Teacher's Pet

by Andrew Neiderman

  Teacher’s Pet

  Andrew Neiderman

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1986 by Andrew Neiderman

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com

  First Diversion Books edition May 2015

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-791-3

  Also by Andrew Neiderman

  After Life

  Duplicates

  The Maddening

  Perfect Little Angels

  Deadly Verdict

  The Magic Bullet

  The Solomon Organization

  Guardian Angel

  Child’s Play

  Sight Unseen

  For our son Erik, because in the end, that’s what it’s all about.

  Preface

  The fall moonlight served as a spotlight, drawing him off the main highway.

  He paused and got out of his car at the road sign that announced, “You are now entering the hamlet of Centerville, a community in the Town of Fallsburg, first settled in 1826.”

  It was obvious that the sign had been recently made, built out of pressured timber. The raised letters were carved in script. This was a community that was very proud of itself.

  He stood within the shadows and looked down the relatively straight road that pointed like a long dark finger toward the center of the village. The street was hauntingly quiet, but he bathed in that silence. He barely moved himself. He was as still as the maple and oak.

  Anyone observing him would say he looked like someone going into a deep meditation. He had the eyes of someone in a trance. In fact his body felt more than ever like a shell. He had visions of snakes shedding their skins, sliding out of their bodies and leaving their imperfections behind.

  He liked it here. There was a stirring within him, a buildup of energy. He welcomed the feeling and welcomed the revitalization of his spirit. He knew that he had a sense of this place already; he trusted his instincts. His search for a new setting had ended. Like a nomad from the underworld, he traveled until he came to an oasis of evil. Here he would pitch his tent and do his work.

  He left his shadow behind to mark the spot and went off to make arrangements.

  1

  The light that escaped from under the pale yellow lampshade seemed magical to Johnny Masterson. He was hypnotized by the glow and couldn’t help but run his hand under it to see if he could feel the illumination. It was a strange idea, but strange ideas often occurred to him when he was in the tutor’s house. He would think thoughts that he would never tell anyone else.

  Sometimes he would feel like a little boy again, imagining wild things. This was something that had been growing ever since he began with the tutor. It happened tonight when he was walking to the tutor’s house and he turned around quickly to look at the moon because he thought it was following him. He dodged behind Mr. Lorner’s old maple tree and peered up at it. Afterward, he felt like a jerk and looked around to be sure no one had seen him.

  But on cold fall nights like this one, there was rarely anyone on the streets. Walking through Centerville after dark was like walking through some movie set. Most of the houses had their shades and curtains closed. The glow of illumination behind them seemed to come from stage lights. People, silhouetted, looked like puppets. Even when he looked through uncovered windows, the inhabitants moved like figures on a television screen.

  There was a standing joke about upstate hamlets like his: “At night, they pull in the sidewalks.” It was a funny exaggeration, but there was also a sense of truth to it. In the evening everyone wrapped his home around him and withdrew like turtles and snails. It was just as Mr. Lucy had told him when they were studying his history lesson: “It’s the Middle Ages again. Men, fearing the darkness, retreated into their walled towns and forts.”

  He was right. Mr. Lucy was always right. There had never been anyone in his life as intelligent and as perceptive as Mr. Lucy. He dreamt of becoming as intelligent as Mr. Lucy because he sensed that the tutor’s intelligence gave him a power over people and a confidence that made him invulnerable. There were few adults Johnny cared to be like, but Mr. Lucy had to be one of them. Pleasing him had quickly become just as important, if not more important, as pleasing himself.

  “What are you doing, John?”

  Johnny pulled his hand out of the lamplight quickly. Mr. Lucy stood in the doorway, his face in shadows. So silhouetted, he seemed taller, broader, even more powerful than Johnny imagined.

  “Nothing, I…”

  “Did you finish all the examples?”

  “Not yet. I’ve got two more.”

  “Then you better get at it, buddy. We don’t want to disappoint your parents, do we?”

  The tutor stepped forward. The light lifted the darkness away as one would remove a mask. Johnny saw the wry smile on his face. It formed at the corners of his mouth and rippled through his cheeks. He winked. Unsaid sentences passed between them. Johnny felt as though he and Mr. Lucy were part of a conspiracy, the object of which was simply to fool and defeat his parents. So far, they were succeeding very nicely. His grades had improved dramatically during the short period he had been working with the tutor.

  Johnny began working on his remaining math problems. While he concentrated, he sensed the tutor’s movements around him and he felt him looking down at his paper. It made him work faster, harder. Finished, he sat back in anticipation.

  Mr. Lucy sat down at the desk. The magical, yellow light seemed like an X-ray. Johnny thought it was probably just another one of his wild thoughts, but Mr. Lucy’s face became skeletonlike, the high cheekbones exposed, his eye sockets deep. When he smiled, his lips disappeared and his teeth glittered. He held the worksheet in fingers of bone.

  “This is good,” Mr. Lucy said. “You’re improving. Your mother will cut back on her Valium this week.”

  Johnny laughed. If someone in school had said such a thing, he would have become embarrassed and angry, but it was he who told Mr. Lucy about his mother’s pill-popping and his father’s martinis. He hadn’t talked as much to a teacher about his private life since he was in grade school. But right from the beginning, Mr. Lucy understood; he understood and he cared.

  “Should I start on the next page?”

  “No, that’s enough for tonight. You’ve grasped the concepts. Now it’s a matter of some drill and that’s something you can do anytime. If you do everything here, you won’t be able to impress your parents with your work at home.”

  “My father came into my room last night. He thought since the music was off, I was up to no good. He snuck up to the door and then turned the handle quickly and charged in. I bet he thought I was smoking a joint or something.”

  “What happened?”

  “I did just what you said to do when something like that happens—I turned from my book and as nonchalantly as possible I said, Hi, Dad.”

  “The power of understatement. Never underestimate it. Very few people your age know how to use it. They tend to go overboard.”

  “I could see he felt pretty stupid. Then I did the rest—I made him feel guilty. I started talking about the science chapter. He stood there dumbfounded. All he could do was stutter his way out. Later, I heard my mother yelling at him for it.”<
br />
  “Did you get something?”

  “Well…”

  Johnny smiled, reached into his pocket, and took out a fifty-dollar bill. He put it on the table. Mr. Lucy nodded his appreciation, stuck it in the textbook, and closed the pages on it as if it were a bookmarker.

  “I told them I was thinking of going to the fair down in Middletown this weekend and I might be taking a date. My mother reached into the pocket of her housedress and took it out. She doesn’t know herself how much money she carries around. I could have taken what I wanted anytime.”

  “But this way is better, isn’t it? You don’t steal from them; you make them give it to you. That’s what I meant by being in control.”

  “Yes,” Johnny said. He was infatuated with the soft yet authoritative tone in the tutor’s voice.

  “If they want to blame anyone for it later, they can blame only themselves. You always come out looking good.”

  “You always do too, don’t you?” Johnny said. It was forward of him to do so, he knew, but he felt he had earned it and, instinctively, he felt the tutor would not be upset with him. He would be upset with the others, any of the others if any of them did it, but not with him, not now, not since he proved himself. Johnny believed the tutor took a special interest in him and he was proud of that.

  “Yes,” Mr. Lucy said. Johnny held his breath. The tutor smiled. “But that’s one of my secrets.”

  “Not anymore. Now I know it, too.”

  Mr. Lucy laughed. It wasn’t like his usual laugh; it was warmer, friendlier. It made Johnny feel good and he laughed, too, even though he wasn’t sure why Mr. Lucy was laughing. “You’re OK, Johnny. You’re all that I thought you would be.” He stopped laughing and leaned forward, his face growing very serious. “That’s why of all my students, I treat you special, Johnny. You have all sorts of greatness in you, all sorts of potential. It’s important that it doesn’t go to waste, that it doesn’t go unused. Will you help me make sure that doesn’t happen?”

  Johnny could hardly speak.

  “Yes.”

  “Good, because there are other secrets I have that I want you to know and to use.” Mr. Lucy leaned back. “Don’t tell me you didn’t realize that, Johnny Masterson?” Johnny smiled. “See. Don’t try to put one past your tutor.” Johnny laughed.

  “I won’t.”

  “Because you don’t have to,” Mr. Lucy said quickly and leaned forward again. “If we can’t trust each other, we can’t trust anyone. Am I right?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Mr. Lucy stared at him for a moment. Then he smiled again and reached forward to playfully shake Johnny’s head.

  “How about a cup of hot chocolate?”

  “Sure.”

  Mr. Lucy stood up. When Johnny did too, Mr. Lucy put his arm around his shoulders and they started out of the study.

  “We have a little more time tonight and I would like to discuss some of the other kids with you.”

  “The other kids?”

  “My other students. You know all of them, even though you’re not such great friends, right?” Johnny nodded. “Well, I think you can help me with them.”

  “I can?”

  Johnny sat at the kitchen table while Mr. Lucy prepared the hot chocolate.

  “Of course. Lots of times people don’t learn things because of personal reasons, personal problems that block their capacity to understand or even their capacity to care. If a teacher could know these problems and deal with them first, he or she might be a great deal more successful, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Well, look at your case, Johnny,” Mr. Lucy said, turning from the stove. “When you told me about your parents and your relationship with them, I began to understand your problems. I’ve helped you a great deal with them, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And now you’re doing a lot better in school and getting along a lot better at home. See?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “So,” Mr. Lucy said, turning back to the hot chocolate, “what I want you to do is tell me things about my other students. If necessary, find out things about them and tell these things to me.”

  “Like a spy, huh?” Johnny asked. Mr. Lucy poured the two cups.

  “No, not like a spy.” He lifted the cups and turned, smiling. “Like an assistant. I want you to be my assistant.” He put the cup down in front of Johnny and sat across from him.

  “An assistant?” Johnny felt a surge of excitement. He liked the sound of that, but most of all he liked the implied power.

  “Uh huh. Of course, no one will know. This will be another one of those secrets between us. You can understand the reason for that, I’m sure.”

  “Sure.”

  “And this won’t be a one-way street, Johnny,” he said, and sipped his hot chocolate. “As I told you before, there are other secrets I have that I want you to know and to use.”

  “You’ll teach me these other things?”

  “That’s right. Things other than your schoolwork.” He leaned toward him again. “Things that will give you power and strength.”

  “And make me like you,” Johnny said. He said it as he would state a conclusion. The tutor smiled.

  “Exactly, Johnny.”

  For a moment Johnny Masterson was silent. He stared ahead, stared past the tutor, stared beyond the house. He stared at an image of himself, a fantasy that could come true. He saw himself in the halls of his school, no longer the quiet, meek outsider, no longer the lonely insecure person he was. Instead, he saw himself walk with the tutor’s strength and confidence. He saw the way the other boys looked up to him and admired him, hoping that he would be their friend and maybe pass on some of the secrets to them. He saw the way the girls competed for his attention and he saw the way he handled it maturely. He saw the new respect his teachers had for him and he saw his parents look at him in awe.

  “Johnny,” the tutor said. Johnny blinked and came back to reality. “You’d better start drinking your hot chocolate before it gets cold.”

  “Oh.”

  Johnny lifted the cup to his lips. The tutor and he considered each other. Johnny formed the smile around his eyes the way the tutor formed his. They nodded ever so slightly at each other, then they both laughed.

  With their eyes, they signed a contract between them.

  One day, Mr. Lucy had just turned up. None of the neighbors said they saw any moving vans or pickup trucks parked by the old Taylor house. The house itself was a neighborhood joke. It had stood idle a great many years before the tutor came. People called it “turn-of-the-century.” Ordinarily, that would be something of a compliment; old things were quite in style now. But this house was quite decrepit on the outside. The owners, a pair of spinster sisters, had inherited it. They did nothing to restore it and little to keep it in shape.

  The wooden shutters, their paint faded and peeled, hung loose. The gray wooden siding was chipped and so badly in need of paint it looked bleached. The eyebrow windows of the attic were grimy and streaked. Sunlight had yellowed the old linen curtains that were draped over the other windows. They hung like limp ghosts of a bygone time when handmade things were common and expected, when houses like this had porches for people to sit on and talk away warm summer nights, when front doors like this one were thick and hand-carved, and when red brick chimneys weren’t a sign of opulence but necessity.

  The small, two-story structure with its Queen Anne roof and its tiny patch of lawn stood out like a sepia photograph placed on an album page filled with color photographs. It was distinctive, right down to the small cement squares that made up its short walkway to its three wooden plank front steps.

  No one had ever seen the real estate agent or the Stanley sisters come around with a prospective tenant, but a neighbor, Ellen Lorner, looked out of her bedroom window one night and saw there were lights on in the old Taylor house. She called her husband Barton to the window.

  “Couldn’t have just happened t
oday,” he said. “They had to have the electric company come and turn the electricity on.”

  “No one said anything about a tenant.”

  “Well, the block gossips let one slip past them. How could such a thing happen?” he chided kiddingly.

  “How could anyone just move into that house? Didn’t it need a lot of work inside? Goodness knows, it’s been an eyesore on this block for as long as I can remember. Why just the other day, Toby Feldman said she was going to get Morris to have the town code enforcement officer see about having it condemned.”

  “Why? The structure’s still good. Those houses were built solid. Not like these two-by-fours. Nowadays, everyone’s in a hurry. Why, my father’s house…”

  “I wonder who would move into such a house,” Ellen said. If there was one thing she didn’t want to hear any more about, it was Barton’s father and the way things used to be. “Those miserly sisters couldn’t have sold it, could they? They must’ve rented it. If they sold it, we’d all know. With Toby’s husband working in the town hall…we’d know.”

  “So it was rented, so what?”

  “I just feel sorry for whoever rented it. I’m sure those old Stanley sisters charged too much rent.”

  “You’re just dying of curiosity to find out all about the tenants. Think of some excuse tomorrow and go over to say hello. Then call me at the office and tell me how much rent they’re paying.”

  In the morning the telephones on Highland Avenue formed a chain of chatter, announcing the news and linking the curious. Highland Avenue was a side street of a dozen houses in the hamlet of Centerville, an upstate New York community with a population of just under two thousand. It, plus seven other similar communities, formed the Fallsburg Township. Many of the children were bused to a centralized school system.

  The township, like a good part of Sullivan County, a once rich resort area heavily populated by New York City tourists in the summer, had gone into an economic decline during the past two decades. Many bungalow colonies and small hotels went out of business. The successful business people who remained guarded their luxurious homes and styles of life vigorously. They felt threatened in many ways, a principal one being the deterioration of the school system. The line, which had become something of a chant, was “The schools are failing us.”