Sprout

ENEMY WHO NEEDS TO GET A HEARING AID AS WELL AS GLASSES: Okay. Well, welcome to our school, Danny, and to Kansas. I understand you traveled quite a distance to get here.
    ME: I’m from Long Island.
    IAN ABERNATHY: (spitting out the stalk of wheat he’s been chewing on) Long Guy land? Is that right next to Short Gay land?
    CLASS giggles become CLASS guffaws.
    ME: ( intellectually distancing my fragile psyche from Ian’s lameoid joke by reminding myself that hazing is an unavoidable but finite adolescent ritual, and also staring at my desk, where the word “crap” had been carved about an inch deep into the wood, and seemed to sum up how I felt ) It’s in New York.
    IAN: (slapping his forehead so hard his straw hat is knocked to the floor) Noo Yauk? Noooooo Yaaaaaaaauuuuuuuk?
    MISS TUNIE: Thank you for your generous offer, Ian. Yes, you can prepare an essay on the State of New York for next Monday. I’m sure we would all appreciate learning about where our new classmate comes from.
    CLASS, fickle in its loyalty, redirects its guffaws at IAN ABERNATHY.
    IAN: (blushing so hard the smattering of freckles on his cheeks disappears like lily pads subsumed by algae in a dead pond) Miss Tunie!
    MISS TUNIE, a.k.a. THE TEACHER WHO MEANS WELL BUT DOESN’T REALIZE HOW MUCH TROUBLE SHE’S CAUSING: You’d rather have it ready tomorrow? Why, thank you, Ian. I’m impressed with your zeal. ( continuing in a louder voice when IAN, who will later demonstrate his love of lost causes by playing for Buhler High’s football and basketball teams , opens his mouth to protest ) Why, yes, I do think an hour after school in the library would help you finish your paper. Is there anything else you’d like to volunteer for, Ian? Or anyone else for that matter?
    IAN is silent. As is CLASS, save for one snort from a tall, angular GIRL sitting in the desk one row over from mine, and scratching a word into her desk with a pencil. A hint: it’s a synonym for the word that had been carved into mine.
    MISS TUNIE: Well, Dan, I believe you were telling us why you moved here?
    ME: ( wishing MISS TUNIE, who got props for taking down Ian, had forgotten about me in the excitement ) My dad said he heard about a job.
    MISS TUNIE: ( smiling naively, like well-meaning elementary school teachers everywhere ) And what does he do?
    ME: Nothing. He didn’t get the job.
    CLASS is silent. Dead silent. The sound of the tall GIRL’s pencil scratching into the wood is the only thing that can be heard.
    MISS TUNIE: ( oh so naive ) A-ha. ( which, to be fair, might’ve been uh-huh, although that’s not much better ) And what does your mother do?
    ME: ( mumbling ) Mpmf-mpmf-mpmf.
    GIRL scratching well-known but unprintable four-letter word into her desk suddenly lifts her pencil—No. 1, I later learned, which has a harder lead than No. 2, and cuts into laminated wood better. From the corner of my eye, I notice that one of the straps of her overalls is undone, exposing a faded T-shirt from Hole’s 1994 Live Through This tour, which occurred when the GIRL was approximately one
    MISS TUNIE: ( really, really unwilling to let well enough alone ) Pardon me, Dan? I didn’t catch that.
    ME: ( e-nun-ci-a-ting ) She. Is. Dead.
    MISS TUNIE: ( smile hardening like Play-Doh left out of the can ) Oh. Well. Welcome to our school, Dan. Daniel. (fiddling with papers) I see that your English and composition skills are exceptionally high. Perhaps you can, um, write about … Well. Would everyone please open their copy of The Outsiders to the last page? What do we make of Ponyboy’s assertion that quote It-was-too-vast-a-problem-to-be-just-a-personal-thing unquote? What do we think Hinton is trying to communicate …
    Lights dim until the entire class is shrouded in darkness, save for a lone spot on the new kid. Another bell rings. Class exits, their shadowy forms more heard than seen as they squeeze through the closely packed desks. But the boy known for one more week as Daniel Bradford remains in his seat as the last spotlight fades, until eventually he too disappears in a darkness punctuated not by noises from the stage, but from the audience. Seatsprings creak beneath squirming bottoms as they wait for the house lights to come up; the electric hum of the EXIT sign at the back of the theater calls them back to the real world. At long last, rubber-soled chair legs squeak over freshly waxed linoleum. There’s a crash, hollow metal being tripped over by not-so-hollow flesh