The Year of the Gadfly

by Jennifer Miller

  “Sorry I’m late.” Mr. Kaplan hurried in, and I snapped on a smile. Mr. Kaplan stood over my chair. In class, he was militaristic, but outside, he was nervous, like the dorky kid who never knows what to do with his hands. Mr. Kaplan gazed out the window.

  “It’s bleak up here,” I said.

  Mr. Kaplan didn’t respond. I wished he would stop hovering and sit down.

  “I’m happy I didn’t grow up here,” I continued. “I spent my formative years in Boston. Which is much more cosmopolitan, you know? Do you like Nye? It must be pretty different from UCLA. Where’d you grow up?”

  “Iris.” Mr. Kaplan eyed me. “Was there something you wanted to discuss?”

  “I wanted to show you this.” I held up Marvelous Species. “I discovered another reference to Lucinda Starburst, and I was wondering if—”

  But Mr. Kaplan cut me off. “Where did you get that?”

  “From my house.”

  Mr. Kaplan took the book and sat down. He stared at the cover, transfixed. It was clear that my previous attempts to make him notice the book had failed.

  “Are you okay? . . . Mr. Kaplan?”

  “What?” he snapped. “Yes.”

  His chest heaved once, and I thought I detected dampness around his eyes. Murrow, I thought, the book isn’t supposed to upset him!

  “You said you brought this from home?”

  “Yes, but it’s a temporary situation. I mean, it’s my house but not really my home.”

  “Whose house is it?”

  “Elliott Morgan’s. He used to be headmaster here. He’s friends with my dad. I’m sleeping in his daughter’s room. She must have really loved this book. She had it set up on her bookshelf like a shrine.”

  Mr. Kaplan was digging his index finger into the cuticle bed of his thumb, and I couldn’t tell if he was paying attention.

  “Aren’t you even going to look inside?” I asked.

  Mr. Kaplan’s nail punctured the skin, and blood welled up on his thumb.

  “Mr. Kaplan, you’re—”

  He opened the book but stopped at the title page and ran his hand over the paper, as if his fingers were capable of erasing the text. Then he noticed his bloody thumb and shut the book. “I have to get going.” He put Marvelous Species on the table. “Can we finish our discussion later?”

  I nodded, but he was already hurrying away, sucking on his thumb. I lifted the book cover and turned to the title page.

  To Lily, marvel of my life. Justin.

  An angry smear of blood ran across these words now, the stain already turning brown.

  That night I was sitting on my bed with Marvelous Species when my mother came in. She’d been on the phone all afternoon with members of her many charities, and she was dressed in black heels and pearls, as if she’d actually been out visiting boardrooms and foundations. Given that she’d been conducting this business from the dining room table, she was wearing way too much perfume.

  “So.” My mother folded her hands in her lap. “What are your plans for Friday?” I held up the book. “Oh, come on.” She faked a smile. “There must be something more fun than that. Why don’t you call a girlfriend and go for coffee in town. I’ll drive you.”

  “Thanks for the offer,” I said, “but I’m really okay.”

  “Iris?”

  I looked up. Now my mother looked different. Her face was set—determined—and her lips were drawn tightly together.

  “I know it’s hard being the new kid, but you’re not even trying to make friends.”

  “I went to the ice cream social.”

  “Iris, you should go out.”

  “Okay.” I looked back at Marvelous Species.

  My mother glanced at the chapter I was reading. “What in God’s name are extremophiles? Don’t tell me you’ve become a fan of science fiction.”

  “It’s for Mr. Kaplan’s class.” This wasn’t exactly true, but it was close enough.

  My mother shook her head. “Why are so you interested in science all of a sudden?”

  “Unlike some people”—I glanced up—“Mr. Kaplan takes me seriously.”

  “Garrison Pasternak says Jonah Kaplan was nearly kicked out of school when he was a student. Did you know that?”

  “Mr. Kaplan went to Mariana?”

  “And now he’s brainwashing my daughter.” My mother picked my phone up from the bed. “Call a friend.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Take the phone.”

  I didn’t move. I was thinking about Mr. Kaplan’s omission and how it felt more like a lie. I asked him where he was from, so why didn’t he acknowledge growing up here?

  “Take the phone, Iris.”

  I took it. My mother smiled, but it was the expression of a 1950s housewife on the verge of a homicidal rampage.

  “Now then, who are you going to call?”

  “Nobody.” Was I overreacting about Mr. Kaplan? But why had he handled Lily’s book like a hunk of enriched uranium? I needed to think his reaction through. I needed my mother gone.

  “This is not up for discussion,” she continued. “You are not going to sit around and read about extremo-whatevers all weekend. Now pick somebody and call her.”

  “Who, Mom? Who do you suggest?”

  “For God’s sake, Iris. Out of the hundred people in your class, there must be at least one girl you’re friendly enough with to invite to the movies.” She started rattling off people whose parents she knew from the school board. Then she grabbed the phone from me and started searching through my address book. She was getting more agitated by the second. I asked for the phone back, but she ignored me. She suggested Lauren Nevins, who was my lab partner, and Amanda Petroff from my literature study group. I was starting to panic.

  “Katie Milford?” my mom said. “You’ve mentioned Katie lots of times.”

  “Mom, please,” I whimpered. “Please don’t. She’s editor of the—”

  “All right, all right.” But she held the phone out of my reach as she scrolled through the address book, mumbling names to herself. And then she stopped. “Dalia Zalowski.” She looked up at me. “Oh, Iris . . .”

  I looked away.

  “I thought we talked about this, sweetie. Remember what Dr. Patrick said. You need to erase it.”

  “Give it back!” I reached out my arm. Tears had begun to drip from my eyes and sink into Lily’s pink comforter.

  “Iris, are you listening to me?”

  I looked up as if I hadn’t actually heard. But I had. The black bird I’d felt inside my chest earlier that day began rustling its wings. I shook my head, crying. It wasn’t my fault that I didn’t have anyone to call, that Dalia’s phone was disconnected and put in some box in her room with everything else she wasn’t ever going to need again. Dalia’s number was the only thing I had from my old life. I’d already given up the main thing—the thing that mattered—so why couldn’t I just keep the number?

  Frantic, I lunged for the phone and grabbed it, and before I knew what I was doing, the phone was hurtling toward the wall. It smashed and clattered to the floor. My mother looked like she’d just witnessed a car crash.

  “I don’t know what to do, Iris.” She was crying now. “I’m trying to help you.”

  “I don’t want your help,” I yelled. “I want you to leave me alone!”

  My father appeared in the doorway. He looked from my mother, balanced on the corner of the bed, to me, curled up against the headboard. When he noticed the phone, he gave me an exhausted look. He walked over to the bed and helped my mother up. “I’m trying to help her,” she sobbed into my father’s armpit. “Nothing’s working.”

  When they were gone, I felt a strange sense of calm, like my brain was an empty shell. On the floor across the room, the phone’s cracked screen glowed white. I turned around to see Murrow’s picture on the wall. He’d lost people, too. Jan Masaryk, George Polk, and worst of all Laurence Duggan, who’d been Murrow’s first real friend in New York City. The government went
after Duggan, accusing him of spying for Russia. Duggan couldn’t take the intimidation, so he jumped out the window of his Manhattan office. He fell sixteen stories and landed on the sidewalk. The impact knocked off one of his shoes.

  The night after Duggan’s death, Murrow went on the air and told the nation about the injustice that had killed his friend. He talked and people listened. But nobody was listening to me. “You had a whole country of people who cared what you thought!” I shouted at Murrow’s poster. “But I don’t have anyone. Not one! Just like my mother said. So what am I supposed to do?” I waited, heaving. “Answer me!” But the room was silent.

  Like Duggan, Dalia had ripped herself out of the world. The cut was sudden and messy, and she’d taken part of me with her. This hole, I realized, had filled up with shadows, with dark, beating wings. I climbed under Lily’s covers and curled up with Marvelous Species. Somewhere inside, I reasoned, there must be a creature as misunderstood as I was.

  Jonah

  October 2012

  IN NYE ALL climatory bets are off, so I wasn’t surprised to wake up one day in early October and discover a hefty fall of snow. It was the kind of morning that made you want a woman in your bed, another sleep-warmed body to pull close for just five more minutes. Of late, I’d taken to reminding myself that over 450 species of bdelloids in swampy waters and damp mosses never had sex and didn’t seem to mind. My six months of celibacy was nothing extraordinary. But comparing myself to leechlike creatures wasn’t exactly a mood booster.

  Even worse, I knew exactly who I wanted in my bed. I’d been in Nye for two months and still had no sighting of Hazel Greenburg, the woman whose girlhood iteration I had loved, and who, before she stopped speaking to me, had been my closest friend. My mother had spotted her in Nye months ago, and yet I had not run into her at the bookstore or the bar or the pharmacy. She was unlisted and, despite my efforts, untraceable.

  I stumbled into the bathroom. Without turning on the lights, I shook a couple of extra-strength Excedrin from the bottle (headache remedy and daily caffeine dosage all in one!). As I brushed my teeth, I ran a hand through the red mess of my hair. A little greasy but not too bad.

  Back into the dark bedroom, I put on the week’s final pre-ironed shirt and pants. I was out of clean socks, so I pulled yesterday’s from the hamper. I slid on my beat-up brown loafers, then remembered the snow and pulled on a pair of boots instead. I grabbed a banana from the kitchen and my satchel from the doorknob. In the car, I turned the defrost on high and pulled out of the parking lot—thick forest swinging away from me—and onto the road. My head throbbed with sleep. Cold and wet have always been my least favorite physical states. The doleful landscape rushed past as I maneuvered my Sube around the slick contours of Mountain Road. Within ten minutes the woods gave way to Mariana’s sweeping lawns, now covered in snow and blank silence.

  I turned onto school property and realized I’d inadvertently pulled into the student carpool line instead of the faculty entrance. Twelve years of the same daily routine were hard to shake.

  Inside the building I ran into Headmaster Pasternak conducting a tour for parental hopefuls. Most of the fathers were slicked and shined, their suits impeccably tailored, their bodies smelling of expensive aftershave. Despite the weather, the mothers wore high heels.

  The group walked down the hall with the detached confidence of CEOs. They paid no attention to the students who, in their haste to make the bell, did look a little like underlings sent to make Xeroxes and fetch coffee. Only one couple, clearly the outsiders of the group, seemed genuinely intrigued by the commotion of students changing classes. The wife wore a hemp tunic shirt and a gray braid down her back. Her husband had a dearth of hair on his head and a great deal of it over his lip. They whispered back and forth like kids on a field trip—the ones who lag behind and make trouble. They reminded me of my own parents.

  As I approached, I heard Headmaster Pasternak intone: “The Community Code is the foundation of this school, Mrs. Simpson, and our students—”

  Then Pasternak saw me and threw his hands up with joy. “Mr. Kaplan! Good morning!” He beamed as if I’d just sold him a winning lottery ticket. “Mr. Kaplan teaches freshman biology and sophomore chemistry,” Pasternak told the parents. “He’s an alum of the school and quite distinguished—BA from Stanford, PhD from UCLA, and quite a few publications at the young age of twenty-eight. We call him Mr. Kaplan at his own insistence, by the way . . .”

  Pasternak shook his head like he couldn’t believe a PhD would voluntarily choose not to flaunt his title. Whether he really believed this or whether it was for the parents’ benefit, I couldn’t tell.

  “Mr. Kaplan is here as part of the College-Based Education Initiative I was describing.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Kaplan?” A man in a pinstripe suit raised his hand like he was signaling for the check. “I’d like to know what you think about the school’s science facilities. I mean, are they up to date, technologically speaking?”

  “Mr. Hughes,” Pasternak butted in, “our laboratories are brand new. We’ve taken great pains to provide the most up-to-date equipment.”

  “But Mr. Kaplan, what’s your take? I can’t imagine that students at an elite school in the twenty-first century are still playing around with Bunsen burners. What about new computer technology or scientific digital systems or—well, you know the lingo better than I do.”

  All eyes turned, including Pasternak’s. I knew what he wanted me to say.

  “To be honest,” I replied, “I believe critical thinking is ultimately more important than fancy technology.” And then I was waxing eloquent about the simple beauty of the high school labs. The black-topped lab tables, the map of elements that always hung over the chalkboard and would snap up with a satisfying thwap no matter how aged and battered it was. These were rooms full of wonder and the excitement of mixing chemicals together without ever knowing exactly what would happen. These were rooms that sparkled in my mind’s eye like untarnished petri dishes. “Don’t you remember how much fun science class was?” I asked.

  Pasternak’s eyes narrowed. I’d given the wrong answer. But I was the expert, so there was nothing he could do about it. He pressed forward with his sycophantism. “Mariana is at the forefront of technological advancement. This fall we’ll introduce Aciview, a grade catalogue system through which parents can observe students’ academic progress via an online password-protected site.”

  I imagined this dad perusing Aciview over his morning coffee: Looks like Bobby was down from a 3.6 to a 3.45 this week. And Mom, flipping the French toast: Oh, honey, education is a long-term investment. You can’t expect immediate dividends.

  Pasternak ushered the parents down the hall, pausing to take hold of my arm. “Can you stop by my office sometime this week, Jonah? At your convenience, of course.”

  Before I could respond, he was hurrying after the man in the pinstripes, attempting further damage control. The hippie parents followed the group toward the stairwell, but before they entered, the mother turned. Her eyes met mine with a sorrowful expression, though I couldn’t tell whether the look was for me or for her soon-to-be-matriculating children.

  I headed off in the opposite direction. There were a million things Pasternak might want to discuss: new textbooks, my role as Academic League advisor, the rising price of wheat. But at the moment when he’d gripped my arm with his bony fingers, I felt the unmistakable muscle memory of my past: I was still a naughty student in trouble.

  Iris

  October 2012

  AFTER THE PHONE-throwing incident, my parents called Dr. Patrick faster than you can say paranoid schizophrenic. I saw the landline light up, so I pressed the speaker button to listen in. Since they were discussing my mental health—without me!—I decided snooping was justified. Dr. Patrick wanted to know whether I was still talking to my “imaginary friend.” (The nerve of him, belittling Murrow like he was an invisible playmate!) He also said my involvement with the school paper was a
positive indicator of my “growing social integration and emotional rehabilitation,” but he advised my parents to monitor me for “further signs of erratic behavior or delusion.” He reminded them to be patient. “Remember, she’s grieving.” On the few occasions that Dr. Patrick nixed the psychobabble, he actually made sense.

  The next morning, classes were shortened for the “Community Forum,” Mariana’s fancy name for a school assembly. So far, we’d had speakers from MADD and SADD as well as GLADD (yup, Gays and Lesbians Against Drunk Driving). This time, HM Pasternak had brought in a “nationally respected psychologist and teen counselor” named Dr. Marcie Putz (“pronounced,” she assured us, “with a long u”) to talk about bullying. After forty-five minutes, I’d learned the following lesson: Don’t bully. A better message, I thought, would be to warn against saying any single word too many times in a row. The more Dr. Putz (long u!) said “bullying,” the more the letters morphed into a collection of meaningless sounds. B-u-l-l-y-i-n-g, I thought, trying to bring the meaning back. Bully pulpit. Bully Brooks. I tried to say “other people being bullied” three times fast, but I couldn’t do it.

  “Dr. Putz?” The short u echoed through the theater like a bull(y)horn. We all turned to see the Community Council president, Henry Landon, leaning against the theater door, his hands in his pockets. He was trying to look nonchalant, but his eyes told a different story. “Could a large group of people be bullied at the same time—like a collective bullying?”

  “I suppose,” Dr. Putz said into the mike. “Do you have something specific in mind?”

  “Well, I think we’re all being bullied right now. Outside.”

  “Excuse me?” Dr. Putz said, but she’d lost her audience. Everybody was jumping up and pushing toward the hall like Black Friday barbarians. Meanwhile, Pasternak shouted into the microphone demanding order, but to no avail. The crowd was drunk with disorder. Then all at once I was swept up and out of the theater. People crowded the windows. I squeezed myself in between two bulky football players and caught a good look outside.