The Secret Life of
MS. FINKLEMAN
Ben H. Winters
For Diana, Rosalie, and Isaac
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
1 THE GREAT UNKNOWN
2 A WALKING, TALKING MYSTERY
3 TRADITIONAL ENGLISH FOLK BALLADS FROM THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
4 SPDSTAMF
5 THE GOLDBERG VARIATIONS
6 BETHESDA’S DAD
7 MOZART’S PIANO CONCERTO NO. 20 IN D MINOR
8 TENNY BOYER
9 “GREENSLEEVES”
10 THE TINIEST CHANGE IN PLAN
11 THE NOTE
12 FLOCCINAUCINIHILIPILIFICATION
13 GOPHERS
14 AWKWARD POPCORN
15 “LIVIN’ ON A PRAYER”
16 THREE LITTLE WORDS
17 BETHESDA FIELDING, MOUNTAIN CLIMBER
18 “ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!”
19 CHRISTMAS LIGHTS
20 ONE MORE PART OF THE SECRET
21 “GREAT BALLS OF FIRE”
22 “LOSE? WE CAN’T LOSE!”
23 OUT OF TIME
24 WASHINGTON CROSSING THE NILE
25 AN OLD CARDBOARD BOX SECURED WITH MASKING TAPE
26 A DREADFUL COUGH
27 “LET’S ROCK!”
28 “JANITOR STEVE IS GONNA FREAK”
29 THE ROCK SHOW
Epilogue JUNE
Acknowledgments
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
THE GREAT UNKNOWN
Ms. Finkleman was not the most popular teacher at Mary Todd Lincoln Middle School.
She wasn’t the most unpopular, either, of course. Never would she be ranked, for example, with famously horrible teachers like Mr. Vasouvian, the cruel gym instructor, or creepy Ms. Pinn-Darvish, the art teacher with the streak of purple in her jet black hair. But nor was Ms. Finkleman adored the way that some teachers are adored: teachers like gentle old Mrs. Howell, who brought brownies every second Friday, and who included a bonus question on every test relating to her cats, Jackie O and Mr. Spock.
No, Ms. Finkleman, who taught Band and Chorus, was considered neither awful nor excellent—indeed, she was hardly thought of at all. Her hair was a boring shade of brown, her face neither beautiful nor ugly, her speaking voice timid and plain, her clothes drab and conservative. A kid could pass her in the halls a hundred times and never know it—quiet, anonymous Ms. Finkleman, hurrying from the music room to the teachers’ lounge, her head down and her violin case clutched tightly to her chest.
In short, Ms. Finkleman was one of those people so totally unremarkable as to be essentially invisible.
She was until the Seventeenth Annual All-County Choral Corral, that is.
Until Little Miss Mystery and the Red Herrings.
Until Bethesda Fielding and Tenny Boyer got caught cheating and were very nearly expelled.
But as anyone can tell you—at least, anyone who has taken English Language Arts with Ms. Petrides—a good story starts at the beginning and ends at the end, no two ways about it. And the story of Ms. Finkleman’s shocking emergence from obscurity begins midway through second semester, in seventh-grade Social Studies with Mr. Melville.
Bethesda Fielding was enjoying the American Revolution.
She got to class first and snagged her favorite seat in the front row. Mr. Melville’s class didn’t have assigned seats, but Bethesda usually sat in the front—it was kind of dorky, but she was short and hated feeling like there were things going on she couldn’t see. As she dug out her Social Studies notebook (which was almost full, even though it was only February and seventh grade still had four months to go), Mr. Melville was already writing today’s lesson in big, sloppy, red capital letters across the board.
Yesterday morning Paul Revere had charged through the night to warn his countrymen about the British advance. Today, according to what Mr. Melville was scrawling on the dry erase board, someone named Israel Putnam would be leading the ragtag colonial forces in the Battle of Bunker Hill. Bethesda was a smart girl with a secret sense of herself as exceptional, and she got a certain flush of pleasure from stories of important people and the important things they had done. She waited impatiently, pencil poised above her spiral notebook, one sneakered foot squeaking against the leg of her chair.
Mr. Melville finished writing and stood at the front of the room, arms crossed, watching unsmilingly as Braxton Lashey rushed in thirty seconds after the second bell.
“Ah! Mr. Lashey! ” Mr. Melville exclaimed haughtily.
“You have decided to favor us with your company! What a pleasant surprise! ”
Mr. Melville was a large man of late middle age, with a wild mane of thick white hair, a thick white beard, and thick white eyebrows that were forever arching upward to express sarcasm, mock bewilderment, or scorn. The Eyebrows of Cruelty, as they were known to all at Mary Todd Lincoln Middle School, weren’t the only remarkable thing about Mr. Melville. It was also well known that he never spoke to other teachers and spent the lunch period alone at his desk, eating tuna salad and listening to jazz music. A third famous fact was that every semester he gave one huge test that determined 33.33 percent of your grade—and he never announced when the test would be until the night before. He called it the Floating Midterm, and when students complained, as they often did, he would say, “Whatever is the problem?” with an expression of exaggerated innocence. “If you’re paying attention in class, why would you need to study at all?”
Mr. Melville wasn’t the most popular teacher at Mary Todd Lincoln Middle School, either.
Braxton Lashey fumbled his way to his seat. “Please, Mr. Lashey,” said Mr. Melville, his tone thick with sarcasm, his eyebrows dancing wickedly. “Do take your time.”
When at last poor Braxton was settled, Mr. Melville began. “Before we are introduced to Generals Putnam and Howe, and discover that the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought on a different hill entirely … I have for you a Special Project.”
Bethesda Fielding grinned and flipped to a fresh page in her Social Studies notebook as reaction to Mr. Melville’s announcement burbled through the classroom. Chester Hu poked Victor Glebe in the arm and made a thumbs-up; Shelly Schwartz smiled brightly at Violet Kelp, who smiled brightly back; Rory Daas muttered, “Oh, sweet,” under his breath; Pamela Preston bounced giddily in her seat; Natasha Belinsky clapped three times and said, “Yay! ” Braxton Lashey, who had been digging through his backpack, pretending to search for a pen while he waited for his blush to fade, looked up and smiled.
Special Projects were another famous fact about Mr. Melville, and the only one that wasn’t something bad. Even kids who hated school (like Chester Hu) or were generally terrible at it (like Natasha Belinsky) got excited about Mr. Melville’s Special Projects. The only kids who didn’t were those who were totally spaced out—kids like Tenny Boyer, who always sat in the back row, doodling guitars on his jeans with a highlighter pen.
Special Projects were totally random assignments that had nothing whatsoever to do with the approved Social Studies syllabus. They were invented by Mr. Melville personally, in accordance with no curricular requirement or Board of Education guidance. Special Projects were weird, cool, and interesting. Best of all, Mr. Melville suspended regular homework while a Special Project was under way.
Every year parents grumbled about the projects (which took valuable time away from preparing for all the federally mandated standardized tests), and wondered why Mary Todd Lincoln’s principal hadn’t put a stop to them. The truth was that Principal Van Vreeland, like everyone else, was frightened of Mr. Melville and talked to him as little
as possible.
The last Special Project, back in December, had been on family trees, which most students thoroughly enjoyed—especially lucky Pamela Preston, who discovered that her great-great-great-great-uncle was the person who shot Jesse James. There had even been a picture of her in the newspaper, beaming, posed next to a scowling Mr. Melville.
Now, beneath BUNKER HILL, Mr. Melville slowly wrote three words in thick blue marker: THE GREAT UNKNOWN.
Bethesda Fielding carefully copied down this intriguing phrase, her sneaker squeaking more insistently, as Mr. Melville explained.
“Life is a mystery,” he said slowly, heavily enunciating every word. “An endless dance of secrets and ambiguity. The things you know and the things that you think you know are but tiny pebbles when set against the towering mountain of that which you do not know, and which you can never hope to know. My question for you, intrepid youth, is this: Do we cower in terror before the great unknown? Do we hide our heads? Are we mice? Or are we human beings?”
Pamela Preston’s hand shot up. “Human beings.”
“That was a rhetorical question, Ms. Preston, though your enthusiasm is appreciated,” Mr. Melville replied wearily. “Today’s Special Project is simple. Pluck out a loose thread from the vast tapestry of your existence, and follow it where it leads. Peer into the bottomless chasm of the great unknown, reach out for the hand of truth, and grab it! In summary, find a mystery, and solve it! ”
“Can I go to the bathroom? ” asked Chester Hu.
“No,” snapped Mr. Melville, giving Chester a baleful glare before he concluded. “By Monday! Seven hundred fifty words! Using primary sources! Yes? Good?”
“I don’t get it,” said Natasha Belinsky.
“I am terribly sorry, Ms. Belinsky,” said Mr. Melville, looking not at all sorry. “But we must press on.” And with that, Mr. Melville turned back to the board, uncapped his red dry-erase marker, and returned his class to Bunker Hill.
Meanwhile, at the end of Hallway C, in the Band and Chorus room, Ms. Finkleman was leading her first-period sixth graders through an off-key assault upon John Philip Sousa’s “King Cotton”—wholly unaware of Mr. Melville’s Special Project and the particular mystery Bethesda Fielding already had it in her head to solve.
2
A WALKING, TALKING MYSTERY
At lunch, Bethesda Fielding sat quietly at one end of a long table, sipping a strawberry melon Snapple, while her fellow seventh graders loudly considered various approaches to the Special Project.
Shelly Schwartz and her twin sister, Suzie, were considering why hot dogs are sold in packages of twelve, but hot-dog buns are sold in packages of eight. Victor Glebe was going to solve the mystery of whether Mr. Happy, the diving dolphin at Stinson Aquarium, was really happy, or just faking, in hopes of earning his freedom. “Oh my god,” said Chester Hu to Victor Glebe. “I love that idea! That’s such a good idea! Can we work together?” Hayley Eisenstein thought she might solve the mystery of why her mother no longer spoke to her uncle Allen. Braxton Lashey said he didn’t know what he was going to do, didn’t have any ideas, and he had left his lunch at home, so could anyone loan him a couple bucks?
Todd Spolin, who was eating a taco, said he was going to solve the mystery of what they put in the tacos.
“What about you, Bethesda?” asked Pamela Preston, who, ever since the whole great-uncle-shot-Jesse-James thing, sort of considered herself the queen of Special Projects. “What are you thinking?”
“Hmm? ” said Bethesda.
“What are you going to do your Special Project on?”
“Oh. Well,” Bethesda answered, “I think I’m going to do Ms. Finkleman.”
Pamela narrowed her eyes and tilted her head a little. “You’re going to do what?”
“Ms. Finkleman,” said Bethesda, taking a sip of her Snapple. “That’s probably what I’m going to do. I’m almost positive.”
Everyone looked at everyone else, and then at Bethesda, and there was a long silence; from the next table over they heard Tenny Boyer singing quietly to himself, oblivious as usual, bobbing his head to his iPod and reading a magazine. Then there was a loud crunching sound as Todd Spolin took an enormous bite of taco.
Bethesda smiled impishly around her straw and casually tucked a stray lock of her reddish tannish hair behind her ear. She had decided on her Special Project idea almost as soon as Mr. Melville had explained the assignment, and she was pretty pleased with it. It seemed like no one at lunch really got what she was talking about—and Bethesda was pretty pleased with that, too.
Pamela Preston broke the silence, addressing Bethesda as if she were telling a kindergartner not to eat paste. “Um, Bethesda? What exactly are you talking about? Ms. Finkleman is just our boring music teacher.”
“Or is she?” answered Bethesda dramatically, her smile widening, her foot squeaking animatedly against the leg of the cafeteria table.
“I’m sorry, Bethesda, but I totally don’t get it,” said Pamela.
“Me neither,” agreed Todd Spolin, although it sounded more like “nee never,” since he had a lot of taco in his mouth.
“It’s simple, really,” Bethesda said patiently. She took off her glasses and cleaned a speck of Snapple from her shirt as she spoke, drawing out her words to extend her time in the spotlight. “Okay. So. Mr. Melville’s assignment was for us to find a mystery in our life and solve it.”
“Wait—it was? ” said Natasha Belinsky, furiously paging through her notebook.
“Ms. Finkleman is a total unknown quantity. Right? Think about all the other teachers. We know that Mr. Darlington is married and lives in that old yellow building on Hatchet Street. We know that Mrs. Howell has the cats with the dumb names. We know that Ms. Zmuda went here when she was a kid.”
“We sure do,” said Chester Hu, rolling his eyes. “She never shuts up about it.”
“We even know that Mr. Melville is married, and there are some pictures of little kids on his desk. I bet they’re grandchildren.”
“I bet they came with the picture frames,” said Suzie Schwartz.
“But what about Ms. Finkleman?” Bethesda continued. “Is there a single famous fact about Ms. Finkleman? ”
There was another long silence, but Bethesda could tell it was less of a “what is she talking about?” silence and more of a “huh, that’s interesting” silence. Pamela still looked skeptical, but most of the others were starting to nod.
“You know, now that you mention it,” said Shelly Schwartz thoughtfully, “she’s such a quiet lady. I wonder where she comes from.”
“Exactly,” said Bethesda.
“Yeah. And is she married?” wondered Suzie. Everyone started to get into it.
“What about kids? Does she have kids?” offered Hayley Eisenstein.
“Does she have any friends?” said Braxton Lashey.
“What about pets? ” added the new girl, Marisol Pierce, shyly.
“Mmmhfm—nn—mmfffhm? ” said Todd Spolin.
“Exactly, exactly, exactly!” Bethesda responded, waving a finger in the air. “That is what I’m going to find out!”
“No offense, Bethesda,” said Pamela, crossing her arms across her chest. “But I don’t think it’s the greatest idea.”
“I agree,” said Natasha Belinsky, crossing her arms in exactly the same way. “Who cares about Ms. Finkleman?”
“I do!” said Bethesda. “And so should you guys.”
Bethesda stood and addressed the other kids at the table as if she were making a big closing argument in a courtroom. “This woman is a part of our lives! She’s a part of our community! We take music from her every single day.” (Which wasn’t true, since music and art alternated, plus there were weekends and everything, but nobody interrupted. Bethesda was on a roll.) “And yet we don’t know the first thing about her! Ms. Finkleman is a walking, talking mystery, right in our midst, and I am going to solve her! I mean solve it! I mean—you know what I mean! ”
And with
that, Bethesda spun on her heel and exited the lunchroom.
And then, a second later, came back. “I forgot my Snapple.”
Then she spun on her heel and exited the lunchroom again.
“Well, whatever,” said Pamela Preston, when Bethesda was gone. “I am going to solve the mystery of where Jesse James is buried. I don’t know if you guys heard, but it was my great-great-great-great-uncle who shot him.”
“Yeah,” Chester said. “We heard.”
3
TRADITIONAL ENGLISH FOLK BALLADS FROM TEl SIXTEENTH CENTURY
At that very moment, Principal Isabella Van Vreeland sat at the large mahogany desk that dominated her vast, thickly carpeted office, wearing a giant foam sombrero and halfheartedly eating an egg-salad sandwich. As she chewed, she stared at her computer screen, reading and rereading an email from Principal Winston Cohn of Grover Cleveland Middle School. Finally she scowled, put down her sandwich, and shouted. “Jasper! Get in here!”
Assistant Principal Jasper Ferrars, a very thin and very tall man with close-cut black hair, rushed in with notebook and pen at the ready. “Yes! Principal! Ma’am! Hi! What is it?”
“Jasper, I—Stop looking at me like that.”
“I wasn’t! I mean, I was looking at you. Of course I was looking at you. But only in order to be attentive,” Jasper answered rapidly. “I wasn’t, you know, looking at you. How’s your sandwich? Is it okay? Good sandwich?”
“You are looking at me like I’m wearing a giant foam sombrero that says GO GROVER CLEVELAND on it.”
“Yes. I was. I may have been. I can’t remember. But, as you know, the fact of the matter is … you are wearing a giant foam sombrero that says GO GROVER CLEVELAND on it.”
Principal Van Vreeland leaped up from her desk. “And whose fault is that? ”
“Um—mine?” stammered Jasper.
“No,” snapped Principal Van Vreeland. “But good guess. It is the fault of our girls’ softball team, which was trounced by Grover Cleveland.”
The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman Page 1