“I’m going to the cafeteria to call home,” I tell her.
She nods. “Okay, see you back here after.”
That’s the policy. We don’t have to ask permission to leave. It is to our advantage to stay in class, where there is assistance from teachers when we need it, to do our work rather than bringing it home and doing it alone. But we’re under no obligation to use that advantage. Of course, if someone was leaving the classroom all the time, a conference with a counselor, and maybe a parent, would be scheduled. Phones are to be used only in the cafeteria—or, in the case of teachers, in the teacher’s workroom.
Walking to the cafeteria, I remember my first year here, when students raised a big concern over past instances of being spied upon by security cameras in the hallways. Staff said the cameras had been installed for security and worries about an outside intruder. Students then did extensive research on the history of school shootings and found out that almost all had been shootings by current students, not outsiders. There was still a need for security from random outsiders, but the number of those happenings was quite low. The whole debate turned into a school service project assigned to the senior class at that time. Their job was to make a recommendation to a group of administrators, teachers, parents, and community members after reviewing all the information.
The seniors’ recommendation was approved without revisions. The security cameras were moved to outside entrances, with constant monitoring of those cameras. Concern about internal security, which had originated from a student, was addressed in ways experience showed would be more effective than security cameras: Training for students and staff to show that speaking up about concerns prevents school shootings and gets help for those who need it. Establishing an effective system of referring students to high-quality mental health services. Setting up a Conflict Resolution Council to deal with problems in the school before they become major. The first two things were done right away. The last step, the Conflict Resolution Council, is scheduled to begin this quarter, with students as the majority of members.
I call Mom the second I get to the cafeteria, and she answers on the first ring.
“Daniel, I’m so glad you called. I’ve been worrying about you. You have to know this whole situation is not your fault, or mine. I promise to quit thinking of you as my little boy … and listen to you better. We’re a team, right?”
“Yes. Thanks, Mom.”
“Our attorney is already in gear for the challenge of opposing your stepfather. The fact that he’s a high-powered member of the law school faculty means it won’t be easy, but things are going to be okay, Daniel. You should relax and throw yourself into a new school year.”
I trust Mom totally, but the anxiety that engulfs me today won’t allow for relaxation. Mom’s attorney may be able to get her financial support for day-to-day life, but no way would my creepy stepfather agree to pay for my college. And I can’t believe my counselor here can pull off me getting enough money to attend the kind of high-quality business school I want to go to. Bottom line, I can’t dump my worries about college money on Mom, when she has more immediate problems to get through.
Mom doesn’t expect me home right after school, since I usually stop off at the student park gathering. Today, I need alone time for thinking, and walking works best for me. The familiarity of this small town is comforting, allowing me to focus inward. I wouldn’t call it “thinking” as much as “obsessing,” going over the same ground and beliefs over and over.
Stumbling on a fallen branch causes me to come to. I’m again following Crooked Creek up to the secluded cliff overlook. I look for signs of foot traffic and the weed dealer. Not seeing him, I sit at my spot, not relaxing but waiting for him to find me. He does.
“You look worse than yesterday.”
“Yeah, I am.” I take a deep breath. “And I need a job.”
“I was worried you might blow my cover and new location. But then, I seem to be the least of your concerns.”
Today, he has lost the Italian shoes and other upscale dress, and looks the part for the terrain.
Rising to the challenge I’ve been planning out, I say, “I’m hoping we can help each other. I can expand your customer base, find a lot of high school students who—”
“No, that’s too risky,” he says.
I wasn’t expecting that comeback. My central bargaining chip tossed away, I begin to rack my brain for another idea …
“And, it’s not necessary,” he says. “I have more customers now than I can deal with. All the college students are back for fall term. But I could use some help.”
Yes! “I really need money,” I blurt out, unable to contain my passion.
Looking serious, he says, “That’s not a great skills appeal to a potential employer. And in this job, desperation can encourage stupid mistakes. If you can’t think on your feet, we could get into trouble.”
He said “we.”
“I need to be able to trust you,” he says.
I launch into my confident persona, good posture, strong voice, penetrative eye contact. “I know about trust. I just got my whole world turned upside down because someone didn’t trust me. What do I have to do to prove myself to you?”
“Well, that’s a start. I like straightforward; seems honest.”
A long interlude doesn’t jar me from my game. I learned last spring in negotiation training for Model UN that you can’t push people. You have to give them room to feel your sincerity, integrity.
He ends the long pause with, “Okay, we’ll start slow and see how it goes.”
Has he missed the boiling blood streaming through me? Or is he so confident that he thinks he can teach me to control the panic?
I don’t have much time to ponder that, because Godfather, as I’m now calling him—he grew up in Chicago, and yesterday’s outfit fit the bill—begins my job training right away, going over prices, quantity, what to say/not say, and record keeping. All transactions entered electronically, equipment supplied by him. Salary will be based on commission, but under no circumstances am I to engage in drumming up business. That’s too risky; he will handle marketing. To start, he will mentor me, and later transition responsibility to me for completing the transaction. A few weeks of joint (pun) distribution should reach most of the current customers and ease me into their confidence. Final training is how to pick up on clues of surveillance and what to do in an emergency. Critical to the latter is the escape route, which nobody else seems to know about, ending at the back of the law school.
I’m impressed by his clear thinking and solid plan.
I make it home in time for dinner, expecting a quiet night in, but when I get there Mom says we’re going to Sean’s house for dinner. She ran into his mom today and ended up telling her what was going on. “Sean’s mother was so understanding and supportive when we talked,” she says. “It’s good to develop friendships with people who aren’t friends of your former stepfather.”
I like the way that “former” sounds.
When we arrive at Sean’s house, it is obvious he has been told what is up with the former stepfather. We walk out back to the creek.
“You know,” he says, “you can count on me if you ever need anything. I mean it—anything.”
I don’t know how to respond to that statement. In my Mr. Mayor persona, I have lots of people who joke around and swap stories with me. But I have never had what you could say is a close friend. Nobody I believed I could count on. Cora is starting to break through to my real core, but it has more to do with what she is all about, not that I have developed any trust in myself to be out there. And I definitely pick up these vibes from her that she worries about me sometimes, which is uncomfortable for me and makes me want to bolt.
All I can think of to say is, “I’m okay, Sean. It’s my mom I’m worried about. I hope your mom will stay in contact with her.”
Dinner is quite lively, with Sarah relieving any lingering tension through stories of her preschool esca
pades. It is her second year there, and she seems to be thriving. Today’s highlight was a field trip hike to the top of Black Bear Mountain, starting about three-quarters of the way up, from a public parking area. Halfway through the hike, one kid starts jumping all around, saying he sees a bear. Other kids scream and run to the teachers. Sarah says she stayed put and calm and saw a bald eagle, a “real” one.
I have vague memories of when the world did not seem like such a threat. Those memories slip away more each day.
Mom asks Sean how Stone Creek is different from the Hilltop.
“In a word, totally,” he says. “Hilltop was like a fish tank—and we were the fish, kept apart from the real world of natural waters, glubbing around in circles, until we almost believed it was normal. But at Stone Creek”—Sean’s voice gets lighter now—“people are enthusiastic, look you in the eye, move with a sense of purpose, and yet are patient, willing to stick with something until they figure it out. Helpful to new people like me. No shrill bells! Everybody can tell time and get themselves to where they need to be. In the classroom, people use normal speaking voices, not overly inflating them or whispering secrets. There are quiet areas for people who want that to concentrate. And iPods are allowed for people who concentrate better with music. I’m treated like an individual, like I matter.”
“From Sean’s descriptions of what goes on at Stone Creek,” his mom says, “it sounds like the students are more mature than I would expect from teenagers.”
Today in morning block we wrap up our review of US literature and history resources in the library, choosing what book we want to read in our area of interest.
The technology teacher helped me with Google searches in my area, industrialization. First, I focused in on the big tycoons—Carnegie in steel, Rockefeller in oil, Gould in railroads, and the banking guy, Morgan. There seems to still be controversy about whether they were good guys or bad guys. There’s no doubt, though, about their wealth. Then I read snatches about Henry Ford, the assembly line, and updated teamwork approaches coming from the Japanese auto companies. That kind of related to the topic of theories of management.
Apparently, the most famous writing on the impact of industrialization on the average person is Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. But that sounded pretty gross to me, meat-packing warehouses in Chicago. It would be interesting to learn about the impact investigative journalism can have; honestly, though, the “good life” of the wealthy is more intriguing to me. So I’ve decided to plunge into an account of the lifestyle of the rich and famous, the payoff from hard work—I’m going to read The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The librarian says it is a good choice, and she’s excited to talk with me about it when I’m done.
Back in the classroom, the English teacher tells us our report on the reading we selected is to be written in the form of a short tale. “You know, ‘Once upon a time,’” she says. “The major decision for you is when your tale begins and when it ends. Thinking in terms of a tale will help you look at events from a big-picture perspective and lead you toward a ‘point.’ Spend some time reading your source, or sources, before formulating a focus. You will be reading on your own in class for part of several days. Your written tale is due a week from today.”
An arts teacher who specializes in drama agrees to come to our class to do a dramatic reading of the Gettysburg Address. It’s only 272 powerful words long. I time her. It takes two minutes and three seconds to deliver the most famous speech in US history.
The history teacher then takes the lead, asking the question, “If iPads had existed when Abraham Lincoln was alive, how would things have been different for him and for our country, then and now?” We are asked to write a paragraph response.
I usually have an answer for these kinds of questions within two seconds, a lame one, but I’m trying to learn to slow down and take time to think. Today, my mind flicks around to other things, making it hard to come up with something good.
The group discussion is interesting, with lots of original ideas. We discuss big-picture concepts like change, perception of time, and key social institutions in society. The main conclusion we reach is that technology has brought many changes to our lives, but it has not substantially changed the character of the way we work, go to school, live in families, and govern ourselves. Like, we still work as many hours now as we did fifty years ago, even though technology has majorly increased productivity.
Starting to read The Great Gatsby relaxes me, I guess because it allows me to focus on something other than my jumbled personal life. ‘Focus’ is one of the main skills I work on at Stone Creek. I’ve always liked to read on my own, but in school I used to just go through the motions, quickly pulling out a few tidbits related to whatever topic I was told to focus on. The rest of the time, reading was pretend, sort of zoning out, only to realize I had no idea what had been said in the last paragraph I read. Now that I am not forced to read some particular selection to find some particular point in school, I try to take in the author’s perspective and just go with it. I’m getting better at losing myself in a good story.
At the lunch newspaper meeting, one of the student editors hollers across the room to me, “I have an assignment for you, Daniel. Interview Chief about him sitting in on classes the first week of school.”
I tense. Interviewing Chief sounds interesting, but she could have asked me rather than assigning it to me. Since I’m new to the newspaper work, though, I guess I have to prove myself. I bite back my annoyance and e-mail Chief. We agree to meet Monday during club time.
Right after I get that settled, the same editor, in the same hollering voice, says, “The events schedule posted on the school website lists a speaker for 9/11 in your US history class, Daniel. Would you like to write a story about that?”
Better. She asked. But the hollering? I get up and walk across the room to where she’s working. In a soft voice I say, “Thanks for asking this time. Sure, I’ll do it.”
I can see my club time doing newspaper interviews and write-ups is likely to take up all five days of the week. My Investment Club idea seems to be crashing. Oh well, the newspaper work will be my cover for the fact that nobody else seemed too interested in investments—and doing it by myself would not be as much fun.
Today in soccer is our first opportunity to actually play. The last few days we’ve done organizational stuff and skills drills. Today, our all-white Chilean team is playing the Southies, as in “south of the border.” Each match, fifteen minutes per half, has one teacher referee and one student referee recruited from among players on the community competitive team. Neither referee speaks Spanish. The Southies are using slang that many of us Chileans don’t understand. I get a good bit of what they’re saying but don’t like them making fun of our mistakes so I choose not to engage with them. Sean, who knows some street Spanish from living in San Diego, likes the bantering back and forth and the constant laughter.
The Southies look like naturals, while we are struggling to gain control over the ball. Most of the action is us trying to defend against the superior offense of the Southies. Frustration rises with our profound lack of skill in comparison to theirs.
“Daniel, do something,” one of my team members hollers. “You’re our captain.”
“Time out!” I call out loudly.
The Southies keep playing and score another goal.
Dodging Southies, many of whom are now on the ground in hysterics, the teacher referee comes over to me. “There is no such thing as ‘time out’ in soccer,” he says, loud enough so all my teammates can hear him.
Humiliated, I say, “I know, but we just needed some planning time to get our strategy straight.”
“That should happen before a match,” he says. “What did you do yesterday in your team meeting?”
A free kick is awarded to the Southies.
The constant chatter from the Southies, their gestures towards us, and their incessant laughter, leads to me and a few other teammates losing any rem
aining cool. We start shoving and tripping Southies. Sean walks off the field, looking disgusted. Play is stopped every few seconds due to rule violations by our Chilean team, with yellow and red cards being thrown out with abandon. Mercifully, the end of the half comes before we lose all our players to penalties.
Some of my teammates glare at me.
“I thought this was supposed to be fun,” one of them says. The teacher calls both teams over to the sidelines. “We need to take a real break and figure out what’s going on here,” he says. “I want each person to pair up with a player from the other team that plays your same position. Spread out for private conversations, and the two of you talk about what happened here.”
Calling us back after about ten minutes, he asks for reports of what we think happened.
“Male machoism unleashed,” one guy says. “All the girls are on other teams.”
“Is it any surprise the girls don’t want to play with us?” says another.
“Okay, let’s reserve the comments and discussion for later,” the teacher says. “For now, let’s just hear what all the pairs came up with. Is there a volunteer to take notes?”
“I’ll do it,” Sean volunteers.
Good, I think. He can understand the Southies’ heavy accents better than the rest of us.
“Thanks, Sean. Okay, let’s go around and hear thoughts about what happened from each pair.”
“Somebody could get really hurt out there with all the roughness going on.”
“We got mad because we felt ridiculed.”
“Us Southies were just playing with you. It was really funny.”
“There was no real competition, only a slaughter.”
“We don’t know most of the players on the other team very well. I only know one person. We worked together on a project in math class last year.”
“I couldn’t understand the Spanish words the Southies were using. I’m not sure I want to know what they were saying about me.”
School Tales Page 13