Or Not

by Brian Mandabach

  “Wish we had swimming suits,” I said.

  “Sean’s busy at the upper lake—we could skinny-dip.”

  I scanned the slopes above us, looking for hidden watchers. “Didn’t he and Dad say they saw some other fishermen up here?”

  “I don’t see anybody today.”

  The truth was that I wasn’t too keen on baring my birthday suit in front of my mom, even if there were no other eyes upon us.

  “Come on,” she said. “Don’t be such a prude.”

  “I don’t think so, Mom.”

  Our rock jutted out into the water, and she was dangling her feet in, testing it.

  “It’s so cold, a dip is all we’ll be able to stand—”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, I’m cooling off.”

  She stripped, and slipped into the water, whooping, to her shoulders, then shot out again, hauling herself back onto the rock.

  “Wheeeeeeeee-hooooooo! More like freezing off. Once more.”

  This time she kicked off from the rock and did half a dozen strokes out into the lake, her pale bottom mooning on the surface, before turning and racing back.

  She came up sputtering and blowing, dried herself a little with her sweatshirt, and got dressed again. I cooled off by wading in up to my thighs and dunking my face and hair, but I felt lame, chicken, and as Mom said, like a prude.

  Today, Mom and I braced ourselves against the wind, gazing down at the blue lakes amid patches of snow.

  “Skinny dipping?” I suggested.

  “Now you’re up for it,” she said, reaching her arm around my shoulder and pulling me over to her, “when there’s too much cold and not enough time.”

  She held me next to her for a minute, leaned her head against mine, and then kissed my head through my cap.

  “Come on,” she said. “We’d better go down.”

  9 September

  Dearest Di: school was amusing today. I got a hard time in my lit circle for not finishing the new book, A Light in the Forest. I could have, but it was making me mad—another story about settlers and Indians, and guess who wins in the end?

  So, I had to sit out the discussion and read, which served to remind me that showing up and doing your work is the best way to avoid being bothered. But as I skimmed the rest of the book and wrote my questions, it occurred to me that this wasn’t so bad. Maybe if I was always behind, I’d always get to skip out on the group discussion.

  Next was choir. When it was time for the hated song, I got down off the riser—I’m in the back row—and sat over in the corner. Mr. Kimble waved me back up, but I shook my head no.

  After they went through it once, he came over.

  “Are you okay, Cassie?” He squatted by my chair, speaking low—a little private chat.

  “I’m all right,” I answered.

  “What is it with this song? I’m beginning to notice a pattern.”

  “A pattern?” All innocence.

  “First you get sick, then you’re mouthing—you think I can’t tell? Now you just step down. I think I’ve been indulgent, maybe too indulgent, but we are performing the day after tomorrow. It is time for you to sing. So get back up there and sing this song.”

  I remembered how he’d taught us diaphragmatic breathing—I was using it now to help steady myself.

  I shook my head.

  “Get back in your spot and sing,” he said. His face was red, like he was holding his breath—while I continued the deep belly-breaths and shook my head again.

  Then he exhaled a long sigh. Kids were turning around to see what was going on.

  “May I ask why not?”

  “It’s personal.”

  “Well, take your person out into the hall until you’re ready to sing.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, but I’m afraid it came out in a mocking tone. I must have overdone the pseudo-sincerity.

  This was the second time I had been sent out into the hall this year. It isn’t so bad, really.

  I waited until I heard the opening chords of “America the Beautiful,” then I slipped back in and climbed into place. I sang loudly and clearly—just to prove my patriotism. We sang right to the bell, and I slipped out with the crowd, which delivered me some strange sideways glances. I think Mr. Kimble wanted me to stick around for another chat, but I was gone.

  10 September

  In English today, they came and got me. I’m used to seeing kids get the orange summons to the office, but it had never come for me.

  Dr. Hawkens, assistant principal for discipline, motioned me into a chair across from his desk. He pressed a couple of buttons on his phone and slid his mouse around a little, clicking here and there as he listened to the phone and scanned his monitor. Then he put down the phone and turned to me.

  “Cassandra Sullivan—I haven’t seen you up here before. I think the only time we’ve met is when I’ve read your name at our honor assemblies. No previous discipline referrals. Four point-oh GPA. Advanced on all your CSAPs, though last spring’s aren’t in yet.” He looked at me, smiling a little close-mouthed smile. “What’s the sudden insubordination and disrespect for staff and students—what’s this all about?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He waved the referral in his hand. “Choir yesterday.”

  “I wasn’t disrespectful.”

  He folded his hands on his desk. “Why don’t you tell me what happened in there.”

  “What does it say?”

  “Asked you first.” He grinned. “I just want to hear your side of the story, then I’ll tell you what Mr. Kimble had to say.”

  “Well—” I couldn’t believe this. I’ve seen kids throw punches at each other and be back in class the next day. Once a kid told the teacher to fuck off, and he was back in half an hour. I was getting busted for not singing?

  “Insubordination means refusing—” he began.

  “I know what it means.” I heard Mom’s voice in my head, Steady . . .

  “Good,” he said. “You’re a bright girl. Tell me what happened, Cassandra, and we’ll get this worked out.”

  “Nothing to tell.”

  He turned back to his computer, clicked away at his mouse for a while, and heaved a sigh. I was getting good at making these people sigh.

  “Cassandra—”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s one thing: Mr. Kimble said that you refused to sing, and when he assigned a time-out in the hall,” here he began to read, “‘Miss Sullivan said YES SIR! in a loud and sarcastic tone audible to the entire class.’ What do you have to say about that?”

  I shook my head.

  “Don’t want to make this any easier, do you?”

  I shrugged.

  “Well, what would you like to see happen?”

  I gave him another shrug, but he kept trying.

  “I’ll tell you what. Mr. Kimble wants you out of that group. His position is that the show choir is an elite group, our crème de la crème, if you will, and he will not stand for rebellion among the ranks. As for myself, I tend to agree. However—”

  A measured pause here, then he leaned forward, resting his arms on the desk. “However, let’s imagine a different outcome. How about you apologize. How about you sing the song, loud and strong, and agree not to pull a stunt like this again. I think we could, then, let bygones be bygones, water under the bridge.” Back to the little smile—so confident that this was just a little bump that could easily be smoothed.

  “Sound like a solution?”

  Sounds like a crock of Cheez Whiz, I wanted to say, but again, I shook my head.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Okay. Fabulous. One day in-house suspension, for starters. We’ll also transfer you to another elective. Is art okay? Excellen
t. He’s always got plenty of empty chairs—lot of kids run crying to the counselors to transfer out of there when they get their schedules. Unfortunately, this would be your transfer-quota for the year, so don’t ask. That suspension can start right now, by the way. I’ll send somebody down to get your books.”

  So I spent the rest of the day in the little in-house suspension room. They collected my assignments for me, and I was done with them before lunchtime. The school security guy, Mr. Bad they call him—short for Badagliaccio—actually escorted me down to my locker to get my lunch.

  As everybody in the hall gawked, I got the first taste of peer admiration I’d had in a while.

  Quill swerved over across the hall and tried to shake my hand.

  “Cassie the Antichrist!” he said. “Public enemy.”

  “Okay, that’s enough,” said Mr. Bad. “Back to the hole.”

  Quill erupted in laughter at this, and really, come on: back to the hole?

  Mom and Dad were angry at first, getting a call about “insubordination” and “disrespect for staff and students.” But when I told them the whole story—swearing that I had not been disrespectful when I was talking to Mr. Kimble and saying that maybe I should have made nice to Dr. Hawk—they seemed to understand.

  “So, what happens now?” said Mom.

  “I just want it to blow over as soon as possible.”

  “I can accept the insubordination,” said Dad. “But how were you disrespectful to the students?”

  “Maybe he thinks I’m disrespecting them … ”

  “Disrespect is not a verb, Cassie. Don’t disrespect the language.”

  “Yes, sir. He always says that it’s disrespectful not to give your best to every song.”

  “Okay, in principle, but—”

  “I’m just disappointed that you’re out of the choir,” said Mom. “I enjoyed hearing you sing, you’re good at it—”

  “And she looked so fetching in that tuxedo outfit,” added Dad.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to apologize and get back in?”

  “Not if I have to sing that song.”

  “Performers don’t get to choose the program, Cassie. I hate to see you giving up your music over this.”

  “Choir is not my music, Mom. It was your idea.”

  11 September

  This morning I got to hang out in the hole until Doctor Hawk was ready to see me again and readmit me to class. I polished my apology letters, removing all traces of sarcasm, trying to keep them simple.

  Dear Dr. Hawkens,

  I apologize for my rude and disrespectful behavior yesterday. I’m sorry for behaving in such a bratty way.

  Respectfully,

  Cassandra Sullivan

  Dear Mr. Kimble,

  I apologize for my disobedience and disrespect to you and your students. I did not mean to be disrespectful to you or to them. I’m sorry for being such a smart aleck.

  Respectfully,

  Cassandra Sullivan

  I think those are some heroic words, Di. I worked long and hard on them, agonizing over such things as the contraction “I’m” versus “I am.”

  The doctor barely glanced at my notes and wrote me a pass to class. I’m not sure what my teachers had heard about this thing, but Mr. Math accepted my homework without a word. As for my peers, their eyes were drilling me hard. Quill’s friend DJ sits next to me and asked me what happened.

  “Nothing,” I whispered. “I just had to change my elective.”

  “What’d you get?”

  “Art.”

  “Have fun. He, like, hates everybody.”

  I thought that sounded funny—how can you like/hate at the same time? I was about to ask DJ which it was, like, like or, like, hate when we were rudely interrupted.

  “Miss Sullivan,” said Mr. Math. “Maybe, after missing almost half the class, we’d better concentrate extra hard on our work instead of telling stories?”

  I bent over my book, letting my hair slide down like blinders, wondering why I got yelled at when DJ was talking too.

  At lunchtime, I went to Mr. Griffin’s Lord of the Rings group, grateful to have an excuse for avoiding the cafeteria. When I showed up, there were a few seventh-grade girls in his room along with Quill, DJ, and their friend Kelly, sitting on desks in two separate groups, chatting and eating.

  “Cassie Sullivan, welcome,” said Mr. Griffin. “Everyone, this is Cassie. I had her big brother a few years back, and I understand she is quite the scholar of Middle Earth.”

  “I thought she was just the school Antichrist,” Quill said. “Excellent.”

  “Cassie, today we are discussing the Fellowship, book two, Rivendell through Moria.”

  “Khazad-dûm,” said DJ.

  “Deep are the wells of Kheled-zâram,” said Quill.

  “Cold are the springs of Kibil-nâra.”

  Mr. Griffin tried to get everybody into a circle, and then people read passages out loud from the book. DJ read the song, written by Bilbo:

  Eärendil was a mariner

  that tarried in Arvernien . . .

  It was really long. A couple of the girls were whispering through it, and people kept breaking off into side conversations, but it was cool anyway. When lunchtime was over, half of them hadn’t had a chance to read their parts, so next week we’re going to stick with the same section.

  “You read something, too, Cassie,” said Mr. Griffin. “And not some endless, obscure poetry.”

  “You don’t like Eärendil?” DJ said to Griffin.

  “I do,” I said. “But I like Sam’s poetry better: ‘Troll sat alone on his seat of stone, and munched and mumbled on a bare old bone.’”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Griffin. “See you guys next week.”

  Then it was back to reading class where, instead of lit circles, we had a September 11th writing prompt:

  Now that some time has passed since the terrorist attacks, what are your thoughts on what has happened and what has changed for you and your country since then?

  It looked like, with the assembly seventh period, the rest of the day was going to be devoted to this topic. Trouble is, everything you say about that day sounds like either understatement or hyperbole or both. I still cry sometimes when I think of all those firefighters going up while everybody else is going down. I still get freaked when I see a plane in the clear morning sky, and I think I’ll always carry the image in my mind of people falling from the windows of the twin towers.

  But did anything change?

  People seemed nicer for a while. The pain brought us together, everyone said, and I felt it myself. I also felt it fade—into pride and the big psych-up for war and blood.

  I remember hearing of the Taliban leader’s children being bombed. “How does it feel now, Mr. Mullah?” I remember thinking. “How does it feel when it’s your kids?”

  But it wasn’t the little kids’ fault, and how can we hate them for killing our innocents when we turn around and kill theirs? Isn’t it the same?

  After we wrote, we had to read aloud. It was the usual stuff: people telling about where they were when they heard and how sad and afraid they were and how much television they watched. It has changed us, they said, by bringing the country together, making us stronger, making us value our freedom, blah, blah, blah. One girl’s dad was in New York, which would have been scary—and one guy’s cousin was killed—not that he sounded that broken up about it. One of the goofballs said that we should nuke the Middle East, an idea that inspired a great deal of clapping and hooting.

  Then Sinclair asked me to read what I had written, and did I decline? No, I just opened my big mouth and went for it:

  The silhouette of a jet

  In the blue morning sky,

  Conf
etti. Ashes. Dust.

  People flying out windows,

  Caught by the camera,

  Confetti. Ashes. Dust.

  Frozen in the sky,

  Falling forever,

  Confetti. Ashes. Dust.

  Never to land,

  Never to escape,

  Confetti. Ashes. Dust.

  That blue sky,

  That black smoke,

  Confetti. Ashes. Dust.

  Never to escape,

  Never to land,

  Confetti. Ashes. Dust.

  That’s how it was.

  That’s how it will remain.

  What has changed?

  What will change?

  An eye for an eye, and a you for an I, a cry for a cry, a child for a child, they must die for

  a die until the last dying cry.

  W.

  W.

  J.

  D.

  I didn’t expect a lot of enthusiasm, so I wasn’t disappointed when my reading was followed by a less than polite silence. Sinclair was mumbling something about liking the repetition when Jenny burst out with, “What is her problem, anyway?”

  “No personal attacks, Jenny.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “But that is just wrong.”

  “I thought it was cool,” said Liz Pine. “Like, totally twisted, but cool. It reminded me of Nine Inch Nails, or Marilyn—not that I’m into them anymore—”

  “Who else would like to read?” Sinclair said. “We have just enough time for one more.”

  Next was art. Before we went down to the assembly I met my charming new teacher, got a spot on his seating chart, and received a little advice:

  “We’re here to study art, Miss Sullivan. You do your work and be quiet about it and we’re not going to have any problems here. Do we understand each other?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. No need to worry about sarcasm here—I got the impression he wasn’t hard-wired to pick it up.

  My peer group was remarkably well behaved at the assembly, and our principal expressed her pride, declaring that the future of America was in good hands with patriots like us coming up.

  One of the counselors gave a sort of eulogy for the fallen, which was followed by “America the Beautiful.” Both were very solemn and accompanied by teary eyes and some sobbing by assorted girls. It’s awful to be so cynical, Di, but I have a hard time swallowing my bile when a group of these girls, all BFF (best friends forever), get hysterical together. There were a bunch of them clustered around the counselor afterwards. This was after a rousing version of the hated song got everybody up and singing. I remained seated, just like for the pledge of allegiance, but I’m already paying for it.