Boys Life

Leatherlungs”-was demonstrating on the blackboard the division of fractions. Arithmetic was for me a walk into the Twilight Zone; this dividing fractions stuff was a mystifying fall into the Outer Limits.
    “Cory?” she whispered again, behind me. “I’ve got a big ole green booger on my finger.”
    Oh my Lord, I thought. Not again!
    “If you don’t turn around and smile at me, I’m gone wipe it on the back of your neck.”
    It was the fourth day of class. I knew on the first day that it was going to be a long year, because some idiot had decreed the Demon a “gifted child” and had double-promoted her, and like the fickle finger of fate, Mrs. Harper had devised a seating chart-boy, girl, boy, girl, boy, girl-that put the Demon in the desk at my back.
    And the worst part, the very worst, was that-as Davy Ray told me and laughed wickedly-she had a crush on me as big as the cheesy green moon.
    “Cory?” Her voice demanded my attention.
    I had to turn around. Last time I’d resisted, she’d smeared saliva on the back of my neck in the shape of a heart.
    Brenda Sutley was grinning, her red hair oily and ratty and her wandering eyes shining with mischief. She held up her index finger, which had a dirt-grimed nail but no booger on it.
    “Got’cha,” she whispered.
    “Cory Jay Mackenson!” Leatherlungs roared. “ Turn around this instant!”
    I did, almost giving myself whiplash. I heard the traitors around me giggling, knowing that the Harpy would not be satisfied with this display of respect. “Oh, I guess you know all about the division of fractions by now, don’t you?” she inquired, her hands on hips as wide as a Patton tank. “Well, why don’t you come up here and do some division for us, to show us how it’s done?” She held the accursed yellow chalk out to me.
    If I am ever on death row, the walk to the electric chair will be no more terrifying than that walk from my desk to the chalk in Mrs. Harper’s hand and then, ultimately, to the blackboard. “All right,” she said as I stood there shoulder-slumped and hang-doggy. “Write down these fractions.” She rattled some off, and when I copied them my chalk broke and Nelson Bittner laughed and in two seconds I had a fellow sufferer up there with me.
    Everybody knew by now: we weren’t going to be able to defeat Mrs. Harper with a frontal attack. We weren’t going to be able to storm her ramparts and yell victory over her scattered math books. It would have to be a slow, insidious war of snipers and booby traps, a painstaking probe to learn her weakness. All us kids had found out by now that all teachers had a sore spot; some went crazy over gum chewing, others insane over behind-the-back giggles, still others nuts over the repeated squeaking and scuffing of shoes on the linoleum. Machine-gun coughs, donkeylike snorts, a fusillade of throat clearing, spitballs stuck to the blackboard: all these were arsenals in the battle against Hitlerian teachers. Who knows? Maybe we could get the Demon to bring to class a dead, stinking animal in a shoebox, or get her to sneeze and blow ribbons of snot out of those talented nostrils of hers to make Mrs. Harper’s hair uncurl.
    “Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!” Leatherlungs bellowed at me as I finished my queasy attempt at fraction division. “Go sit down and pay attention, you blockhead!”
    Between Leatherlungs and the Demon, I was really in for it.
    After the three o’clock bell had rung and Davy Ray, Johnny, Ben, and I had jawed about the events of the day, I pedaled home on Rocket under a dark, glowering sky. I found Mom at home, cleaning the oven. “Cory!” she said when I walked into the kitchen intent on raiding the cookie jar. “Lady from the mayor’s office called for you about ten minutes ago. Mayor Swope wants to see you.”
    “Mayor Swope?” I paused with my hand reaching for a Lorna Doone. “What for?”
    “Didn’t say what for, but she said it was important.” Mom glanced out the window. “A storm’s blowin’ up. Your father’ll drive you over to the courthouse, if you can wait an hour.”
    My curiosity was piqued. What would Mayor Swope want with me? I looked out the window as Mom continued her oven cleaning, and judged the gathering clouds. “I think I can get there before it starts rainin’,” I said.
    Mom pulled her head out of the oven, looked at the sky again, and frowned. “I don’t know. It might start pourin’ on you.”
    I shrugged. “I’ll be all