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  She wore a denim skirt, a clunky bead necklace and a big white sweater with a panda down one side—my Josie would’ve called it a dorky outfit, and Josie was eight.

  Franny smirked. “What’s going on, honky?” she asked through her licorice.

  “Why do you call me that?”

  Boots tugged on, she sat up straight, smoothing her skirt down her shins.

  “Sorry!” Her brown hair was so staticky that it floated above her shoulders. “I’m just excited about Velouria—there’ll be time to stop at Ye Olde Candy Shoppe on the way in, right? They sell Curly Wurly bars.”

  “Why’d you call me honky?” I asked.

  More kids dragged themselves around the hallway, so I wanted the conversation to be over—what kind of autocrat did I look like, looming over her like that?—but I also didn’t want to spend my day beside a girl whose tongue was not connected to her brain.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I just thought that compared to Mr. Reid you’re kind of a honky.”

  His bearded face looked down at us from a photo on the wall. Some award he’d won.

  “Mr. Reid isn’t African-American,” I said.

  “Nah, German, I think. He fought in the Gulf War!”

  “Really? For Germany?” I’d been eleven during the Gulf War, but as a substitute, you can’t let them imagine you ignorant on any subject at all. “I don’t remember Germany sending—”

  “No, man, the Americans!”

  She picked up her sneakers in one hand and banged them into the bottom of her locker—green Converse, with trailing yellow laces patterned with jesus in red letters. There was a ton of religious families in Hoover so I didn’t see the need for her to change her footwear just on account of that.

  “I don’t know if we’ll have time to stop the bus,” I said.

  “Haw-haw!” A bony shoulder bumped into mine—Clint Denham. All in tight denim, the huge red scarf his mother’d knitted him bundled around his neck. “You still around, Mr. G? Taking us over to Velouria after all, hey?”

  “I’ve been telling you for two months that I’m here until Christmas, but every morning you act like seeing me is some big surprise.”

  “I’ll tell you why that is!” He took a step back in his big leather shoes, nodding solemnly. Brown hair fell in his eyes, and three or four wiry ones poked hopefully from his chin. “It’s because every Saturday night I’m sitting at home with my folks, right? tv trays and all that, and right at the second when my brother goes down in the basement to play his drums—the exact second—I think, I bet Mr. Giller’s in Hollywood by now. They scooped him up in the Walgreens parking lot.” He looked down at Franny and smacked his lips, then suddenly displayed the same stony grimace as when he’d heard noon-hour improv had been canceled. “Gone to California.”

  “See you out at the bus.”

  I navigated around a couple of freshmen as I moved to my classroom door.

  “We ought to hook up at lunch,” Clint was saying behind me. “With tongue and everything.”

  Franny had her legs stretched in front of her, and he tapped his pointy shoe against the sole of her boot. She rolled her eyes.

  “We’re at the plastic factory at lunch,” she said.

  “That’s cool. We can do it there. You can’t spend the rest of your life wondering what’s it like to make out with hot guys, that’s pathetic to the point of crisis.”

  Franny eyed him like he’d taken a dump between her legs.

  “Keep talking like a bitch,” she said, “you’ll get noogies ’til your nose bleeds.”

  “That’s cool anyway. I like short girls with big sunglasses.”

  I’d met my Lydia when we were sixteen, working as counselors at Camp Lake Picu in Dundy County. Deb knew the camp’s owners, so Lydia was the canoeing instructor while I ran a special cabin for bedwetters.

  “I don’t do anything in particular.” I tried to sound adult as we sat on the porch of her boat-shed, overlooking the water. “The idea is maybe they’ll feel less self-conscious sleeping amid their own kind, so with reduced anxiety maybe they’ll quit peeing.”

  “How often do you change their sheets?” she asked as she unbraided her hair.

  “Every morning whether they need it or not.”

  I’d heard it was possible to unhook a bra using only one hand, and she was being very patient with me. She shook her head as two senior campers stood up in their canoe to cannonball into the emerald water.

  I threw my raincoat over the back of the desk chair and took my corduroy sport coat off the hook—Lydia’s dad had given it to me the Christmas before he died, and it had been my lucky teaching jacket ever since. For all the luck it had brought.

  Here was a new arrival: on my desk a one-sheet fax sat propped against the framed photo of George Reid on a canoe trip in the Tetons. Thankfully I love a good list, otherwise it might’ve occurred to me that George should sit home with his resectioned bowel and let me teach the goddamn class like I was paid to. And seriously, faxing? In 1987 he must’ve figured it was the future and stuck with it despite history siding against him, like drivers of electric cars after 1908.

  Peter, most of this should be unchanged from previous years (seven and counting) so I thought I’d send it along after (obviously) changing what needed changing.

  field trip: Chemistry 11, Dockside Synthetics, Friday October 21

  trip/purpose: Dockside plastics factory in Velouria to see how science is applied to industry and the manufacture of a variety of products

  transportation: Bus booked for 8:45, tour 10-1, return 2:15, lunch provided (even veggie dogs!)

  permission forms: see checklist on clipboard, attendance there too

  parent volunteers: Colleen Avery (Megan), Doug Melloy (Shawn)

  contact person at site: Rob Aiken, 402-466-9807 (cell)

  instructions if returning after dismissal: n/a

  homework: write summaries, details that struck them particularly

  special conditions, allergies: lunch will be nut and dairy free

  Good luck!

  If we were back at 2:15 that’d be perfect for me to get the kids at four. Otherwise I’d just call ahead to the sitter’s house, but what kind of weirdness could possibly befall us between Hoover and Velouria?

  “Uh, Mr. Giller?”

  Eye-linered Grace Bradford, in her skull-bedecked hoodie, stood between the nearest tables. Her skin was slightly tawny so there might’ve been Asian blood in her lineage, or Mexican or Pawnee or Arapaho. If I’d ever managed to become a geneticist I probably would’ve known at a glance. She held out a sheet of white paper.

  “I signed a form about your vacation homework,” I said. “For surf camp or whatever it was.”

  “This is to put on a school event.” She stared at me down the length of the paper like she was sighting a gun. Her hair had recently become more blue than black. “Mr. Vincent didn’t want to, but he said if I could get three teachers to sign maybe he’d change his mind. You’re a real teacher, right?”

  I unfolded the page. nbzambi march, it read. Any lunch hour, bowling gift certificates for best costumes, signs encouraged to attract media attention. Students have a voice to protest. Then three empty lines for signatures.

  “This looks great for Halloween, why’d Mr. Vincent have a problem?” I felt across my desk for a pen. “How do you say it, ‘nub-zambi’? What is that?”

  “Nbzambi’s the original Congolese word for a zombie, like the walking dead, and that’s how everybody has to dress up.” She hoisted her bum onto a table. Her short nails picked at the crumbly particleboard edge. “And my mom’s gone to Taiwan so the surfing’s postponed.”

  “Hold on, I didn’t think about what exactly you’re protesting—are you saying we should be out of the Congo? Because I don’t know if I agree with that.” I click
ed the pen a couple of times like it’d help me think. “I’m not a war nut by any stretch, but for the average Congolese it’d be a huge mistake if we pulled out right now—our men and women are precious, yes, but defending women and children is also their job. And you want students to, what, dress up with their arms falling off and stuff?”

  If she’d rolled her eyes with more vehemence she’d have damaged herself.

  “Not at all!” she spat. “I just want, like, Day of the Dead costumes, like with faces painted white or skeletons and stuff. Everybody says, ‘Oh, let’s have our arms fall off and blood pour out of our mouths,’ but I’m not into that stuff. I’ve already got the T-shirts made.”

  “I can definitely see the value in raising awareness of the human cost without necessarily saying we should pull out, but if you want attention you might as well go gory and get attention.”

  “Nobody should stay in the Congo. Even the people who live there should just get out.” She pulled her legs up to sit cross-legged, and picked at a hole in her jeans. “Just no blood and guts, no bones sticking out—tons of people with painted white faces, walking around not saying anything? They’ll be freaky!”

  Entirely true. But I handed the paper back unsigned.

  “It sounds like you want signs to say ‘Empty the Congo Entirely,’ but that’s obviously not practical and I have to watch my step here, right? I’ve got kids of my own, and for the time being I’m not exactly picking and choosing the work I get.”

  She slid down to the floor with a thump. “So put your kids over the rest of the world,” she said to the blackboard. “Nice priorities.”

  With that in mind I put extra pens in my jacket’s inside pocket, got my clipboard and headed out toward the staff room, because at 8:15 the second pot of coffee was usually pretty fresh, or if it wasn’t I’d have time to make a new one.

  The white-tiled staff room smelled like dishwasher soap. A dozen women sat with their legs crossed on the couches while the loveable Grey and Dreaper, a couple of oversized math teachers with beards, sat playing canasta with Mahinda, a twig-necked divorcé from Sri Lanka.

  “Stay after dismissal today, Peter,” said Mahinda, “and I will teach you to play once and for all. Against two colonials they will never win.”

  “Tell me again how I’m a colonial?” I asked.

  Cam Vincent, our principal, circled the table to peer down at their hands, sporting a jet-black crewcut like he’d walked straight off an old baseball card.

  “Giller, listen.” Cam stretched hairy arms way over his head like he’d been up early digging coal. “Turns out Nella’s having her back surgery right around Christmas, George should be back by then, and her blocks are mostly eleventh grade, so—”

  “Oh, yeah, believe me, I want any classes I can get. All these kids are great,” I mostly bullshitted. “Really engaged with the material.”

  “Young and motivated,” sneered Dreaper. “Kids’ll be the perfect age when we bring back the draft.”

  “No, no, if they already had Doctor Reid,” said Grey, “then Mensa’s got to have helicopters circling overhead. This is Genius School!”

  Back in September they’d giggled until they’d spilled their peppermint tea, telling me how Reid had his Ph.D. in Biology but instead of lecturing at Harvard he’d parked his ass back in his hometown to teach high school like a sucker. I could’ve told them that, similarly, I’d started my master’s in biochem—planning to delve into stem cell research on, not surprisingly, Parkinson’s disease—but switched to education in order to earn an imminent-baby-supporting income somewhat sooner. But then Grey and Dreaper would’ve pointed out that if I’d only stayed in medical research I could’ve bought and sold Hoover ten times over. I massaged my irate earlobe.

  “Help, Doctor Reid!” Dreaper waggled his hands. “I swallowed a roofing nail!”

  “I don’t feel this Congo mess will carry on much longer.” Mahinda licked a fingertip and commenced rearranging his canasta hand. “You see it with the Tamil Tigers at home, or the IRA, the PLO in those other places, if these rebel movements cannot renounce violence they eventually go down in flames.”

  “Bullshit,” said Dreaper, setting his cards down to reposition his belt under his gut. “These M23 guys we’re fighting now, they were the Congo Army, then they quit for better money from the Rwandan guy! They’ve got a million guns, a million guys with nothing else to do, and we’re scrambling around trying to keep them from raping their own women! And that’s a noble cause, I’m not going to complain about that, but that’s not a job for a human being! We’re getting torn to pieces by these M23 guys circling around at night, we—”

  “Infrared goggles,” offered Cam. “See anything in the dark.”

  “Tried that, remember?” Grey cupped his hands behind his head, displaying damp armpits. “That infantry platoon killed those endangered goddamn anteaters.”

  “Isn’t it the LRA we’re fighting?” I asked.

  “That’s the trouble over there,” Cam said earnestly, dragging the back of his hand beneath his chin. “Can’t say who exactly we’re engaging. Boys just keep coming home with their lips cut off.”

  We all went quiet, the soles of our shoes squeaking absently on the tile. The women on the couches were laughing at yet another story about that kid with Asperger’s.

  “So the ball hits the bottom of the rim,” gasped Melissa Jordan, ponytail swaying, “knocks his glasses clean off, and then he’s so mad, he makes these fists and—”

  “What we need in Africa,” Dreaper said, “is cyborgs. Enhanced humans.”

  “With jetpacks on,” Cam intoned.

  “Robots.” Dreaper frowned at his cards again. “Just program them, ‘Kill bad guys.’ Our men and women can come home, go back to farming, selling cars.”

  “My point exactly.” Mahinda winked. “The criminals will lay down their arms in the face of superior technology.”

  “What time’s the assembly?” called Ange Helms, our clunky-heeled-shoe home ec teacher. But passable ankles, Mahinda had once muttered.

  “Not ’til 11:15,” said Cam. “But I might bring him through some classes if he’s here early. Coming over from McCook.”

  “What assembly?” I asked.

  “It’s not on your watch, don’t worry about it.” Cam raised his prodigious eyebrows. “But, say, Giller, want to swing by Sunday and watch some Steelers? Jacksonville, right? What a joke.”

  “Sorry, I’ll have to pass,” I said. “But thanks.”

  “Ah! Already spoken for. I’ll have to be quicker next time!”

  I shuffled over to the empty coffee machine and dumped the soggy filter in the trash. We didn’t have a single plan for Sunday, but I didn’t want to be burdened with a lot of friends if and when we moved to another town. And I liked to send the kids downstairs to play Wii on Sundays while I watched the games, so I could jot the stats down on my own. All last season, stretched on the bed beside me, scarf around her head, Lydia had rooted for Cincinnati just to be obstreperous, and, boy, their receivers had had hands like feet, right from Week One. They really had looked sick.

  At 8:45 we stood outside the cafeteria exit, the eleventh-grade boys in long shorts and girls in crop tops even though it was cold for October, possible snow smelling raw in my nostrils. Jordie, Devon and Todd had called in absent so that left me with fifteen for the field trip, and no sign of my parent volunteers.

  I did another head count but the skater kids were playing leapfrog or something so I got twenty the first time, then twelve. Couldn’t blame the skater kids if they kept warm. I watched through the shrubs for anything yellow that might swing into the parking lot. This would be my first visit to a plastics factory too, and I was holding onto the thinnest hope that I might be able to teach something. Well, we all thought the chemicals pouring into those moulds smelled evil and must slowly be killing the world, sure, so
you can all quit going to the dollar store to buy Frisbees and sunglasses, all right? We won’t know for a thousand years exactly how that crap will pervert nature at the most fundamental level. Kids will happily scrawl “pervert” in their notebooks regardless of context.

  “Hey, hey, Megan.” Clint, all in denim, leaned past my elbow. “What up, girl?”

  “Come onnnnn, make it come!” moaned Megan Avery in her sequinned-butterfly cardigan. “Did you know we’re missing appliqué in home ec today?”

  “Teachers don’t run the buses,” I said, then noticed the kids wandering across the parking lot toward the swaying magnolias—they enjoyed many noon-hour cigarettes in there at their campfire ring overlooking a trickling culvert—so I squared my shoulders for the day’s first authoritarian holler.

  “So I’m not ridiculously late!” called a svelte woman in a black tracksuit, skipping across from a green Taurus wagon. “Oh, Megan! Which teacher is this?”

  “It’s Mr. Giller,” said Megan. “Dr. Reid’s off sick.”

  “Bowel resection. I’m Pete Giller, his substitute.” Jesus, had she thought Kirsten McAvoy would be the sub? “Glad you’re joining us today, Mrs. Avery.”

  I put my hand out to shake, all hearty and businesslike, but she just grasped my fingertips while performing a disturbing little curtsey.

  “I heard that he wasn’t having surgery at all,” she whispered, “but that the poor dear was spending his stress leave in California!”

  “That’s where the best ones go,” said Clint.

  “I don’t think that’s the case, ma’am,” I said. “I heard from him this morning.”

  “Are you really wearing that jacket to Velouria?” asked Franny.

  I instinctively checked the top button. “Why?”

  “It’s just, you know, you’ve got a clipboard and a corduroy sport jacket. You look exactly like a teacher on a field trip.”

  “But that’s—”

  “But didn’t you ever want to be something more?”