The Last Teacher, Page 2

  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.

  Fifth Kid

  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.”

  Sixth Country

  “Did you hear the news?” Al Flanagan asked her. When Ray looked at him with a blank expression, he said, “Liechtenstein disbanded!” When her eyes remained blank, he yelled, “Liechtenstein! It was one thing when Maldives and San Marino disbanded, but Liechtenstein? Are you kidding me!”

  Harry Rousner yawned and said, “Maldives is actually bigger than Liechtenstein, both in terms of size and population. If you’re going to get upset, Liechtenstein isn’t that big of a deal.”

  “Suddenly, the Biology teacher knows everything!” Flanagan shouted. “Well, did you know this now makes six countries that have officially disbanded, now that the end of mankind is in sight?”

  “And?” Rousner said.

  Flanagan eyed the Math teacher up as if not caring about Liechtenstein dissolving into nothing was reason enough to fight him.

  “And soon it will be seven,” he growled. “Then eight. Then nine.”

  Rousner yawned and went back to reading his paper.

  “How long until the Unites States disbands?” Flanagan shouted. “Huh, Mr. Smart Know-it-all?”

  Barbara Wachowski opened the door to the teacher’s lounge, saw the state her Math teacher was in, and told Harry to leave Flannigan alone.

  Rather than defend himself, Harry only shook his head and sighed.

  The principal walked from sofa to sofa, acting as though she were simply assessing how many teachers she had left. But she always kept an eye on Ray. After sitting down next to her English teacher, Wachowski leaned to the side and said, “Did you tell your students they could be anything they wanted?”

  “Of course.”

  “Ray,” the principal said, frowning so hard that her eyes almost disappeared. “We’re going extinct.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t give me that. You know what I mean. You can’t tell kids they can be anything they want to be when the entire human race is fading away.”

  “Oh.”

  “Stop it with that,” Wachowski said. “You’re making it more difficult than it has to be.”

  “Do you want me to tell them they can’t be anything they want?”

  “No, of course not.”

  Ray said, “So, I shouldn’t tell them they can be anything they want, and I also shouldn’t tell them they can’t be anything they want?”

  Harry Rousner looked up from his paper, opened his mouth, then bit his lip to keep from saying something that would get him in trouble. Al Flannigan was pacing back and forth across the room, trying to figure out all the ways that Liechtenstein disbanding might have an impact on his life.

  When the principal didn’t answer, Ray said, “I should just let them figure everything out for themselves? Instead of trying to help them? Instead of teaching them?”

  “Exactly!” the principal said, beaming now that there was no confusion.

  “Look at it this way, Ray,” Harry Rousner said. “They have to figure everything else out for themselves. Why should this be any different?”

  Al Flanagan yelled, “Ask those kids in Liechtenstein if they can be anything they want!”

  Seventh Student

  The next day, three more of her students were absent, and she knew she would never see them again. Zack Childers, Farah Fran, and Kevin Mathiason were, in all likelihood, on their way south with their families. She imagined them sitting in the backseat of the respective cars they were passengers in, each of them reading one of the books she had assigned to the class.

  But instead of only having five students remaining in her class, there were seven. Two new faces looked at her as if they had just as little an idea of why they were there as she did.

  “Hello,” she said. “I’m Ms. Phillips.”

  “But feel free to call her Ray,” Eric said. “Like a man.”

  “Thanks, Eric.” Then, to the two new faces, “What are your names?”

  “Shawn Kaprosky,” one said.

  “Debbie Vandenphal,” the other said.

  “And where are you normally at this time of day?” she asked.

  “We’re Juniors,” Shawn said weakly, almost mumbling.

  He didn’t have to add that he and Debbie were the only two Juniors left at the high school. Already, there were no freshman or sophomores. Shawn and Debbie were the last juniors. And now, Ray only had five students who were seniors.

  “Our normal teacher didn’t show up today,” Debbie said, trying not to sniffle. “Principal Wachowski told us to come here instead.”

  So, in addition to the three students who must have left in a small caravan, the only other English teacher remaining in their school had also departed. While she liked to imagine her kids reading during their trip south, she doubted the teacher was thinking about the school work she had assigned or about her students. If she were thinking about either of those things, Ray thought, she wouldn’t have been able to leave them in the first place.

  “Very well,” she said. “We’re happy to have you.”

  She stood there for a moment trying to think of what to teach. Also, she tried to figure out which student, one still there or one who had already left, had complained to their parents about being told they could be anything they wanted. Was it her little troublemaker, sitting so smugly in the back corner? It seemed unlikely to her.

  She knew she needed to say something before Eric took over. But the two new students wouldn’t have read any of the material that her own kids were supposed to have completed. It also wouldn’t be fair to her original students—the ones who still showed up each day—if she strayed from that day’s planned lesson.

  Impatient with the silence, Eric looked at Shawn and Debbie and called out, “Just because you’re juniors doesn’t mean you can’t be anything you want. You can be anything you want to be in this world. Right, Ms. Phillips?”

  Ray kept her groan to herself.

  “Thanks, Eric.”

  Eighth Time

  The other English teacher wasn’t the only faculty member to quit. In the teacher’s lounge the next morning, Principal Wachowski told the other assembled teachers that five others had also left. The old Music teacher, whatever her name had been, was gone. So was the Art teacher. So was Al Flanagan.

  “Who’s going to scare the beejesus out of the kids now?” Harry Rousner said. Then, looking at Ray, he pointed and added, “You’re it.”

  “Al was a nice guy,” Ray said. “He was just scared about what the future holds.”

  The principal sighed and said, “Okay, enough of that kind of talk.”

  “What kind of talk?”

  “The kind that had your students’ parents calling me to complain about someone insisting they can still be anything they want, even as governments are disbanding, the Nobel committee is gon
e, and there’s no more NHL.”

  “No more hockey?” Harry said.

  The principal nodded. “They announced it this morning. The league is folding.”

  Harry shook his head and grumbled curses to himself.

  “I’m not going to apologize for trying to inspire my students,” Ray said.

  Principal Wachowski moved to the door, ready for the conversation to be over. “Inspire them all you want. Just don’t lie to them.”

  Ray opened her mouth to say something else, then thought better of it and kept silent. It wasn’t the possibility of getting reprimanded or even fired that worried her. The junior class was almost nonexistent and had already relocated to her classroom. It was now obvious to her that her job wouldn’t exist in another year. In a couple months, she would be out of work, regardless of whether she spoke her piece or not.

  No, she kept silent because she was wondering where this would all end. How many more students would disappear before they gave up pretenses of Fourth Period versus Fifth Period? How many more teachers would vanish before the principal would throw a couple kids in Ray’s classroom and tell her to teach them whatever she wanted, no matter if it had anything to do with English or Math or whatever else she could think of?

  “Which brings me to my next point,” the principal said, as if reading Ray’s mind. Wachowski’s head was the only part of her still remaining in the doorway. “We might have to start combining classes. Like I said, we’ve had a few teachers skip town. We’ll probably have more do the same. I know a few of you had new students yesterday. Just keep up the good work and we’ll get through this.”

  She disappeared for a second. Then her face reappeared, leaning into the doorway once more, and she added, “And for the eighth time, do not say anything that makes one of your students’ parents call me with a complaint. We have enough problems as it is.”

  Ninth Report

  She brought the television cart into her classroom so she could watch the news along with her students. It was all they were going to be thinking and talking about later in the day anyway, so she might as well view the broadcast along with them.

  At first, the television showed only static.