How are we going to pay for his room and board?
How are we going to pay for his room and board?
How are we going to pay for his room and board?
He pushed open the door to the library and exhaled in the silence of the space. Brooklyn Visions Academy’s library was like a sanctuary. It was collegiate, full of fancy lamps and tables, ornate designs in the crown molding lining the ceiling and doors. This was the library where Shakespeare and all the rest of the dead white guys Miles had to study in school would’ve wanted to have their ashes scattered. Under the cherrywood floorboards, or mixed into the polish of the oak tables. At this hour, everyone was either in class or at lunch, so Miles had the place all to himself. Minus the librarian, Mrs. Tripley, or as she was known around campus, Trippin’ Tripley. Mrs. Tripley was who everyone expected Ms. Blaufuss to become in thirty years. An old lady full of so much life—so happy, so curious—that it seemed weird.
“Careful, Miles,” Mrs. Tripley said, as Miles walked through the doors. Mrs. Tripley knew everyone’s name. Every student, every teacher.
“Careful of what?” Miles said, staring up at her. “Looks like you’re the one who should be being careful.”
“Ah. Famous last words,” she said, twisting the bulb until the light flickered on. “I just didn’t want you walk under this ladder, is all.”
Miles smirked. “Mrs. Tripley, I don’t mean no harm, but why would I do that?”
“I have no idea, son. But people do it. And let me tell you, it’s bad luck.”
“I don’t need to walk under a ladder to have that.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Nothing. It’s just…You believe in that stuff?”
“What, superstitions?” She stepped gingerly down each rung of the ladder. “I don’t know. I think they’re interesting, and we can’t prove what we can’t prove, huh?” Miles had no idea what that meant, or if it meant anything at all. Mrs. Tripley continued, “But whether you believe in them or not, you still shouldn’t walk under a ladder, Miles. Because somebody like me might fall on you. And that, my dear, is bad luck.” She held the blown bulb to her ear and shook the burnt filament around inside. “Trust me. Been there.”
Miles opened his mouth to ask, but then decided against it.
“Now, what can I do for you?” Mrs. Tripley left the ladder in the middle of the floor and walked over to the trash can behind her desk, which was also big and wooden.
“Hide me.”
“Hide you?” Mrs. Tripley slapped her hands together to clear the dust from her fingers. “Are you being sought after? Are you the creature Frankenstein is chasing? Are you the young Bill Sikes being hunted by the mob of Jacob’s Island? Are you Ralph running from the spears of the other stranded kids? Hmmmm?”
“Um…I’m…Miles.”
“I know who you are, Miles. And that was Shelley, Dickens, and Golding. You, my dear, should spend more time in the library. It’s not just a hiding place, but also the place where the chases happen. Understand?”
“I…guess so?” Miles didn’t know what to say or how to respond to Trippin’ Tripley, and was regretting coming into the library at all. Ganke was probably scarfing down pizza, while Miles was trying to decode the school librarian.
“Now, on a serious note, you’re not really being chased, are you?” She leaned in, in case the chaser was in the building.
“No. I’m fine.” What he really wanted to say was I don’t know.
“Okay, phew. That’s good.” She knocked on the desk. “Knock on wood, Miles.”
“I don’t—”
“Just do it.”
Miles knocked. “Does anyone even know where that superstition came from?”
She grabbed a pile of books from a cart beside her desk, and started toward the stacks. Miles followed behind.
“Well, I don’t know if anyone does, but…I do,” Mrs. Tripley quipped. “See, in ancient times it was believed that good spirits lived in trees, and that when you knocked on them you were calling on them to come and protect you.” Then, while slipping a book onto the shelf, she added, “I’ll even do you one better. You know why people say you get seven years of bad luck if you break a mirror? Because souls are trapped in mirrors. And when you break a mirror you let them out!” She threw her hands in the air emphatically. “I mean, I don’t really believe that, and, honestly I don’t know why seven is the number of bad-luck years, but that’s where it comes from. Any other questions?”
“Yeah,” Miles said. “You know anything about white cats?”
“Other than they’re adorable? Nope.”
“Nothing?”
“You said white cats, right?” Miles nodded. “Yeah…I got nothing.”
“What about spiders?”
“They’re scary,” Mrs. Tripley said bluntly, while squeezing another book into an already stuffed row.
“But I mean, do you know any superstitions about them?”
Mrs. Tripley stopped between two bookshelves, turned to Miles. “I do know one thing. It used to be said that spiders could connect the past with the future. Something about the symbolism of the web.”
“You serious?”
“Of course.” She resumed restocking.
“How you even know all this?”
“Oh, Miles, because I live here.” She caught herself. “I mean, I don’t live here. I mean, look, sometimes I take a nap in the geography section, pretend I’m in Thailand, and wake up in the morning, but that doesn’t count as living here. So…don’t think that. But I live in the books. I read and read, all the heavy stuff, waiting for the day when one of my students, like you, comes in to ask me about…spiders.” She checked her watch. “Now, if I were you I’d get to class.”
“What time is it?”
“The first bell rang two minutes ago.”
“But I didn’t hear it.”
“Well, the lightbulbs aren’t the only things that blow out in this old place.” She winked.
Oh no. Oh no! Miles couldn’t be late for Chamberlain’s class. If there was any class he couldn’t be late to, it was that one. He dashed back through the stacks and barreled through the library door. The hallway wasn’t packed, which wasn’t a good sign because it meant the second bell would be ringing any moment. Miles broke out in a full-on sprint down the hall, rocketing into Mr. Chamberlain’s classroom, sweating and out of breath.
“Made it!” he spat. Mr. Chamberlain didn’t even acknowledge him. He was scribbling his daily quote over the faint outline of the quote that he’d written for the class before. When Miles got to his seat, Mr. Chamberlain began the chant for the day.
“All we ask,” he said softly, “is to be let alone.” He set the chalk in the chalk tray and pressed his hands together, meditatively, as the last few stragglers, including Hope Feinstein and Alicia, entered the room. The bell rang, which apparently was also the signal for Alicia to turn on her cold shoulder. Because she did.
And, like clockwork, the buzzing in Miles’s head started up.
Miles opened his mouth to speak to Alicia, but the words disintegrated like snow that melts before it hits the ground. He tried again, but was cut off by Mr. Chamberlain.
“All we ask is to be let alone,” Chamberlain repeated a little louder. Miles took that as a sign to let Alicia alone. Mr. Chamberlain repeated it a third time, and then asked, “Do any of you know who said that?”
“Yeah,” Brad Canby said, slouched at his desk. “Everybody in this class.”
Many of the students laughed, some even being obnoxious enough to bang on the desks as they howled. But Miles didn’t even crack a smile. He couldn’t afford to. Literally.
For a moment his mind drifted. He thought about what Tripley said about spiders representing the connection between the past and the future, and wished he could somehow apply that to getting his job back. Taking the past firing and connecting it to a future of reemployment.
Maybe I could just beg Dean Kushner.
<
br /> Maybe I could ask to be put on probation and given a chance to prove myself.
I mean, I’m basically a straight-A student. That’s gotta count for something, right?
“No, Mr. Canby,” Mr. Chamberlain said, totally ignoring the disrespect. “Actually it was Jefferson Davis.”
Maybe I could—wait, what?
And the cloud in Miles’s mind instantly vanished at the sound of his father’s name.
Jefferson Davis?
Buzz.
Then Miles said it out loud. “Jefferson Davis?” Managing his nausea was starting to become normal. He knew he wouldn’t die. It would just feel like death, like panic, like his brain was being held over a flame and his stomach was in the spin cycle. Spidey-sense, ignored.
Mr. Chamberlain opened his eyes. “Morales, have you forgotten classroom decorum? Raise your hand if you want to speak.” Again, Miles stared into his eyes.
“But Brad didn’t…” Miles closed his mouth, fuming. There was no use.
Alicia shifted in her seat as Mr. Chamberlain continued. “And, yes, Jefferson Davis. The president of the Confederacy during the American Civil War. The man who appointed Robert E. Lee general of the Army of Northern Virginia, to lead the most important Confederate army.” Mr. Chamberlain closed his eyes again. “The quote is a simple one, but it means so, so much. It’s simply asking that the people of the South be allowed to govern themselves. That the way things were was just fine.”
“Unless you were a slave,” Brad blurted out, rolling his eyes.
“Seriously,” Alicia said under her breath. Chamberlain opened his eyes just for a moment and shot her a glare. But he didn’t say anything. Just burned Alicia with his eyes. Then he snapped them shut again, took a deep, annoyed breath, and with his hands still pressed together, and without any finger-wagging or scolding, he replied to Brad. “Well, Mr. Canby, it’s a bit more complicated than that.”
While Alicia shook her head every few minutes, flustered by Mr. Chamberlain’s words, Miles drifted in and out of the lecture, not only dealing with the sandalwood leaping from the back of Alicia’s neck, but also the fact that his father’s name was the same name as the man who was fighting to keep slavery alive. And Chamberlain kept the Jefferson Davis quotes coming—Wherever there is an immediate connection between the master and slave, whatever there is of harshness in the system is diminished—as he preached from the front of the class to the two or three students scribbling in their notebooks and about fifteen other students who were listening to music, playing on their phones, or, like Brad Canby, had their heads on their desks, asleep. But Miles was neither writing nor sleeping. Instead he was sitting there, letting every word dagger through his mind.
“We underestimate the bond between slave and master. So many slaves were comfortable with being enslaved. Happy even. Later this week, maybe I’ll bring in some images to better illustrate my point.”
“Images?” Again, Alicia sparked up. “No disrespect, Mr. Chamberlain, but don’t you think that’s…I don’t know…taking it a bit far to illustrate your point?” Chamberlain didn’t budge. Alicia looked around the room for a supportive face, but most people had already checked out. She turned and glanced back at Miles, but he was staring down at the fake wood grain of his desk, fighting to keep Are you serious? trapped behind his lips. Too much going on. Too much at once. The buzzing was now a burning, the heat of frustration spreading throughout his body, but Miles just tapped his fingers on the desk, trying his best to keep his composure. He continued to sit, quietly stewing, as Mr. Chamberlain dug his heels into this ridiculous lecture. Miles wondered if at this point Chamberlain’s Civil War lesson was all just a bait-fail, because no one cared enough to engage except Brad, who was just playing around, and Alicia, who was simply ignored. But Chamberlain kept pushing.
“An interesting way to try to understand this is to think about dogs. Dogs don’t mind being on leashes—being in cages.” Mr. Chamberlain, in a rare instance, broke his statue-like stance, removed his blazer and set it on his desk in the corner of the room. Then he unbuttoned his cuffs, and flipped them so that his wrists were exposed. And that’s when Miles saw it. The dark outline of a cat on his left wrist. A tattoo he had seen other times but paid no attention to because Mr. Chamberlain was weird enough to have a tattoo of a cat on his wrist. The type of guy who had pet cats with complicated historical names, which he pretended were his children. That guy. But this tattoo was familiar. It wasn’t an actual image of a cat—it was a symbol. A cat with a bunch of tails. Like the cat Miles had dreamed about the night before.
Chamberlain took a step forward and placed his eyes right on Miles again. “And every time the dogs see their owners—the people who put those leashes around their necks, and feed them scraps—they wag their tails, happy. Some would even say…grateful.”
Grateful? Miles wasn’t sure because his brain had gone static, but he could have sworn Alicia had said it out loud at the exact same time he was thinking it. Grateful? And if she had said it, which, judging by Chamberlain’s brief pause and pinched lips, she had, Chamberlain again paid Alicia no mind. No reply. But that word, combined with the tattoo on Chamberlain’s wrist and the buzzing inside of Miles, was enough of a spark to light a fuse in him. Miles’s tapping fingers become a clenched fist. He raised it and slammed it down on the desk, splitting the wood and buckling the metal legs. Everyone jumped, including Alicia, who whipped around to see what had happened. Miles looked into her eyes, his chest heaving.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. Then to Mr. Chamberlain, “I’m sorry.”
“You should be!” Mr. Chamberlain snapped, but he didn’t seem startled by it at all. As if he was expecting it. He took another step closer. “It would be in your best interest to put a muzzle on…this anger of yours, Morales.”
“A muzzle?” Miles jumped from his seat, his desk crunched up in front of him. Luckily for him, at that very moment, the bell rang. Still with a closed fist, Miles looked around at his classmates, everyone wide-awake, looking on with their mouths hanging open. They slowly grabbed their bags under the heat of his gaze, as if they could be crunched up next. Miles eased his glare, collapsed his chest, collected his things as quickly as possible, and left.
As he tore into the hallway, Miles heard Alicia calling for him over his own internal voice yelling. Stupid, stupid, stupid! But he kept moving, juking through the mob of students, some already whispering about what had just happened moments before in class. Information moves faster in high school hallways than it does even on the internet. So Miles had to move twice as a fast.
“Miles!” Alicia shouted out again. But Miles put his head down and charged on. “Miles! Wait!” Alicia followed Miles to the end of the corridor. “Just…stop for one second!” she said, finally close enough to him to touch his shoulder. Miles turned around, his face tight and flushed, his chest heaving, his hands still trembling. It’s over for me. I’m outta here. Alicia caught her breath. “Look, I just wanted to say that what happened in class today was…was…we gotta do something.”
“Do something? Do what?” Miles shot back. “You wanna have a little poetry reading about it? You think that’s gonna help me?” The words came out with sharp edges. Prickly. And Miles regretted them as soon as they left his mouth.
“Help you?” Alicia’s face knotted. “You think this is about you, Miles?” She shook her head and sort of laughed, but not in a ha-ha kind of way. “This ain’t about you. This is about us. And not just you and me, but about Winnie, and Judge, and all the freshmen and sophomores who are gonna have to take this class. The seniors who already have. The kids coming into this school. And if Chamberlain’s acting like this, if he’s talking like this, you think he’s the only one? And you think you the only student he’s picked on?” Alicia crossed her arms. “Maybe a little poetry reading won’t do much, but let me ask you something, Miles, what are you gonna do?”
“That’s not how I meant it,” Miles said. “All I’m saying is, w
hat can I do? You…you just don’t know. I just…smashed a desk.” Miles caught himself. “I mean, I…I just pounded it, and it broke up like that. But the point is, they’re probably about to kick me out because of it. So, at this point, it don’t really matter what I do.”
“Oh, okay. I see,” Alicia said sarcastically. “I don’t know, huh? Well, let me tell you what I do know. You scared.” Miles opened his mouth to say something, but Alicia put her hand up, stopped him. “No, no. It’s okay. I understand. I don’t blame you for being scared, but because you are, you just not gonna do nothing, right? Just gonna take your defeat because that’s better, right?”
“Alicia…” Miles started, but he had nothing. No answers. No way to explain everything.
“Well, let me know how that all goes for you, Miles,” she said, turning and walking away.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“Aight, now spill it.”
Miles had finally gotten back to the dorm after his afternoon classes, his stomach morphing from a tight knot to an empty pit after talking with Alicia, the same thoughts repeating over and over in his mind: It’s over for me. I’m outta here. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Ganke had just turned on the Nintendo as Miles dug through his closet and pulled out his mask.
“Where do I even begin,” Miles started. “First, somebody robbed the store yesterday,” he said, flat. “While I was trying to get extra credit from Blaufuss, someone broke into—” He caught himself in a lie. No one “broke into” the store, because it was left wide open. “Someone came into the store and stole a bunch of sausage.”
“What?” Ganke immediately paused the game, glanced back at Miles, who was still digging in his closet. “Sausage?”
“Yep. Sausage. In a can.” Miles flung his mask and suit on his bed. “And they think I did it.”
“Who thinks you did it?”
Miles rubbed his face. “Dean Kushner. My folks. That’s why they came up here. They think I had something to do with it.” Miles shook his head. “I mean, not for nothing, I don’t even like sausage in a can.”
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