The Kingdom of Childhood

greeted him with his usual handshake and a warm “Good morning, Zach.” Then he handed him a hall pass and said, “Ms. Valera wants to see you this morning.”

“What? Why?”

“She just wants to speak with you. It’s between you and her.”

“I can just talk to her after school or something, can’t I? I don’t want to miss class. I’ve got my Inferno summary in my Main Lesson book to show you. I know it’s late and all, but —”

“Zach,” said his teacher. He looked at Zach over his glasses. “Go.”

As he walked down the hall, Zach felt his anxiety level spiraling upward by the second. Temple had ratted him out. I won’t tell Scott, he had said. You’ve got my word. But he had never promised not to tell an adult, and now here Zach was, on his way to the classroom Temple must have visited first thing that morning. He could almost hear Temple’s end of the conversation, his SAT-genius, teacher’s- pet explanation: I tried to explain it to him by what you taught us about crime in Germania, but he just denied it and denied it. And I’m really worried about him. He’s not keeping up with his end of our project because of his relationship with the kindergarten teacher. Left foot, right foot; fear and fury throbbed in him, each in turn, with the pounding of every step. Temple had forgotten: traitors hung from trees. He walked past classroom after classroom. From each came the chorus of the other students chanting the morning verse:

I do behold the worldWherein there shines the sunWherein there gleam the starsWherein there lie the stones.

Normally he slogged through it, by rote. At the moment, though, he would have enjoyed nothing more than droning out a scripted introspection about his soul if it meant he could circumvent a conversation about it.

He stepped into Ms. Valera’s classroom, which was empty of students—her planning period, he supposed. Straight ahead was the supply closet at which, not very long ago, he had attempted to get a little attention out of Judy and she had freaked out like the entire concept astonished her. The history classroom was a Bermuda triangle in which Judy was chaste, Temple was a rat, and Zach wished to be in the presence of anyone but the hottest teacher in the school. It was no wonder the previous teacher had died. The place was cursed.

“Have a seat, Zach,” Ms. Valera said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

She sat at its far end at her desk, scribbling onto a stack of papers, her long hair brushing her arm as she wrote. Objectively speaking, she was probably still hot, but at the moment she looked simply terrifying. He sat in the chair nearest her, which was not on the opposite side of her desk but rather very near her own seat, to diminish any sense of her as an authoritarian figure. He would have preferred the desk in the way, as a sort of emotional shield.

She turned to face him and crossed her legs, resting an elbow on her knee. “Do you know why I asked you to come see me?”

Oh yeah, he thought, but there was zero chance he would offer that answer. He decided to plead the Fifth. “No idea.”

“Sure you do. I can tell by your answers that you’re not doing the readings. Your papers are hastily done, and in class, you always have this look.” She waved a hand up and down in front of her face slowly. “Glazed as a donut. Do I bore you?”

“No. Of course not.”

“I try to keep it interesting. I spoke to some of your other teachers and they report you seem distracted, but to some extent they write it off because you’re new here and still getting acclimated. But I’m in the same boat, and I think it’s something else. What do you think?”

The back of his nose began to burn, near his throat. He looked away and replied, “I’ve just been real busy in the evenings and not getting enough sleep.”

“So you feel you’re under a lot of stress.”

“No. I’m just busy. It’s not necessarily stress-busy. I like to hang out with people after school and I don’t want to have to give that up to read fucking Dante.” She cocked an eyebrow, and he muttered, “Sorry. But I don’t.”

“How’s the Tacitus project coming along?”

“It’s done, mostly.” This was true, and he felt a little defensive at the question. “Me and Temple and Fairen knocked it out pretty quick after you assigned it. Ask Fairen, she’ll tell you.”

“I believe you. I spoke to Temple about it yesterday, actually. He filled me in on everything you’ve been doing.”

It was involuntary, but Zach dropped his head down and cradled his forehead in his hand. He rubbed his eyes, and Ms. Valera asked, “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” he said, grimly. “Listen, anything Temple’s telling you is stuff he’s just coming up with on his own. I know he’s really smart and all, but that doesn’t make him a mind reader. I don’t tell him anything, so I don’t know where he gets this stuff from.”

Ms. Valera folded her hands on her lap and absorbed this information with a blank stare. “So are you telling me he has no idea where you’re at on the project? Because he told me everyone had their part finished except for the illustrations.”

Zach looked at her unblinking, his mouth partly open. He couldn’t figure out whether she really didn’t know, or was trying to get him to own up to it without having to drag it out of him. Why else would she have called him down here, on today of all days? To discuss his grades? In his mind he heard Temple’s voice again: it’s obvious, my friend. Or was it?

“Something’s off about you, Zach,” she said. “I wish you’d air it with me so we can work through it. It’s very clear that you’re capable of much more than you’ve given lately.”

He pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Yeah, you know, I worked all term on that playhouse for the auction. Did any body mention how great that turned out? The school got over five hundred dollars for it. So the stuff I care about, I am working hard at. And the stuff I don’t care about can just take a number.”