The Unteachables Read online

  Until the truth came out. A kid named Jake Terranova had gotten hold of the test and charged his classmates ten bucks a pop for a copy of it. That’s why they aced it—they were cheating. And when the whole thing blew up, was Thaddeus there to take the heat the way he’d taken the acclaim? Not on your life. The teacher was to blame. That’s who I’ve been ever since. The guy who . . . The teacher whose class gave the entire Greenwich School District a black eye.

  Officially, life went on after that. No one revoked my teaching certificate or docked my pay or kicked me out of the union. But everything was different. When I stepped into the faculty room, people stopped talking. Colleagues wouldn’t look me in the eye. Administration kept changing my department. One year it was English, then math, French, social studies, even phys ed—me with my two left feet.

  I went into a blue funk. Okay, that wasn’t the school’s fault, but it began to affect my personal life. My engagement to Fiona Bertelsman fell apart. That was on me. I was lost in my own misery.

  Worst of all, the one thing that was most important to me—teaching—became a bad joke. The students didn’t want to learn? Fine. I didn’t particularly want to teach them. All I needed to do for my paycheck was show up.

  Until next June, when early retirement would carry me away from all of this.

  And now Thaddeus thinks he can make me throw that away too, just to avoid a year with the Unteachables. Obviously, the superintendent doesn’t have the faintest idea who he’s messing with. I would happily go into room 117 with a pack of angry wildcats before I’d give him the satisfaction of forcing me out.

  I look from the superintendent to the principal and back to the superintendent again. “I enjoy a good challenge.” I pick up the Toilet Bowl and walk out of there, careful to keep the big mug steady. Can’t risk spilling coffee all over myself. It would spoil the dramatic exit.

  Three decades in this school, and never once have I set foot inside room 117. I know where it is, though, from the stint in phys ed. Somebody has to be in the remotest classroom of the entire building, but I decide to be offended by it. It’s just another part of the conspiracy to force me out.

  Well, it won’t work. After all, how bad can these Unteachables really be? Behavior issues, learning problems, juvenile delinquents? Does Thaddeus honestly think I’ve never crossed paths with students like that throughout thirty years in the classroom? Bad attitudes? The kid hasn’t been born with an attitude that’s half as bad as mine at this point. Face it, the Unteachables can only hurt you if you try to teach them. I gave up on teaching anybody anything decades ago. Since then, my relationship with my classes has been one of uncomfortable roommates. We don’t much like each other, but everybody knows that if we just hold our noses and keep our mouths shut, we’ll eventually get what we want. For me, that means early retirement. For the SCS-8 students, it means being promoted to ninth grade.

  That part’s a slam dunk, because surely the middle school is dying to get rid of them. What would they have to do to get held back—burn the whole place to the ground?

  I walk into my new classroom.

  A roaring fire in a wastebasket. Smoke pouring through the open windows. Kids toasting marshmallows on the end of pencils. Pencils catching fire. One pyromaniac-in-training seeing if he can get his eraser to burn. An escapee standing outside in the bushes, gazing in, eyes wide with fear. A boy draped over a desk, fast asleep, oblivious to it all.

  Most kids would scramble to look innocent and be sitting up straight with their arms folded in front of them once the teacher puts in an appearance. Not this crew. If I came in with a platoon of ski marine paratroopers, it wouldn’t make any more of an impression.

  I stroll over to the flaming wastebasket and empty the giant cup of coffee onto the bonfire, which goes out with a sizzle. Silence falls in room 117.

  “Good morning,” I announce, surveying the room. “I’m your teacher, Mr. Kermit.”

  Only ten months until June.

  Three

  Parker Elias

  I love the sound the pickup truck makes when the motor roars to life. It’s even cooler now, with that little muffler problem, but that’ll only last until Mom and Dad save up the money to get it fixed. Even without the extra noise, though, it’s still awesome.

  I look down at the start button:

  NEEGIN RATTS/POTS

  That’s what I saw the first time, anyway. Now I know that it really says:

  ENGINE START/STOP

  That’s what reading is for me. I see all the letters, but they’re kind of a mishmash. Like my class at school, which is SCS-8, although it looks like SS8-C or S8-SC or even C-S8S. It messes me up at first a little until I figure out where I have to go, and then it doesn’t matter what order the letters and numbers are in.

  The pickup jounces over the packed dirt of the driveway before bumping onto the paved road where our property ends. Our farm is right outside town, so I haven’t gone very far when a police car pulls up beside me. The cop gives me a thorough once-over with his eyes. I’m used to it. I’m kind of small for my age, so I look like a twelve-year-old out for a joyride. I thought that new girl’s eyes would pop out of her head when I jumped down from the pickup on the first day of school. Or maybe that’s the expression she gives everybody who knocks her book bag halfway to the moon.

  Let’s set the record straight: I’m fourteen. They don’t let you drive any younger than that no matter what your special situation is.

  It’s okay, though. The police around here all know me. The cop rolls down his window and peers into the flatbed of the pickup, taking note of several bushel baskets of fresh tomatoes.

  “You’re just taking those over to the farmers’ market, right, Parker?” he calls.

  “Right, Officer.”

  “And straight to school after that?”

  I shake my head. “First I have to pick up Grams.”

  The cop frowns. “Grams?”

  “My grandmother,” I explain. “I have to take her to the senior center. Then school.”

  That’s why I have a driver’s license in eighth grade. It’s a provisional license—although, to me, it usually looks more like RIVALSNOOPI ICELENS. I’m allowed to drive the pickup, so long as it’s for farm business or for Grams, who’s pretty old and sometimes kind of confused, no offense. My folks both work crazy hours on the farm, so I’m the only one who’s free to pick her up at her apartment and take her to the center, where she hangs out all day. Then I drive to school, and after school, I pick her up and take her back to our house for dinner. She doesn’t live with us, though. She refuses to give up her own place. “My independence,” she calls it.

  The law says I can do all this because running a farm is considered a “hardship.” That’s pretty stupid because we actually prefer living outside the city and having tons of open space when everybody else is stuck on a little postage stamp of grass. Plus, we don’t have livestock, so we don’t have to do any of the really gross farm things, like sticking your arm up the butt of a sick cow. (I’ve only seen that on TV, but—hard pass.)

  I drop off the tomatoes at the market, watching the clock impatiently while Mr. Sardo weighs everything to the millionth of an ounce. Then straight to Grams. She’s waiting for me in the lobby of her apartment building, but she’s wearing a winter coat, and it’s like eighty degrees out. So I have to park and we go upstairs to put away the coat, and by the time I return from the closet, she’s in the kitchen, warming up leftover meatloaf for me.

  “But Grams, I’m going to be late for school.”

  “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, kiddo.”

  I used to like it when she called me kiddo—but now I’m pretty sure it’s because she can’t remember my name. It bums me out. To be fair, she called me kiddo before she forgot my name too. The difference is now it’s the only thing she calls me.

  “I already had breakfast,” I tell her.

  “You want mashed potatoes with that?” she asks. “It w
on’t take long.”

  “No, thanks. This is fine.”

  Obviously, I eat the meatloaf. It’s actually pretty good. Grams can still cook, even though she’s forgotten most other things. She’s been knitting me a sweater for the past three years that she can’t seem to finish. I’ve gotten a lot bigger in that time, but it’s okay, because so has the sweater. It’s draped over the back of the couch, a mass of dropped stitches, hanging strands, and random colors. It looks like a giant psychedelic wool amoeba.

  I gulp down the food as fast as I can, but it still throws off the schedule. By the time I drop Grams at the senior center, I can already hear the bell ringing at school. With my grandmother, there’s always something to slow you down—if isn’t meatloaf, then she’s buttoned her blouse wrong, or she’s wearing slippers instead of shoes, or she’s waiting for Grandpa to come home, even though he died a long time ago. I’m used to being late—Grams is worth it. But it’s my fourth time already, and it’s only the first week of school.

  I barrel around the streets, busting the speed limit by a lot, and blowing at least one stop sign. I screech into the school parking lot, leaving a small mark on the side of Mr. Sarcassian’s BMW. Not good. Carefully, I back out and find another spot, this one on the opposite side of the lot. I pull my trusty can of scratch guard out of the glove compartment and rub the evidence off my front bumper. Then I work on the Beemer a little. Not perfect, but it should keep Mr. S. from noticing the damage long enough for him to have absolutely no idea where it might have come from.

  This is usually the part where my day starts to go downhill. I love getting to school—the driving and all that. But once I’m here—not so much. There’s no problem with the building, and the teachers are okay, I guess. It just happens to be a place where I’m bad at everything that’s considered important.

  It’s a long walk to room 117. I take it slow, because who wants to rush to somewhere you hate? I’m already late, though, so I open the door and walk inside.

  Before I know it, my feet slide out from under me, and wham! I’m flat on my back on the floor.

  It gets a big laugh and scattered applause from the six kids who are already there. The only person who doesn’t react is our teacher, Mr. Kermit. He never lifts his face from the New York Times crossword puzzle, except occasionally to take a sip from a humongous coffee cup. And that’s not just today. He’s like that all the time. Yesterday, when Barnstorm chucked one of his crutches and shattered the globe, the teacher didn’t so much as flinch, not even when the Horn of Africa bounced off the side of his head. You could probably set off an atomic bomb on his desk, and he’d never notice.

  I scramble up. But when I turn back to the doorway to see what tripped me, I go down again, on my face this time. I can smell the floor, and taste it a little. There’s butter all over it!

  “Who greased the floor?” I howl.

  The kids laugh louder—enough to penetrate the cone of silence and capture Mr. Kermit’s attention. He glances up, sees me flopping like a fish out of water, and quickly goes back to his puzzle. If he’s not the worst teacher in the world, he’s definitely bottom five.

  Most embarrassing of all, Kiana has to rescue me—she’s the girl whose backpack I hit with the truck. She hauls me far enough from the buttered area that I can stand upright again. My shoes are still a little slippery, but at least I can walk to my desk.

  Kiana turns to the rest of the class. “Who did that?”

  Rahim, who’s fast asleep, lifts his head off the desk and looks around like a deer in headlights. “Did what?”

  “Let it go,” I murmur, red-faced.

  “Why should you?” she demands. “Somebody buttered the doorway. Mr. Kermit’s not going to stand for that.”

  An absentminded “Mmmm” comes from the direction of the teacher’s desk.

  “Shhh!” I drag my broken body into my chair. Who’s the mystery prankster who almost put me in intensive care? Plenty of possibilities in this class. Barnstorm, the injured sports star. He gets away with everything—at least he did until they put him in SCS-8. Aldo, the jerk who flies off the handle every time the wind blows. Elaine—I sneak a look over my shoulder at the scariest girl in the eighth grade. Oh, please don’t let it be her. Elaine rhymes with pain.

  I’ll probably never find out who buttered the floor. If it was Elaine, I don’t want to.

  When I glance up, Mr. Kermit is standing in front of me. At first I’m flattered that he’s come over to make sure I don’t have a concussion. But no. He places a worksheet on my desk and wordlessly returns to his crossword puzzle.

  That’s what we do in the Special Self-Contained Eighth-Grade Class. At the beginning of each period, Mr. Kermit hands us each a worksheet. No one does them.

  At least that’s how it was at the beginning. There were a lot of paper airplanes sailing around the room for the first few days. I figured Mr. Kermit would get mad, but he never made a peep about them. So the airplanes stopped. What was the point of making them if you couldn’t get a rise out of the teacher? Eventually, it got so boring that the only possible thing to do was the worksheet.

  It’s kind of hard for me, though, because the letters get all jumbled up. Even if it’s math, they never just ask what’s five plus three. They have to make it into a story about five brown rabbits and three white rabbits having a rabbit cotillion. That’s where I get lost. Cotillion looks like licit loon to me.

  I’m hunched over my paper, trying to make heads or tails of what seems to be unbreakable code, when, at the desk beside me, Kiana sets down her pen and peers at my paper, which is as untouched as the minute I got it.

  “You haven’t started yet?” she hisses.

  “Sure I have,” I reply defensively.

  She isn’t sold. “What question are you on?”

  “One,” I shoot back. “I’m taking it slow, okay?” I return to work, staring at the letters, willing them to arrange themselves into a form that makes sense to me.

  I guess I look like a scientist peering into a microscope, because she blurts, “You can’t read!”

  “Yes I can!” I say defensively. “I’m just—pacing myself.”

  She reaches over and plants a finger on question one. “What does that say?”

  “There’s no talking in class,” I tell her. “You want to get us in trouble?”

  Mr. Kermit takes a long, loud slurp of his giant coffee.

  “Read it!” she orders.

  And I don’t. It’s not that I can’t. But it would take time. “I don’t feel like it,” I mumble.

  “Parker,” she urges, “this is stupid. You can get help with this. You just have to tell the teacher. But nobody can help you if they don’t know there’s a problem!”

  My eyes find Mr. Kermit. His attention never wavers from his crossword puzzle, even though Rahim and Barnstorm are sword fighting with rulers, and Aldo leaves the room altogether. If I have to depend on Mr. Kermit for help, I’m going to be older than he is before I get any.

  Four

  Aldo Braff

  The first time I saw Kiana, I knew she was going to be a pain in my neck.

  It was the first day of school—the marshmallow roast. She was the new girl, so I was nice. I took a pencil, speared a marshmallow, and made room for her around the fire. Talk about rude! She refused to take it because it was “unsanitary.”

  That’s the last time I try to be a gentleman.

  You know those bossy types who think they know everything? That’s Kiana. One time I’m in the cafeteria when she comes up to me and tells me to stop kicking the candy machine.

  If I’m kicking the candy machine, I’m doing it for a very good reason! Who put her in charge of the world?

  She grabs my arm and hauls me away from the machine. “What’s wrong?”

  “I wanted a Zagnut!” I tell her in fury. “It gave me a Mounds!”

  “So?”

  Man, she really isn’t from around here. At Greenwich Middle School, everybody know
s two things about me: 1) when I want something, nothing stands in my way, and 2) I don’t like coconut.

  I look around. There’s dead silence in the cafeteria, but nobody’s eyes are on me. They know better than to get between me and a Zagnut bar. All except Kiana. Maybe all Californians are like that. They can’t mind their own business.

  She asks, “And if you keep on kicking it, will the Zagnut come out?”

  “Maybe,” I say stubbornly.

  She shrugs. “Then go ahead.”

  But here’s the thing: I don’t want to kick it anymore. She’s ruined it for me!

  The worst part is, she’s in SCS-8, so I can never get away from her. We spend the whole day in room 117, except for lunch in the cafeteria and phys ed, which is in the gym with a couple of other classes. The only surefire place to avoid her is the boys’ room. She hasn’t followed me in there. So far.

  Our teacher, Mr. Kermit, is probably in his fifties, but he looks about nine hundred. Actually, he looks like he’s dead already, hunched over his desk, his eyes half-closed. He never moves a muscle. It’s hard to tell if he’s even breathing. I’m amazed he isn’t swinging from the light fixture, for all the coffee the guy drinks. Mostly, he’s working on a really complicated crossword puzzle. He hates my guts—at least I think he does. All the teachers in this dump have it out for me, so why should he be any different?

  He’s dumb too. He doesn’t even realize that we all call him Ribbit. There’s this nut job in our class, Mateo Hendrickson—he pointed out that the only Kermit he ever heard of was Kermit the Frog. Turns out Mateo’s a fan of the Muppets, not just Star Trek, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Halo, and every comic book ever printed.

  Anyway, a nickname was born. Every morning when the teacher walks in, late as usual, we start ribbiting.