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| Illustration by Mark Satchwill |
Written by Katherine Tomlinson
Illustrated by Mark Satchwill
“We have to stop meeting like this,” Graham McCallan said as he slid into a folding chair next to Vera Polk. She gave the history teacher a wan smile. She liked him well enough but she’d had a headache since lunch time and the prospect of sitting through a hastily convened faculty meeting made her want to weep despite the company.
The principal had promised he wouldn’t take up much of their time but he was already 15 minutes late.
Which was typical of Wayne Richtman’s passive-aggressive behavior.
Vera had never really warmed up to Wayne who thought she was just a little too hard on her students.
“This is high school,” he’d said to her more than once, “not MIT.”
She was pretty sure Wayne couldn’t have gotten into MIT if his parents had donated a new building, but she had some students who could if they were pushed hard enough.
And that included Rob Nolan.
As far as Vera concerned, she’d be happy to give Rob a recommendation if he wanted to apply for early admission to MIT.
As long as it got him out of her classroom.
“If Wayne doesn’t get here in the next five minutes, I say we all leave,” Graham said to no one in particular as the teachers milled around the cafeteria. “Isn’t 20 minutes the grace period?”
No one bothered to answer him.
The younger teachers had all pulled out their iPhones to check email and twitter feeds with that total obliviousness to environment that only those under 30 could manage.
Graham produced a flattened bag of Gummi bears out of his jacket pocket and dug through the candy for one that was pineapple flavored.
“Gummi bear?” he asked, holding the bag out to Vera.
