Schooled: Chapters 13–18

“God bless America!” Dad was astonished. “That’s the stray your mother brought home?”

“You’re a saint to put up with it, Soph. This is cruel and unusual.”

Mom was so nice, so kind, so understanding that she made the rest of us seem like insensitive jerks.

Cap looked disapproving. “That’s with swords, isn’t it? Rain would never teach me anything that uses weapons.”

“That’s society for you, Cap. Following rules is more important than living your life. The law says you can’t drive until you’re sixteen. So if somebody does it, it’s a huge deal. You should feel sorry for these poor kids. They’re prisoners, and they don’t even know it.”

It’s hard to stay positive when you’re surrounded by psychic zombies.

When people discussed me, the sentence usually began with “The biggest dork in the whole school is ...” Friend had to be a promotion from that.

I tried to take the friendship further a couple of times, but he didn’t want to join the chess club—he gave me a whole speech on the evils of competition.

Okay, I figured, how about neutral territory?

People were lined up with their towels, socks, underwear, and any canvas bag that was supple enough to be twisted and tied.

The star of the show was definitely Cap. He was demonstrating, helping, mixing colors, and hanging up finished work.

Kids were asking him about the bus-driving incident and the Halloween dance, and hanging on his every word.

It was a carnival atmosphere, with lots of pointing and laughing and high fives.

Because Sophie had been watching TV her whole life, and not just a few weeks like me, it was easier for her to watch Rishon throw his whole future away. For me it was agony.

No wonder T & T was such a popular show. It was practically an instruction manual for life.

Garland Farm followed simple logic: you plant tomato seeds, you get tomato plants. No seeds, no tomatoes. Cause and effect.

But a real school was so messy and random that solutions sometimes fell into place by sheer luck.

I thought I’d never get used to the outside world, with its chaos and clutter.

To Rain, financial matters were a distasteful but necessary private function, like going to the bathroom.

But the instant I stepped inside, I knew this was a place that represented everything Rain and I were rejecting by living at Garland. Money was all that was important here. People were depositing it, withdrawing it, borrowing it, and paying it back.

But he interrupted me with this long lecture about how this money belonged to everybody, not just me, and how I had to be responsible.

Rain always said that nothing was more responsible than doing what was in your power to make another human being happy.

He picks up a guitar in the music room and strums a few old Beatles tunes, and pretty soon he’s got twenty people in there singing along. He’s running some kind of martial arts class on the front lawn. He’s got more kids working on the Halloween dance than will probably come that night. He’s even got a few meditators. If I didn’t know the kid’s history, I’d probably have the police making sure he wasn’t setting up a cult.

It triggered an explosion of images from my own childhood at Garland. Cult was exactly the word for it, with Rain as its philosopher/guru.

Things were even thawing slightly between Cap and my daughter.

It was so sudden, so devastating, that to this day, I have no idea who did it to me.

Darryl Pennyfield is my prime suspect, because he was close by, but I didn’t catch him in the act.

When your whole world is a cheesy, prepackaged rehearsal for being alive, like middle school, a kid your own age who can pilot a twenty-ton bus is impressive. Plus the fact that he saved somebody’s life, obviously.

Steering clear of that crowd was a good way to avoid being dangled by my ankles over a toilet bowl.

So what was her sudden fascination with Cap? She was star pupil of his tai chi group; she was constantly turning up at his locker to show him a new peace-sign bracelet she’d bought, or a magazine article on Vietnam or the Beatles or anything about the sixties.

Another thing about Naomi: I was invisible to her. Either that or I was like Cap’s pet ferret—a subhuman companion, undeserving of attention.

I was purchasing wedgie insurance, and Darryl was Allstate.

“Mr. Kasigi said spend it responsibly. What could be more responsible than giving to charity?”

If these kids took a minute to ask themselves where Cap got off writing thousand-dollar checks, they’d be rioting, not applauding.

All the adulation must have been overwhelming to someone like Cap, who was so accustomed to peace and quiet.

He pushed his way through a barrage of high fives and ducked into the bathroom.

I recoiled as if he’d slapped me.

Being liked was a feeling I didn’t know. That I might never know. And to have that rubbed in my face by my one kindred spirit, the only person around who was more of an outsider than I was—it was the ultimate insult.

I glowered at him through eyes that were barely slits.

Hero status wasn’t good enough for him anymore. He had to be a heartthrob too.