He Never Looked Up at Breakfast, So I Served Him Papers novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Room 114

On Monday morning I unlocked room 114 and found thirty-one seniors waiting in the hall.

The substitute had left the room in chaos, and the chalk tray was full of gum.

I wrote on the board in my teacher's hand: STATISTICS, MRS. HARMON.

"You're the card lady," a girl said from the second row.

"I'm your teacher."

"Same thing."

"Phones in the bin by the door," I said. "Anyone who wants to keep theirs can discuss it with me after school."

Nobody moved.

I picked up the chalk.

"Here is your first problem. Two million people watched a video of a man ordering the wrong lunch for his wife. Forty percent of them commented. How many comments?"

A boy in the back row sat up.

"Eight hundred thousand," he said. "That's the one where he says 'Is this a bit?'"

"Show your work."

"That's not in the video. He said it at the house."

"Correct," I said. "You've done your reading."

The room laughed, and the phones went in the bin, one by one.

By the end of the hour a girl in the front had corrected my arithmetic on the board, and I had told her she was right and she had gone red to the ears.

I had not felt that kind of tired in nine years.

It was the good kind.

At three o'clock the buses pulled out, and I stood at the window of room 114 with the chalk dust on my sleeve.

Beyond the school fence, out on the public sidewalk, stood a tall man with his hands in his jacket pockets.

I knew the shape of his shoulders.

He kept exactly one step outside the fence, as if someone had measured it for him.

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