by Ben Sciacca
“You made those choices because they were easy,” Malik replied.
“Excuse me?” Jim said, his lips tightening.
“You wouldn’t last a day at my school, Jim.”
“And here we go again!” Jim said, throwing his hands up in the air.
“I won’t bore you, man. But let me tell you a story.”
Ms. Jones leaned back from staring at her computer screen and barked at the class. “Everyone in here needs to sit down, shut up, and just watch the movie! If you keep on hollering, I’ll turn it off and hand out some homework.”
Malik sighed. He hated his chemistry class, and he hated Ms. Jones even more. It was Tuesday. They were watching The Fast and the Furious 3 for the second time this quarter. Most of his classmates were standing and talking. Aside from the periodic table on the wall and a poster of a kitten holding a test tube, there wasn’t any evidence of chemistry in the entire classroom. It had been this way for the last eighteen weeks.
Ms. Tuck, the usual chemistry teacher, was still out on medical leave after trying to break up a fight in the gym. Ms. Jones was an old, tenured teacher who did nothing but show videos and scream vain threats at the kids. No one cared or responded.
Malik sat in the back with his history book open. Mr. Dukes, his history teacher, was the only instructor who attempted to teach each day. His class was the only one that Malik actually enjoyed.
Just then the door opened. The assistant principal, Dr. Griffin, walked in with a clipboard in his hand. He gave Ms. Jones a quick glance, but she never looked up from what she was watching on her computer. A few of the students noticed him in the door and sat down, but the majority of the class continued to talk, laugh, and play with their phones.
“I need everyone’s attention!” Dr. Griffin shouted over the din. He glared at the class through his glasses. “Sit your butts down and give me your attention!”
“Docta Griff!” one of the kids, William, hollered from the back. “What up, Docta Griff!”
The assistant principal frowned. “Ah, Mr. Will, good morning, sir. Thank you for your greeting. I need you to head to the office.”
William frowned and cocked his head backward. “The office? What’d I do?”
Dr. Griffin turned to Ms. Jones. “Would you please turn off that TV? I can’t hear myself think.”
Ms. Jones picked up the remote and clicked off the television without looking up from her computer. Dr. Griffin looked back at his clipboard. “Let’s see . . . Jamal Anderson, Shaquita Bird, John Cole, Everson Masterson, Tyrone Smith, Mike Thomas, William Thompkins . . . and . . . Brenden Watson. Please grab your things and head to the office.”
Brenden turned to Malik. “Man, what the—? They sending me home, bro?”
Malik glanced at his friend and rubbed his chin. He watched as the dismissed classmates started to shout and curse in dismay.
“Standardized testing starts tomorrow, doesn’t it?” Malik said.
“Yeah, I think so. So what?”
“My guess is they’re tryin’ to boost the stats, dude,” Malik said with a slight shrug.
“Huh?”
“Look at the list, bro,” Malik said, shaking his head. “Jamal is failing like every single class. Shaquita can hardly read. Tyrone and William don’t even try—they go to sleep during testing like every year.” Malik offered Brenden a knowing smile. “You do too, bro. They want to boost the numbers and get out from being a failin’ school.”
“So they’re gonna suspend us?” Brenden said. “That ain’t right!”
Dr. Griffin was a large man and able to shout over the disgruntled classroom. “I don’t need to repeat myself again! If I called your name, grab your stuff and head to the office. Now!”
“What’d we do wrong, Dr. Griff?” Jamal shouted as he balled up his fists. Several of the kids turned their heads toward the door as a small pack of loud students moved down the hallway toward the office.
“Yep,” Malik said. “That’s what they’re doin’. I just saw Patrick and Cameron. Central did somethin’ like this last year. Remember? They sent like thirty kids home for three or four days.” He shook his head. “This is ridiculous, bro.”
Brenden looked at Malik in disbelief and then turned to Dr. Griffin. “You sending us home because you think we’re stupid?”
Dr. Griffin flinched slightly before speaking. “Mr. Brenden, it’s time to go. Grab your things now. You and the others I just called are excused from taking the tests this week. You’re making a bigger deal out of this than it needs to be. If anyone continues to argue with me, you’ll be going home for a long time.”
Jamal stood up with a grin on his face. “Aye! Dr. Griff said we don’t have to take that test. That thing is too boring, man! I’m cool with that. Let’s go, y’all.”
Brenden looked at Malik. “You should go, dude,” Malik said. “This is lame, but there’s no reason to make things worse. Just treat it like vacation or somethin’.”
Brenden sniffed and nodded. “Cool, bro. You go ahead and take the test then. Boost the stats for us, or whatever.” He snatched his backpack off the floor and headed toward the door with his classmates. Dr. Griffin pushed his glasses up his nose and watched Brenden as he exited. He took another look at Ms. Jones, but she was still engrossed with her computer.
“So they just sent those kids home?” Jim interrupted. “For what? Didn’t the parents care? I’m guessing they didn’t stand for having them sent home for no reason.”
“I don’t know if the parents cared,” Malik replied. “The administration had some old disciplinary stuff on almost every kid they sent home: fighting, defiance in the classroom, cheating, some other nonsense that they held on to until this week of testing. They had a ‘reason’ for why each kid was sent home. Not everyone knew why those kids were told to leave that week. Some just thought the school was handing out a bunch of suspensions. But some of us knew. They sent over forty kids home tryin’ to get our stats over the line so that we wouldn’t be a failin’ school no more.”
“Did it work?” Jim asked.
“Huh!” Malik laughed. “They tried to make it work.”
Dr. Griffin walked over to Ms. Jones’s desk and handed her a blue folder. Then he walked out the door. Ms. Jones took another minute to finish what she was watching on her computer screen before clicking it off and standing up.
“All right class, listen up!” Many of the students continued to discuss what had just happened with their classmates. “Tomorrow we start the standardized testing. These tests are very important for our school.” She grabbed the folder off the desk and started walking down the aisles, handing each student a stapled packet.
“Is this another crossword puzzle?” Briana commented from the front of the class. Ms. Jones ignored her.
Malik took his packet and studied it for a minute. “Yo,” Benny said as he turned to Malik. “Is this some kinda review sheet? Aye, Ms. Jones. What is this? You can’t be givin’ us a science test because we haven’t learned any science in here all year.”
Several students laughed. Others nodded their head in agreement. Ms. Jones stood in the front of the class and smacked the folder with her hand. “This,” she said loudly, “is the answers to the science section of the standardized test.”
“So you’re just givin’ us the answers?” Benny asked, incredulous.
“We’re going to spend the next forty minutes studying this together.” Ms. Jones pulled out a packet. “Let’s get busy.”
Malik looked around the room. There were a few surprised faces. A couple of his classmates shrugged, but within thirty seconds everyone was quiet and absorbing the answers on the sheet of paper. He sighed and joined the crowd.
“What they did is illegal,” Jim said.
“Yeah, probably,” Malik said. “But you think anyone cares? Do you care? Who cares about what happens at Edgewood High, man? Nobody for real. Our stats don’t matter to nobody.”
Jim turned back toward the fire to think
for a moment. Malik chuckled and shook his head. “It didn’t make a difference. They sent like the bottom ten percent of our class home along with most of the troublemakers. Then they gave out the study guides for science to everybody. Almost everyone crushed that section on the test. But only a handful of us did okay on the rest of it. Most of the smart kids there don’t care enough to pull that school out of the hole it’s in. We stayed a failing school.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Jim said. “I mean, cheating went on at my school. But it was usually a handful of kids with their own elaborate schemes. I’ve never heard of anything that drastic before.”
“So does Edgewood sound like a place where you’d be able to work hard, study, focus, and make all your ‘good choices’?”
Jim remained silent, so Malik continued. “I’ve been going there for four years. I can count on one hand how many teachers actually care enough to teach each day. Most of ’em are old and tenured and don’t care. I can count on two hands and about six of my toes how many times the police have been up there and pulled guns and knives off of my classmates. I lost track of how many fights I’ve seen ’cause there are probably two to three good ones each week. So, when you make it sound so simple, like ‘Hey, just go to class, just pay attention, just do your work, make good choices, blah, blah, blah’—you lose me, man. My guess is that your toughest choices each day were which girl to ask out or what to eat for lunch in the cafeteria.”
One of the large, glowing logs at the base of the fire was permeated with jagged fissures of orange. The heat pulsated in it as if the log were breathing. With a sharp crack it disintegrated into several coals. Jim watched in silence, then jumped up and tossed in another log, unleashing a cloud of sparks that swirled around and up the chimney like fireflies.
14
THE CONFUSION
12:25 a.m., Tuesday before Thanksgiving
MALIK COULD FEEL SLEEP CLOUDING HIS MIND and tugging at his eyelids. The waves of heat from the fire comforted him, and the dancing flames mesmerized him into a trance. But his back hurt, and the hard chair was uncomfortable. He groaned and stood up. Jim was battling his own weariness, and Malik’s movement startled him. He lurched slightly.
“Dang, man,” Malik said. “I think my butt fell asleep.” He rubbed his rear end. “I can’t feel nothin’ back there right now.”
Jim dragged his hands wearily across his face as Malik jogged in place for a minute to revive his legs.
“I’m hungry,” Jim said. He held his hands to his stomach.
“Me too,” Malik replied. He feigned a few punches at the shadows.
“My wife was cooking her famous chicken casserole tonight,” Jim continued, wistfully. “I bet she would have even let me sample a piece of the apple pie she was saving for Thanksgiving.”
“You know what I could go for right now?” Malik flopped back in his chair.
Jim was still dreaming of the apple pie, topped with some vanilla ice cream. “What’s that?”
“A deep-dish pizza, man,” Malik said, wide-eyed. “Pepperoni. Yeah . . . deep dish pepperoni from Pizza Hut.”
“If I had my phone,” Jim mumbled, “or if yours still worked, we could probably get one delivered.”
“Psh! Pizza Hut would probably deliver way out here in the middle of this hunting camp before they ever delivered a pizza to my apartment.”
“You don’t have Pizza Hut in Edgewood?” Jim asked, with surprise in his voice.
“We got one,” Malik said. “But they don’t deliver no more. Nobody delivers in Edgewood for real.”
“Why’s that?”
“Too many delivery dudes were gettin’ jumped and robbed.” Malik suddenly realized he was validating Jim’s fears of his neighborhood even more. “So one by one they stopped delivering.”
“Mugging the pizza guy,” Jim said. “Now you’re starting to understand—”
“I know what you’re gonna say, so don’t say it.”
Jim frowned. “I’m just saying, once the pizza guy doesn’t feel safe in a neighborhood, there isn’t much hope that anyone will. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to rob and hurt someone like that—it makes even less sense when people rob and hurt the very folks who are trying to help them.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Malik asked.
Jim raced down the hallway dodging nurses and orderlies in his way. The ER was the last place he expected to be that morning, but when he heard about his old college roommate, he came straight to the hospital.
The storm from the night before had knocked almost a third of the city’s power out. Several homes, including his, were still waiting for the electricity to be restored. The power company was out in force, cutting limbs and fixing lines.
Jim paused in front of Sam’s room and knocked three times before pushing the door open. As he entered the room, he saw Sam’s girlfriend, Ginny, and his mother sitting down and talking softly. “Jim,” Ginny said with a weak smile. She wiped a strand of hair out of her face and offered him a hug.
Jim nodded at Sam’s mother. “Good morning, Ms. Langston. How are you both doing?”
“We’re making it,” Ginny replied. She placed her hand on Ms. Langston’s knee.
Jim turned toward his friend in the bed. “How’s my boy Sam doing?” What he saw took him aback. The left side of Sam’s face was purple and swollen. There were stitches below his eye. He wore a neck brace. Dried blood was caked in one of his eyebrows and in his hair. His lips were split in two places. He was sleeping.
“What happened?” Jim asked, turning back to the two women. “I know those storms were awful last night. Did he fall from the truck? Or did something fall on him? He looks terrible.”
Ms. Langston shook her head. “He got mugged, Jim,” Ginny said. A few tears formed in her eyes.
“Mugged?” Jim asked, incredulous. “I don’t get it. Wasn’t he out restoring power last night?”
“His crew services the west side,” Ms. Langston said softly. “He was in the truck while his partner was in the lift repairing a line.”
Jim narrowed his eyebrows.
“Some men came up to the truck,” Ms. Langston continued, “and told him to give them his wallet. He told them he didn’t have any money—you know Sam . . .”
“He never has any cash with him,” Jim said, shaking his head.
“One of the guys hit him in the face,” Ms. Langston continued. “His friend in the lift saw the whole thing, but he couldn’t do anything.”
“I don’t get it,” Jim said. He was getting angry. “Wasn’t he trying to get those people’s power back on?” Ms. Langston nodded. “And they decided to rob and beat him in the middle of him trying to help them?”
“He handed them his wallet,” Ms. Langston said with a sniff. “When they saw that he had no money, one of them snatched him out of the truck. They beat him up and just left him there in a bloody heap.”
“What types of animals do something like that?” Ginny asked with tormented eyes. “I mean, that’s just inhumane.” Jim was stunned.
“Some of his crew members have been mugged over there before,” Ms. Langston said. “But nothing like this. He’s been trying to transfer to working over on this side of town, but he’s new to the company and has no pull.”
Jim folded his arms. “Did they catch the guys who did this?” Ginny shook her head.
“Maybe those punks would think twice if they had to wait a month or two before they got their power turned on again,” Jim muttered. “If they want to act like they’re from the jungle, then they can live in the jungle. That makes me so mad!”
“Could you talk to Mary Beth’s dad and try to get Sam transferred to another crew?” Ginny asked. “This is just too much.”
“Sure, Ginny, I can talk to him. I think he’ll listen.”
“Please,” Ms. Langston pleaded. “A mom can’t stand to see her son like this. He’s not a soldier or a policeman where he should have to be fearing for his life each day.”
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“It’s dangerous enough just messing with power lines,” Jim replied. “I’ll do what I can to get Sam out of there.”
Malik nodded. “Yeah, it’s messed up when stuff like that happens. Makes me mad too.”
“But what’s the point? Do guys like that not realize that they’re acting no better than dogs—that they’re giving that whole neighborhood a bad name? I’ve heard of people shooting at firemen before. That kind of stuff blows my mind. Can you explain it?”
Malik shook his head. “I really can’t, man. I mean, I think a lot of people are just desperate. It’s like some of them don’t know what else to do.”
“But my friend was there to turn on their power!” Jim said with exasperation in his voice. “He was there to help them—so they can watch their television, finish their laundry . . . iron their pants—whatever. Why do you rob and then beat a guy like that?”
Malik lowered his eyes and stared at the floor. But Jim was on a mission now. “When power guys come through our neighborhood, I wave and try to say, ‘Thank you.’ When it’s hot outside I sometimes bring them a bottle of water. I appreciate them getting my neighborhood up and running again. Those guys are the good guys.”
Malik slowly lifted his head and turned to Jim. “Like I said, I don’t really have an answer for that mess, man. But I know that a lot of those dudes are truly . . . desperate.”
“You keep saying ‘desperate.’ What’s that supposed to mean? Does desperation give people the license to assault and rob people?”
“I ain’t sayin’ what those guys are doing is right. It’s wrong, man. But you don’t know what it’s like to be in your twenties, with a criminal record, and no chance at a job—”
“But that gets back to what I said about choices!” Jim interrupted. “If those guys are criminals, then they need to live with the consequences of their decisions.”
“Consequences for life, man?” Malik shot back. “My cousin, Ricky, did a year in prison for selling some weed back when he was eighteen. He spent a year and a half in the pen. He did his time. He learned his lesson, right? He got out and looked for a job—a real job—almost every day for like six months. He’s actually a really smart and talented dude. How many jobs do you think called him back for an interview after he checked the box that he was a felon?”