Mr. Adler’s replacement was Mr. Grierson, and he arrived a month before Christmas with a deep, otherworldly tan. He wore one gold hoop earring and a brilliant white shirt with pearly buttons. We learned later that he’d come from California, from a private girls’ school on the sea. No one knew what brought him all the way to northern Minnesota, midwinter, but after the first week of class, he took down Mr. Adler’s maps of the Russian Empire and replaced them with enlarged copies of the US Constitution. He announced he’d double majored in theater in college, which explained why he stood in front of the class one day with his arms outstretched reciting the whole Declaration of Independence by heart. Not just the soaring parts about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but the needling, wretched list of tyrannies against the colonies. I could see how badly he wanted to be liked. “What does it mean?” Mr. Grierson asked when he got to the part about mutually pledging our sacred honor.
The hockey players slept innocently on folded hands. Even the gifted and talented kids were unmoved, clicking their mechanical pencils until the lead protruded obscenely, like hospital needles. They jousted each other across the aisles. “En garde!” they hissed, contemptuously.
Mr. Grierson sat down on Mr. Adler’s desk. He was breathless from his recitation, and I realized—in an odd flash, like a too-bright light passing over him—he was middle-aged. I could see sweat on his face, his pulse pounding under gray neck stubble. “People. Guys. What does it mean that the rights of man are self-evident? Come on. You know this.”
I saw his eyes rest on Lily Holburn, who had sleek black hair and was wearing, despite the cold, a sheer crimson sweater. He seemed to think her beauty could rescue him, that she would be, because she was prettier than the rest of us, kind. Lily had big brown eyes, dyslexia, no pencil, a boyfriend. Her face slowly reddened under Mr. Grierson’s gaze.
She blinked. He nodded at her, promising implicitly that, whatever she said, he’d agree. She gave a deer-like lick of her lips.
I don’t know why I raised my hand. It wasn’t that I felt sorry for her exactly. Or him. It was just that the tension became unbearable for a moment, out of all proportion to the occasion. “It means some things don’t have to be proven,” I offered. “Some things are simply true. There’s no changing them.”
“That’s right!” he said, grateful—I knew—not to me in particular, but to some hoop of luck he felt he’d stumbled into. I could do that. Give people what they wanted without them knowing it came from me. Without saying a word, Lily could make people feel encouraged, blessed. She had dimples on her cheeks, nipples that flashed like signs from God through her sweater. I was flat chested, plain as a banister. I made people feel judged.
Winter collapsed on us that year. It knelt down, exhausted, and stayed. In the middle of December so much snow fell the gym roof buckled and school was canceled for a week. With school out, the hockey players went ice fishing. The Boy Scouts played hockey on the ponds. Then came Christmas with its strings of colored lights up and down Main Street, and the competing nativity scenes at the Lutheran and Catholic churches—one with painted sandbags standing in as sheep, and the other with baby Jesus sculpted out of a lump of ice. New Year’s brought another serious storm. By the time school started again in January, Mr. Grierson’s crisp white shirts had been replaced with nondescript sweaters, his hoop earring with a stud. Someone must have taught him to use the Scantron machine, because after a week’s worth of lectures on Lewis and Clark, he gave his first test. While we hunched at our desks filling tiny circles, he walked up and down the aisles, clicking a ballpoint pen.
The next day, Mr. Grierson asked me to stay after class. He sat behind his desk and touched his lips, which were chapped and flaking off beneath his fingers. “You didn’t do very well on your exam,” he told me.
He was waiting for an explanation and I lifted my shoulders defensively. But before I could say a word, he added, “Look, I’m sorry.” He twisted the stud—delicate, difficult screw—in his ear. “I’m still working out the kinks in my lesson plans. What were you studying before I arrived?”
“Russia.”
“Ah.” A look of scorn passed over his face, followed immediately by pleasure. “The Cold War lingers in the backcountry.”