Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Devon
I’ve borrowed my mother’s car to make sure the school resource officer, Dante, doesn’t recognize me and come over for a chat through the car window.
I’m ducked down, the brim of my Phillie-Phanatic-embossed baseball cap parallel to the top of the steering wheel, my eyes level with the pitifully low number on my mother’s odometer.
The last thing I need right now is for the staff and students to see me parked out in the lot like some creep.
My boot feels heavy against the floor of my mom’s old Toyota.
The car is hot, my sock inside the boot sticking to my ankle with sweat, but I don’t dare to turn on the ignition and possibly draw attention to myself.
I imagine the students catching sight of me and rushing the car with their phones, a pubescent paparazzi, dodging school buses like Regina George did not. I duck down lower.
I refocus on my building, tamp down the rising melancholy, and watch as the first homeroom of sixth graders skip, speed walk, and sprint out of the building hooting and hollering like maniacs.
They are still so small. The babies of the middle school and I imagine them in two years, legs long and spindly, cheeks less round and cherub-like, sitting at the desks of my classroom.
This first class has broken the flood gates.
Now hundreds of children are rushing out the doors, a phone in almost every hand as they take selfies, Snap each other and film Tiktoks to the boombox beat.
The teachers are herding them onto the buses, their faces a mix of amusement and exasperation.
They still need to get inside and clean their rooms, go through the tedious checkout process that awaits them.
But not me. I’m on paid sick leave and obviously making the best of it as I adjust my shorts to avoid furthering my swamp ass.
Pathetic.
I catch sight of Mr. Donato’s mustache as he ushers a group of seventh grade boys onto bus 29.
Seeing him still makes the anger course through my veins and pour into a fireball in the center of my chest. I take the mature route and flip him off, keeping my finger beneath the steering wheel just in case I accidentally photobomb one of the 8,000 selfies being shot at the moment. Obviously, that would be my luck.
Headline: Young Teacher/Karaoke Failure Caught Flipping-off Students in Instagram Photo.
I’ve given a decade to this school—ten years of putting my students at the forefront of my mind and actions—and here I am holed up in a 2012 Corolla wearing my “oh the places you’ll go” shirt like I’m a crazy Stan.
I reach for someone to blame—but my scapegoat sister stopped bleating when she swore she hadn’t broken the social media rule.
What about Donato? Surely I can dole out some blame in his general direction. Never once has the man had my back. It’s not like I released the video—or ran an illegal karaoke ring in the school auditorium. But still here I am with my tail between my sweaty legs.
And it’s not the first time he’s made me—or other educators—feel this way.
Countless times I’ve asked for help or support and he’s told me to stay in my lane—that I’m stepping out of line.
That the mental health of my students is not my concern.
And countless times I’ve limboed beneath his red tape to figure out a way to help.
How low can you go? Really, effin’ low if a kid is in crisis. Subterranean even.
My focus is recaptured when my students start filing out of the building.
No skipping or running for these goons. No way.
They are far too mature for such shenanigans.
They saunter. I find myself smiling, my eyes tearing up like they do whenever I hear the graduation song or see a student in their cap and gown.
Many of them are hugging the teachers—I can almost hear their heartfelt thanks and feel the discomfort of the approach to embrace.
Hands and arms down around hips? The diagonal tilt?
The one arm side hug? It’s all part of the awkward adolescent package.
The package that I signed up for. Those are my goddamned hugs. And I need them right now.
I try to remind myself that I’ll see them around town.
At Target, where they all line up for pink drinks and look at me like I’m well outside my rights to be spotted on their turf, then reconsider and want to take photos like I’m some rare spotted tiger.
And some of them I’ll see often, the few who have shared lunch with me each day and opened up about their pain and their issues.
Those few always stay in touch. Like Syd has and always will.
I wait until the very last student disappears onto their big yellow bus and I rest my forehead against the steering wheel.
The farewell beeping starts as one bus after the next files out of the parking lot like that arcade game, Centipede, the drivers’ honking drowning out the opening of “We Don’t Need No Education.
” The students are nearly hanging out of the windows, some waving, some videotaping the teachers who are all sending them off with their hands in the air, yelling a chorus of wishes of good luck and see you next year.
And then it’s quiet.
The teachers turn and head back inside and I turn the key in the ignition, adjust my boot so it’s away from the pedals, and drive home to my mom with the less than comforting thought that there is always next year.