I didn’t feel the same way later that day, when I ran into my dad again with Mrs. English. This time they weren’t at the library. They were having lunch at my school. In my classroom. Where anyone could see them, including me. I wasn’t that ready for change.
I made the mistake of dropping off the draft of my Crucible essay during lunch, because I forgot to give it to her in English class. I pushed through the door without bothering to look through the little glass square, and there they were. Sharing a basket of Amma’s leftover fried chicken. At least I knew it would be rubbery.
“Dad?”
My dad smiled before he turned, which is how I knew he’d been waiting for this to happen. He had the smile ready. “Ethan? Sorry to surprise you on your home turf like this. I wanted to go over a few things with Lilian. She has some great ideas about the Eighteenth Moon project.”
“I bet she does.” I smiled at Mrs. English, holding up the paper. “My draft. I was going to put it in your in-box. Just ignore me.” Like I’m going to ignore you.
But I didn’t get off that easy.
“Are you ready for tomorrow?” Mrs. English looked at me expectantly. I braced myself. The automatic answer to that question was always no, but I had no idea exactly what I wasn’t ready for.
“Ma’am?”
“For the reenactment of the Salem witch trials? We’re going to try the same cases The Crucible is based on. Have you been preparing your case study?”
“Yes, ma’am.” That explained the manila envelope marked ENGLISH in my backpack. I hadn’t been paying much attention in class lately.
“What an amazing idea, Lilian. I’d love to come watch, if you don’t mind,” my dad said.
“Not at all. You can videotape the trials for us. We can all watch it as a class afterward.”
“Great.” My dad beamed.
I felt the cold glass eye rolling over me as I walked out of the classroom.
L, did you know we’re reenacting the Salem witch trials in English tomorrow?
Haven’t been memorizing your case file? Do you even look in your backpack anymore?
Did you know my dad is videotaping it? I do. Because I walked in on his lunch date with Mrs. English.
Ewww.
What should we do?
There was a long pause.
I guess we should start calling her Ms. English?
Not funny, L.
Maybe you should finish reading The Crucible before class tomorrow.
The problem with having actual evil in your life is that regular, everyday evil—administrators giving you detention, the textbook evil that makes up most of high school existence—starts to feel less terrifying. Unless it’s your father dating your glass-eyed English teacher.
No matter how you looked at it, Lilian English was evil—the real kind or your everyday variety. Either way, she was eating rubbery chicken with my dad, and I was screwed.
Turns out The Crucible is more about bitches than witches, as Lena would be the first to say. I was glad I waited until the end of the unit to finish reading the play. It made me hate half of Jackson High, and the whole cheer squad, even more than usual.
By the time class started, I was proud that I actually did the reading and knew a few things about John Proctor, the guy who gets completely shafted. What I hadn’t anticipated was costumes—girls in gray dresses and white aprons, and guys in Sunday school shirts with their pants tucked into their socks. I didn’t get the memo, or it was still in my backpack. Lena wasn’t wearing a costume either.
Mrs. English doled out our respective one-eyed glares and five-point deductions, and I tried to ignore the fact that my father was sitting in the back of the room with the school’s fifteen-year-old video camera.
The classroom was rearranged to look like a courtroom. The afflicted girls were on one side—led by Emily Asher. Apparently, their job was to act like phonies and pretend they were possessed. Emily was a natural. They all were. The magistrates were on one side of them and the witness box on the other.
Mrs. English turned her Good-Eye Side on me. “Mr. Wate. Why don’t you start off as John Proctor, and then we’ll switch around later on in the period?” I was the guy who was about to have his life destroyed by a bunch of Emily Ashers. “Lena, you can be our Abigail. We’ll start with the play and then spend the rest of the week on the actual cases the play was based on.”
I went over to my chair in one corner, and Lena went to the other.
Mrs. English waved to my dad. “Let’s start rolling, Mitchell.”
“I’m ready, Lilian.”
Everyone in class turned to look at me.