The Academy (10 page)

“
Chosen
to pose?” The ferret-faced woman stepped forward. “How are you going to pick?” She smiled slyly. “Do you want us to audition?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. This is why I asked you to meet me here before school.” He pointed to the lone father, to Lillian and to one of the scrapbooking moms who had inexplicably remained. “You are out. The rest of you, take off your clothes. Panties, too.”

There was a mass exodus from the room. Kate’s heart was pounding crazily with fear and embarrassment—
he wanted to see her naked

—and she hurriedly followed Lillian and most of the other parents out the door. From the corner of her eye, she saw that the ferret-faced woman and two other alterna-moms had remained behind. One was already pulling her T-shirt over her head.

“I don’t . . . ,” Lillian began, then shook her head, at a loss for words.

“That guy’s going to be fired,” Kate said firmly. “I’ll make sure of it. That’s illegal, what he’s doing.”

She and Lillian followed the parade of outraged parents to the office. When they walked in, the principal was already standing next to the front counter, being yelled at by those first four parents who had stalked out of the art room outraged. The woman looked calmly over at Kate, meeting her eyes. Kate had never met the principal before but knew instantly that she did not like her. She operated on instinct, trusting her initial reactions or her woman’s intuition or whatever you wanted to call it, and she knew immediately that Principal Hawkes was one of those inflexible, intractable I’m-always-right-and-you’re-always-wrong bitches that she had made it her personal mission to avoid whenever possible. A quick glance over at Lillian told her that the old lady had the same reaction.

But Kate pressed forward, joined the crowd and stated that not only was Mr. Swaim asking moms to pose naked in front of their children’s classmates, but he wanted them to
audition
by taking off their clothes. “Right now,” she said, “there are mothers stripping in his room!”

The principal nodded noncommittally as the parents expressed their anger. Finally, when there was a pause, she spoke. “I understand your concern, and if any of you choose not to participate in Mr. Swaim’s project, I completely understand. And you
will
get volunteer credit for the time you spent on campus this morning.” Her expression hardened. “But I’ll tell you right now that one thing I will
not
do is impinge on the academic freedom of my instructors. One of the reasons we became a charter school was to get away from the school district’s small-minded micromanagement and avoid outside influence on our curricula. I’m not about to let a group of prudish parents dictate artistic standards to our highly trained and eminently capable staff.” She glared at them. “You can transfer your children to other classes, provided we have the room. That is your right. But if the sight of a bare breast in an artistic setting is so upsetting to them at this age, then they are going to have a very difficult transition to adulthood.”

“It’s not just a bare breast,” Kate said angrily. “He wanted us to take off our underwear. Do you understand what that means? Fifteen-and sixteen-year-old boys will be looking at women’s crotches. Vaginas. Does that seem appropriate to you?”

“I—”

“
Vaginas
. The vaginas of their mothers or their friends’ mothers. In class. With your support. Tell me now, do you think that’s okay?”

The principal’s eyes met hers, and Kate did not like what she saw in those dark brown orbs. There was a hardness that she had expected, but below that, beyond that, was something deeper and darker that she did not understand and that for some reason frightened her. “As I said,” the principal reiterated in a voice surprisingly calm, “you are free to transfer your child to another class if you feel that Mr. Swaim’s class is not a good fit. Our office staff will be glad to assist you.” She smiled insincerely. “If there is nothing else, I must get back to work. Please excuse me.”

And with that, the principal was gone, leaving the parents even angrier and more distraught than when they’d first come in. The person at the nearest desk, a slim conservatively attired woman with the plastic smile of a religious convert or a commissioned sales-person, stood up and walked over to them. BOBBI EVANS, her name tag read, ADMINISTRATIVE COORDINATOR. “How may I help you?” she asked.

Kate was the third mother to transfer her child out of Mr. Swaim’s art class—to an elective titled The Blue and the Gray, about the Civil War—and she walked out of the office feeling both stunned and angry. Lillian had already left, since, as a grandmother, she had no jurisdiction over her granddaughter and needed to get her daughter to come to school and make any changes to the girl’s schedule, and Kate headed out to the parking lot alone. The office was supposed to call Tony in and inform him of the substituted class, but Kate had no faith that anyone there would do so, and she vowed to check with her son when he arrived home and make sure the transfer had gone through.

As she reached the parking lot, Kate saw another woman walking from the classrooms to the cars and recognized her as the ferret-faced mom who had remained behind in Mr. Swaim’s class to “audition.” The woman recognized her as well, and she looked over at Kate, smoothed her fake T-shirt over her fake breasts and smiled proudly.

Seven

A group of eight or nine students was gathered in a circle around the flagpole when Brad, Myla and Ed arrived at school. All the students, boys and girls, were holding hands, their heads bowed. Mr. Carr, the band teacher, was leading them in prayer.

“I thought there was supposed to be separation of church and state,” Ed said loudly as they walked past.

“. . . and bless the unbelievers,” Mr. Carr intoned for his benefit, “that they might know Your goodness and take strength from it.”

“I hate religious assholes,” Ed said.

“Hey!” Myla objected. “I’m religious!”

“You know what I mean.”

She stopped walking. “No. I don’t.”

Ed looked toward Brad. “Help me, dude.”

“I think he means the hypocrites.” Brad gestured to the group of students in the prayer circle behind them. “Like them.”

Ed nodded. “Exactly.”

“Not all of them are hypocrites.”

“Come on,” Brad said.

“What do you mean, ‘come on’?”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I’m very serious. Ashley goes to my church, and she’s great.”

Ed snorted.

Brad found himself getting annoyed. “They’re passing around a petition to post the Ten Commandments in the library.”

“So?”

“So why does it always seem that the people who want the Ten Commandments posted everywhere are always pro-death penalty and prowar? I mean, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ That’s one of the big ten, right?”

“Yes,” Myla said cautiously.

“So killing’s bad, according to them. But if you kill someone, then
you
should be killed, because it’s wrong to kill. Of course, if there’s a war and the government tells you to kill people in another country, then you can kill all you want. Men, women
and
children. In fact, the more foreigners you kill, the better. If you kill a lot of them, you’ll even be rewarded with medals. But, of course, when you come back, you can’t kill anymore. If you kill someone then, you should be killed. Because killing’s bad.”

Myla shook her head. “It’s not that simple.”

“Isn’t it?”

Ed grinned. “Ever think of trying out for the debate team? You got a knack, dude.”

Myla started walking. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

Cindy and Reba were standing by Myla’s locker when they reached it. Both frowned as they noticed her companions. “We have to find Cheryl,” Reba said. “Something’s come up.”

“What is it?”

The two student-council members said nothing but looked over at Brad and Ed.

“We get the hint,” Brad said. He touched Myla’s shoulder, giving it a soft squeeze. “I’ll see you later.”

“Now, how are we going to disrupt the Harvest Festival?” Ed said loudly as they walked away.

“Asshole!” Cindy yelled after him.

“Is that the best you can do?” he called back.

“Leave ’em alone,” Brad said. “What are you, in third grade?”

“They started it.”

“Not really.”

“Well, they deserved it.”

Brad grinned. “I’ll give you that one.”

They walked to their respective lockers, putting in and taking out what they needed, then met up again at the corner of the building. There was still another ten minutes until first period, so they walked out to the quad. Over by the library, Myla, Cindy and Reba had found Cheryl and were engaged in what appeared to be a heated discussion.

“So,” Ed asked, “are you guys ever going out on, like, an official date?”

“Saturday,” Brad said.

“All right!” Ed held up his hand in an embarrassing high-five position, but Brad ignored it. Ed dropped the hand. “You want my advice?”

“About what?”

“You want it or not?”

“Okay, tell me what you’re going to tell me.”

“Whip it out. In the middle of the date. Whip it out. Chicks love that. They see a big hairy one dangling down in front of their face, they can’t help themselves. They have to suck it.”

Brad rolled his eyes. “Yeah, great plan, Ed. Tell you what, I’ll save that one for you. And if you ever
get
a date, maybe you can try it out and see if it works.”

Ed shook his head. “The sense of humor is the first thing to go.”

The truth was, Brad
didn’t
have a sense of humor when it came to Myla. He was serious about her, and their relationship—whatever it was—was not something he took lightly or was able to joke about. It was meaningful to him, significant, and though he knew it was too early for him to feel this way, he did, although that was not something he was about to share with Ed. Or even Myla herself.

In the quad, a crowd had gathered, dozens of students standing close together, all of them looking intently toward Senior Corner. There was none of the shouting or excitement that would have accompanied a fight, but Brad couldn’t tell
what
was going on. No adults were anywhere to be seen, and he and Ed changed direction, pushing their way through the outskirts of the crowd until they were close enough to see what everyone was staring at.

It was the school mascot. Or, rather, the school-mascot costume usually worn by some overly enthusiastic rah-rah at each pep rally and sporting event. The tiger costume had been filled with an unidentified brown substance that looked a hell of a lot like shit, and its arms and legs were spread-eagled and staked to the ground. Flies were everywhere, their buzzing so loud that it could be heard over the baffled conversations of the crowd.

Ed whistled. “Fuck howdy with a dick water sandwich ŕ la mode.”

Brad turned toward him. “You’ve been saying that same stupid phrase since grammar school and it makes no sense whatsoever. What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Ed looked back levelly. “How would I know? I was in grammar school when I thought of it.”

“Then don’t say it.”

“I like the way it sounds.”

“I bet it’s Washington,” said a tall heavyset girl in an unflattering Idaka dress. “We’re playing them Saturday.” There was a chorus of assent from all around.

This didn’t look to Brad like a harmless prank by students from a rival school, but he didn’t say anything. There was an uncharacteristic grimness to what had happened to the mascot costume, a seriousness underlying the incident that belied any benign interpretation. Despite their stated opinions, the onlookers seemed to sense it, too, their subdued tone and noticeable lack of amusement at what should have seemed hilarious—that obnoxious tiger stuffed with shit, what could be more appropriate?—testimony to the solemnity of the occurrence.

But if it wasn’t a rival school, who
had
done it? And why?

One of the custodians arrived to clean up the mess, and the students began to walk away. Watching would be just a little too gross, and Brad knew that he might gag if the contents of that costume were confirmed. The bell rang at that moment, and he nodded a farewell to Ed. “See you second period.”