14. Anthony
fourteen
anthony
“Good morning, class—”
“Good morning!”
My head and Penelope’s snap to the space between us as if we’re magnets. We’re stuck in a stalemate, staring at each other. We might not be on the best terms, but we probably should have gone over a game day strategy, because we have arrived at the first day of school, and we have had zero conversations about how we’re going to manage the whole co-teaching thing.
The other thing we haven’t really discussed is the walkie-talkie on my belt. Until Nate either confirms my position full-time as the Assistant Principal until Rita gets back from maternity leave, or they sign someone on full time, this is the best we’ve got. I stay in the classroom until he buzzes, I guess.
“Welcome to?—”
“Happy first day of eighth grade!”
She is the first of us to manage a complete sentence, after which a chorus of crickets seems to play out over the swamp of eighth graders in front of us. We have thirty-seven of them between us, a mixture of River Valley and Meadow Ridge kids alike. There’s a palpable mix of tension, apprehension, and indifference that permeates the swamp like a film of smog. I tug at the collar of my polo at the humidity, and clear my throat. Some of the students are staring at us intrigued. Some wear expressions that say, “Will you get on with it already?” One boy is already asleep at his desk.
Penelope beckons me forcefully with her hand low by her waist, almost like a mom trying to subtly chastise her toddler in public without causing a scene.
Except, we are the scene. And this stage is getting a little awkward without a script.
I lean close to her, widening my eyes in indication for her to continue.
“What are you doing?” she whispers.
“Uh… Welcoming my class?”
“ Our class, Ellis. Our class, and for all intents and purposes, this is my classroom, so I suggest?—”
“It’s our classroom for the year, Pen, and if we’re going to make it through an entire year in this classroom together, we should probably start acting like it?—”
“Yo, so like, are we gonna do anything, or are you two just gonna flirt all period?”
I can’t decide if the feeling of my own blush racing up my neck, or the sight of Penelope’s filling her face like a thermometer in the middle of July, is faster. We each take a gaping step apart, clear our throats, and take deep breaths. I turn to her, surrendering as I only know how to, and nod.
“Good morning, and welcome to eighth grade. My name is Ms. Barker, and this is…”
She pauses, allowing me to introduce myself.
“Mr. Ellis.” I nod, ready to pick up where she left off, when she takes over again.
“We will be your homeroom and math teachers this year.”
Immediately, hands go up and questions are tossed around the room.
“Like, all year?”
“Both of you?”
“How does that even work?”
“Will he take the Meadow Ridge kids?”
“I don’t want a River Valley teacher, no way, bro!”
I step back until my back hits the lip of my table. On its unsteady legs, the one framed photo I have—of my family on the Cape last summer—tips over. Penelope shuffles over to me, and we give the kids a minute to chat about the upcoming year.
“Did their parents seriously not tell them?” she asks, arms folded, gazing out over the chaos. I scratch at my chin.
“I’m sure enough blast emails and Facebook posts were sent. It might all be hitting them now that they’re actually in the trenches.”
I gaze down at her, letting those words echo our own truth between us. I had no idea what being in the thick of it with Penelope Barker meant until fate locked us together in every aspect of our lives. It’s downright torture in the sweetest of ways.
I let Pen field the rest of the questions.
Yes, this is happening.
Yes, all year.
No, there’s no way to transfer to the other building.
Yes, they have to listen to both of us.
It goes on like this for all of homeroom until the bell rings. Before I can so much as turn to face Pen so that we can have a better game plan going into how our actual math classes will function, the walkie talkie on my belt goes off.
“Ellis, I need you in the eighth grade wing, boys’ restroom. There’s a fight.”
I take off, dodging several students on the skidding toe of my loafer. Luckily, we’re not far from the bathroom in this wing. I can see the scuffle as soon as I exit our classroom.
“I told you to take my momma’s name out yo mouth! ”
“Tell your momma to keep her mouth off my daddy’s then!”
The two boys are very distinctly from different schools—one, I recognize from the halls of Meadow Ridge, and the other is wearing a River Valley wrestling tee. That boy also happens to have the Meadow Ridge kid wrapped up in some sort of hold from the back.
Nathan is already on the scene, and we work to peel the boys off of each other. Somehow, despite the fact that their two administrators have pulled them apart, their arms still swing out toward one another until Nate and I put some distance between them.
The Meadow Ridge boy—Jackson—is heaving in my arms, but seems to be calming down.
“Xavier, my office,” Nate says to the wrestler. “Mr. Ellis, you can take the conference room, and we’ll go from there?”
I nod, huffing as I give Nathan and Xavier time to pass us by before I walk Jackson to the office conference room, where I promptly find out that the two boys were almost step brothers before Jackson’s mom started cheating on Xavier’s dad. The boys thought they would get a respite, being at different schools, but ended up in the same homeroom together.
Nathan and I spend the morning tending to minimal wounds, setting up both boys with Lucy and Phyllis, and calling the parents to make them aware of the trauma that the boys are both still clearly carrying. By the time the situation is settled, I’ve missed first and second period. I stroll into third period as the bell is ringing, and meet Penelope at the front for a choppy round of introductions, before she starts handing out packets.
“Before we go over the syllabus, I like to start the year with a little Get to Know You glyph. And, since we’ll be one big happy school family this year, we’ll be doing it in cross-school partners. You and your partners will complete your glyph together, to represent both of you!”
I leave the pile of papers on my desk—my own first day of school partner activity—and sit back to watch. The kids begrudgingly get to work, and I begrudgingly lean against the lip of the whiteboard, trying to tamp my frustration.
“So, you’re just taking over then?” I ask when Penelope returns. Her eyebrows immediately scrunch.
“You had to take a behavior call, Ant. What did you expect me to do? Sit around and twiddle my thumbs until you got back? I had a class to run. I’ve done this with the other two periods, and I’d like to keep the day consistent.”
I sigh. She’s not wrong at all. I’m mostly frustrated that we didn’t think to communicate beforehand, but when have she and I ever had our stories straight before? It’s like we’re reading from different books. I want, more than anything, for this day to be over so that we can sit down together and have a civil conversation about what our classroom will look like for the remainder of the year. I want to be on the same page, with both of us having a say over certain aspects of how we do things. But when I return to the classroom after bus duty, the girls are in our room—debriefing, by the looks of it—and my walkie goes off with a call from Nate anyway.
And when I get home, she’s in her office, door closed, headphones on, fingers clacking away on her keyboard. I can see her through the glass panes of the French doors. She looks like she’s in a zone, so I head to the gym, shooting her a quick text that tells her as much, and also says Let me know when we can chat about classroom strategy .
As I finish up my reps, I feel the energy drain from my body like the colors of a sunset dripping over the horizon. We’re in for one hell of a year.