The Unteachables: Chapters 8–15

I sigh, unable to muster up any anger or even surprise.

And he’s been here for the past eighteen hours, safe and sound while the custodians scoured the school, listening to every wall with stethoscopes.

A surge of resentment. What does Emma Fountain know about being burned-out? She’s barely older than the students.

She’s thrown a little to see me in the passenger seat instead of behind the wheel, so it takes some coaxing to get her into the truck.

Then I hear the reply—tinny and very close. It’s coming from the intercom, right on the other side of the door.

“You loathe Spirit Week,” Mrs. Vargas accuses.

She throws up her hands in exasperation.

I’m intrigued. “What did Mr. Kermit do?”

The custodian rakes us with a rueful look. “It’s the kids, ma’am. They’re messing with you. They do it to all the subs.”

“My son went to this school. He’s a successful journalist today, and he’d be appalled to see what’s become of the place that gave him his education. You students are a new low. I don’t think you’d ever behave for Mr. Kermit the way you behaved today.”

“The thing is, she’s right,” Rahim muses, brow furrowed.

I load up my tray in the food line and hobble out to the cafeteria—it’s not easy to balance a big lunch when you’re on crutches.

That’s the rest of SCS-8 except for Elaine, who eats alone, surrounded by a buffer zone of empty tables.

By the time I hit the entrance foyer, I’m flying.

“We’re going to need a better distraction than that.”
“Definitely,” deadpans Elaine. She rears up a heavy black boot and brings it down full force on Barnstorm’s sneakered foot.

“You didn’t have to do that! He could have just faked it.”
Aldo chortles. “Not as good as that.”

Suddenly, my perforated muffler doesn’t seem like such a great asset either.

It may sound cool, but we’re trying for stealth here.

It’s like death and taxes. Actually, my 106-year-old grandfather is doing a better job at putting off death than I am at avoiding Spirit Week. There’s only one word for it: inevitable.

Already, those South African air horns from Hades have begun to sound in the halls. Once the mother lode is passed out, the noise will be beyond imagination.

When the cacophony starts, I resolve to close my eyes and dream of June—of early retirement, of another life beyond these walls.

For a fleeting instant, I toy with the possibility that my dreams have come true, and every single one of the students is absent on the same day.

At the sight of the empty desks, she exclaims, “Mr. Kermit—where are your students?”
I shoot her a coy look. “Shhh. You’ll jinx it.”

And her onetime fiancé used to be just as naïve—until a certain seventh grader named Jake Terranova showed me how the real world worked.

“We did it, Mr. K!” Parker crows. “We got the vuvuzelas! All one thousand of them!”

Greenwich Middle School’s annual Spirit Week was a disappointment this year after a prank gone awry dropped a shipment of the traditional vuvuzelas into the river.

District officials are not revealing the names of the perpetrators of the prank, saying only that they have been “appropriately reprimanded,” and that their teacher is a “veteran educator.”

Superintendent is a powerful job, but a lonely one as well. When big decisions have to be made, there’s no higher authority to appeal to. You are the law.

Not even the most sympathetic principal can condone the kind of stealing, disruption, and destruction of property that transpired on Monday.

Not even the most sympathetic principal can condone the kind of stealing, disruption, and destruction of property that transpired on Monday.

She sighs wanly.

“But I’ll find cause. Zachary Kermit is untrustworthy and incompetent. I know he’s your friend, but as his boss, can you really defend him?”

I don’t gloat. That would be unbecoming of a superintendent. But privately, I enjoy watching her squirm as she struggles to come up with an answer to that.

Twelve hours later, as I lie in bed, trying to sleep, that why? is still reverberating inside my skull.

“But, Mr. K—” Parker interjects, waving his arms to take in the transformed classroom. “What gives?”