Ms. Bixby's Last Day

by John David Anderson

“It is below his average,” my father retorted, the corners of his mouth tightening. “He studies two hours a day after school. He takes Japanese. He reads every night before bed. His mother and I quiz him about what he’s read. It seems impossible for him to get anything less than an A.”

  “It sounds like you keep him very busy,” Ms. Bixby replied, though it didn’t sound like a compliment. Then she pulled up a screen on her laptop. “It looks like Steven struggled a little through our fiction unit this year and missed some questions on his reading quizzes. That’s all. It’s only a third-quarter grade; there are plenty of opportunities left in the year to improve, though I think he should be happy with what he’s accomplished so far.” She turned and smiled at me. I smiled back, then quickly readopted the look of self-disappointment that I came in with before my father noticed.

  “I’m sure my son is only satisfied with doing his very best,” my father answered.

  “I’m sure he is too,” Ms. Bixby said. “But a B is a perfectly acceptable grade.”

  Already it had gone from above average to perfectly acceptable. My father had that effect on people. He would soon have her convinced that the B was a stain on my record that should be removed before it ruined my chances of ever getting into a decent college. “Perhaps for other students in your class,” he responded coldly, “but not for Steven.”

  Ms. Bixby’s cheeks turned pink to match her shock of hair. Suddenly the two of them started talking over each other.

  “Mr. Sakata, I appreciate what you are trying to say, but I think what’s more important is that Steve feels like he is being challenged and that he is growing, socially and intellectually, making connections and—”

  “But in my son’s case it represents a breakdown in the learning process, either on his end or on yours, and signifies—”

  “—grades are just one way to reflect and measure that growth, and that one—”

  “—his sister certainly never earned a B in her life, and both of his parents are quite well educated—”

  “—spend too much time focusing on end results and not enough time on the process, the journey that your son is taking—”

  “—feel that the real problem is that you aren’t challenging him enough, or maybe your system of evaluation is flawed and needs—”

  “—simply don’t think one little B is really worth worrying about.”

  My father cleared his throat. “My son is a straight-A student, Ms. Bixby,” he said, straightening up himself, his voice rising to match.

  I looked up to see Ms. Bixby smiling.

  “Is that what your bumper sticker says?”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I might have only smiled if it wasn’t for the fact that there actually is a “Proud parent of straight-A students!” sticker pasted on the back of the Volvo. I’m not sure how she knew, or even if she knew. Maybe it was a lucky guess. Or maybe she had had this same discussion before with someone else’s father, bickering over someone else’s B.

  “Excuse me?” my father barked.

  Ms. Bixby blushed again. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled-for. You’re absolutely right. You should be proud of Steven. Incredibly proud. He is one of the brightest students I’ve ever had the honor to teach. He surprises me every day with how much he knows, and his curiosity is insatiable. I will make sure that he and I work hard the next several weeks to ensure that all his grades reflect the kind of student he is.” She gave a polite smile. My father stared at her hair again.

  “That’s all I’m asking,” he said gruffly, reaching out and retrieving my report card, holding it with two fingers like a used tissue. “Thank you for your time.”

  He rose, and Ms. Bixby rose too. They shook hands politely. I wasn’t at all sure who the victor was. I was still laughing inside at the bumper sticker remark. Then, as we were walking out the door to room 213, Ms. Bixby called my name. I turned and she stretched out her index finger, her look asking me to do the same. Our fingers touched lightly at the tips, and her eyes brightened. “Be. Good,” she said.

  It was a line from E.T. I know because Topher and I had seen that movie four times already. But I also knew she was making a joke. Thankfully my father didn’t get it, or maybe he just didn’t hear. Then she said, “See you tomorrow,” and “Thanks for coming,” and I couldn’t be sure, but I think she closed the door to her classroom with a little more force than usual.

  Back in the Volvo my father shook his head. “Never have these problems with your sister. Her teachers understand.”

  “I think Ms. Bixby understands,” I murmured.

  “Doesn’t matter,” my father grumbled. “Only eight more weeks.” Meaning only eight more weeks in the semester. Eight more weeks to bring my grade up. Eight more weeks with Ms. Bixby. Eight more weeks to deal with this woman with the crazy hair who obviously didn’t know how to teach or at least didn’t appreciate Sakata greatness when she saw it. Eight weeks.

  Except his math was wrong. He didn’t know what was growing inside her. None of us did.

  There were really only four.

  The bells on the door chirp at us on our way out, leaving Brand and Eduardo huddled over the counter. Topher and I sit on the curb next to each other, knees almost touching. Topher reaches down and plucks a pebble from the street, rolling it back and forth between his fingers. I take my phone out and type in why is cheesecake so expensive. The answer, according to the first website I check, is “Because it is yummy.” That hardly seems scientific. The real answer, I suspect, is because people are willing to pay that much for it.

  “What if it were Topher’s?”

  I put the phone down and look at Topher. He’s looking at the pebble, smooth and gray, barely the size of an M&M. “It’s just a rock,” I tell him. “You can probably have it if you want it.” I’m also not sure why he’s talking about himself in the third person.

  “Not the rock. The bakery,” he says, looking up at the sign. “What if it were called Topher’s? How much do you think I could charge for that cheesecake?”

  Now I understand. It’s a game. How much is your name worth? “Would it be called Topher’s or Christopher’s?” I ask back, not that it would make a difference to me. I’d shop there regardless, though I know for a fact Topher doesn’t know how to bake. The one time we tried to make cookies at his house, we set off the smoke detector.

  “I don’t know. I guess Christopher’s sounds better. Topher’s is more the name of an ice-cream parlor, don’t you think?”

  I don’t actually think about things like this. That’s why I like to have Topher around. “I guess so,” I say. “What about Steve’s?”

  Topher scrunches his nose. “Sorry, man. I’m not sure you could charge more than twenty bucks. Nobody wants to buy cheesecake from a Steve. No offense.”

  I’m not offended. It takes a lot more than that. Especially coming from him.

  “But I’d totally buy comic books from one,” he adds, then smiles, his dimples surfacing. He has a great smile.

  I try to imagine what my parents would say if I told them I was going to skip college and open up my own comic book store. I picture their heads exploding. The thought makes me smile too. “What’s he doing in there, anyway?” Topher says, craning his neck. Brand’s back is to us, but Eduardo is nodding over and over.

  I shrug. I can tell it bothers Topher, being kicked out, sitting out here on the curb while Brand is in there, carrying on the mission or whatever he’s doing, but it doesn’t bother me. I think about all the times the two of us have sat together like this. On the bus. On the floor in his basement. In the cardboard fort we built in his backyard. Always side by side, never across from each other. Topher flicks the pebble with his thumb. I watch it skitter across the parking lot and bounce into a drain. I could never make that shot on the first try. Or the second. “You think this is a good idea?” he asks.

  “It’s a lot of money for a cake,” I say.

  “I don’t mean the cake. Not just the cake, anyway. I
mean all of it.” He stretches his hands out to indicate the all of all of it, his shoulder bumping into mine. “I mean, do you think it’s weird? Do you think she’ll think it’s weird?”

  The word weird just sits there between us. I think about Ms. Bixby, who made us all memorize monologues from our favorite movies instead of famous speeches from history (though I still memorized the Gettysburg Address because my parents insisted on it, claiming that it was also, technically, from a movie, and had greater educational value). Ms. Bixby, who once came to school wearing her bathrobe over her normal clothes because it was twenty degrees outside and she couldn’t find her coat. Ms. Bixby, who kept books scattered all around the room in the most unusual places—tucked in with the hand sanitizer, sitting on the windowsills, stacked on top of the python’s terrarium—because, as she put it, stories are everywhere, just waiting to be found.

  “I think she’s a little weird,” I say.

  “She probably thinks you’re a little weird,” Topher says. “I think you’re a little weird. Don’t worry. It’s a good thing. It just means you’re remarkable.”

  “I think you’re weird too,” I say.

  “Come to think of it,” Topher continues, “I think the word weird is kind of weird. Just say it out loud a few times. Weird. Weird. Weird . . .”

  I start to chant it along with him, the two of us sitting on the curb saying weird over and over again. I suppose if you say anything over and over again, it starts to sound strange.

  About twelve weirds in, the door behind us jangles again and Brand comes out of the bakery carrying a square white box, holding it with both hands. The box doesn’t have one of those see-through windows that birthday cakes from the grocery store always have, but I can only guess it’s the whole enchilada.

  “What was that all about?” Topher asks. I can tell he’s miffed, and he’s letting Brand know.

  “No big deal,” Brand says. “I took care of it.”

  “You ‘took care of it’?” Topher repeats. “What, are you the Godfather now? How much did he charge you? Did you actually get it for forty?”

  Brand shakes his head and smiles. He hands the box to Topher, who nearly drops it, grunting at the weight. Then he hands me back my crumpled ten and one of Topher’s fives. Somehow he got the cake for less than half the price.

  “Turns out it’s teacher appreciation day,” he says with a shrug.

  Through the window of Michelle’s, I see the baker shrug at us too.

  “Welcome to Eduardo’s,” Brand says.

  Brand

  EVERYBODY LOVES A GOOD SOB STORY, SO LONG as it’s not their story.

  I don’t know why. I’m not sure if people honestly care about other people or they just want a way to confirm that they’ve got it better than someone else, someone they can point to and say, “It could be worse. I could be that guy.”

  Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think people are really like that. Not most people anyways. But I think we’re all guilty of it sometimes. Just like we’re all guilty of doing the opposite, looking at everyone else around us and thinking that none of ’em understand. That they are living in a fantasyland full of birthday cake and sunshine and can’t possibly get what we are going through.

  I think that all the time. I can’t help it. Because, as it turns out, nobody knows what I’m going through.

  Then again, maybe that’s because I haven’t told them.

  Eduardo didn’t sob when I told him my story, but he did get quiet. He knew Ms. Bixby, he said. He remembered the pink hair, or was it orange? He couldn’t quite recall, but she had definitely been in the shop before, and he was very sorry to hear about her diagnosis. He was even sorrier when I told him my side of the story—the truth, if not the whole truth—and why it was so important for me to see her today. Then he asked what this all had to do with cheesecake, and I explained that part too. He nodded to himself several times, tapping his fingers on the counter before telling me to just take it. The whole cake. Gratis. No charge. We argued about it for a few minutes more, and then I finally made a compromise, taking the cake and leaving twenty-five bucks on the counter. Nothing free is worth having.

  That’s not one of Ms. Bixby’s sayings. My father actually taught me that one. My father, who keeps most of his money—most of our money—in the bread box by the refrigerator, and tells me to take whatever I need. I watch it slowly diminish, dwindle down to a few bills over a couple of weeks, and then I walk to the ATM by the Village Pantry and make a withdrawal and the bread box is suddenly full again, like magic. I’m sure he keeps track, but he doesn’t say anything. Most days it’s just lunch money. A couple of bucks to rent a movie. Cash and tip for the pizza delivery guy.

  Fridays are different, though. Fridays are the best. Fridays I take at least a hundred bucks.

  Today I took twenty. I guess I should have taken more. Of course if my father knew that I spent twenty of his dollars on a cake for my teacher, he would flip.

  Of course, if he stopped and thought about, he’d realize he probably owes her as much as I do. Nothing worth having is free.

  There’s a used-book store just down the street, and Topher insists on going. He says there’s something he wants to look for, something he should have thought of earlier. We still have some time before the right bus comes to pick us up. The bookstore’s not part of the original plan written across my arm a few days ago, but I can tell Topher’s a little peeved at me for leaving him out of the whole cheesecake getting, so I go along.

  First things first, though. We have to figure out some way to shove this cake in one of our backpacks. It weighs as much as a watermelon, and the box is the size of a microwave. Steve’s pack is the biggest, so we empty it out, putting the speakers in Topher’s, and wrapping the backpack around the box as best we can. It doesn’t zip all the way, but the cake isn’t going anywhere.

  “We should have brought a cooler,” Steve says. “Cheesecake should be kept refrigerated.”

  “I think it’ll be fine for a couple of hours,” Topher says, though I can tell by the look on his face that he doesn’t know the first thing about cheesecake. If it doesn’t come slathered in ketchup or have a picture of Cap’n Crunch on it, Topher’s not interested.

  Steve carefully slides his arms through the straps, grunting at the weight. He looks like he’s about to tip over backward and I wonder if I shouldn’t be the one to carry it, but I know if I say something to Steve, he will think I’m hinting at something. That he’s not strong enough. That he can’t handle it. So I let it go and we walk over to Alexander’s. That’s the name of the bookstore. And maybe the guy who owns it. Then again, maybe not.

  We push through the curtain of dust that greets us at the door, followed by the smell of pinewood and Old Spice cologne—the same kind my father used to wear, back when he took showers every day, before even going to the bathroom counted as exercise. The place looks just like one of those creaky old libraries you’d find in a Goosebumps book, jammed with books from floor to ceiling, stacked sideways, spine-ways, slanted, two and three deep on shelves that lean in every possible direction, like Jenga blocks about to fall. The floors creak when you step on them and even when you just stand there, but that’s not the spookiest part.

  The spookiest part is the owl sitting on one of the high-up shelves by the door. Stuffed, obviously, except whoever stuffed it did it with its head twisted around, looking backward. Owls can do that, I know, but it’s still freaky. A sign on the wall below the twisted owl says Caveat Emptor in fancy gold letters and then, smaller underneath, Buyer Beware. Beware of what? I wonder. The owl’s clearly missing some feathers; I guess it’s seen better days.

  The door swings shut behind us, no chimes or ringing bells to give us away. Topher calls out a “Hello?” There’s no answer. “Bizarre,” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “And creepy,” Topher adds.

  “That too.”

  “You ever been here before?”

  I shake
my head. “Didn’t even know the place existed.”

  Topher inches a little closer to me. I can’t imagine what he’s thinking. His imagination must be in overdrive. “Reminds me of the bookstore from The Neverending Story,” he says.

  “Never read it,” I say.

  “That’s all right. It’s practically impossible to finish anyway.”

  Any other time I’d laugh, if I wasn’t feeling so weirded out. We stand by the door, none of us wanting to take a further step inside. There aren’t enough lights—at least a third of the bulbs are burned out—and that makes for a lot of shadows on the walls. I get a chill, and it seems to be contagious, because Topher and Steve shiver too. Then, just as I’m about to suggest turning around, heading back, and waiting at the bus stop, Steve sneezes so hard he gets a blob of snot in the crook of his elbow. A huge yellow glob quivering there like Jell-O. I think about the time I picked his nose. This is way grosser.

  “I meed a missue,” he calls out desperately, more snot snaking down his upper lip. Topher says to just rub it in, but Steve looks horrified at the idea. I look around and find an antiquey-looking sign that says Powder Room, pointing down a dark hallway. Steve looks at the hallway, looks at the snot, trying to decide if it’s worth the risk. Then he finally stumbles off.

  “Messy,” Topher says.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  The upside is that Steve has broken the invisible force field that was holding us in place by the door, at least. We take a few timid steps, me leading the way. Save for the three of us and the freaky, backward-glancing owl, the place seems deserted. I stare at the mountains of books leaning against each other along the crooked wood shelves. Now that we are inside and surrounded by them, though, I feel a little better. It reminds me a little of room 213 and how there are books everywhere you look. Ms. Bixby would like it here, I think. This is the kind of place she would go. A place you could get lost in. A wooden placard dangling by twine from the ceiling says we are in the literature section.

  I run a finger along one shelf, leaving my trail in the dust, then pull out a copy of a book by someone named Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Never heard of the guy. Sounds like a blowhard. The gilded letters on the cover say Idylls of the King. I open it up to the middle, see that it’s actually poetry—really long poetry—and quickly put it back. I don’t mind reading literature when I have to, but it’s almost summer and I have my limits.