Whisper Down the Lane

that?”
“She probably left his cage open. Just snuck out and some wild animal attacked him.”
“That’s your best guess, Sherlock?”
“Why? You got a better theory?”
She gives me her best interrogator impression: “Where were you the night of…”
I want to turn back. Break out of this building. “Wanna ditch?”
“Too late now.”
“No, it’s not.” I stop walking, tugging on her arm. “Come on.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’m completely serious. Pleeease?”
“Rich…”
“What? It’ll be fun! We can ask someone else to fill us in on what we missed.”
I tug on Tamara’s arm again, harder this time. A confused expression surfaces, as if she isn’t quite sure if this is still a game or not. She gently pulls her hand away. “Quit it.”
“Your loss,” I say, trailing after her. I do my best karaoke rendition of Enya as we immerse ourselves within the song’s reverberations. “Sail a-way, sail a-way, sail a-way.”
“Keep your day job,” she suggests.
I pretend to be wounded. Her words hit me in the heart. “You don’t like my singing?”
“Sorry…”
The gym doesn’t quite have the acoustics to pull off an Enya concert. It’s all rafters and no phonics. What’s meant to lull the teachers into a calm, soothing stupor before kicking off our first faculty meeting of the year seems to simply set everybody on edge. Maybe it’s just me.
A set of folding chairs is arranged around the center of the basketball court, forming a ring. No backs to the staff. There’s a little pop psychology at play here. Condrey can sit amongst us as our peer. No leaders here, even though she’s clearly the one in charge.
Tamara heads for the other side of the circle.
“What? You’re not gonna even sit with me?”
“Not happening,” she says.
“Why not?”
“You know exactly why. You’re going to get bored after a few minutes and you’re going to look for something to distract you, and then you’re going to start bugging me for your own personal amusement, and then we’ll both get in trouble…I’m not getting dragged in, sorry.”
“It’s going to be pretty boring over there, next to Mr. Lumbard.”
Tamara glances over her shoulder to our beloved science teacher. Mr. Lumbard quickly catches Tamara’s eye and his face brightens. “I’ll take my chances,” she says to me. “Thanks.”
“Last chance. All the fun’s gonna be over on this side, with the cool teachers.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“You’ll miss me.”
“Keep dreaming.” Tamara saunters to the other side of the circle.
Donuts had been voted down because Condrey was concerned they would make us sluggish. She prefers complex carbohydrates. Trail mix. Whole grain breads, lean meats. Some yogurt cups and granola parfaits. Coffee is nonnegotiable. Condrey will have a riot on her hands if she doesn’t have a travel pack set up with paper cups and sugar packets.
A stack of photocopied agendas is passed around the circle. The itinerary is evenly divided and subdivided into bite-sized brackets for easy digestion. The whos, whats, wheres, and whens are all laid out. No whys, though. Never the why—as in, why am I here?
Or the how. How is this even happening to me? How did I get myself into this?
If Tamara was sitting next to me, I’d lean over and whisper about a few particular bullet points on the agenda that immediately catch my eye.
Halloween will be now officially be called “Character Day.” Oof.
Active shooter drills. Parents are bound to kick up some dust over that one.
The recent uptick in graffiti. The inner walls in the stalls of the boys bathroom look like a Mötley Crüe video. Sharpied pentagrams. 666 in bold black letters. How do our kids even know this sort of stuff already? Aren’t they too young for this crap? Save it for high school.
Mr. Dunstan slips into the chair next to mine. “Is this seat taken?”
He’s already sitting so it doesn’t seem kosher to say it’s not available. “All yours.”
Dunstan hums to himself as he peruses the agenda. “No discussion of budget cuts, I see. I do believe that means you and I are safe.” He sneezes. He pulls out a handkerchief, monogrammed and everything. P.D. Do I even know what his first name is? He blows.
“Forgive me,” he says between discharges. “Got a bug going around this week.”
It’s true. I discovered another runny nose in my class today. Timothy Haskell’s upper lip was glistening all through first period. Use a tissue, Timothy, I say almost every day.
“Madame Condrey is fashionably late, I see,” I say. “Anybody got eyes on our fearless leader?” This solicits a few charmed snickers from the faculty. Any opportunity to lightheartedly mock our esteemed principal in private is always appreciated. I could always earn a few points from the other teachers by getting a good jab in that didn’t cross the line into crassness. Condrey could take it. Hell—she might even laugh herself. There’s bound to be a funny bone somewhere in her body.
The Danvers School eschews the traditional educational model for something a little more “hands on.” Our mission statement claims we look at the “whole student”—not just their reading, writing, and arithmetic, but their social, emotional, and cognitive development. You won’t find many desks set up in even rows here. Most are in circles. Mrs. Condrey, our beloved principal, wants to foster a collaborative relationship between educators and students.
Amplify their voice. Let them be heard.
The faculty represents a mix of pedagogies. There’s the younger generation of hipstructors, intermingled with the old school, Old Testament–type teachers. There are twenty of us on staff, all told. Not a huge roster, but Condrey considers us all to be one big, happy academic family. As in, arguing-with-your-right-wing-uncle-about-whether-or-not-Obama-was-born-in-the-USA-during-Thanksgiving-dinner type of family. That’s what kind of family our faculty is.
I notice Miss Castevet is absent. Her empty foldout chair is taken away. Our circle tightens. Enya’s last chant suddenly halts. Sail a-way. Sail a-way. Sail a—
“All righty, everyone,” Condrey calls out as she presses stop on the portable CD player. Her heels clack over the basketball court, echoing throughout the gymnasium as she joins us. She has an aerodynamic demeanor. Short, sandy blonde hair.