“I’m just realistic,” I said. Still, wanting to do what I could to save our marriage, I took Father Joe’s advice and tried putting a positive spin on things.
Sitting across from the guidance counselor and principal at Aja’s new school, I catch myself doing it now. Aja went to school for six whole weeks without getting into trouble. He’s not a troublemaker, per se. Or at least, he doesn’t mean to be. But schools take everything so seriously these days.
“Did you hear us, Mr. Keegan?” says the guidance counselor. She introduced herself when I walked in, but now I can’t remember her name. It sounded like a candy bar. Hershey? “Aja threatened to blow him up. We take threats like that very seriously here.”
I sigh and rub my hand over my face. After deciding in September that curtailing my caffeine intake while simultaneously starting a new job was a bad idea, I promised myself I would try again in earnest in October. That’s why this morning—two weeks into the month, but still technically October—I gave up my habit cold turkey, And now, the beginning of a monstrous headache is lurking directly behind my eyes. It’s starting to feel like a poor decision. “Yes, I’m aware,” I say. “But I doubt he threatened anyone. He’s not exactly menacing. Look at him.”
Aja’s sitting in the chair next to me, his bony shoulders hunched over, his feet swinging below his bent knees—too short to graze the ground. He has headphones on, and he’s staring intently at his iPad, tapping the screen furiously with his fingers, but his face looks so, well, not intimidating. I pull one of those godforsaken earbuds out of his ear and he looks up at me. “Aja, did you threaten to blow someone up?” His large eyes grow larger. He shakes his head.
I put the earbud back in, resisting the urge to sneer at the guidance counselor.
“I threatened to blow up his book bag,” Aja says loudly, unable to modulate the decibel level of his voice due to the video game sounds infiltrating his ears. He turns his attention back to the iPad.
“You what?”
The principal and Mrs. Hershey look at me with their overly concerned yet smug faces. Something explodes in a fiery burst on Aja’s screen.
“Yahtzee!” he yells. I hope they can’t see what he’s playing.
He looks back up, as if he’s just realized that that’s what we’re here for. “It didn’t work, though,” he says, and turns back to his game.
“Obviously, he’s joking,” I say, glaring at Aja. “He didn’t have any explosives on him, did he?” I feel confident that he didn’t, but I pause just to be sure.
The principal gives a small shake of his head, and relief floods through me.
“So, how could he possibly blow up something?”
“Mr. Keegan, we have to take every threat seriously,” says the principal.
“Well, it’s not exactly a threat if he didn’t have any of the required materials to follow through on it. And anyway, what about that guy?” I direct my thumb and their attention at the giant fifth-grade kid sitting on the other side of the glass window from us. “He didn’t just threaten Aja, he assaulted him.”
“Yes, well, we’re dealing with Jagger. But right now, we’re talking about Aja,” says Mrs. Hershey.
“Jagger? His name is Jagger?”
She ignores me. “Given Aja’s . . . er, background. I’m afraid we’re going to have to take some precautionary measures.”
“His background?” Here it comes.
She glances down at the top paper in the thick manila folder she’s holding. “Yes.” Her eyes flit to Aja. “Aja, could you step out of the room for just a minute?”
Aja doesn’t hear her. I tap him gently on the arm and he pulls out an earbud. “Aja, head out into the hall. I’ll be there in a minute.” He pauses his game, stands, and walks to the door. “And stay away from that Jagger kid,” I yell after him.
The door closes behind him and I look back at Mrs. Hershey.
“Specifically, we’re concerned about the schizotypal personality disorder,” she says.
I roll my eyes. “He’s never been formally diagnosed with that. It shouldn’t even be in his records.”
The principal, who hasn’t said much during this meeting, clears his throat. I look at him, waiting for him to chime in, but he doesn’t.
“Look, he doesn’t meet the requirements for that, that . . . disorder—or for the autism spectrum or grand delusions, or any other label you people have tried to stick on him in his short life. He’s just a kid! A regular freakin’ kid.”
OK, to be fair, I know Aja’s not regular. But, really, who is? That Jagger kid isn’t exactly your typical fifth grader, either. And I’m not taking Aja back to some psychiatrist just so he can be drugged out of his mind again. My head is throbbing in earnest now and I massage a temple with two fingers. They really should offer coffee at these things.
“Let’s calm down now,” the principal says in his deep baritone. “We’re just going to give everyone a few days to cool off.”
“You’re suspending him. That’s what that means, right?” Damn it. Even though I’ve been at work for five weeks, I’m still the new guy trying to set an example for my team—not to mention we’re slammed. There’s no way I can take off.
“We think that’s best for everyone right now,” he says.
“How is not going to school the best thing for Aja?”
He continues as if I haven’t even spoken. “And then we can discuss seeking a more . . . appropriate behavioral monitoring plan for Aja. Perhaps he’d do better in a different classroom environment.”
“If you’re talking about some kind of special education, you can forget it. Aja is one of the most intelligent kids in your school. Hell, five minutes ago, he was the most intelligent person in this room. By far.” I nod my head in the direction of the folder the counselor is still clutching. “Look that up in his chart.”
I stand up and leave without so much as a good-bye and let the office door swing shut behind me. Aja’s sitting in a chair on the opposite side of the room from Jagger. I glare at the giant kid as I tap Aja on the shoulder. “Come on. We’re leaving.”
On the walk to the car, I can almost hear Dinesh in my ear. Well done, mate. Fuck ’em all. Let’s get a pint.
No, that’s what he would have said if I had told off an annoying coworker, or Stephanie in the thick of our divorce proceedings—but the administration of his son’s school? Dinesh never would have done that. He would have charmed them with his muddled British accent and smoothed things over in less time than it took me to sit down.