“What? Why?” Ms. Blaufuss asked. Miles turned around. Ganke was always eager to recite.
“I’m not ready,” Ganke explained, but Miles could see that his poem was done.
“Doesn’t matter. Let’s hear it. I’m sure what you have is beautiful,” Ms. Blaufuss said. She had a way of seeing the good in everything. Everyone. Tripley with less trip. And everybody loved that about her.
“Okay.
“If only our parents knew how much we really loved them,
how much we really need them to smile and look at each other
with eyes that say they still love each other as much as we do.
“That’s not really how I wanted to say it,” Ganke explained.
“It’s good, Ganke. It’s fine. Let’s keep going. Next.”
Miles turned around, gave Ganke a nod.
Though the rest of the week in Ms. Blaufuss’s class had been poetry, Mr. Chamberlain’s class, since the battle of Alicia, had been war. Same crazy talk about the “days of old Dixie,” and how after the South lost the war, they were forced to end slavery.
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The Thirteenth Amendment. Mr. Chamberlain had written it on the board Wednesday, but after everything that happened, he decided to reteach the lesson Thursday. He explained how the amendment came to be, the key players (or “disrupters,” as he called them) but it was Friday, after all this setup, that he drove home his main point about it.
“The beauty of it all,” Mr. Chamberlain said, “the subtle triumph in such tragedy for the Confederacy, is this.” He took a piece of chalk and raked it across the board underneath the words except as a punishment for crime. “See, the South rose up again, by a new, much smarter form of slavery. Prison.” He smiled, and his eyes were open—a break from his typical blind-gnome stance. Actually, he had been keeping his eyes open constantly since Tuesday, since Miles crushed the desk—which, by the way, had fallen apart completely. Now only the top of the desk, no legs, was sitting on the floor. Mr. Chamberlain still made Miles work at it, even though it was more like a step stool than a desk. And not only was he forced to be at the desk, he had to abandon his seat and squat in order for him to actually use the surface. Miles had been squatting when he’d scribbled other notes about the amendment, and tidbits of Mr. Chamberlain’s rant about the forefathers who wrote it, in his notebook the previous day. And he’d been squatting today—Friday—doing the same thing, when Mr. Chamberlain decided it wasn’t enough.
“It would be much easier for you on your knees, Morales,” Mr. Chamberlain said to Miles. When he said it, he glanced at Alicia too. She had returned to class after a one-day suspension and Chamberlain was watching her as if he was scared she’d spring from her desk and tackle him. “You may only use a chair if that chair is sitting level with an accompanying desk, and well, seeing as though yours isn’t, because you decided to destroy it, I suppose I’d have to write you up if you chose that option.”
“But the only reason he—”
“Oh, Alicia.” Mr. Chamberlain cut her off. “We’re not going to have a repeat episode, are we?” Miles noticed Alicia’s foot tapping, and even though he couldn’t see her face, he knew she was biting her lip. “You know, you can always join him down there if you like.”
Alicia stopped talking. Just hung her head in defeat and disgust. Miles did too. He couldn’t be written up again. He couldn’t be suspended, or expelled. This school was his shot. His opportunity. His parents reminded him of that. His whole neighborhood reminded him of that. So Miles, embarrassed, got down on his knees and continued scribbling his notes using the low, legless desktop.
It took everything in Miles to not lose it. To not break what was left of the desk over Chamberlain’s head. To not break him open to see if he was full of white cat fur or something. Because there was definitely something. But Miles continued to swallow it, convulsing with his screaming spidey-sense, his handwriting becoming jagged streams of ink. Along with that, he had to deal with the awkward glances of his classmates, their mouths silent—no unchecked, snarky Chamberlain jokes, no nothing. Miles figured they were now all looking at him as both a charity case and some kind of loose cannon. Making up all kinds of stories about him. A sko-low trapped in his own temper, probably dealing with family issues.
But before Miles could explode again, he was once more saved by the bell. Alicia immediately jumped from her seat to help Miles up. And even though it was a nice gesture, Miles couldn’t help but pull away from her, upset. Small. Miles looked down, studied the floor for a second before slowly taking her face in, and letting her see his. His eyes were glassy. Hers were as well. Now he could see she was, in fact, biting down hard on her bottom lip, shaking her head, trying to find what to say.
“I…my family,” she eked out, shaking her head.
Miles nodded. He understood. “Yeah, mine too,” he replied, a baseball stuck in his throat.
Alicia turned to Mr. Chamberlain, tried to cut him with her eyes, but he turned around and began erasing the board. His back a Don’t bother.
Alicia stormed out of the room in the midst of the clamor of squeaks and screeches. Miles followed.
“Morales, can I have a word before you leave, please?” Chamberlain said, stopping Miles in his tracks. Miles stepped up to the old man, who had taken two erasers in his hands. Got right up on him, close enough to see the white hair hanging in his nostrils, and the chafed skin outlining his lips. Close enough to take him out. “You know,” Chamberlain began, “as long as you stay where you belong, in the place you made for yourself, you’ll survive.” Then Chamberlain took the two erasers and clapped them together, and asked, “Oh, and how’s the job?” And watching Miles’s face crack beneath the skin, in the midst of the cloud of chalk dust, Chamberlain added, finally, “What a tangled web we weave.”
After a class like that, an experience like that, Miles needed to do something with all that rage. He could go into camouflage, kick over trash cans, put holes in walls. He could do what he’d done a few days before—go looking for trouble, save someone else from it. And do it all behind the mask, letting Spider-Man do Miles’s dirty work to somehow cleanse himself. Or maybe he could approach Alicia humbly and now get on board with organizing something with the Dream Defenders. Something to speak out against Chamberlain.
But before he could decide on any of these things—Buzz.
A text message. Miles rammed the door of the building open, the hinges challenged by the force, and was blinded by the sun. He turned his back to block it out so he could check his phone. He figured it was Ganke asking about what happened in Chamberlain’s class. But it wasn’t.
2:51pm 1 New Message from Dad
TMW MORN
And then another came through. Buzz.