Substitute

  Jill, the blond girl April told me about, brought in a five-color model of the atmospheric layers made of painted Styrofoam arranged like a wedding cake. She wasn’t in the class this block, she said, but she didn’t want to carry it around all day.

  “Wow!” I said.

  “It kind of broke on the bus,” Jill said. She tried to find a place for it on Mrs. Moran’s desk. “Just throw it on the ground—it’s broken anyway.”

  “Don’t reject it, it’s beautiful,” I said. “Believe in what you do!”

  A stony-faced girl named Azure handed me a piece of paper. She wore a pumpkin-colored sweater whose sleeves went over her hands.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Do I deserve this yellow piece of paper?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Just keep it or throw it away.” It was a tardy slip.

  Bucky discovered that a Monster drink had spilled in his backpack. He pulled out his stick of deodorant and wiped it down with Kleenex.

  Attendance. Robert, here. Dixon?

  “He’s not in this room right now.”

  Azure, here. William? William Boucher?

  Azure pointed to Bucky. “He’s right there in the hat,” she said.

  “And you’re Bernard,” I said to a kid in black. Bernard had an iPad mini. “You got one of them newfangled little iPads.”

  “My old one broke,” Bernard said. “I got angry with it, and I smashed it against a pipe.”

  “He has a temper,” said Bucky.

  “You must have been pretty mad,” I said. “Mad at your work?”

  “At my mom,” said Bernard.

  Ah. Gerard?

  “I think he has ISS,” said Bucky.

  “Yeah, he’s in ISS for starting a fight this morning,” Bernard said.

  Rob said, “That’s not what he’s in there for. He was in a thing with Ms. Dahl, and he said some words.”

  “Bad words?” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Rob. “Words were said. He swore at her and called her a very inappropriate name.”

  Penelope, here. Noah, here. (So many Noahs!) Liam?

  “Liam is in Mrs. Hoy’s. You won’t like her. Nobody does.”

  “It smells like paint,” said Penelope, who had big retro glasses and wavy hair. She was making the exosphere by gluing down bunches of blue tissue paper.

  Daisy Patten? Here. Marcus? Marcus Spinney? Here.

  “Hi, Marcus Spinney,” I said. “I’m checking you off. The thing is, taking attendance for this class doesn’t mean a thing. It’s only the first period that makes a difference. This is all just an exercise.”

  Dixon came back with a box of Kleenex. Noah tried to glue his finger to his nose. “I know that’s one of the units that you’re doing—nose gluing,” I said.

  Intervention, however, proved to be a small, calm class. “I love the way all this quiet working is happening,” I whispered.

  “The next class isn’t going to be quiet,” Penelope said.

  I turned off a bank of lights to make the whisperiness last longer.

  After five minutes Azure asked if she could wash her hands. Of course.

  In the continuing bounty of quietude, Bucky and Bernard began stealthily playing Hungry Shark on their iPads. They whispered together about how deep the shark could swim. Later they moved closer to an electrical outlet so that they could plug in their tablets. Rob, the one who’d had three concussions, was at the same table as they were, writing something. Jill sat at a middle table with her boyfriend, Marcus, who had on a periwinkle-blue baseball hat. They were sharing earbuds. Marcus cracked his knuckles every so often. I read about the thermosphere, which is many miles above sea level and reaches bizarrely high temperatures during the day, hot enough to melt steel, but doesn’t feel hot because the individual molecules up there are so sparsely distributed. Each hot molecule is like a burning spark in a walk-in freezer. In other words, the thermosphere is not hot, it’s extremely cold. I read another inspirational quote on the whiteboard: “Fake it till ya make it!”

  “I’ve got blue hands,” Penelope said.

  Five minutes before the end of the block, a guidance counselor came in to see how things were going. I didn’t remember her at first—she was one of the women who’d explained lockdown procedures during substitute training. Mrs. Moran had left good plans, I said, and everything seemed to be going fine. As she left, she detoured past the table where Rob, Bucky, and Bernard were sitting. “What are you guys working on?” she said.

  “Writing,” said Rob.

  Bucky and Bernard mumbled something about working on a Keynote and listening to music, having swiped Hungry Shark from their screens. “You should know what you’re working on,” said the guidance counselor. “Class is almost over, and I don’t want to have to take away the music, or take away the iPad.”

  She left. “Was I supposed to be fussing at you for playing the shark game?” I asked Bucky and Bernard. “I figured that you would know what you need to do.”

  “I’m only missing one paper,” said Bernard. “I usually do it in class.” Bernard was probably lying—one of the main things that school taught, I realized, was how to lie to get by.

  I turned to Rob, who had filled several pages with writing. “Whoa, words on a page!” I said.

  “This is a book I’ve started writing,” Rob said. “It’s about this kid named Adam. He runs away from his house. He’s running through the woods and he comes to a tree. He tries to catch his breath, and the tree grabs him and drags him into the ground. So he’s drug underground, and then he has to try to find a way back up. There’s a city under there that he sees, and this giant forest to the side. He’s just getting to the gates, and goblins come up to him and confront him and say, ‘State your business, or you die where you stand.’ That’s what I have so far.”

  “I like it,” I said. “He’s in jeopardy already. I love the idea of an underground world.”

  Rob pulled out a new, thick copy of The Fellowship of the Ring from his backpack. “I’ve read The Hobbit about ten times now,” he said. “I just got this yesterday.”

  Penelope said, “I don’t like reading a book after I’ve seen the movie.”

  Bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong. Gosh, that was an easy class.

  “So this period coming up is pandemonium and craziness?” I said to Penelope.

  “Pretty much,” she said. “Just saying that now I’ll be talking a lot.”

  “You have a complete character shift?”

  “I have different friends in different classes,” she said.

  Before Rob left I asked him whether he was writing the book for himself or for a class.

  “I’m writing it just because,” he said.

  —

  A KID NAMED COLBY appeared and saw me. “She’s out again?”

  Another kid, Tucker, said, “Oh, hello. Your name is?”

  “Mr. Substitute,” I said. “Mr. Baker.”

  “Hello,” said a third boy, Aiden.

  “You having a good day?” I asked.

  “Yes, I am,” said Aiden. “You?”

  “Yes, actually,” I said. “The last class was great. Everybody was just sort of sitting, doing their thing.”

  Colby said, “This is probably the most active class you’ll have today.”

  “What sort of activity will be happening? Give me the full rundown.”

  “We’ll just be talking, not doing work,” said Colby.

  I said hello to a few more people.

  “Can I take the attendance down?” asked Diana. Yes.

  Four kids were clustered around one table at the far end of the room eating Doritos and talking about hashtags. “Is this the cool kids’ corner?” I said.

  “I’m the only cool person over here,” said a long-haired goofball named Lionel. He was wearing a Kid C
udi T-shirt.

  Students kept coming in. It seemed like a large crowd, but it was really only about fifteen. Plus an ed tech—“THE BEST Ed Tech EVER,” according to the sub plans. Her name was Ms. Worrell.

  “Aiden, that’s not your seat, sit in your seat, please!” Ms. Worrell said.

  “As soon as you walked in, everyone went tranquil,” I said to her.

  “They know that I’ll be angry otherwise,” Ms. Worrell said. “They’re a little chatty sometimes.”

  I said I didn’t mind. “But I’m a little bit looser than I should be. You should keep me in check, too.”

  Ms. Worrell laughed mirthlessly.

  I gave a little spiel to the class. “So I’m Mr. Baker, the substitute, filling in. I’m very glad to have you in the class. And really today you’re supposed to do what you need to do. Which is—” I looked at the plans. “The WebQuest Carbon Footprint. And then we have the project questions and the study guide. And we could maybe have a dramatic rendition of the troposphere? Have you done the layers? When I was in school there were none of these upper layers. The exosphere—amazing. Some people have used pipe cleaners, and some people have used little bunches of tissue, and it’s all good.” Colby poked Bucky. “And elbow management, it’s called. That’s when you keep them to yourself. I don’t mind mild talking. What I don’t like is the wave of sound that starts to build, and then it washes over you, and then one of us fusses, and it gets quiet, and then there’s another wave of sound. Just talk kind of like this, and there won’t be those crests. So, do it! Go to work! Let me know if I can help you in any way.”

  Ms. Worrell spoke. “Who still has yet to do the 3-D model? Let’s see hands. Because it is due today.”

  “It’s due Thursday,” said Lionel.

  “No, WebQuest is due Thursday,” Beth said. “It says right there on the board, ‘3-D Model Project, 5/13.’ Today’s the thirteenth, Lionel.”

  Ms. Worrell turned to me. “I’m going to take my kids down the hall, someplace quiet, where I can crack the whip.” She began herding some boys toward the door. “Down to the Dean’s Den, please. Bucky, you’re coming, too. Gather your belongings. I don’t want you making eighty-five trips. Markers, paper.”

  I asked Lionel’s table which iPad game was taking the world by storm right now.

  “Piano Tiles,” said Lionel.

  “They got rid of Flappy Bird, that was a major major thing,” said Hank.

  “Some guy killed himself over it,” said Tucker.

  “No, those are all rumors,” said Lionel. “He took it down because he didn’t like the fame. The hate, and the fame.”

  “Couldn’t handle the celebrity,” said Hank.

  “Just tear through the troposphere,” I said. I pointed to the thermosphere layer. “This is where it gets nutty. It’s hot, but it’s far away? I don’t like that.”

  “You don’t believe in it?” said Lionel.

  “No,” I said. “I can’t feel it, I can’t taste it. It’s a myth.”

  “Are bananas a myth?” said Hank.

  “Bananas are a myth,” said Lionel.

  I laughed. “You insane person. I believe in bananas. Let’s not question reality here.” I liked Lionel. The three of them began using pipe cleaners and straws to build a planet Earth.

  Bucky returned from the Dean’s Den to get some pipe cleaners from the supply cabinet.

  Aiden explained how the grading worked. If you did the worksheet about the layers, you automatically got a passing grade, even if you didn’t do the 3-D model. So you could skip the 3-D model and still pass.

  “Interesting strategy,” I said.

  Surprisingly, this class, too, was quiet. I watched some YouTube videos, and then I interrupted Tucker, who was now making a hat out of pipe cleaners, to show him and Lionel a video made by a GoPro camera hanging from a helium balloon that went nineteen miles into the air. “It hits these high winds,” I said to him. “This is the only teaching I’m going to do today. We’re almost done. The balloon is going to pop.”

  “They had an iPad attached to a balloon, and they flew the iPad up there,” said Lionel. “The case that it was in kept it safe.”

  “I saw that,” I said. “Bear with me now. It’s going to pop. Nineteen miles high. That’s a day’s hike, but straight up in the air. That’s more than a day’s hike.” We watched the camera fall to earth and land in a tree.

  Hank brought out some Q-tips from the supply cabinet.

  “Those are going to come in handy,” I said.

  “He has really dirty ears,” said Lionel.

  A man from the guidance department came in. “I want to borrow Aiden,” he said. I went over to another jokey table and sat down. “It seems like there’s a lot happening over here,” I said. “I can’t see why you couldn’t use some of those pipe-cleaner shapes to, let’s say, represent the troposphere as imagined by a certain N-dimensional alien who would think in alternative—”

  “Did you just call me an alien?” said a sporty boy, Marco.

  “Basically,” said Diana. She pointed to Marco’s pipe cleaner. “Is that a heart?”

  Hank began looking in Mrs. Moran’s desk for the glue gun.

  “Do you have full permission to look in her desk?” I said.

  “I do not even have half permission,” he said.

  The man from guidance returned. “Can I borrow Nora for a second?”

  “What’s happening?” I asked the class. “Everybody’s being borrowed.”

  “They’re looking for Nelson,” said Hank. Nelson was a ninth-grader who’d gone missing the week before, after school. “He went out for a walk and then he disappeared.”

  Diana poked her finger in the glue gun. “Don’t do that,” I said. “That could hurt you.”

  Marco began crinkling up a water bottle.

  “All right, guys, seriously,” I said. “You’ve got fifteen minutes left. Apply yourself now—total atmospheric activity. Just layer it up, and do it, and you’ll be done. And then you’ll get, you know, an eighty-seven.”

  “Have you ever been poked with a soldering iron?” Lionel asked me.

  “No. You’ve got it all arranged, so why waste all that good effort?”

  Hank typed the wrong password too many times into Tucker’s iPad and disabled it.

  “Here’s your hot-glue gun,” said Diana to Marco. They began gluing down random pipe-cleaner shapes.

  Penelope couldn’t find any cotton balls, so she began pulling the cotton off the ends of the Q-tips.

  “I got glue in my pants,” said Diana.

  Marco, showing off for Diana, tried to start a fire in a pool of molten glue. I dissuaded him.

  Penelope was finished with her colored-tissue project. “It looks like a blob,” she said.

  “No, it looks like the planet Earth as interpreted by your tissuey sensibility,” I said.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  I checked the clock. “Eight minutes to go,” I said.

  “I’m here again next block, by the way,” Penelope said.

  “You’re really spending the day in this classroom,” I said.

  “Oh, yes.”

  I stopped Marco from squirting hot glue on his teeth.

  “That’s a horrible idea,” said Lionel.

  “There are limits,” I said.

  “Tastes bad,” said Marco.

  “Why am I being responsible for you?” said Lionel.

  I looked away for a moment, and when I looked back, Marco had commenced eating the glue stick as if it was string cheese.

  I said, “NO, NO. I draw the line in the sand.”

  “It’s a snack,” Marco said.

  “No, it’s not a snack, it’s a fricking glue stick,” I said. “Don’t eat that. Seriously. DON’T DO THAT.”

  ?
??It’s like gum,” said Marco.

  “It says nontoxic,” said Diana.

  “When they say ‘nontoxic,’” I said, “they mean it’s nontoxic if you’re gluing stuff. If you eat sticks of it, it’s probably going to be toxic.”

  “I just chew on it,” Marco said. He spat out some pieces of glue stick into the trash can.

  I asked Lionel what he was handing in.

  “This finished piece of fine, fine work,” he said. It was an eight-foot-long conceptual-art piece made of straws and pipe cleaners and yellow construction paper, the troposphere at one end and the thermosphere at the other. Very little was glued or taped down. He took a picture of it with his iPad. “Now I just have to put it up on eBackpack.”

  “Hey, guys, you know you didn’t measure it out correctly, right?” said Diana to Lionel and company.

  “Who measures?” said Lionel.

  “You have to have it measured,” Diana said.

  “That’s crazy,” said Lionel. Actually he had done some rough measurements, jotting down kilometer distances.

  “Dude, that’s so off,” said Marco.

  “I hate you,” said Lionel.

  Bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong.

  “Hear that?” I said. “Stack and pack.”

  —

  ACTIVITY BLOCK WAS from 10:40 to 11:14. “It’s the end of the trimester and they ALL have overdue work,” said the sub plans. A big round boy in a maroon polo shirt introduced himself and shook my hand. His name was Stefan. He said, “Do you know a good riddle? I love riddles. They’re the best.”

  I asked Stefan to tell me a riddle.

  “What has four eyes, but cannot see?”

  “A flounder,” I said.

  “Mississippi,” Stefan said.

  “Ah, nice,” I said. He waited for me to tell him a riddle, but I couldn’t think of one.

  Stefan wasn’t officially in this Activity Block, he was just visiting, he said. “I have you last today,” he said. Ah, I thought, so he was one of the class clowns that April had told me about. “If you give me liquid, I will die,” he said. “If you give me food, I will live. What am I?”

  “A chocolate-covered cherry,” I said.