Apple a Day
Member
I do a little writing for fun and I could use a little feedback, especially where it involves gunplay. I am still trying to figure out a way to connive someone into hosting the chapters but haven't found an already existing site which seems to fit. With the tolerance of the moderators I'll post a couple of chapters in hopes of getting feedback.
Here goes:
Chapter 1
As a high school physics teacher you usually don’t have to deal with dead people. It’s not in the job description. I would have noticed if it had been. So, I was surprised and a little put out when a plainclothes cop showed up at my door and started asking me about a student who I’d taught a few years earlier. He didn’t introduce himself as a cop at first but I could tell right away from the mustache. For some reason all the local cops feel compelled to grow a hairbrush under their lip.
“Mr. Haggard?”
“ Speaking.”
“ I wondered if I could talk to you about a young lady named Lucy Vaughn.” He said it as a statement, not a question. He also didn’t ask me if I knew her. I was a little relieved for a moment that he wasn’t there for me so I wasn’t in trouble per se. Then “oh, ****, what did they steal,” came to my mind but I had enough sense not to ask that out loud.
I nodded but stayed firmly in the doorway to my townhouse. “Sure. Not sure what I can tell you about her. I taught Lucy about three years ago, ran into her last… Saturday afternoon at the Barnes and Noble in front of Patrick Henry Mall.”
“ Did you talk to her?”
“ Briefly. She recognized me, came up to me and said hello. I was a little surprised to see her since she wasn’t at school… college, I mean.”
“ Did she say anything about why she was back?” He didn’t ask where she went to college. Uh oh.
I took a deep breath and shifted feet, blew part of it out before I began. “ She said something about becoming not really going to classes and getting on the wrong side of some people – no names – that Sandy hung around with. Sandy was with her at the bookstore but stayed about an aisle away from us while we talked. She didn’t say how or why. She did say that they went to Sandy’s family to get away from them, let things cool down, and maybe transfer somewhere local to take classes with ‘fewer distractions’. While they were at her parents’ place Sandy had to explain that Lucy was her girlfriend in the romantic sense which didn’t go over well. The two girls got kicked out so they packed up everything in Lucy’s station wagon and drove back here. I assumed because her mom lives somewhere in the area… or at least she did and Lucy still has some family or friends here.” I ran out of steam and shrugged.
“ So you don’t know where she was staying?”
“ They were broke so they were camping in their car on the way here. After that, Lucy didn’t say. I didn’t ask. I did offer her a few bucks. She said ‘no’ and that they’d be okay now that they were here.”
“ Sandy didn’t say anything to you at all? Was she one of your students too?”
“ Sort of. She started out in the same class but dropped it after about the first two weeks. She still came in and talked to me after school sometimes. She used to tell me all kinds of stuff about what was going on.”
The cop paused writing notes for a moment and regarded my sideways. “ That’s kind of strange, idn’t it?”
“ Not really. Every year you end up with a couple of kids who like to hang around and talk. They don’t have much of a home life. Their parents don’t listen to ‘em so when they find someone who does they’ll stick around. No big deal. It’s just part of being a teacher. Some kids are just a little needy and latch onto someone who gives a crap.” I think a little bitterness seemed through because he paused again before nodding. “ As a cop,” I threw in,” you probably run into people like that all the time, too.”
He nodded and gave a graveyard chuckle. “ Yep. Ms. Vaughn, too?”
“ Sometimes. Not as much, believe it or not. Lucy was the practical one. Sandy was the nut. Sandy was also into drugs which Lucy stayed away from… at least she used to. I hadn’t seen either of them in a few years so there’s no telling. They both looked pretty ragged. Uhm, if you don’t mind my asking, why exactly are you here?”
“I’m officer Davielli with Newport News PD. Hate to have to tell you this but your two young ladies were found deceased this morning. I can’t say anything else but you’ll see the article in the papers tomorrow. Your name and number were on a piece of paper in Ms. Vaughn’s pocket. “
“ ****, I forgot. I gave her my number, you know, in case she needed help or a job reference or something.” Now how in the Hell had I forgotten that? “ She didn’t have a number which is how we got onto the whole thing about living in her car.” That last bit didn’t excuse anything but I felt like I had to say something.
The officer gave me the “Uhm hmmm,” he probably gives the guys at sobriety checkpoints who tell him they only had two beers that night. He handed me his business card and asked me to call him if I remembered anything else, shook my hand, and left me to run and rewind the faded film of speaking with Lucy over and over in my head.
I don’t get the local paper but I check it online at the paper’s website. I have no idea how they got hold of their senior yearbook pictures but both Lucy and Sandy were posted side by side above the story. They’d gotten in touch with a couple of their old friends for interviews.
Thursday began “pre-planning week” which was actually a week and a half before the beginning of classes. At some point in the far distant past it probably was only a week but then they extended it to fit in all of the administrative crap and still give us a few hours to actually work in our rooms.
The first day consists mainly of being run over by the latest round of standardized testing. Every few years the newest state or national administration figures to make points with the voters by throwing out the old program of filling in rows of bubbles on a sheet and installs a new program of filling in bubbles on a sheet. They attach a spiffy new name small enough to fit on a banner (or at least with an acronym which is easy to pronounce) like “No Student Left Behind” or “Passport to Success” or similar. Everyone panics the year before the first test. Threats are made to jobs, tremendous amounts of paperwork are filled out in lieu of actual teaching, new positions are created, and hills of money changes hands. Educational testing is an industry with companies devoted to producing study workbooks, textbooks to match new standards, generating tests, grading tests, and breaking down the grades by every conceivable criterion. You can look up how well poor, female, Asian students for whom English is a second language did on every single item on the test because it’s included in the packet of scores we receive the first day of pre-planning.
With the latest round of testing we received a new administrator whose title is “testing compliance coordinator”. Her main function is to issue the new testing resource materials, administer the test, and ride herd on the proctors to make sure that when the testing Nazis come to inspect the building that there are no “irregularities” (see also: cheating). In the off season she handles some of the tardy infractions but that’s just a sideline. The first year’s scores always stink… they’re supposed to stink. You have to build enough room into the system for improvement to prove that your new system of testing is making improvements, right? The next year they make “adjustments” to the questions, the teachers get a handle on teaching the kids how to beat the new test format, and scores improve. After a couple of years it comes out that poor, inner city schools with high minority populations do much worse on the tests, lawsuits are filed claiming discrimination, and the test is watered down again. About that time a new set of politicians is elected and the cycle starts over. Where we are in that cycle is the subject of day one of pre-planning week.
The second day was another tremendous waste of time known as “Convocation”. What used to be a ceremony which was vaguely religious to bless the new school year has transmuted into a somewhat patriotic ceremony with the Pledge and singing of the national anthem. All of the teachers have to wear team shirts and are bussed to and from the event so that everyone is accounted for and no one can escape. Typically, Convocation is held at one of the county schools with little air conditioning in the hottest part of the summer.
You can easily tell the elementary school from the high school teachers at such events. The elementary school teachers are the ones wearing matching hats, carrying banners, and chanting team cheers at the top of their lungs. The high school teachers are the ones reading novels or looking like they’d like to slap the **** out of the elementary school teachers so they shut up. The school board demigods come up with a series of stupid human tricks which are supposed to be funny and motivate us. Past skits include dressing up with underwear on the outside, talking to a skeleton dressed as an anorexic teacher, reading aloud a book called “Walter the Farting Dog” , and honking through some pop song assuring us that children are our future. At some point there is a motivational speaker. If we’re lucky then it’s a comedian so we get some jokes in there somewhere. If we’re unlucky then it’s some huckster who is sober now but spends way too much time telling us how much fun he had as a kid taking drugs. Then they serve us friend chicken, biscuits, some swampy mixture they claim is coleslaw, and ice tea in the school’s lunch room which takes over an hour to get everyone through the lines. When the whole staff is sweaty and irritated enough to contemplate vandalism, the busses arrive and we all ride back to finally do some work in our rooms.
The next week we actually get to spend time getting ready for the students in between meetings. Most years we have yearly ‘improvement plans’ which typically involve taking data or generating documents to send to school board office workers who are working on their masters degree. If we spent time during the summer working in our rooms then we get to flex time out of coming in Friday and make Labor Day weekend a four day affair.
With all of that going on I completely forgot about Lucy and Sandy.
Here goes:
Chapter 1
As a high school physics teacher you usually don’t have to deal with dead people. It’s not in the job description. I would have noticed if it had been. So, I was surprised and a little put out when a plainclothes cop showed up at my door and started asking me about a student who I’d taught a few years earlier. He didn’t introduce himself as a cop at first but I could tell right away from the mustache. For some reason all the local cops feel compelled to grow a hairbrush under their lip.
“Mr. Haggard?”
“ Speaking.”
“ I wondered if I could talk to you about a young lady named Lucy Vaughn.” He said it as a statement, not a question. He also didn’t ask me if I knew her. I was a little relieved for a moment that he wasn’t there for me so I wasn’t in trouble per se. Then “oh, ****, what did they steal,” came to my mind but I had enough sense not to ask that out loud.
I nodded but stayed firmly in the doorway to my townhouse. “Sure. Not sure what I can tell you about her. I taught Lucy about three years ago, ran into her last… Saturday afternoon at the Barnes and Noble in front of Patrick Henry Mall.”
“ Did you talk to her?”
“ Briefly. She recognized me, came up to me and said hello. I was a little surprised to see her since she wasn’t at school… college, I mean.”
“ Did she say anything about why she was back?” He didn’t ask where she went to college. Uh oh.
I took a deep breath and shifted feet, blew part of it out before I began. “ She said something about becoming not really going to classes and getting on the wrong side of some people – no names – that Sandy hung around with. Sandy was with her at the bookstore but stayed about an aisle away from us while we talked. She didn’t say how or why. She did say that they went to Sandy’s family to get away from them, let things cool down, and maybe transfer somewhere local to take classes with ‘fewer distractions’. While they were at her parents’ place Sandy had to explain that Lucy was her girlfriend in the romantic sense which didn’t go over well. The two girls got kicked out so they packed up everything in Lucy’s station wagon and drove back here. I assumed because her mom lives somewhere in the area… or at least she did and Lucy still has some family or friends here.” I ran out of steam and shrugged.
“ So you don’t know where she was staying?”
“ They were broke so they were camping in their car on the way here. After that, Lucy didn’t say. I didn’t ask. I did offer her a few bucks. She said ‘no’ and that they’d be okay now that they were here.”
“ Sandy didn’t say anything to you at all? Was she one of your students too?”
“ Sort of. She started out in the same class but dropped it after about the first two weeks. She still came in and talked to me after school sometimes. She used to tell me all kinds of stuff about what was going on.”
The cop paused writing notes for a moment and regarded my sideways. “ That’s kind of strange, idn’t it?”
“ Not really. Every year you end up with a couple of kids who like to hang around and talk. They don’t have much of a home life. Their parents don’t listen to ‘em so when they find someone who does they’ll stick around. No big deal. It’s just part of being a teacher. Some kids are just a little needy and latch onto someone who gives a crap.” I think a little bitterness seemed through because he paused again before nodding. “ As a cop,” I threw in,” you probably run into people like that all the time, too.”
He nodded and gave a graveyard chuckle. “ Yep. Ms. Vaughn, too?”
“ Sometimes. Not as much, believe it or not. Lucy was the practical one. Sandy was the nut. Sandy was also into drugs which Lucy stayed away from… at least she used to. I hadn’t seen either of them in a few years so there’s no telling. They both looked pretty ragged. Uhm, if you don’t mind my asking, why exactly are you here?”
“I’m officer Davielli with Newport News PD. Hate to have to tell you this but your two young ladies were found deceased this morning. I can’t say anything else but you’ll see the article in the papers tomorrow. Your name and number were on a piece of paper in Ms. Vaughn’s pocket. “
“ ****, I forgot. I gave her my number, you know, in case she needed help or a job reference or something.” Now how in the Hell had I forgotten that? “ She didn’t have a number which is how we got onto the whole thing about living in her car.” That last bit didn’t excuse anything but I felt like I had to say something.
The officer gave me the “Uhm hmmm,” he probably gives the guys at sobriety checkpoints who tell him they only had two beers that night. He handed me his business card and asked me to call him if I remembered anything else, shook my hand, and left me to run and rewind the faded film of speaking with Lucy over and over in my head.
I don’t get the local paper but I check it online at the paper’s website. I have no idea how they got hold of their senior yearbook pictures but both Lucy and Sandy were posted side by side above the story. They’d gotten in touch with a couple of their old friends for interviews.
Thursday began “pre-planning week” which was actually a week and a half before the beginning of classes. At some point in the far distant past it probably was only a week but then they extended it to fit in all of the administrative crap and still give us a few hours to actually work in our rooms.
The first day consists mainly of being run over by the latest round of standardized testing. Every few years the newest state or national administration figures to make points with the voters by throwing out the old program of filling in rows of bubbles on a sheet and installs a new program of filling in bubbles on a sheet. They attach a spiffy new name small enough to fit on a banner (or at least with an acronym which is easy to pronounce) like “No Student Left Behind” or “Passport to Success” or similar. Everyone panics the year before the first test. Threats are made to jobs, tremendous amounts of paperwork are filled out in lieu of actual teaching, new positions are created, and hills of money changes hands. Educational testing is an industry with companies devoted to producing study workbooks, textbooks to match new standards, generating tests, grading tests, and breaking down the grades by every conceivable criterion. You can look up how well poor, female, Asian students for whom English is a second language did on every single item on the test because it’s included in the packet of scores we receive the first day of pre-planning.
With the latest round of testing we received a new administrator whose title is “testing compliance coordinator”. Her main function is to issue the new testing resource materials, administer the test, and ride herd on the proctors to make sure that when the testing Nazis come to inspect the building that there are no “irregularities” (see also: cheating). In the off season she handles some of the tardy infractions but that’s just a sideline. The first year’s scores always stink… they’re supposed to stink. You have to build enough room into the system for improvement to prove that your new system of testing is making improvements, right? The next year they make “adjustments” to the questions, the teachers get a handle on teaching the kids how to beat the new test format, and scores improve. After a couple of years it comes out that poor, inner city schools with high minority populations do much worse on the tests, lawsuits are filed claiming discrimination, and the test is watered down again. About that time a new set of politicians is elected and the cycle starts over. Where we are in that cycle is the subject of day one of pre-planning week.
The second day was another tremendous waste of time known as “Convocation”. What used to be a ceremony which was vaguely religious to bless the new school year has transmuted into a somewhat patriotic ceremony with the Pledge and singing of the national anthem. All of the teachers have to wear team shirts and are bussed to and from the event so that everyone is accounted for and no one can escape. Typically, Convocation is held at one of the county schools with little air conditioning in the hottest part of the summer.
You can easily tell the elementary school from the high school teachers at such events. The elementary school teachers are the ones wearing matching hats, carrying banners, and chanting team cheers at the top of their lungs. The high school teachers are the ones reading novels or looking like they’d like to slap the **** out of the elementary school teachers so they shut up. The school board demigods come up with a series of stupid human tricks which are supposed to be funny and motivate us. Past skits include dressing up with underwear on the outside, talking to a skeleton dressed as an anorexic teacher, reading aloud a book called “Walter the Farting Dog” , and honking through some pop song assuring us that children are our future. At some point there is a motivational speaker. If we’re lucky then it’s a comedian so we get some jokes in there somewhere. If we’re unlucky then it’s some huckster who is sober now but spends way too much time telling us how much fun he had as a kid taking drugs. Then they serve us friend chicken, biscuits, some swampy mixture they claim is coleslaw, and ice tea in the school’s lunch room which takes over an hour to get everyone through the lines. When the whole staff is sweaty and irritated enough to contemplate vandalism, the busses arrive and we all ride back to finally do some work in our rooms.
The next week we actually get to spend time getting ready for the students in between meetings. Most years we have yearly ‘improvement plans’ which typically involve taking data or generating documents to send to school board office workers who are working on their masters degree. If we spent time during the summer working in our rooms then we get to flex time out of coming in Friday and make Labor Day weekend a four day affair.
With all of that going on I completely forgot about Lucy and Sandy.
