The Last Teacher (2 page)

“Who can tell me what Chopin was trying to say at the end of
The Awakening
?”

Farah Fran, who was quickly establishing herself as Ray’s best student, raised her hand. “That it’s better to die on your own terms than live the way society wants you to live?”

“Very good, Farah,” Ray said, and the girl smiled. “But don’t think of it as the main character killing herself. Chopin is careful not to say what happens to her, even though we all assume the same thing.”

Every year, Ray had her class read the story about a woman who, on the final page, walks into the ocean until the water is over her head, and every year the students tried to turn the moral into a cliché that some rock band would sing about.

“Do you think it could have been Chopin’s way of providing an escape?” she asked her class.

Without raising his hand, Eric Tates said, “Maybe she knew it was a matter of time until the Blocks appeared and everyone would die anyways.”

Half the students laughed. The other half groaned.

There were two types of class clowns: the ones who became quiet once you ignored them, and the type who quieted down once you acknowledged how smart or clever or funny they were, depending on whatever type of inadequacy they needed soothed. Ray had quickly learned that Eric was the first variety.  So, instead of telling him to stay on topic, she acknowledged the comment with a smile and asked the class what they thought about the book’s ending. Was it a tragedy or, in an odd way, was it a happy ending?

Eric said, “Maybe a whale ended up eating her and it was supposed to be a tragedy, but then she wasn’t dead at all, was just sitting in the whale’s stomach.  And she doesn’t get out until everyone else in the world has died.  So she has a kid, the human population starts growing again, and it’s a happy ending.”

Ray offered a polite grin. “Probably not.”

But before she could keep the rest of the class on topic, a boy said, “How would she get pregnant if everyone else was dead, you moron?”

A girl said, “She’d of been two hundred years old by the time she got out of the whale’s stomach, idiot.”

The class clown held his hands in the air as if he were surrendering to police.  “Hey, don’t shoot me for thinking outside the box.”

“Okay, everyone, settle down.” Then, “So what do you think of the ending? Keep in mind, this was written by a woman in a time when women didn’t have many rights.”

Christy Neal raised her hand, then said, “Wouldn’t she have been better served trying to change the system than run away from it?”

Candace Nieler raised her hand and said, “Why not move somewhere else, somewhere with a friendlier society toward women?”

“She wouldn’t have had a problem if she’d just stayed in the kitchen,” Eric said.

The boys laughed. The girls rolled their eyes.

“Quiet, Eric,” Ray said.

But the class clown added, “My dad said another body washed ashore last night. Probably another Block that some family threw in the water to get rid of it.”

“Eric, be quiet. That’s your third warning.”

“If Chopin had been around today, she could have written an ending where the main character wants to go out into the water but then she’s grossed out by all the dead Blocks floating around. So instead, she”—

“Eric, out! To the principal’s office. Now!”

The boy sighed, zipped up his backpack, then walked out of the class without saying anything else.

“Okay, where were we?” Ray said once the room was quiet again.

“Ms. Phillips?” Celeste Rodriguez said, her hand raised.

“Yes?”

For every class clown, there was a student who wanted to make the class run as efficiently as possible. Ray refused to think of these kids as the Teacher’s Pet, although that was the opposite of the role Eric played. Whatever it was, Ray always had a special place in her heart for the student each year, usually a girl, who counter-balanced the troublemaker. This year, Celeste was going to be that girl.

But instead of reminding everyone what they had been talking about or asking a question about the end of the book, the girl only said, “Can I go to the restroom?”

“Yes, Celeste.”

“Do I need a hall pass?”

“No.”

“Ray, did you send one of your students to my office yesterday?”

Principal Wachowski was leaning in close, trying to talk as quietly as possible so no one else in the teacher’s lounge could hear. The part that irritated Ray the most, though, was that Barbara knew Eric Tates had been sent to her office, and yet she still asked about it as if it were a cloudy area that was up for debate.

“He was being a nuisance. The class can’t function when he refuses to behave.  As soon as he was gone, everyone else had a chance to learn.”

“I understand that. I really do.” Barbara reached out and put a hand on Ray’s shoulder. “But what am I supposed to do? Suspending the kid makes no difference. More and more kids are skipping out of school because they know that having a degree won’t count for anything in a couple years.  Children are leaving with their families to go south. We can’t afford to push away any of the remaining kids, can we?”

Ray shook her head and said, “I can’t have him disrupting my class. It’s not fair to the other students.”

“You want me to teach the punk a lesson?” Al Flannagan said, somehow looking even older than normal. “I’ll take that kid out back and show him what respecting authority means. I’ll whip that kid’s ass!”

Ray smiled and said, “No, thank you, Al.”

She didn’t bother to add that Al had been saying similar things since she had been teaching there and she had never once seen him do anything more than tell the offending kids how children used to have better manners back when he was their age. She also didn’t add that if Al couldn’t beat up an out-of-shape Harry Rousner, he would never get a hold of an energetic kid.  Eric Tates may be nothing more than a stick-and-bones teenager, but he would be able to run circles around the poor old Math teacher.

“You let me know if you change your mind,” Flannigan said. “That kid will never know what’s coming. I’d go Fourth of July on that brat!  He’d be seeing fireworks, that’s for sure!”

“Thanks, Al.”

Flannigan threw a hook in the air in front of him, then a right cross, showing her where Eric’s face would be.  “Like the Fourth of July.”

“I know, Al, thanks.”

“Listen, Ray,” the principal said, squeezing Ray’s shoulder in a way that made Ray, Harry, and every other teacher in the room, except for Al Flannigan, who was still busy shadow-boxing, all cringe. “Just be patient with him. When he acts out, remind yourself that his friends have probably gone south. Or maybe he has a younger brother or sister who’s a Block. Or his mom and dad have jobs that aren’t needed anymore because the population keeps declining. Just try to be patient with the kid, that’s all I’m saying.”

Al Flannagan put both of his arms in the air after having knocked out the imaginary troublemaker.

Harry Rousner looked up from his paper, sighed, and said, “I think the fireworks display is over,” then went back to the Sports section.

“Just be patient with the kid,” Barbara said again. “It must be difficult being a kid these days, seeing the schools shut down, seeing the classes a little more empty each year.”

“Tell me about it,” Ray wanted to say.  Instead, reminding herself that it was important to pick her battles, she only nodded.

Eric was no better behaved the next day. When Ray tried to have the class share their thoughts about the ending of
The Stranger
compared to the ending of the previous book they had read, Eric kept talking about the Block Slasher, the serial killer who was going around killing as many quiet and motionless victims as he could get his hands on. When she asked the class how they would have liked to see the book end, Eric said it was a good thing those books were written when they were since there were no more Nobel prizes being given out for Literature, adding, “They would have written those books for nothing.”

Ray closed her eyes and remembered what the principal had said. There was no telling what was going on at Eric’s home. Maybe his parents fought every night, trying to decide if they should leave and head south, the way so many other people were beginning to do. Maybe he had a Block brother or sister who required all of his attention, never letting him have a chance to be the carefree kid he yearned to be.

When she re-opened her eyes, she closed her copy of the book and said, “Okay, Eric. What would
you
like to talk about today?”

There were only eight children in her class now. Celeste Rodriguez, the girl who Ray thought might become her best student, hadn’t shown up for school that day. The kids were already whispering that Celeste had texted them from a rest stop. She and her parents were moving south to be with the rest of her dad’s family. While Celeste was the first of Ray’s students to disappear, she was the fifth student in the entire school to fade away only days after the school year had started. Knowing this, Ray understood there would be no way to keep Eric and the others on the day’s planned lesson.

But instead of asking if she thought the Block Slasher would be caught or if she planned to relocate south as well, Eric said, “Ms. Phillips, what did you want to be when you were our age?”

“Excuse me?”

The boy smiled. “What did you want to be, you know, when you got older?”

She thought about telling him that she certainly hadn’t imagined spending her days having to put up with the likes of kids who wanted to make a joke out of everything. She thought about telling him she had wanted to be a teacher, even as a little girl. But she didn’t say either of those things or anything else. Instead, she remained silent, thinking. The fact was that she couldn’t remember what she had wanted to be when she grew up.  Not when she was a little girl.  Not even when she was a teenager like they were.

How was it possible to forget what her dreams had been? Was she unable to remember because she had settled on the life she knew she would have—a high school English teacher—or had the memory faded away once the initial indications appeared that all of mankind would slowly go extinct?

One thing was clear: her students, especially Eric, would know if she lied to them.

“I don’t remember.”

She looked around the class, from one face to the next. None of the kids said anything.  Not even Eric.

“What do you want to be when you grow up, Eric?”

The class clown snorted.  But as she watched, she saw the laughter and mockery quickly transition to something else.  The boy, so eager to turn each classic book into a joke, the kid who wanted to distract the rest of the class any opportunity he had, looked down at his feet without saying anything.

In the front row, Kelly Abraham looked like she might start crying. Kevin Mathiason gazed out the window, trying to think of something more pleasant than the turn their discussion had taken.  Candace Nieler looked at the portraits of Shakespeare, Hemingway, Salinger, and all the other legendary authors who were hanging on the walls around them.

Ray placed the book that was in her hands on the desk beside her, letting the kids know they were done talking about literature for the day.

“You know,” she said, standing up and looking out the window herself.

The high school still had a football field, a soccer field, and a baseball diamond, but it had been four years since the athletics programs had been disbanded, none of them having enough kids who cared about playing games anymore, and all of the fields were overgrown and wild.

“You know,” she said, “just because of everything that’s happening”—she turned back from the window and from the wilderness that was creeping upon them, then motioned at all of the empty seats in the class—“doesn’t mean you can’t still do whatever you want in life.”

She thought Eric would snicker at this romantic’s notion of life, but he, along with all of the other kids in class, simply stared at her.

She said, “When I was little, I believed I could do anything I wanted, be anything I wanted. But by the time I got to high school, I didn’t feel that way anymore. The older you get, the more the world feels like a place for realists rather than dreamers. Everywhere I looked, I saw people trying to get through the day rather than people eager for the next adventure that life had to throw at them.  Even my hippy parents got to be that way.”

Outside in the hallway, the bell rang. Class was over. The students were supposed to go to their next room. But everyone, Eric included, remained quiet and motionless. For a split second, it was as if Ray were the teacher of a class for Blocks instead of the final batch of regular kids. The thought made the hairs stand up on her arms.

“If there is anything at all that you take away from my class, I want it to be this one lesson: As long as you never give up, you can be whatever you want in life. I don’t care if you read the books I assign or pass the quizzes I hand out, just leave here remembering that you can do whatever you want and I’ll be happy.”

For once, Eric raised his hand before speaking.

“Yes, Eric?”

The boy did his best to offer a smile, then said, “Ms. Phillips?”

“Yes?”

“If the main character in
The Awakening
had someone say that to her, I completely understand why she would have decided to walk into the ocean.”

“Thanks, Eric.”