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From Peak to Pit
by
Max Hawkins
A stack of papers slams down on the desk and I am snapped out of my reverie.
"Hm, what was that?" I say.
"I said this is the last straw, Leah, I’ve given you chance after chance and you
seem to just throw it back in my face."
Mr. Raider. I call him Stu because he resents it. He is my principal.
And I am in his office again because I slipped roofies into my math teacher, Mr.
Doring’s, coffee mug.
I’m innocent, really. Not guilty, at least.
I swear.
"The only option now is expulsion. I don’t want to do it, frankly, but multiple
suspensions haven’t gotten anything into your head. And at this point, you’ll be
lucky if you don’t get jail time."
I sit in the same mahogany chair that I’ve been in forty times this year. Forty one if
you count today. Stu doesn’t know this, but every time I’ve sat in this seat I’ve
carved a tick mark into the chestnut of the front of his desk with a paper clip or
some safety scissors or whatever ‘potential weapons’ I’ve had on me. Memory of
past incidents, I guess.
Tick mark 2: Filled in every answer on the Chapter 3 test "Screw you."
Tick mark 14: Replaced Mr. Doring’s lesson plan with "A Guide to the Kama
Sutra."
Tick mark 28: Sent anonymous letters to the school newspaper suggesting that Mr.
Doring had a homosexual relationship with a janitor.
Tick mark 35: Released a mother skunk into the math room closet. Mr. Doring never wore his blue striped shirt again.
I’m not a bad kid, really.
I’m carving away at tick mark 41 as Stu tells me that the ambulance just took Mr.
Doring away. He was still unconscious. What I don’t tell him is that just after
Mr. Doring passed out, while other students were running to get help, I lugged him
over to the black board, propped his back up to the wall, and took a picture of
him with his right finger up his nose and his left hand on his crotch. I don’t tell Stu
because I’m saving this for tick mark 42, when I mail this picture to the town
paper.
What you must understand is that I’m innocent. No, really. At the very least, I’m
not guilty. Before tenth grade, I was angelic. I was Janey B. Goode. I had
straight A’s since grade school. I participated in school sponsored car washes. I went on
trips to the elementary school to teach kids Why We Shouldn’t Fight and Why We Shouldn’t Do Drugs and Why We Shouldn’t Rig An Electrical Current To Our
Teacher’s Chair. No, really.
When I was a saint, the teachers loved me. I remember Mrs. Sheffield, my sixth
grade history teacher telling me that I was the only student, in her twenty four
years of teaching, that she believed would be the first woman President of the
United States.
And here I am, off declaring war.
It’s not my fault though. I had every intention of achieving a 100 average in my
tenth grade math class. Ninth grade, I fell short with a 99.7 because I had to stay
out of school for a week after my appendix was removed. I received the homework we had in the hospital, but I ended up missing an important lesson on
how to factor three variable equations. I received a 98 on the next test and never let up on myself because of it. Honestly, I was excited for tenth grade; it would be
my chance for redemption.
And then Mr. Doring had to go and ruin everything.
I don’t know whether it was because I corrected a problem he did on the black
board on the first day of school, or because he joked about my glasses on the
second, but you could say that we never hit it off. Unless you count the time I
elbowed him in the ear. But that was an accident. I swear.
It wasn’t my fault he needed stitches.
Nevertheless, right from the start he would constantly joke about me. Berate me.
Not directly, of course. He didn’t have the balls to do that. But he would say
things like, "Are there any questions on the homework?" I alone would raise my hand and
he would say, "Are there any good questions on the homework?" He would say things like, "So who did something over the weekend…" and then he would look
right by me and go "…that was interesting," or "…that was exciting," or
"…who has friends."
And he thought this was funny. Like he’s a freaking comedian. Like I give a
damn what he thinks.
After every joke, his little band of groupies would chuckle. Chortle. Guffaw. Every
laugh sounded like pig or a horse or a sheep. Every laugh was a series of short, curt expulsions of noxious gas from their throat. They were balloons farting out
air. It was the sound you made when you’re punched in the stomach unexpectedly. Over and over and over again.
The verbal abuse was bad enough, but I was a trooper. If Mr. Doring thought he
was the first to tease me, then he was brutally incorrect.
But don’t screw with my grades.
Mr. Doring thinks his Chapter 1 test was difficult, then he’s 0 for 2. I nailed every
answer on that test. To the decimal. I didn’t even need my calculator. He’s
handing back our tests and I’m sitting where I always do, front and center. He’s across the
room giving back an exam to one of his groupies. The idiot student looks at his grade, emits a whooping call, and gives Mr. Doring a high five. Mr. Doring comes to
the next test, smirks, and tosses it across the room, Frisbee style, to my
desk. I don’t give him the pleasure of attempting to catch it. The paper bounces off my
head and lands face down, and he says, "Sorry, I’m sure it didn’t cause any
more brain damage."
Chuckle, chuckle. Snort, snort.
I turn the test over and see a 64.
64.
64.
64 out of 100.
I got every answer on that test right. But I didn’t put a zero in front of the
answers with decimals; a practice that any real mathematician would admit is
superfluous. And yet, Mr. Doring took 4 points off each time.
64.
I take a deep breath and tell myself that everything will be alright. I try to stay
cool, but my cheeks flush crimson. I try to stay calm, but my teeth clench. I try to
act normal, but underneath my tranquil facade my heart balls its fists, stamps its
feet, and lets out a feral shriek.
And that was that.
My old grandma had a saying. " Leah, if you’re going to jump off a cliff it might as
well be the Grand Canyon." Don't be wishy washy about anything, she told me.
Either left or right. Either up or down. Choose. Now. Go or stop. Pass or fail.
Sink or swim.
Mr. Doring had ruined my class average. The hope of a perfect GPA was down the
drain. A 64, I thought to myself, the College Board would notice that. To me,
logic dictated action. If I was going to fail, I was going to do it in style. If I was going
down I would take Mr. Doring with me.
My goal for a 100 average was ruined through no fault of my own. So I had taken
it upon myself to make a new goal to achieve.
I was going to make Mr. Doring’s life miserable.
Tick mark 1: Super glued everything on Mr. Doring’s desk to the floor. This was
small potatoes compared to my later offences, but I needed to start somewhere.
I raided Mr. Doring’s desk after school while he was in the bathroom and secured
everything I found to the white tile of the room. The highlight was when I found
his car keys. I kept those.
Tick mark 7: Sprinkled a mixture of bird food and laxative all over Mr. Doring’s car.
From what I heard, the car wash removed most of the crow excrement, but they had to paint over the stains.
Tick mark 37: A friend on the yearbook committee gave me access to all the photo
negatives. I altered Mr. Doring’s. When the yearbook was released, angry
phone calls came in demanding to know how the school could have let him grow a little
Hitler mustache right before his photo was taken.
Keep in mind, I was very careful about all of this. Though I was often a suspect for
these ‘mysterious acts of vandalism,' there was never any evidence to tie me
directly to the scene of the crime. In juvenile court, all you need to establish is
reasonable doubt. The judge eyes my soft, parted coffee hair, my wide brimmed
black spectacles, the dusting of freckles across my nose, and he’s mine. My perfect attendance record. Spotless, squeaky clean.
I admit, tears in my emerald eyes, that yes, I may have a grudge with Mr.
Doring. Yes, I’ve been in arguments with him. No, I don’t like him very much. But I
would never, could never do anything like this.
I swear.
Juvenile court isn’t held in spacious chambers like in the movies. It’s in a cramped,
sterile, confine with only a desk dividing you from the judge. In this room I play
the victimized girl, shaking, voice wavering, and I can feel the judge grow the lump in
his throat. I’m innocent. At the very least, he says, I’m not guilty.
The roofies offense is what did me in. What I didn’t count on were my classmates.
I had been careful, but a sneaking suspicion had circulated that I was behind
the pranks. Nobody said anything before because to them, most of the incidents were
funny. Even to the groupies. But the roofies are what did me in. Something
about seeing their teacher, head cocked back at an awkward angle, mouth wide open,
cavernous. Arms dangling and swaying. It got to them, and so they got to me.
I carved my forty-first tick mark and then I was expelled. The judge wasn’t much
better. I was able to plea bargain away time in a juvenile detention center in
exchange for going to an all girls, private boarding school. It was a government
funded place complete with state-appointed psychologists and lockdown at 10 PM.
I was stuck in with all the chemically imbalanced girls. Manic-depressives who
burned their houses down while their parents slept, nympho whores who couldn’t
say ‘no’ and ended up on the street, cocaine and heroin addicts, whose parents
sent them off before they could overdose. These were the girls I was grouped
with. The first day, when Dr. Harold B. Ledder asked me if I thought I had a problem, I told him yes.
"Harry," I said, stretched out over the maroon recliner, "I think I’m too smart for
my own good."
I had jumped the Grand Canyon. And lying in a chair next to Dr. Harold Ledder on
the third floor of Andrea C. Woodock’s School for Underprivileged Girls, I
realized that I had hit bottom.
Seven months later, on an overcast October Wednesday, my new school traveled
to my old one to take on their ladies’ field hockey team. I was never on my old
school’s team, back then I detested sports. I had joined my new school’s team
because it was a way of turning over a new leaf. Dr. Harold Ledder liked that sort
of thing. The judge sentenced me to spend time at Andrea through eleventh grade. Then, with recommendation I had a chance to be reevaluated to reenter
public school. I was fitting in nicely at Andrea; I had the straight A’s, of course, but
I was also participating in extracurriculars. Field hockey in the fall, softball in the
spring.
Year round I counseled girls on Why Life Is Worth Living and Why You Should Feel
Good To Be You. Dr. Ledder said he would definitely consider recommending me for reevaluation. Stone by stone, I was climbing my way back up.
On the overcast Wednesday, our team won 6-4. After the game, I was walking back to the locker room and saw Mr. Doring standing on the sideline, gazing into
the distance. His little ever-present smirk, what I used to call the "asshole smirk"
was gone. His wrinkles looked deeper, his cheeks seemed to droop lower, his eyes
appeared soft, human.
I walk up to him. He doesn’t notice me.
"Mr. Doring?" I say. He turns. For a moment I see something in his eyes, recognition, hatred, suspicion, forgiveness, something.
And then it was gone.
"Oh. It’s you. Leah."
"Yeah. Uhm…I don’t know how to say this, but I…I wanted to say that I’m sorry
for how things went. In my new school I’ve changed and…I kind of see that it
was wrong to do what I did. I’m sorry."
He stares at me. For the second time I see a flash of something in his eyes, relief,
regret, rage, weariness, something.
And then it was gone.
"Yeah, well…I understand. I forgive you."
After I showered, I headed outside to meet up with my old friends. They are all
shocked at how different I look, how I’ve cut my hair up to my shoulders, how
I’ve opted for contact lenses. How I seem so happy. I tell them that I met up with Mr.
Doring and that I said that I’m sorry. They are all proud of me. I tell them that
it was strange how he seemed so sad. I wonder why. They tell me that there is a
rumor going around that the night before, his house burned to the ground. That
right now he has nowhere to live. That his life is ruined.
I shiver in the brisk autumn air and say, "Wow, that’s too bad. I’m sorry to hear
that."
Because I had nothing to do with that.
I’m innocent. No, really.
I swear.
Chuckle, chuckle.
Snort, snort.
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