This Is Where We Live

by Janelle Brown

  But Brenda was looking through the swinging glass doors that led out to the quad. “Speak of the devil,” she muttered. Claudia followed her gaze down the purple hallway to where Nancy Friar, the principal, was marching straight toward them. She wore a cerise pantsuit and a determined expression. Nancy saw that she’d been spotted and raised a hand in greeting.

  “That’s my cue,” Brenda said. She melted away toward the other side of the lounge and began fiddling with the mail in her cubbyhole, leaving Claudia alone in the entry as Nancy pushed through the swinging doors.

  “Just the person I was looking for!” Nancy chirped, as she approached Claudia. “Can I steal you for a moment?”

  “I have to prep for my senior seminar,” Claudia objected. Nancy was the last person she wanted to talk to right now. She hadn’t yet decided how to break the news to her friend’s mother that she was going to be quitting before the semester was over. She imagined that it wouldn’t go over well.

  “Don’t worry,” Nancy said. “This will only take a few minutes.”

  Nancy drew her away from the door and into the corner of the lounge farthest from the other teachers. Impatient, Claudia wondered what Nancy could possibly want; it was the first time the head of school had ever bothered to seek her out. Could she already have heard about Quintessence from Samuel Evanovich? she wondered.

  “I want to start by asking if you’ve been having problems with Penelope Evanovich,” Nancy began.

  It took a minute for Claudia to realize what Nancy was talking about, and when she did, it felt as if a giant hand had just smacked her in the chest, sending her body backward and leaving her breath behind. “Nothing that comes to mind,” Claudia answered, wondering what Nancy knew. Had Penelope gone to talk to her about the illicit A? But why on earth would she do that? “Why? What did you hear?”

  Nancy glanced over her shoulder at the other teachers and then dropped her voice. “OK, I’ll level with you. Penelope has been bragging to other students that she doesn’t have to do any of the work for your class because she has some sort of special arrangement with you. Do you know what that’s about?”

  Claudia’s body, from temple to toe, felt as if it had been strung together with taut rubber bands. She struggled to find the appropriate response, aware that each passing moment of hesitation would simply cement her guilt. She glanced around the room, where the other four teachers were doing a bad job of concealing the fact that they were listening in. Brenda lurked by the fridge, slowly stirring her tea; Jim was fiddling with the drawstring waistband of his sweatpants, tucking his shirt in and then untucking it again; Hannah had stopped turning pages in her novel; Evelyn was holding the term paper over her face again, but her hands quivered with the effort to keep it there.

  “I have no idea what that’s about,” Claudia finally said. “Have you asked Penelope what she meant?”

  “I wanted to address it with you, first,” Nancy said. She fussed with the drape of the cherry-print silk scarf around her neck. “I’m sure it’s all a false alarm—this kind of thing happens more often that you’d think.”

  “Teenagers aren’t exactly known for being forthright, are they,” Claudia said, and offered her employer a commiserating shrug. Nancy didn’t know anything specific, she tried to reassure herself; it was all just secondhand rumors. And in a she-said she-said situation, wouldn’t the teacher always win by default?

  “They certainly aren’t,” Nancy agreed. “But we’ll need to investigate further, just in case parents get wind of it and kick up a fuss. You know how they are. Anyway, I hope you won’t be offended, but may I look at your records?”

  Claudia swiftly calculated the possible outcomes of this. If they discovered that she had been blackmailed into doctoring Penelope’s grade, she would lose her job—which wasn’t the end of the world, of course, since she was quitting to direct Quintessence anyway. Except that Penelope would undoubtedly be punished by Nancy—perhaps even expelled—and for that Claudia would surely incur the wrath of Samuel Evanovich and lose the movie. No movie, no job: Penelope’s big mouth was about to cost her her entire future. What on earth had possessed her to brag?

  She glanced around the room. No one was bothering to hide their curiosity now. Jim Phillips was doing some runner’s stretches in the middle of the room, staring blatantly; Brenda was standing with her hands on her hips, as if ready to barge in on the discussion; Evelyn had let the term paper fall to her chest as she watched. Even Hannah Baumberg had finally looked up from Jude the Obscure, marking her place with one finger.

  “You know,” Claudia bluffed, “if you wait here, I could go grab a few of Penelope’s old assignments for you. Right now. Just to show you that she’s been doing the assigned work.”

  Nancy smiled. “That would really clear things up.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Claudia said, already moving toward the door.

  “I’ll wait here,” Nancy said. Over Nancy’s shoulder, the rest of the teachers settled in to their seats, planning to wait for the finale of this show. She wondered whether they were on her side in this dispute and realized that, by keeping to herself this semester—and considering this job just a setback en route to loftier goals—she had pretty much guaranteed that they weren’t.

  Claudia turned and fled.

  Out in the quad, the marine layer overhead was growing dark, signaling the arrival of the first fall storm. A few students meandered across the campus, toting skateboards and iPhones. “Heya, Munger!” called one, a sophomore from her Film Noir course. Claudia jogged across a small patch of grass toward her classroom, passing underneath a polished steel sculpture that distorted her silhouette against the flat sky.

  The keys slipped in her fumbling hands, requiring three tries before the door finally opened. Inside, she flipped on the lights and headed for the utility closet. There, Claudia took a deep breath, and another, trying to calm herself. The air was hot and staticky. She tore into her bag, shuffling through a batch of essay assignments, until she found what she was looking for: the most recent offering from Mary Hernandez. “Post-Structuralist Elements in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet” was a twelve-page tome that name-checked Foucault, Wittgenstein, and Benjamin, followed by three pages of footnotes. Emblazoned on the last page, in teacherly red ink, was an A+. She tore off the cover page and hid it in her drawer.

  Digging further, she located Penelope’s submission: “Blue Velvet by David Lynch,” an unfinished three-page essay with no thesis to speak of. Quickly, before good sense overcame her, Claudia gently removed the cover page and stapled it to the front of Mary’s essay. Voilà! If you examined the new essay closely, you might notice that the two paper stocks didn’t quite match, and that the cover page was typed with a slightly different font, but was Nancy really going to study the essay that closely? Claudia rifled through her drawers, looking for more evidence to doctor. There: her own answer sheets for the last three multiple-choice pop quizzes. She penciled Penelope’s name on each one, and then graded each with a red-ink A. It would have to be sufficient.

  She gathered her papers and raced back to the lounge. Students were arriving quickly now, gathered in clusters by their lockers, sending last-minute texts to friends who were standing just a few feet away from them. Two girls in regulation blue blazers were huddled in a corner by the entrance to the teacher’s lounge, twirling their hair around their fingers as they stared at a boy Claudia didn’t know, who was carrying an enormous plaster bust of his own torso, probably the latest assignment from Sculpture and Life Drawing. The hallways smelled like pepperoni pizza, wafting out from the cafeteria’s ovens.

  Back in the teacher’s lounge no one had moved, the four teachers apparently far more riveted by the spectacle unfolding before them than by any urgency to get to their classrooms on time. Only Nancy had switched her position, from the corner of the lounge to a sentinel position by the window, where she could oversee the migrations of the kids outside. She made notations in a notebook, perhaps tracking war
drobe infractions that would later need to be addressed.

  Claudia handed the stack of forged assignments to Nancy just as the first bell rang. “This is all I could find in my files,” she apologized.

  Nancy examined the papers. Outside, the thundering of a thousand pairs of tennis shoes pounded through the corridors. Students shrieked and shouted in the courtyard, oblivious to anything but the melodramatic minutiae of their small sheltered lives. It was almost too much for Claudia to bear.

  Nancy glanced briefly at the cover of Mary Hernandez’s essay and then turned the page, scanning the text. “They’re quoting Foucault now? Good grief. I didn’t study him until grad school. I just can’t keep up with these kids anymore.”

  “They’re very bright.” Claudia held her breath as the principal riffled quickly through the rest of the papers. Nancy gave a brief glance at each quiz and then handed the stack of papers back with a smile. And it was done.

  “Well, that’s a relief. I’m glad to see it was all just a misunderstanding. I swear, this group of seniors is so gossipy, I don’t know where they get it from. Their parents, I imagine.”

  Jim Phillips let out a small wheeze, perhaps of disappointment, and picked up his gym bag. Hannah Baumberg was already halfway out the door, followed in quick succession by Evelyn Johnson. Only Brenda remained, lingering near the coffeepot.

  “I’m happy I could clear it up,” Claudia said faintly, rolling the offending papers into a tube before Nancy could examine them further.

  “So am I.” Nancy reached out to grasp Claudia’s hand. Her palm was warm and well-moisturized, just like Esme’s. “You know, it’s been great having you as part of the team, and the kids certainly seem energized by your courses. We’re really glad you’re here.”

  “It’s been a pleasure,” Claudia heard herself saying, and then Nancy was gone. Through the window, she could see the principal crossing the quad through a crowd of students, a veteran salmon battling against the prevailing current.

  I won, Claudia thought, as relief turned her bones to gelatin. I won. She backed up from the window, blindly bumping into a sofa. She grabbed the armrest to stabilize herself.

  “I just want you to know that I have your back,” she heard Brenda saying in her ear.

  Claudia turned to face Brenda, who stood just behind her, bags in hand. “Excuse me?”

  Brenda stepped in closer, dropping her voice to a near-whisper even though the lounge was completely empty now. “I had the Evanovich girl for Modern Thinkers last year, and she was a nightmare. Contradicted me constantly, always in pursuit of some private agenda, a lazy little girl with a chip on her shoulder looking for the easy way out. I’m not sure what she’s got against you, but I count myself lucky that she never decided to go after me.”

  “Thanks,” Claudia said. She realized she was tearing up in appreciation of Brenda’s support. I don’t deserve this, she thought. “But I think everything’s OK now.”

  Brenda shook her head and hoisted the bags back onto her sloping shoulders. She pushed her cat’s-eye glasses back up the bridge of her nose with a free forefinger. “I hope for your sake that it is,” she said.

  Claudia returned to her classroom just as the final bell rang, settling into her usual position behind the podium onstage. It was still difficult to breathe. The kids entering the room impressed Claudia as no more than a colorful, noisy smudge. Only one person in the entire room was distinct: Penelope. The girl scuttled into the classroom last, chewing on a jawbreaker that stained her lips blue. Claudia watched her select a seat in the far corner of the classroom, at safe remove from—who, her peers? Her teacher? She pulled out a pen and began to doodle unconcernedly on her notebook, seemingly unaware of the crisis she had nearly ignited.

  Rain pattered against the windowpanes; the storm had arrived. The students had hauled their jackets and umbrellas out from hibernation, and a path of damp footprints led from the door down the aisle, vanishing just before the stage. Claudia gathered homework assignments with shaking hands, as her stomach began to sour with guilt. You only did what you had to do to survive, she reminded herself. There was no other option, barring total disaster. It was the only way to save Quintessence. To save your entire way of life.

  She queued up the DVD of Robert Altman’s The Player, part of a weeklong lesson plan about the portrayal of Hollywood in the movies. The male half of the class busied themselves watching the girl’s gym class suffer through a game of basketball on the soggy courts just outside the window. In the back of the classroom, Jordan Bigglesby and Lisa Yang texted furiously on their portable devices. Claudia couldn’t be bothered to stop them.

  “Let’s start by discussing what the title of this movie means,” she addressed the class. She was met by a profound silence. Rain battered the campus, amplified by acres of polished concrete. “Did no one care for this film?”

  Theodore Kaplan flung a hand over his head, tearing his gaze away from the wet T-shirts of the girls outside. “I liked it,” he said.

  “What did you like about it?”

  Theodore’s mouth twitched with concentration. “Um. I thought the Tim Robbins character was pretty bad-ass. Killing a guy and then sleeping with his girlfriend.”

  From the side of the classroom, Penelope snickered audibly. “Bad-ass, dude,” she muttered, and then rolled her eyes so far into the back of her head that Claudia momentarily hoped they might get stuck there, forever blinding the supercilious brat. Theodore turned to stare at Penelope, furious. Next to him, Eric Doterman wadded up a ball of paper that Claudia was fairly certain would be aimed at Penelope’s head the next time Claudia turned her back. She twisted deliberately away, letting him do it.

  “So you admired the murderer,” Claudia repeated. “Did anyone else feel the same?”

  Mary Hernandez, a row over, shook her head. “I thought it was a fairly hypocritical movie,” she said, lisping slightly.

  “Hypocritical how?”

  “Well, he’s making fun of cinematic tropes, like sex scenes and happy endings and a three-act structure, but then he gives the movie a sex scene and a happy ending anyway. So it’s as if he’s pandering to the lowest common denominator but also complaining about it at the same time. He’s having his cake and eating it too, so to speak.” She grabbed a rope of black hair and pulled it over her shoulder.

  “A good observation, but maybe that was his point,” Claudia responded, finding it difficult to meet Mary Hernandez’s eyes. She thought of the effort that the girl put into her work, week after week—God knows when Mary slept, between slinging chicken buckets at Chicken Kitchen and the hours she apparently spent perusing French philosophy books for fun—and felt sick that she had credited Mary’s work to her most problematic student. The girl spent her free time driving her sick grandmother to the doctor, for chrissakes; and Claudia’s first callous response when she ran into Mary outside her house had been to suspect her of stalking her? Maybe Mary does try too hard, she thought, but that doesn’t mean I’m not a terrible teacher and an even worse human being. She pivoted and walked across the stage. “Let me ask another question. What do you think Altman is trying to say about the film industry in this movie?” She waited. On the edge of the room, Penelope cackled—maybe the paper ball had hit its mark?—but even she had nothing to offer for once.

  “No one? OK. This is a movie about the moral bankruptcy of the film industry. Altman used it as a way to vent about his own demoralizing experiences in the studio system. It’s no coincidence that the screenwriter gets murdered, and the producer is the one who kills him; this is a symbolic expression of the death of creativity in Hollywood at the hands of executive power.”

  Again, silence. Claudia looked out at the room and saw a sea of faces staring at her with confusion. Or was that silent accusation that she saw? Because who was she to lecture about the moral bankruptcy of the film industry, when she’d just sold out her star student (a scholarship student, at that!) in order to secure a job directing the biggest piece
of trash she’d read in years? She gazed around the room and finally landed back at Penelope, who now had her back turned to the front of the room. She was holding up a piece of paper for Theodore and Eric’s benefit, some sort of sign with words written on it in capital letters.

  “Penelope?” Penelope turned, startled, and dropped the paper. “Would you care to share your sign with me?”

  Penelope fiddled with her pencil, examining her handiwork under a curtain of sticky bangs that she stroked, absently, with her free hand. She was wearing a studded, spray-painted leather jacket that looked like it belonged in the bargain bin of a gutter punk supply store; it was definitely not regulation uniform, and the fact that she could get away with wearing this was yet another sign of the Evanoviches’ exalted position within Ennis Gates. It was utterly unfair.

  “No,” Penelope said. “Not really.”

  A palpable current of shock washed across the classroom: a fellow student so openly defying the teacher? Claudia felt her face growing pink. Months of hot fury at the girl bubbled on the surface, dangerously ready to erupt. Control yourself, she thought. The last thing you need is a confrontation.

  “Fine,” she said, slowly. “Then why don’t you just tell me whether you agree with my assessment of Altman’s film?”

  Penelope slouched back in her chair and stared at Claudia. “I don’t know. I wasn’t listening.”

  “Clearly,” Claudia said, through her clenched teeth. She knew she should just move on to the next student—she had already prevailed today, hadn’t she? Penelope wasn’t a threat any longer, she could just ignore her for these last remaining days at Ennis Gates and everything would be fine—but she couldn’t make herself do it. Something had cracked open inside her, and rage was leaking out. The sarcasm fell off her tongue before she could shut her mouth to stop it. “In that case, why don’t you pull from your vast experiences in the film industry and simply tell me how talent is treated in Hollywood.”