like a report for extra credit?”

  “This is a lab course. In a lab course, we do labs.”

  “Why do all the labs have to involve killing something?” Maggie tried to sound as scornful as Matt would sound, but she knew she sounded close to tears instead.

  “No one in our class will be killing a fish. The perch will be prepared for dissection before they’re delivered here.”

  “That makes it better? That someone else kills them?”

  “I thought your objection was to killing.” Mr. O.’s voice had that angry edge to it now.

  “Yes, but killing is killing, whoever does it. It’s no less killing because someone else does it for you.”

  “This girlish sentimentality is going to cost you your education in biology.” The coldness in Mr. O.’s voice was as sharp as the scalpels that would cut open dozens of innocent, once-living fish tomorrow.

  “Jake’s not dissecting things, either, and he’s not a girl.”

  “Jacob Dycus is a very troubled young man. I would hardly recommend him as a role model.”

  “At least he doesn’t kill things.”

  “Maggie, listen to me. I’ve been teaching biology for twenty years now. For twenty years I’ve been dissecting animals and supervising student dissections. Think about it. If dissecting animals is such a terrible crime, what does that make me?”

  Maggie said nothing. The unanswered question hung in the air between them.

  Mr. O. stood up and returned to his desk. He scribbled out a late pass for lunch and another pass for Friday, for the library. “Don’t bother coming to class tomorrow. We’ll see you Monday.”

  Through her film of tears, Maggie fled to the hall. Mr. O. was a mass murderer, a cold-blooded killer of hundreds of worms, fish, and frogs. Why should she care what he thought of her?

  But she did. The memory of the special smile he had once had for her, not so very long ago, choked her. Her only hope was that when he read her essay he’d understand. Maybe he wouldn’t agree—even after reading it, Matt still didn’t agree with her—but at least he’d understand. If only he would understand enough not to hate her for doing what she had to do. If only he would understand enough so that everything between the two of them could be the way it used to be.

  10

  When Maggie reached the library on Friday morning, for her exile from biology, Jake wasn’t there. Maybe he had gone to class; maybe Mr. O. hadn’t had time to talk to him yesterday about the fish dissection the way he had talked to Maggie. It was odd, in a way, that he hadn’t asked Jake to stay after class, too. But perhaps he wanted to talk to each of the rebels alone.

  Jake came in as Maggie was opening her biology book. She planned to use the library time to study for the upcoming exam, hoping that if she got an A on every single exam, Mr. O. wouldn’t have the heart to give her an F on her report card.

  “Where were you?” Jake asked as he sat down next to her at her table by the window. Maggie noticed that Jake had no books with him. It was probably uncool to carry books.

  “Mr. O. told me yesterday to come here.”

  “He didn’t tell me. I guess he wanted the pleasure of kicking me out of class in front of everybody. Public humiliation is one of his things.”

  “Did he ask you if you were going to do the dissection, and you refused?”

  “You might put it that way. I called him a fascist.”

  “Oh, Jake.” Maggie was glad she had been spared that encounter. Maybe Mr. O. still did like her, at least a little bit, since he had let her go quietly to the library instead of expelling her publicly. “What did he say?”

  “He threw me out for a week. Boohoo, boohoo. A whole week without his corny jokes and his crazy ties. My heart is breaking in two. And all his big threats. He’s going to give me an F. I’m already getting an F. That’s what gets him. There’s nothing he can do to me.” Jake laughed mirthlessly. “Nothing I haven’t already done to myself.”

  But there was plenty Mr. O. could do to Maggie. He could take the A she was so proud of and turn it into an F. Maggie still didn’t believe he would really do it. It would be too unfair. He could give her an F for every lab she missed, but labs were supposed to be only 20 percent of their grade. If 80 percent of her grade was an A, and 20 percent was an F, her final grade should be—Maggie did some quick math in her head—a B. It would be too unfair to give her an F when she had earned a B. Mr. O. might have some faults—three weeks ago Maggie would have denied it, but she couldn’t deny it now—but he wasn’t unfair.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Jake said.

  Maggie didn’t understand. “Now?” They couldn’t leave school now; it was only fourth period. They were supposed to be in the library.

  “No, next year. Yes, now. I feel like having a cigarette. Besides, it’s almost sixty degrees today. We don’t need to sit here in this pathetic library. We could be out watching the snowdrifts melt away.”

  “We can’t go outside. We don’t have a pass.”

  “You don’t get it, do you? We don’t need a pass. This isn’t a maximum-security prison, even though they act like it is. Who’s going to stop us? Do you see any armed guards? Any attack dogs? Any electric fences? That old library guy isn’t even watching us. Nobody is. Come on, Maggie. This is our chance. They’re cutting up dead fish in here. Let’s go commune with life out there.”

  “But—”

  “No buts.”

  Maggie gave in. Her heart was pounding as she silently packed up her books and followed Jake into the hall. Grand Valley Middle School didn’t have any armed guards or attack dogs, but it did have hall monitors. What would Jake say if somebody stopped them? But nobody did. The only monitor they passed was deep in conversation with a teacher. It was incredibly easy to walk right out of the building and into the warm, welcoming January sun.

  As soon as they were outside, Jake grabbed Maggie’s hand. This time, now that she was psychologically prepared for it, it felt very nice to have his fingers intertwined with hers. It felt like the two of them against the world, the forces of life against the forces of death.

  With his free hand, Jake pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

  “Don’t smoke,” Maggie said.

  “Why not? Once we cross the street, we won’t be on school property.”

  “You said you wanted to commune with life. Smoking kills people.”

  Jake stuffed the cigarettes back in his pocket. “You speak, and I obey.”

  They had reached the little park across the street from the middle school. “Climb that tree,” Maggie commanded, to test her new powers.

  Jake dropped her hand and swung himself easily to a perch on the lowest branch. Maggie laughed.

  “Come on up.” The branch was sturdy enough to hold them both.

  “I’m not very good at climbing.” Unlike graceful Alycia, Maggie was a total klutz. She still remembered her terror of the jungle gym on the elementary-school playground. She should ask Matt if there was a gene for jungle-gym-phobia.

  “I’ll help you. Here.” Jake leaped lightly from the tree and offered Maggie his two cupped hands as a stirrup. In an instant, he had boosted her up; in another instant, he was seated beside her, their shoulders touching, her hand back in his.

  “This,” Jake said, “is much nicer than the library.”

  Maggie couldn’t disagree. For the first time since Maggie had known him, Jake looked happy—not sullen or surly or bored, just happy. Then, as she turned toward him to reply, he kissed her. It wasn’t a long kiss, but it was definitely a kiss. Maggie’s first kiss—just a week and a half before her thirteenth birthday.

  From across the street, they heard the bell ring. Fourth period was over.

  “I have to go,” Maggie said regretfully.

  “Why?”

  “I just do.”

  Maggie was afraid Jake would argue, but he
didn’t. He let himself down first and held out his arms to her. Maggie jumped into them, like an old-fashioned lady alighting from a stagecoach.

  “See you later, Maggie.” To her relief, he didn’t sound mad; he still looked foolishly happy.

  “You’re not coming?”

  “Nah. I’ve had enough for one day. Study hard. Be good,” he said in a voice that seemed both mocking and tender.

  As Maggie slipped back into the school, she wondered: What would Alycia say if she knew that Maggie had cut class and been kissed on the lips—by Jake Dycus?

  * * *

  “I got another F today in biology,” Maggie told her mother that night at dinner. They were each slurping a big bowl full of cold cereal and sliced bananas and happy-cow milk. When they were both too tired to face fixing any real food, they would eat cereal for dinner. Sometimes Maggie’s mother called the cereal suppers “not my finest moment of motherhood.” But usually she defended them: “If those food pyramid people want us to eat six servings a day of grains and cereals, they’re going to have to expect an occasional cereal entrée.”

  “Oh, Maggie,” her mother said now, laying down her spoon. “That makes how many? Two F’s? What’s going to happen to your grade?”

  “Mr. O. says if I don’t do any of the dissections, he’ll give me an F.”

  “For the whole trimester?”

  “That’s what he says.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Did you ask him if you could make up the labs in some other way?”

  “Uh-huh. He said no. I think he’s really, really into dissections.”

  “What about your classmates? Are the rest of them busily hacking up dead worms and—what else?”

  “Fish. Everyone except me, and Alycia, and this one boy, Jake.”

  “The boy who called you on the phone.” Maggie’s mother took one glance at Maggie’s face and chortled with satisfaction. “Am I good or am I good?”

  “It was Jake,” Maggie admitted reluctantly. She had a grudging respect for her mother’s flashes of intuition, but she didn’t like giving her mother so much uninvited access to her life.

  “What kind of boy is he?”

  “He’s…” Maggie tried to think of a truthful answer that wouldn’t sound defensive. She gave up. “He’s just a boy.”

  “Good student?”

  “Not exactly. I bet he could be, but he has this chip on his shoulder, and he won’t let anybody make him do anything he doesn’t want to do.” Maggie knew that she had already said too much.

  “I get the picture. You like him, don’t you?”

  “Sort of.”

  “When do I get to meet him?”

  Never. “I barely know him.” Though Maggie had to admit that she knew Jake well enough to let him kiss her.

  “What does Alycia think of him?”

  Maggie hesitated. “He’s not her type.”

  “But he’s your type? Your type is underachievers with chips on their shoulders?” Her mother gave an exaggerated sigh as she shoved her cereal bowl away. “Remember, Maggie: Mistake Number One, throwing yourself away on a loser.”

  Maggie bristled at the word. Who was her mother to disparage Maggie’s friends? Who was her mother to disparage Maggie’s father? She seemed to forget that the man she was putting down happened to be the only father Maggie had ever had, even if his place in her life had been reduced to the size of a shoe box.

  “Jake’s dad left, too.” Maggie wasn’t sure why she said it. Maybe it was because her mother always seemed to think she was the only one who had gotten dumped when Maggie’s father disappeared. That all the loss and hurt had been hers alone.

  “A match made in heaven!” her mother said. “Both of you from broken homes, both of you sabotaging your biology grades for some quixotic crusade.”

  Maggie gave her mother a blank look. She didn’t know what the word meant, but she could tell it wasn’t a compliment.

  “Quixotic. From Don Quixote. It’s a famous book about a crackpot who thinks he’s a knight in shining armor and goes around fighting windmills.”

  “That’s what you think I’m doing?”

  “I didn’t say that. Well, maybe I did say that. Do you really think your failing biology is going to change the world?”

  “If bad things are happening in the world, we have to at least try to stop them. I mean, we can’t just do nothing.”

  Maggie’s mother reached out her hand to Maggie. “Oh, Mags, forget everything I just said. I’m glad you’re still idealistic. Stay that way as long as you can.”

  Even though her mother didn’t sound sarcastic anymore, she still sounded condescending, as if caring about killing animals was a cute phase a starry-eyed young person would go through on her way to becoming a tough, cynical, hard-boiled adult.

  “One thing I’d like to know, though,” her mother said as she carried both bowls to the dishwasher. “You said Alycia isn’t doing the dissections, either? Don’t tell me Bob Eagen’s daughter is going to get an F in biology, too.”

  “Her lab partner does them for her.”

  Maggie’s mother burst out laughing. “It’s perfect! Like father, like daughter. Get someone else to do your scut work for you—your lab partner, your secretary. I love it! But not my daughter, oh, no, she’s the one out there fighting the windmills. I guess I’m proud of you for it.” She gave Maggie a hug. “Don’t let Jake call the shots, though.”

  Maggie pulled away. “What’s wrong with Jake? You don’t even know him. I’ve barely said two sentences to you about him.”

  “Maybe I don’t know Jake. What I do know is that some people fight windmills to try to change the world. Some people fight them because they like to fight, and if someone gets hurt in the process, all the better. And some of us stopped fighting years ago because we’ve learned the hard way that the windmill always wins.”

  * * *

  The weather turned cold and snowy again. Jake called Maggie twice over the weekend. He wanted her to go out for a walk with him in the snow, but Maggie told him that her mother said no. It was only half a lie: Maggie hadn’t asked her mother if she could go out with Jake, but she suspected that if she had asked, the answer would have been no. At the least, her mother would have insisted on meeting Jake first, and then Maggie had the uncomfortable feeling that, with his jacket and his hair and his sullen expression, Jake would look exactly the way her mother expected him to. And Maggie couldn’t stand giving her mother that much satisfaction.

  Besides, Maggie was secretly relieved to have an excuse for why she couldn’t see Jake alone. Maggie was increasingly drawn to Jake, but there was something stressful, something unsettling, about being with him.

  Instead Maggie spent her Sunday afternoon baking cookies and knitting companionably with Alycia at Alycia’s house, while outside the snow fell steadily, covering the bleachers where Jake had first held Maggie’s hand, blanketing the tree branch where he had kissed her.

  Alycia’s father drove Maggie home toward nightfall. For all that Maggie’s mother complained about Professor Eagen, Maggie liked him. Of course he would expect his secretary to type and file and take care of pesky little conference details: that was why people had secretaries, to do the work they didn’t want to do. If Professor Eagen did all those things himself, her mother would be out of a job. Naturally, Maggie never said this to her mother. But she privately didn’t think that Professor Eagen sounded so bad.

  “Alycia tells me you’re leading a revolt against animal dissections,” he said as he backed out of their two-car garage. The Eagens never had to worry about shoveling their cars out of snowdrifts. One touch of their remote-controlled garage-door opener, and off they went.

  “Well, sort of.” Maggie hardly saw herself as the leader of a revolt, but she was flattered that Alycia had described her that way.

  “Good for you,” he said heartily, his approval a welcome contrast to her mother’s ambivalence. “Did you know that a number of schools have eliminated animal dissecti
ons on ethical grounds? They use computer simulations or video instruction. Instead of a hundred students stumbling and bumbling through a botched dissection of a hundred animals, the same hundred students watch a video of an expertly done, professional dissection of a single animal. A lot of animal lives are saved that way. Sometimes I think that a century from now, people will look back on our treatment of nonhuman animals the same way we look back on the practice of slavery.”

  “Do you really?” If only Professor Eagen would tell this to Mr. O. Maybe Mr. O. would take Maggie’s arguments more seriously if a grownup man—a Ph.D. college professor—shared them. She wondered if Mr. O. had read her essay yet. The contest winners were supposed to be announced sometime next week.

  “I do. Of course, that’s the historian in me, always wondering what future historians are going to be saying about us.”

  Maggie thanked him warmly when he dropped her off at home, as much for his encouragement as for the ride. If this was what fathers were like, she definitely wouldn’t mind having one.

  * * *

  On Monday, Mr. O. didn’t smile at Maggie, and she didn’t guess the answer to the light bulb joke: “How many paranoids does it take to change a light bulb?” “Who wants to know?” The class was moving on to frogs, with a frog dissection scheduled for a week from Friday. Maggie couldn’t even imagine dissecting something that hopped. Hadn’t Mr. O. ever read the Frog and Toad books? Hadn’t he read The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher?

  The week wore on, with no smiles from Mr. O. Twice after school, when Alycia had basketball practice, Maggie sat with Jake in the bleachers again. Together they brushed off the snow from the topmost bleacher—their bleacher—clearing just a few feet of bare metal, so that they had to sit very close together. They still didn’t talk much; Maggie had yet to tell Jake about her father. Jake held her hand the whole time, tucking it safe and warm into his jacket pocket. But he didn’t kiss her.