a side-discussion not on slavery (her intended subject) but on what a shipyard was and what was meant by the word caulker. It sounded dirty, several students hypothesized.
“I’m sorry but I had to call,” Will said.
“I’m listening.”
“Dean got sick.”
“Sick? How sick? Can I see him? I can come by tomorrow.”
How he wished.
“He stopped eating, walking and even drinking water, Terri. You should have heard him cough.”
No sound on the phone from her end or the sound of someone trying not to cry or scream.
“I had to do it.”
“Do what?”
“I had to, Terri.”
She said she couldn’t talk anymore and hung up. Will turned off the light over his ill-fitting queen-sized bed. The alarm clock read 12:15 in red, double-jointed numbers. He wedged a pillow between his feet to stop the cricketing. A stale glass of water stood stagnant guard on his night table. At 2:43, he buried the alarm clock in the top drawer. Rogue sleeplessness filled the time with brutal self-evaluations before quicksand dreams of falling, and in one water dream, capsizing. Someone yanks him up hard by the arm, a man in a black robe. The man looks like Fred Gwynn. In a seamless segue, Will is in a courtroom decorated in marble ancient columns, and Fred Gwynn is reading charges brought against William P. Larkin. For the crime of selfishness, how do you plead? Guilty, your honor. For the crime of immaturity, how do you plead? Guilty. I hereby sentence you to Life.
Will was especially relieved to have to get out of bed and go to work.
• • •
At Lakeview High, he waited four years for Mrs. Howell to retire before they gave him her classroom. Will had been a “floater” – teachers unassigned a room who rolled a metal, warped-wheeled cart of their school belongings from classroom to classroom for six periods. For the dozen floating teachers, home base was a suite of cubicles aptly nicknamed “Dilbert.” There, the floaters parked their carts until it was time again to haul their educational wares. Some teachers claimed to like floating, but they were also the ones who perpetuated the Secret Santa gift-swapping ritual. Real team players.
Will did his hard time and last year, finally, Room 215 was his. The classroom was closest to the men’s room and the main stairway leading to the office, where moody gatekeepers issued paychecks, schedules and contested chaperone duties. Room 215 featured slender windows providing a cheap view of the football field. In the back of the classroom – where Will smartly stationed his desk and microwave – he could monitor his yearly crop of teens.
This year’s menu of bureaucratic bullshit included the following edicts from the Hopewell County School Superintendent’s Office: No student will receive a 0 grade; no accepting late work anymore (“Not even in July?” Will asked snarkily during a poorly-attended department meeting); homework grades are not to be applied to a student’s academic record, and failing a student was essentially not an option. These new practices coupled fretfully with an “epidemic” of students leaving school grounds daily to dine at the nearby Chipotle and Chick-fil-A. Lunching off-campus was against the rules for liability issues, but students remained determined to take their appetites elsewhere. Once, Will interrupted one of his student’s cell phone conversations with her Uber driver who apparently was charging too much to get the girl to Chipotle. He felt nostalgic for last year’s cheating epidemic.
Still, for every front office cluster fuck, behavioral epidemic, debasing parent-teacher conference and further demolition of student accountability, Will’s Honda was always 38 paces from his classroom. So what if his classroom was too cold in the winter and too hot in late spring. So what if the janitorial staff used a leaf blower to sweep out his room, which accounted for backpack flotsam clinging to the ceiling’s cobwebs. So what if he taught house-unbroken pups of freshmen every year. Room 215 was his.
Will was not expecting calamitous news when he was summoned to the main office on Monday. He had faithfully reported the gazebo incident and received an officious warning, as noted in his personnel file. What was the worst thing Hull could do? Give him all Standards next year? Fine with him. Fewer college recommendations to write; fewer parents to e-mail-stalk him. Will preferred the Standard kids. He had been a Standard kid.
“Have a seat,” said assistant principal Hull, who always struck Will as more of a loud oil painting than a human (and that croaking, glottal voice, that classic vocal fry). The administrator sat at his Office Depot desk and on the cinder-blocked wall behind him a laminated inspirational poster: “I’m a School Administrator. What’s Your Superpower?” Two framed photographs of the Family Hull were turned outward on his desk for visiting staff and teachers to appraise. The Hull children looked cretinous. The Hull woman looked like she could drown the lot of them. Cut the brakes and roll their minivan into a lake with the doors locked. Staged press conferences. Fake tears. The whole show.
“As you know, we’re getting a new math teacher. This is her first year, and I’m not going to have her float. She’s going to be lost enough as it is. I need you to be the team player that I know you are,” Hull said, scraping out his words.
“You’re taking my classroom?”
“I’m hoping it’s only for the remainder of the year, Will.”
“I was a floater for four years before I got my classroom. Then I floated again this year. Now, I have to float again? Is this because of the gazebo? That was a year ago. I reported that immediately. I haven’t had an issue, any issue since. And now you’re giving my room to a new teacher?”
Hull had lost confidence in his algebra teacher and suspected Will of faking a cough on the phone last month so he could skip school for the first time in four years. Not to mention Will terrorizing his neighbor’s property last year. The man might be cracking up, a man who had never once changed his daily lesson plan, never once asked for a different classroom or schedule. Hull feared the teacher might be capable of entering school grounds after hours and taking a chainsaw to his Ikea desk, family photographs or his inspirational poster!
“You’re a team player, Will. And I know you will continue to be a team player.”
Will walked out of assistant principal Hull’s office and passed Pete Wilson rolling his cart to Ms. Emmart’s room to teach his U.S. history. Pete was only five years older than Will, but Pete looked 65 and broken down like a junkyard microwave. The wheels of the metal cart wobbled and squealed. Pete took the corner with his cart and math books toppled onto the ground. Will felt sick to his stomach.
He was a floater again.
Chapter 3
In Annapolis, the weather-proofing shrink wrap comes off the boats in spring, as another season de-cocoons. The kid-friendly pirate ship Sea Gypsy gets back to work, as do the twin schooners, Woodwind. Polo-shirted marina employees strip wrap off the Sea Rays, Silvertons, Carvers, and Chris-Crafts. Other big boats come north from Florida and Bermuda. At the town’s City Dock, the inlet is nicknamed Ego Alley for the throaty cigarette boats and yachts that idle through the small waterway between April and October. At the end of the inlet is a landing for tenders and dinghies. If you didn’t have a boat, you could kayak or rent an inflatable Zodiac and zip around the creeks.
Will walked along City Dock by the statue of Alex Haley, whose “Roots” monument marks the spot where Kunte Kinte landed and was sold into slavery. Tourists stopped to skim the plaque’s inspirational quotes. Will saw a private school girl (white shirt untucked) drop a solid scoop of black walnut ice cream onto the crotch of Haley. There were tears. “I want my ice cream!” the girl cried. Her mother attempted to delicately scoop the black walnut by using napkins from the ice cream shop, but she was overmatched. Witnesses saw the girl’s mother resort to using her bare hands to swab the novelist’s lap. Many had to look away.
Across the street at Starbucks, Will considered buying a smoothie, but smoothies were never as good as he hoped. He got coffee, either a Venti or Trenta, and took