in response. I wished I had some mail to leaf through in order to look distracted.
“We are only trying to get the repairs undertaken as quickly as possible. No one else in the building is being as difficult as you.”
“No one else is as pretty as me either.” Would humour throw him off?
“You are a prick,” he hissed, his poor attempts at friendliness completely dissipating. Did they not have comedy in Poland?
“Now who’s getting hostile?”
“You should stop being such an asshole and let me do my job.”
“If you only had one.” I’ve never been one for taking the high road.
By that time, I had arrived at my apartment door, unlocked it, and was closing it in Andrew’s face, assuring him I would contact the construction foreman to allow my apartment to be entered.
Home sweet home. Maybe I could move in the summer when I didn’t have all this marking to do. And maybe by then the building wouldn’t look like a set piece from M*A*S*H.
Chapter Four
The advantage of working on what’s known as a linear timetable is that you see each of your classes every other day. Of course, if you have a bad class, you’re stuck with them all year, but at least there are little gaps between your times together. I was counting on that one day gap to avoid having to see my law class, when I would have to admit I had failed them miserably in my attempt to argue their case with the vice-principal. It would be quite reasonable for them to no longer consider me the coolest teacher at the school. To be perfectly accurate, they hadn’t actually labelled me as the coolest, but I refused to believe any of the teaching faculty could be any cooler. If I called in sick tomorrow, I would buy myself another couple of days. After three days, surely their teenaged attention spans would have forgotten all about our previous conversation. These thoughts had almost put a spring in my step as I rounded the corner of the second floor hallway leading to my classroom and saw Sara sitting on the floor outside.
“So?” she asked as I walked up to the door, keys in hand, pretending not to have noticed her. “Mr. Patrick!” she demanded when she could stand my pitiful pretending no longer.
“Good morning to you too,” I grumbled, trying to muster indignation from the depths of my embarrassment. “Where I come from, we open our requests for information with a polite salutation.”
“You come from East Van like the rest of us, so cut the crap and get to the point. What did Owen say?” By this time I had entered the classroom and was involved in the daily ritual of emptying my pockets of wallet, keys — anything with a hint of value — and depositing them in my locking filing cabinet. The rule of thumb in most high schools is: if it isn’t locked or bolted down, they’ll steal it. As with Polish Sausage the night before, my attempts to engage myself in other activities in order to disengage my pursuer were not terribly successful.
“I spoke with Mr. Owen.”
“And?”
“Mr. Owen feels that Tim’s date might not be appropriate for the school’s graduation dance.”
Sara’s eyes rolled so emphatically I thought she might do herself an injury. Or she might be related to the vice-principal. “I already know that. I sent you there. How did you change his mind?” This was the moment in which my carefully cultivated nine-month journey to “cooldom” would be put to the test.
“I didn’t.”
She didn’t respond immediately. Her adolescent eyes searched my face, and I realized she was looking for signs of an imminent punch line. She smiled slightly. “Shut up,” she finally commanded, somehow making it sound as friendly as “good morning” might among adults. “What did you tell him?”
There was no holding back any more. “I told him I recognized it was his decision to make, and I quietly left his office.” Sara’s playful incredulity shifted to a flash of anger, and she seemed ready to let loose a pile of expletives — a skill she paradoxically practiced with as much acumen as her “A” essay writing abilities — when the sinister smile crept back into her eyes and the corners of her mouth.
“Oh, I get it. Nice one.”
I returned the smile. “Thank you.”
“You’re pretty crafty.”
“I have my moments.” I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I was willing to bask in her adulation a moment or two.
“Everything’s about a teaching opportunity for you. Once a teacher, always a teacher.”
“Occupational hazard.”
She shook her head in a gently scolding fashion without losing the good humour I was certain would have faded long before now. “Fine then. I’m up to it.”
“I figured you would be.” I wasn’t sure I liked the direction this conversation was taking. By now it was becoming clear that I might well have unleashed student anarchy on the poor befuddled vice-principal, and while I didn’t particularly feel sorry for him — I still considered him an ass despite his defeating me — I knew this would only serve to make my life more difficult. As Sara turned to leave, she glanced slyly over her shoulder in my direction.
“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
“Yeah. You bet.”
“We’ll be ready. You just need to let us know how we do this.” I couldn’t hold out any longer.
“How we do what?” I asked to her back.
She turned, smiling. “How we use law class to tackle the school’s discriminatory policies about Tim and grad.” With that she was gone.
“Shit,” I said to the empty desks.
The rest of the day passed in a haze, which must be what it feels like for many of my students on any given day. It’s hard to imagine that adolescents and teenagers wouldn’t be fascinated with the wonderful world of Canadian history, law, and literature, but somehow there it was. My head was not in the game as I pondered the following day’s law class, in which I was expected to lead my students in a coup. The more I thought of ways to disengage them, the angrier I got at Bill Owen, not just for having put me in this position but because I knew the kids were right. The school had no business trying to legislate the gender preferences of any of its students. Shortly after the end of the day bell, I had packed up my bag and was skulking toward the exit when the student at the centre of Sara’s furor appeared in front of me.
“Mr. Patrick,” Tim Morgan began as he stepped in front of the emergency exit that was the conduit to my freedom — or at least avoidance.
“Hi, Tim,” I said. He was standing right in front of the door.
“Mr. Patrick,” he replied glumly, “can I talk to you for a minute?” I couldn’t see any easy way to avoid the inevitable, so I sighed and motioned for him to carry on. “I know that Sara came and talked to you this morning. She said our law class was going to take on the vice-principal.” Talking with teenagers is much like playing that old kid’s game “telephone,” in which a message is passed
