Because of Mr. Terupt (13 page)

“Mom, Danielle said her family disapproves of you, and that you and Charlie will never be allowed to get married.”

“Whoa! Slow down, Anna,” Mom said. “First of all, Charlie and I aren’t looking to get married. Second of all, I know their family disapproves of me.” My jaw fell open. “Sit down, honey.”

I sat at the kitchen table across from Mom. She had been looking over the mail and drinking a cup of coffee (cream and sugar) when I burst in on her.

Mom explained. “Charlie and I went to school together. When I ended up pregnant with you, he didn’t treat me kindly—just like everyone else. In fact, one day he got me so upset I kicked his truck. I put that dent in his door.” I could see my mom reliving those painful memories as she spoke. “He’s actually apologized to me for how he behaved back then.”

“But why would Charlie say he’s sorry if his family disapproves of you?” I asked.

“Danielle’s parents and grandparents are pretty old-fashioned and religious. Just like my parents, who couldn’t find a way to be accepting of me and my situation all those years ago. They still can’t.”

For a second I wondered about my mother’s mom and dad. I’ve never met them. Were they really that unforgiving? Were Danielle’s?

“I think Charlie just went along with everyone else when we were teenagers, but now he’s ready to think for himself. It’s always good to make up your own mind,” Mom said.

So I have Mr. Terupt to thank. If it weren’t for his accident, Danielle might never have come over, just like she said. Thanks, Mr. Terupt, but you didn’t need to go and get hurt
this bad so that I could be friends with Danielle. Don’t get me wrong—I’m very grateful—but I’d really like you back now. You’re going to get better.
Be positive
. You taught me that.

“Maybe Danielle and Charlie will be able to change their family’s opinion of us,” I said. “I’m going to be positive. Mr. Terupt would want that.”

I
know what it’s like to have people gang up on you. Being big, I learned real quick. It stinks. I never thought I’d do that to someone else, but I did. I didn’t even realize it.

Peter must have felt that no one in the whole wide world liked him. I see it now but I didn’t see it when it was happening, when it mattered most. Not until James and Luke made me open my eyes.

Selfishness caused me to be blind. I only thought about how bad
I
felt. I’m not saying I would have done anything different, had I seen it earlier. I’m just glad it changed. For all of us.

Luke told us that Mr. Terupt’s going to have brain surgery. All the girls started crying when he told us that. And the boys didn’t make fun of us for it—not like every other
time. Luke kept talking. He told us about Mr. Terupt’s wrestling and concussions and it not being all Peter’s fault. It was an accident, a real honest accident, with lots of us to blame. Luke said that Peter threw the snowball because of him. But he wasn’t the only one who got Peter mad that day. Others of us started confessing. I prayed for God to cleanse us all.

I hugged everybody at James’s party. I was sorry for so much, but really sorry for Peter. Even though we all told him it wasn’t just his fault, I think he still felt it was.

I felt bad for Anna, too. I hoped she wasn’t mad at me after what I had told her. I wanted us to still be friends. I also wondered what Charlie’s intentions were toward her mother, so I asked him.

I found Charlie out in the barn early one morning before school. He was sitting next to one of the cows and pulling her teat to get her started for milking. “Morning, sunshine,” he said. “What brings you out here?”

“I wanted to know why you went to see Terri Adams,” I said.

“To share a good cup of coffee with a fine woman,” he said, “and to ask for her forgiveness for the way I treated her when we were in school.”

Charlie slipped the machine onto the cow’s udders and got her milking. “Good girl,” he said, patting the cow. Then he walked over to the next one, squatted down, and started the process over.

“Do you think Anna and her mom are bad influences on me?” I asked.

“Nope. But I don’t think you should try to change Grandma’s or Mom’s opinions on that score.”

“Are you going to see Terri again?”

“I’d like to,” Charlie said. He stood and moved to the next cow. Charlie had four machines, so he could milk four cows at the same time. He did the milking every morning and night.

“Then are
you
going to try and change their opinions?”

“Nope. I see no reason to start a family war—you shouldn’t, either,” he said.

“That’s easy for you to say, because you can just drive yourself over there whenever you want. Sooner or later my teacher won’t be in the hospital any longer. He’ll either be back or in the ground, and I won’t have any reason to go over to Anna’s house. I want to be friends with her and her mother. I like them.”

Charlie stopped what he was doing and looked at me. “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said. “And let’s continue to pray for that teacher of yours.”

“Do you think he’ll make it through the surgery?”

“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “I wish I could tell you, but I only know animals.” He walked over to me and wrapped his arm around me, giving me a little squeeze. “It’s time for you to catch the bus. Go on. Have a good day at school, sunshine.” He made me smile a little. I hoped I didn’t smell too much like the barn.

I
f anyone knows silence, it’s me. The silence in our classroom wasn’t the worst. There was always someone you could turn to and whisper. It contained tons of sadness and guilt, but it wasn’t absolute.

Even Peter’s silence was over. He was lucky.

My silence at home pressed on—with nobody for me to turn to, and with nobody in sight to rescue me. That silence was absolute. The only company in my house was more sadness and guilt.

But somewhere along the way this year, Terupt taught me to see things different. To think about things different. To think about more than just me. It was always
my
silence, and
my
fault. But now I started to think about Mom’s silence.
And Dad’s silence. Mom’s fault. And Dad’s fault. They were hurting, too. Why did I have to wait for them to talk to me? I didn’t.

A few days after James’s party I crept into Mom’s bedroom, where she lay on the bed in her pajamas. I climbed in next to her and put my arm around her. Then I told her, “It’s not your fault. I love you.” She didn’t do anything, but I lay there and fell asleep, holding my mom.

When I woke up, I felt good. I hoped my words had helped her. I thought of Terupt as I walked out of her bedroom. He had helped me reach out. I missed him. I wished I had a chance to tell him how I felt, too. I wanted him back so bad.

I found Dad sitting in a chair in the family room—better called the “be-alone room” in our house. He was home, so I must have slept for a while. I wondered if he had seen me with Mom. Immediately, I knew it was gonna be much harder for me to say those same words to him. We never talked to each other like that, not even before Michael died.

“Hi, Dad.” I sat on the sofa near his chair.

“I saw you in there with your mother,” he said. “She needs you, Jeffrey. You might be the only one who can help her.”

“Dad, it’s not your fault,” I blurted out. He didn’t say anything. I knew my words surprised him. That they hit hard. I got up and went over and hugged him. “I love you,” I said. I let go after a few seconds and headed out of the room.

“It’s not your fault, either,” Dad said, before I was gone. I heard his voice breaking up as he said it. I felt that good feeling again, and thought of Terupt.

I thought about what my dad said about Mom needing me. I didn’t know what else to do, so every day after school, I started going home and resting next to her in bed. It felt like the right thing to do.

I
tried
. Terupt taught me that, too.

A
ct 11, Scene 1

Welcome to the hospital waiting room, where every face is a concerned face. Who knows what’s on the minds of all these worried people? They keep busy in different ways. Some read, a few watch television, one lady knits.

Enter us. The kids from room 202.

We sat quietly, kind of looking around—anxiously awaiting the outcome of Mr. Terupt’s surgery. Was it even okay to talk? I wondered. A lot of other people from school sat waiting, hoping for Mr. Terupt. Mrs. Williams and her red-haired secretary, Mrs. Barton, waited. Mr. Lumas and Mr. Ruddy sat and waited. Everyone at school liked Mr. Terupt. That was just another testament to him.

Technically today was a school day, but Mrs. Williams helped us make arrangements to be here.

“I can’t make this a school-sponsored field trip,” she told us about a week ago. At that point we knew when Mr. Terupt’s surgery had been scheduled, and Mrs. Williams realized our entire class planned to be there. “I can’t have all of you climb onto a bus and be taken to the hospital,” she said.

“Our parents can drive us there,” Anna suggested. “And we can help each other with rides.”

“I like that idea,” Mrs. Williams said. “Then you can leave when you want, or not go at all—if you’d rather not.” I thought about Jeffrey.

Ms. Newberry, Miss Kelsey, and Mrs. Warner also came. The school was able to provide substitutes for their classes, but not everyone’s. I expect all the teachers would have been here if it weren’t a school day.

That was when I realized that Mr. Terupt didn’t have any family present. Not one person. I thought of his desk back in our classroom. Every teacher has family pictures on his or her desk. Not Mr. Terupt. And there were only two flower arrangements in his hospital room, one from Ms. Newberry and one from Snow Hill School. But no mom or dad were sitting next to his bed. How had I missed it? Not one family picture. Not one family member visiting or waiting next to me. Did he even have any family? I wondered. Had my mother noticed and not said anything? Had any of my classmates had these same thoughts? All of a sudden there was so much I didn’t know about my beloved teacher.

“I just wish he’d open up more and give me a chance,” I heard Ms. Newberry say. She was talking quietly to Mrs.
Williams. “He was beginning to let me get close. I don’t know what he’s so afraid of.”

“Or what he’s hiding,” Mrs. Williams added.

“I just want the chance,” Ms. Newberry said. “I care about him so much, and so do these kids. He better pull through.”

I heard Ms. Newberry’s voice crack. Mrs. Williams put an arm around her. They were quiet. I suddenly had a lot of unanswered questions going through my mind, but none of them mattered if Mr. Terupt didn’t make it through the surgery.

“How long will his operation take?” Anna asked.

She didn’t realize she had blurted this out until she met our startled looks. Thanks, Anna, I thought. The perfect candidate to break our silence.

“Eight hours,” Luke said. “Less, if it goes well—more, if there are any complications.”

Silence again.

I
’d visited the hospital several times, but never once had I gone to the waiting room. Not until I sat in there with my class on Brain Surgery Day. Sat for hours.

The room had a nice layout. The architects had found a way to
maximize
(dollar word) the area while keeping a large perimeter. The room represented a rectangle, with little sections of the wall jutting into the interior here and there. This created corners and smaller spaces within the larger room. I figured this was important because people wanted privacy. At least, that was how it felt while I waited.

W
e sat together in the waiting room. I sat next to my mother. We left Grandma home, not knowing how she would handle being in the company of Terri and Anna. Anna sat across from us, next to her mother. A large wooden coffee table rested in the middle of everyone. It reminded me of our class meetings. We didn’t form a circle on the floor, and we didn’t have the microphone, but it was close enough—except no one talked. Mr. Terupt always started our meetings, so we sat silent, until Anna spoke up. Thank goodness.

But after Luke answered her question, no one else talked. At least not until Jeffrey surprised us. He put our class microphone in the middle of that big wooden table. I stared at it. Then I looked at Jeffrey. How did he know to bring it?

“Just a hunch,” he said. I noticed that he and Jessica were looking at each other.

I reached down and took the microphone. “Remember the first time Mr. Terupt brought this out?” I said. I passed the microphone to Lexie.

“I was like, Teach is a weirdo,” she said. “But it turned out to be pretty cool. Sort of like the grass thing.”

“Seventy-seven million, five hundred thirty-seven thousand, four hundred twelve,” Luke reminded us. “That grass project was awesome.”

The microphone moved around our square, and we shared different stories and memories. It was perfect.

Then a doctor came into the waiting room.

A
ct 11, Scene 2

Enter a man wearing lime green scrubs and a matching hospital cap. The kind that cinches around your head like a shower cap. I saw him the moment he came through the door. Was he coming for us? It was too soon! Wasn’t it? Had something gone wrong with Mr. Terupt’s surgery? I stiffened. Then I noticed Jeffrey. He was practically hyperventilating. This place, and especially the sight of a doctor, triggered such horrible memories for him. I wrapped my arm around him and whispered, “It’s okay. Just breathe.” My mom also helped comfort him. She sat on the other side of Jeffrey and hugged him, too. Mom knew his story—I had told her. But others stared at him, wondering why he was so worked up.

The doctor didn’t come over to us, and Jeffrey calmed
down. Instead the doctor made his way over to the knitting lady. I saw him take a deep breath as he got closer to her, and I wondered if it was one of those big breaths you take in order to get ready to deliver bad news. He pulled a chair next to the knitting lady and sat down across from her.