Part 77: James

The next morning, everyone at Growing Horizons knew what James had done - implicitly, latently, the way they knew who the current US President was or how many sides a triangle has. It wasn’t like the movies where they all started pairing off and whispering as soon as they saw him; they didn’t care that much. But if some impartial observer, some eighth grade enthographer, were to conduct a survey, a good eighty percent of the kids would have contributed some version of, “Oh yeah, that’s the kid who tried to chase down Hannah last night even though he’s really the reason she ran away.”

And Hannah’s non-presence at school that morning just confirmed what everyone knew would happen: he had failed in his quixotic quest. She had chosen to stay where she was, wherever she was. Courtney (newly promoted to first-name status) knew, probably, so they didn’t have to.

“Hats and headphones!” shrieked whats-her-name at the entrance, a harpy of a woman: sharp, beak-like nose, angular haircut; that weathered skin you get from tanning too much but without being at all tan. “Hats and headphones!” Every time the same cadence. Parrot-like. “Hats and headphones!” As far as James knew, this was her only job here, and she went home after the first bell.

He made a show of yanking out his headphones and presenting them to her, enclosed in his left hand, as he passed her, perched on her balcony. He hadn’t even been listening to music: he’d shut his mp3 player off after the last song so that she wouldn’t interrupt one - how sad, to work so hard on a creative project, to pour your heart and soul into it, only to have it cut short by some old birdbrain on a weirdly specific power trip. But he didn't want her to see him walk in without his headphones in, or she might think she was Making a Difference.

James entered the eighth grade Common Area and noticed of two people who did turn to each other and start whispering, giggling, conspiring: Courtney and Victoria. The new best friends. Inseparable; codependent. If only Hannah could see how her supposed Best Friend was honoring her memory. At least when she was following Hannah around, you could understand why. But now she was holding Courtney’s books, waiting for her to finish up at her locker before she went to her own, and it was pathetic.

Victoria laughed loudly at something Courtney whispered between glances in her mirror. Too loudly. She wanted him to know she was laughing at him.

So they were enemies again, apparently. That was what he had missed last night by not going online. Or he was her enemy, at least. He didn’t respect her enough to consider her an enemy. She was just part of that great crowd of brainwashed masses he had so eloquently condemned last night for their vanity, their pettiness, their . . .

“Mr. Cooper?” A tap on the shoulder.

“I’m putting them away,” James said impatiently, stuffing his headphones into his pocket.

“Oh, I don’t care about that,” Mr. Brown said. One of You; relatable. “I was just hoping you could come see me when you have a minute?”

“Uh, I guess so, why?”

“We’ll talk about that when you get there. Whenever it’s convenient is fine. You’re not in trouble. Thanks, man, appreciate it.” Mr. Brown disappeared into the crowd of students, holding his arms out in front of him to part the seas, playing Moses.

James continued on his way to his locker, even though he didn’t have a backpack to put in there. Whenever it’s convenient meant right away in Brownian, of course, but he should at least try to figure out what he was walking into. Was he in trouble? ("You’re not in trouble" was a meaningless phrase. No one was ever in trouble at Growing Horizons, according to its teachers.) Had he done something, said something?

Sure, he had spent last night calling his peers soulless, barren, dead inside (he couldn’t stop listing terms of derision; he had to include them all in the final draft) - but the school didn't know that. Opening his locker, he felt a pale shadow of last night’s excitement pass through him. He was strong, independent, powerful - he could handle Mr. Brown. He grabbed a random notebook and a pen, something to carry, and strode towards the English classroom, his room for Advisory Time anyway. So at least this whatever-it-was with Mr. Brown had a built-in time limit - the good kids would start trickling in for AT in ten minutes or so.

Inside the room, he found Mr. Brown much as expected, in his natural habitat: sitting on a desk chair backwards, the teacher version of turning your baseball hat around, hand on his bearded chin. But there was someone else in the room, too, sitting at a desk in the farthest corner of the room, looking insolent, hat in hands. Sean.

“Ah, James, good, you made it,” Mr. Brown said, as if this was a dinner party and he’d sent out the invitations weeks ago. “Shut the door, please.” James obeyed unthinkingly. “I’ve asked Mrs. O’Reilly to take my AT group - except you, obviously, James - this morning so we can have this little chat. I think it’s important, whenever you have a conflict in life, to address it directly instead of letting it  . . . fester. Great word, fester. I think we had that as a vocab word once, didn’t we?”

James shrugged. They had, in February. Hannah had briefly used the screenname fesTeringMaggots (a stopgap between haNNaHHeLLraiser and her current one.)

“Anyway,” Mr. Brown continued, getting up, offering his seat to James even though the room was full of them, “I understand the two of you have been experiencing some conflict lately, and I was hoping that we could have an open and honest discussion about what’s going on. To prevent the problem from escalating. Getting out of hand. Becoming a distraction. I hope you both will join me in that.”

James nearly laughed out loud. This was what Mr. Brown wanted to see him about? His argument with Sean probably ranked fourth or fifth on the list of issues he was having, occupying maybe ten percent of his mental energy, and somehow Mr. Brown thought it was eating away at him. How paternal. It was just like when his dad asked him about kids who he hadn’t seen in years, who had moved away (or died, or evaporated, who knew really?) after sixth grade. He wondered how the news had gotten to Mr. Brown, what absurd path it had followed, how garbled it had become in the Telephone game.

“So will you?” Mr. Brown asked.

“Will I what?” James said.

“Will you . . . participate?”

“I guess so.” He shrugged again. “If he will.” Sean played with his hat, rotated it in his hands, incapable of ever being still.

“Mr. Oullette has already agreed to participate, in good faith,” Mr. Brown answered for him. “With the stipulation that . . .”

“I said I would if he did,” Sean interrupted. “Which he hasn’t yet.”

“Yes, he has. He just did.”

“No, he said he would if I did. That’s different.”

“Yeah, it is,” James agreed.

“And I thought you said you weren’t going to use big English teacher words?” Sean added, to Mr. Brown.

Just because you're too dumb to understand them, James thought instinctively, then revised: Ignorant. Uneducated. Comprehend.

“You’re right, I did agree to that. And so I apologize for breaking my word, Sean. Let’s use first names here. I’ll start: I’m not Mr. Brown right now. You can call me Isaac.”

Sean and James made eye contact for the first time. “Do we have to?” James said, speaking for both of them. Sean laughed.

“You don’t have to say anything you’re not comfortable with saying,” Mr. Brown replied. “In fact, I think that should be one of our Ground Rules.”

Sean groaned. “Does this have to be the kind of thing that has Ground Rules?”

“Well . . .” Mr. Brown considered, sat on a desk. “I suppose if you’re both comfortable with having a more open-ended conversation, then there shouldn’t be any harm . . .”

“Thank Christ,” James sighed. Out of habit, being in this room, he glanced at the clock. 7:24. The second warning bell would ring any minute now.

“No need to worry about time,” Mr. Brown said hurriedly. “We will take all the time we need for this to be a productive discussion. I’ve already spoken to both of your first period teachers, and they have agreed to excuse you from---” There it was; the familiar chime. Predictable, routine. “Anyway, I do think it’s best if we try to have this conversation without using profane language. Now, don’t get me wrong, when I’m not at work, I drop my fair share of bombs myself, but . . .”

“Is that a rule?” Sean asked. “No swearing? Cause I’m not sure I agreed to that.”

“Not a rule. Just a guideline for productive conversation.”

“So we can swear?”

“I’d really rather---”

“Christ isn’t a swear,” James cut in. “It’s a name. Are you saying I can’t say someone’s name? What if I’m a Christian and Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior?”

“Well, actually, technically, Christ is a title, coming from the Greek--”

“You’re a Christian?” Sean scoffed. “Since when? Oh, let me guess, Hannah’s a Christian?”

“No, she’s not, actually. And neither am I. We're both atheists, we just--"

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, gentlemen!” Mr. Brown stretched out both his arms like an umpire saying safe or (unconsciously, coincidentally) like Christ on the cross. “I can’t help but feel like we’re getting off on the wrong foot here. Let’s backtrack a bit. Now, please let me say the reason why I think we should all agree to avoid swearing here today is because that sort of language often elicits an emotional reaction, and I think we ought to be here to listen rather than react.”

“Fuck that,” Sean said flatly.

James laughed. Sean’s stupidity could be funny sometimes, even if he didn’t understand why.

“Mr. Oullette, if you aren’t going to take this seriously, then you can leave.”

“Alright, fine.” Sean got up. “You’re the one who wanted to have this little powwow anyway."

James found himself laughing again. Powwow was almost clever (though it might be racially questionable - he’d have to check.) Maybe Sean was alright after all. He didn’t use the computer all that much compared to the rest of them, which could be either a sign or a cause of his decency.

“And I’m glad you think this is funny, Mr. Cooper,” Mr. Brown said, turning to James, who was still standing by the doorway, notebook in hand. “In case you have forgotten, we are doing this for your sake. You think I don’t have a thousand things I’d rather” -- the Late Bell -- “a hundred things I'm supposed be doing right now? But when it came to my attention that you two--”

“I thought we were using first names?” James said.

“We are. Or we were going to, but apparently . . .”

“So we can’t call you Isaac anymore?” Sean asked.

“No. You can. If that would . . . if you would just sit down and . . .” But he was less Isaac than ever; he was defaulting to the way he acted in class. Seeming to realize this, he took a deep breath and counted backwards from five. “Let’s try this again. Let’s start over. Perhaps we should start by allowing each of you to articu--explain the situation from your persp---point of view. Sean, would you like to go first? And I do invite you to sit down. Both of you. For your own comfort, I mean. Not because I’m telling you you ‘have to.’ But it would make me feel more comfortable if you did."

“I’d rather stand,” James said.

“Yeah, me too.”

“Fine. Stand. So, Sean?"

“He can go first,” Sean said, sounding mad again out of nowhere, talking about James in third person again. What had happened? They had been getting somewhere.

A student knocked on the glass part of the door, so worried about being late for AT that they didn’t notice the situation inside the room, one that any Growing Horizons student would have instantly recognized as two students getting Talked To by a teacher; two students In Trouble (but not the kind of trouble where you help.) Mr. Brown tried to wave them away with a series of gestures: first the hand-flap, then the head-shake, then the directors-cut-sign at the neck.

One of these evidently worked, or the student just gave up, because whoever it was disappeared.

“Sorry about that,” Mr. Brown said. “Anyway, Sean, you were sharing something? Where did you leave off?"

“Nowhere. Listen, thanks for trying and everything, but I really shouldn’t be late for AT. And like, you know, I can solve my own problems. We both can. We’re practically in high school. You don’t need to hold our hands anymore.” Sean put his hat on - hats were banned at GHMS, but Mr. Brown wouldn’t say anything - and made towards the door.

“Yeah, thanks, Mr. B.,” James said, trying out the nickname for the first time. (Hannah called him Brownie, he remembered suddenly with a pang.) “This was real helpful. Just good to get us in the same room together, you know, and see what happens.”

“Alright, well. I suppose I could call Mrs. O’Reilly and tell her I can take my AT group after all . . .” He sounded crestfallen, hesitant, bereft of any authority he had ever had, like a dad who tries to say no, unaware that  "check with your father first" is a formality.

“Yeah. Perfect. I’ve just got to go to my locker,” James said, opening the door. This made no sense - he already had a notebook and pen in his hand - but then, neither had anything that had happened in the past twelve minutes. And because he did so, and because Sean must have had to pee or something, bolting as soon as he left the confines of the English room - James would always remember - he was the only one in the Common Area when she walked in, wide-eyed and yet worldly, exhausted and exhilarated, brilliant and (let’s be real here) beautiful: Hannah Fucking Pratt.