Are We There Yet?

by Kathleen West

  Mr. Whittaker cocked an eyebrow. “Well, the other incidents provide context,” he said, matching her change in tone, “so we’ll review those first before I get into what happened today.” He glanced back at his monitor and clicked something. “First, in the lunchroom, Teddy dumped his spaghetti in someone’s lap.”

  “What?” Alice felt knocked off balance again. “Who?”

  “I usually don’t share students’ names, but Teddy and this other boy did seem to have a history. It was Tane Lagerhead.” Mr. Whittaker tilted his head, waiting for her reaction.

  Alice didn’t know of any history other than Nadia’s comment from that morning. “Tane has been in Teddy’s class since third grade with no issues.” She closed her eyes for a moment, searching her memory. She could see Tane’s too-short pants at sixth-grade graduation, but neither she nor Teddy had commented on them. “That doesn’t sound like Teddy,” she said about the lunchroom. “Certainly it was an accident?”

  “I interviewed several witnesses, Mrs. Sullivan. And then last week’s altercation in the hallway suggests a pattern.”

  “A pattern?” Alice’s bravado ebbed just as she’d summoned it.

  “Teddy crossed the hallway and knocked Tane’s books from his arms.” Alice tried to imagine it. She shook her head. “And then he tripped him,” Whittaker said.

  “What?” She knew Teddy to throw an elbow on the soccer field, but pushing kids in school hallways? No way. Whittaker must have her son confused with someone else.

  “Yes,” Mr. Whittaker said, certain. “And then he threw Tane’s math book in the third-floor compost bin.”

  “In the compost bin?” Alice couldn’t stop her echo. The whole situation seemed outlandish.

  “Before you ask”—he held a hand up—“the security footage confirms it was Teddy.”

  Alice looked over her shoulder, as if she could see through the closed door to the seating area where Teddy waited. She felt as if she were watching a television show. This poor mother, she’d say if she were. How could she be so clueless? Although her tears had dissipated, she dabbed her eyes with her Kleenex. “Shouldn’t someone have called me about these behaviors?” Alice asked, finally. “They seem sort of serious for just a portal.”

  Whittaker’s shoulders stiffened. “I’m in charge of discipline for more than one thousand students. I have to rely on the systems set in place.” Alice felt herself melting into the back of her chair. Mr. Whittaker stood then, and as he moved Alice noticed a familiar sandalwood smell. He uses the same shampoo as Patrick. “I think we should get Teddy in here to explain what happened today.”

  Alice shuddered. Behind her, the assistant principal opened the door. Alice turned to see Teddy shuffle in. He looked smaller than he had that morning, and despite Alice’s attempts, he wouldn’t make eye contact with her.

  “Teddy,” Whittaker said once they’d both sat. “Perhaps you can explain what happened this afternoon.”

  “Perhaps,” Teddy said, snide.

  Alice jerked upright. “Teddy!” An image of him dropping Tane’s math book into a garbage can flashed in her mind’s eye, and then another vision of spaghetti on Tane’s lap.

  She stared at her son, and pale pink splotches appeared on Teddy’s cheekbones. “It was supposed to be a joke,” he mumbled. Teddy looked at Mr. Whittaker. The assistant principal turned his palm up, an indication that he should continue. Alice felt her throat closing. “After the band played the theme from Jurassic Park—you know that song, right, Mom?”

  She nodded. Despite the tension of the moment, she heard a few bars of the piece in her head, and as Teddy continued, she pictured Laura Dern running in cargo shorts next to a brontosaurus. “Well, as we were leaving the stage,” Teddy said, “I just grabbed Tane’s pants. Like, as a joke.”

  Alice blinked away the CGI dinosaur. “What?”

  “It was a joke,” Teddy said, a tinge of desperation in his tone. He reached out and rubbed a leaf of the plant on the edge of the assistant principal’s desk. Alice swatted at his arm, then immediately worried Mr. Whittaker would report her for some kind of abuse. “Tane always wears shorts under his sweat pants,” Teddy rushed on. His nail beds turned white against the armrests of the chair. “I know because we’re in the same PE class and soccer. It’s those sweat pants that always hang down in back. You’ve seen them, right, Mom? So yeah, I, like, pulled them, but I didn’t think they’d come all the way down.”

  “So what happened next?” She heard the chill in her voice, anger replacing the confusion and disbelief she’d withstood during the first minutes of this meeting.

  Mr. Whittaker jumped in. “Tane’s buttocks were exposed to the audience.”

  Teddy spasmed, an inappropriate laugh bubbling out of him. Alice squeezed his hand. “Stop,” she said, and then she looked pleadingly at the assistant principal.

  He continued. “And the left-hand side of the auditorium also saw his—”

  Before he could finish, Alice interrupted. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “We’ll find a way to fix this.” She stood, jerking Teddy upright. She’d had enough.

  “I’m going to suspend him for four days,” Mr. Whittaker said flatly, “as this is his third offense and detention has clearly had no impact.” Alice felt saliva pooling near her molars. Suspension? She’d only heard of Nadia’s Donovan getting suspended. No one else she knew had even mentioned the assistant principal.

  Mr. Whittaker put a finger on his calendar. “We’ll see him back here next Thursday. No school or soccer until then.”

  Teddy fell back into his chair, his hand slipping from Alice’s. “Four days?” he blurted. “But I can’t miss practice.”

  Whittaker seemed on the verge of a smirk, and Alice felt again as if she were living in a movie, seated in Ed Rooney’s office looking at Ferris Bueller’s attendance record. “You’re not playing soccer,” Mr. Whittaker said to Teddy. Alice could see in his straight spine, the tilt of his chin, that the man had begun to enjoy himself. “In addition to the academic suspension, I’m instituting a two-game athletic penalty. I believe that takes us to the end of the regular season.”

  Teddy’s eyes filled. “But—” he said.

  Mr. Whittaker cut him off. “We have a zero-tolerance policy for bullying, Mr. Sullivan. You can try soccer again next year.”

  “We’ll be in touch,” Alice mumbled. She needed to talk to Patrick. She needed to get out of this office. She pushed Teddy toward the exit.

  Teddy Sullivan

  Teddy had expected his mom to begin her inevitable lecture the second he buckled his seat belt. Instead, she cranked the classical music station and clenched her jaw. As they rolled out of the school parking lot, Teddy looked over his shoulder at the second-floor classroom where Sadie and Tane were currently in math. Had Sadie commented on his Finsta post? he wondered, thinking of his fake Instagram. Had she doubled down on #TeamTane?

  No Elm Creek soccer until next year. Teddy remembered Whittaker’s punishment. Ordinarily, Teddy wouldn’t care that much because club travel soccer was way more important. But everything had been worse on the premier team since Tane had joined.

  It had all started when Tane showed up at tryouts even though he’d been down two levels the year before. Teddy’s dad had looked nervous when Tane walked over to the group. “Kid’s tall,” he had said, just before the drills began. “Strong legs.”

  Teddy evaluated his dad’s statement, measuring Tane against the other kids he’d been playing soccer with for years. “But I’m better.” Teddy had squeezed his water bottle over his head in the August heat. His dad hadn’t answered for a few seconds. A familiar, uncomfortable sensation had traveled up Teddy’s sternum. This type of nerves, he knew, never helped his play. The last time he’d felt like this, he’d shanked a penalty kick in the previous year’s playoffs. His dad had pulled his ball cap down over his eyes as the clock ticked away
on the Elks’ loss, a game Teddy could have saved if he’d just been a tiny bit better.

  “Don’t you think I’m better?” Teddy had prompted at tryouts. He had glanced down the sidelines at Tane, who had jogged over to check in with his own father, a white-blond dude who had to be at least six feet five.

  Teddy’s dad had put a hand on his shoulder. “His size is an asset, but you’ve got great skills. They’d be crazy not to take you at striker.”

  As they’d started, Teddy had thought of the nail polish Tane had worn on his index fingers to sixth-grade graduation last spring along with his too-short pants. Totally weird. He had also remembered Tane telling him in fourth grade that he’d played rec league, where everyone was happy just to get a participation trophy. That wasn’t how Teddy had ever played soccer. But at premier tryouts, Tane seemed so confident, sure he belonged there even though every other kid in the group had been on a premier or a C1 team the previous season. Teddy had seen flecks of purple polish near the cuticles of Tane’s nails as he gripped a ball during Coach’s instructions.

  The team didn’t need anyone new.

  When the roster had come out a week later, Teddy’s eyes had bulged when he found Tane’s name ahead of his own on the alphabetical list. On his Insta, he’d posted a screenshot of the email. His caption read, “Can’t wait to ball with this sick crew.” On his Finsta, he’d enlarged the middle of the alphabetical list where “Lagerhead” appeared and wrote, “This should be interesting.” Landon and McCoy had added surprised emojis.

  On the day he was suspended, Teddy had posted on his Finsta again in the bathroom between the time Mr. Whittaker, the total ween, had force-marched him to the office and when his mom had arrived to pick him up. He used a Napoleon Dynamite still as the photo, but it was the caption that really sealed it. “The end of the #battle,” he’d written. “Hope all you #TeamTane haters enjoyed the show at the 7th grade assembly. #micdrop or #pantsdrop, I should say.”

  The comments had already accumulated by the time he’d washed his hands and dropped the phone in his backpack. At the last second, when his mom was in the office with Mr. Whittaker, he’d remembered to delete the Finsta profile from his phone. He might never, depending on the level of his mother’s rage, see the device again. He stared at the Elm Creek soccer field as they turned in to their neighborhood, and laughed at the pink penis painted on the side of the porta-potty.

  “Nothing’s funny,” his mom said, her voice low.

  Evelyn Brown

  Suspended?” Evelyn felt shocked. “My Teddy?”

  “I know,” Alice whispered. “I’m so confused about what’s going on with him. He’s not himself. Or”—she paused—“he’s not who I thought he was. Does that happen in junior high? Kids just mutate into some totally different person? Why didn’t you warn me?”

  “Junior high is hard,” Evelyn said automatically. She had warned her, of course. And Evelyn had spent her career researching the jarring transformation from childhood to adolescence. She’d studied Alice’s development, obviously, and wondered at each phase how much of her daughter’s personality and decision making came from her innate qualities—baked into the DNA she inherited from her birth parents—and how much Evelyn had managed to sprinkle on top with the “nurture” part of the equation as her adoptive mom.

  But Teddy? In Evelyn’s mind, Teddy was a still a cherubic three-year-old, golden curls swirling around his perfect little ears. Obviously, she knew he’d gotten bigger. In fact, his physical growth stunned her every time she saw him these days.

  Evelyn could hear Alice rummaging on the other end of the line, probably digging in her junk drawer. For someone who kept the other ninety-nine percent of her house perfectly spotless, Alice had a knack for misplacing her keys or a roll of Scotch tape. Evelyn often thought that Alice’s obsessive cleanliness might be a reaction to Evelyn’s own laxity as a housekeeper. She glanced over at her dirty lunch dishes languishing on the side of the sink. “What are you looking for?” she asked.

  “What? Oh.” The rummaging stopped. “I was hoping I had a safety pin in here.”

  Evelyn smiled to herself. Although her condo was on the messy side, she knew exactly where she kept her spare safety pins—in a plastic box in her sock drawer. They’d been there for years.

  “Well, in any case,” Alice said, “I’m afraid to even leave him in the house alone. I’m not sure I can trust him, even if I take his phone. Do you think that’s irrational?”

  Evelyn was proud of herself for limiting her parenting advice to the moments when Alice actually asked for it. “I think you’re right to be cautious.” She kept her tone light.

  Alice sighed. “Can you come over? Maybe pick Adrian up from school at three? I hate to ask at the last minute.”

  Evelyn smiled. She was used to these requests. She enjoyed them. As much as Alice wanted to be all things to all people, there were so many times Patrick was traveling or working late. Her daughter got stuck between car pools and client meetings. As Evelyn had cut back on her teaching schedule in the last couple of years, she’d been happy to help out. Thrilled, even. What a gift to be so close to her grandchildren. She’d have to get back to her work later, an article she’d agreed to review for the Journal of Applied Adolescent Psychology. But she could do that in the evening if she drank black tea that afternoon, instead of her usual chamomile. Maybe she could make a cup for Teddy, too. Get to the bottom of things with him. Or try.

  “I’ll be there in thirty.” Evelyn logged out of her laptop and added her mug to her dish pile. She pictured Alice pacing her kitchen, stopping to google phrases on her phone like “my seventh grader is a bully” and “I don’t know my child anymore.”

  Evelyn hoped she’d also have time to reassure Alice that afternoon. She wanted to put in some face time with her before she dropped her own bomb. She hated to think of Julienne this way, as a violent explosion, but Evelyn knew that was exactly how Alice would receive her, even though Evelyn had always before made Alice her priority. She winced, imagining what Alice might google after Evelyn finally told her the news.

  Sadie Yoshida

  Tane arrived back in math class just as Sadie watched Alice’s car leave the parking lot. Teddy had looked up at the classroom from the front seat. He’s looking for me, she thought, and she felt both flattered and irritated. She had wanted him to pay attention to her at the homecoming game, and he’d totally ignored her. But now her opinion mattered? Now that she was legit friends with Tane?

  As Tane handed Mr. Sadler his hall pass, most of the kids glued their eyes to their worksheets. McCoy Blumenfeld, though, started laughing, little barks escaping his lips as his shoulders shook. He’s an infant, Sadie thought. No wonder he’s best friends with Teddy.

  “McCoy,” Mr. Sadler said, annoyed, “why don’t you go to the drinking fountain and compose yourself.” A couple of other kids snickered then, but Sadie gave Tane a half smile. She was surprised he hadn’t just vacated the building after assembly. She would have gone home, she thought, if it had happened to her. And she probably never would have come back. Nudity in front of the entire seventh grade? This was the kind of story people would be telling their grandchildren at Thanksgiving in fifty years.

  “Did they make you go to the counselor?” Sadie whispered as Tane took his seat next to hers. Maybe if she’d seen everything in assembly, she would have felt shy about speaking to him, but she’d closed her eyes as his pants went down, holding her breath just as Mikaela had grabbed her arm and screamed.

  Tane nodded. Mr. Sadler turned back to the rectangular prism he’d drawn with a dying purple marker on the whiteboard. “Teddy’s mom just drove out of the parking lot.” Sadie pointed at the window. “I’m guessing he got suspended.” Tane didn’t say anything. Sadie squinted at the parked cars. She zeroed in on their PE teacher’s Honda, which Sadie knew by the 26.2 sticker on the back windshield.

  This whol
e thing—the #TeamTane/#TeamTeddy fight—had started when they’d had a sub in PE class who let them play dodgeball. Sadie remembered her elementary PE teacher saying the game was banned. These days, phys ed was all about the cooperative activities, not the competitive ones. In fact, they’d used the brightly colored dodgeballs just the other week to play some stupid thing called Star Wars Battle. The object had been to push one of those inflatable exercise balls over the other team’s home line by pelting it from behind their own barrier. Some of the boys had abandoned the task and started chucking their dodgeballs at each other from across the gym. Even Tane had joined in. Sadie had watched him pick up a red ball, smile at Teddy on the opposite team, and fling the orb at his head. Everyone had laughed—Sadie, too. It was funny—not really a big deal.

  But then Teddy had mentioned it in car pool. Tane Lagerhead had been such a “douchebucket” about the game, he’d said.

  “Language,” Sadie’s mom had scolded, her eyes never leaving the road as the two kids sat in the back seat. Even though Sadie had topped one hundred pounds, her mother insisted she sit in the back, claiming it was safer, though it made Sadie look like a baby. While they drove, Sadie had changed the subject to their math test, but then that night Alexandra Hunt had posted “#TeamTayne” on her Snapchat story with a picture she’d found of a random kid, not Teddy, with his head thrown back, a ball smashing into his nose. Alexandra hadn’t gone to Elm Creek Elementary with them. She didn’t know that before seventh grade, Tane was always the one with the too-small shirts, the brightly colored socks, the nail polish that he used to wear on all ten fingers before switching to just the index ones sometime last year. Alexandra also didn’t know how to spell his name. “#TeamTain,” Mikaela Heffernan had posted the next day with a picture of Tane bent over an assignment in study hall, his adorably floppy brown hair hanging into his eyes. “#TeemTane,” Chloe Cushing added with a pic of Tane in the lunch line. The intentional spelling errors were almost as funny as Alexandra’s original photo. Teddy stood in the background of Chloe’s pic, mostly hidden behind Tane’s shoulder. Teddy had been one of the tallest kids in their elementary class, but Tane had definitely caught up over the summer.