“Stop here,” he said.
She pulled in front of a two-story yellow Craftsman with a BMW in the driveway and a basketball hoop over the garage. It had a wide white porch and a front door flanked by outsized windows. The blinds were open, and through the rain Molly made out the form of a little girl, nine or ten, who was staring at them through the window, pressing her palm to the glass. What was she looking for?
“Is that your sister?” Molly asked Nick.
“That’s just Nell,” he said.
“Lovely home.”
He looked at it like he’d never thought of it that way, or any way at all. “I guess,” he said. “Hey, thanks for the ride, Miss Nicoll.”
“Call me Molly,” she said automatically, and they both were startled.
“Okay?”
She couldn’t take it back, somehow. “See you in class.”
Nick stepped out into the rain and slammed the car door behind him. She waited until he’d loped up the slate walkway and knocked at the front door. When at last the door opened, Ryan Harbinger was on the other side. The boys knocked fists, then turned to squint at her car through the rain. She sat there in confusion. This was Ryan’s house? Why had Nick brought her here? Why hadn’t he told her this was where he wanted to go? Was there any limit to the list of things she didn’t know? Both boys waved and she pulled her car into gear; she had forgotten, briefly, that she was visible.
—
That night, there was a friend request from Nick Brickston waiting for her on Facebook. She hesitated for only a moment before accepting. She liked Nick, and anyway she’d already said yes to Amelia Frye.
Molly sat on the love seat in her little apartment and looked into Nick Brickston’s world. She saw him bleary-eyed at parties, cheery with his mother, brooding at the mountain’s edge, and shirtless (pale and skinny) at the beach. She read what he wrote on his friends’ pages (much of it nonsense, none of it about her) and what they wrote to him. She saw him playing video games in Damon Flintov’s bedroom and smoking a cigarette at Ryan Harbinger’s baseball game. She read his friends’ complaints about all their other teachers and all their other work, and was quietly thrilled to be the one they liked, the one who understood them and didn’t assign work over holiday weekends, or when there were tests in other classes, who in fact hardly assigned work at all.
—
Jane Frank’s curriculum called for The Scarlet Letter, but Molly chose A Clockwork Orange instead. She knew her kids: Hawthorne would not stand a chance. But the boys in her class would be braced by Clockwork’s violence, while girls like Calista might find the poetry inside.
On a foggy Monday morning, Molly greeted her class and handed out the paperbacks, then sat atop an empty desk, resting her feet on a chair and her book on her knees. The kids settled back in their seats. On the couch at the back of the room, Ryan Harbinger sprawled with his head thrown back on the cushion, Samantha Aster tucked under his arm. Jonas Everett sat wide-kneed on the other end, and Steph Malcolm-Swann and Amelia Frye spooned on the center cushion; Steph was French-braiding Amelia’s hair. Molly began to read aloud. As soon as she started, five or six kids rested their heads on their desks, a few closed their eyes. She didn’t mind. She knew that they were listening, like little children. She believed that, despite all the optimistic theory she’d been taught, in the end this was the best she could do for them: to let them hear the language.
After several minutes she was interrupted by the squeaking open of the classroom door. Katie Norton peered into the room. Her eyes traveled with evident concern over the circles of desks, the couch crammed with kids in the back, the collage of posters, and the mess of the teacher’s desk, and landed on Molly.
“Good morning, Miss Nicoll. Sorry to interrupt. I have someone here who’s very eager to join you.” The principal turned and whispered urgently to a figure in the hall, then turned back and pulled the person in. In the principal’s grip, bare-headed and flush-faced, was Damon Flintov.
On seeing him, the class erupted in hoots and cheers. Ryan Harbinger jumped up from the couch to pump his fist and shout, “Yo, yo, yo! Flint in the motherfuckin’ building!”
“Free at last!” yelled Nick Brickston.
“Fuck yeah, bitches!” Damon hollered back.
“Hey!” Katie Norton snapped. “Is that the kind of language we use in here?”