The Unteachables

One

Kiana Roubini

It’s no fun riding to school with Stepmonster—not with Chauncey screaming his lungs out in the back seat.

Don’t get me wrong. I’d cry too if I’d just figured out that Stepmonster is my mother. But at seven months old, I don’t think he’s processed that yet. He just cries. He cries when he’s hungry; he cries when he’s full; he cries when he’s tired; he cries when he wakes up after a long nap. Basically, any day that ends in a y, Chauncey cries.

There also seems to be a connection between his volume control and the gas pedal of the SUV. The louder he howls, the faster Stepmonster drives.

Who’s a happy baby? she coos over her shoulder into the back seat, where the rear-facing car seat is anchored. Who’s a happy big boy?

Not Chauncey, that’s for sure, I tell her. Hey—school zone. You better slow down.

She speeds up. Motion is soothing to a baby.

Maybe so. But as we slalom up the driveway, swerving around parked parents dropping off their kids, and screech to a halt by the entrance, it turns out to be one motion too many. Chauncey throws up his breakfast. Suddenly, there’s cereal on the ceiling and dripping down the windows. That’s another thing about Chauncey. His stomach is a food expander. It goes in a teaspoon and comes out five gallons.

Get out of the car! Stepmonster orders frantically.

You have to come in with me, I protest. They won’t let me register without an adult.

She looks frazzled, and I guess I don’t blame her. That much baby puke must be hard to face. I’ll run home, change him, and wipe down the car. Wait for me. Ten minutes—fifteen at the most.

What can I do? I haul my backpack out of the SUV, and she zooms off around the circular drive. I don’t even have the chance to make my usual Parmesan cheese joke—that’s what it smells like when Chauncey barfs. When I first came from California to stay with Dad and Stepmonster, I thought they ate a lot of Italian food. That was a disappointment—one of many.

So there I am in front of Greenwich Middle School, watching swarms of kids arriving for the first day of classes. A few of them glance in my direction, but not many. New girl; who cares? Actually, the new girl doesn’t much care either. I’m a short-timer—I’m only in Greenwich for a couple of months while Mom is off in Utah shooting a movie. She’s not a star or anything like that, but this could be her big break. After years of paying the bills with bit parts in sitcoms and TV commercials, she finally landed an independent film. Well, no way could I go with her for eight weeks—not that I was invited.

Eventually, a bell rings and the crowd melts into the school. No Stepmonster. I’m officially late, which isn’t the best way to start my career in Greenwich. But short-timers don’t stress over things like that. Long before it could come back to haunt me on a report card, I’ll be ancient history.

I check on my phone. It’s been twenty minutes since ten minutes—fifteen at the most. That’s SST—Stepmonster Standard Time. I try calling, but she doesn’t pick up. Maybe that means she’s on her way and will be here any second.

But a lot of seconds tick by. No barf-encrusted SUV.

With a sigh, I sit myself down on the bench at student drop-off and prop my backpack up on the armrest beside me. Stepmonster—her real name is Louise—isn’t all that monstrous when you think about it. She’s way less out of touch than Dad, which might be because she’s closer to my age than his. She isn’t exactly thrilled with the idea of having an eighth grader dropped in her lap right when she’s getting the hang of being a new mom. She’s trying to be nice to me—she just isn’t succeeding. Like when she strands me in front of a strange school when she’s supposed to be here to get me registered.

The roar of an engine jolts me back to myself. For a second I think it must be her. But no—a rusty old pickup truck comes sailing up the roadway, going much faster than even Stepmonster would dare. As it reaches the bend in the circular drive, the front tire climbs the curb, and the pickup is coming right at me. Acting on instinct alone, I hurl myself over the back of the bench and out of the way.

The truck misses the bench by about a centimeter. The side mirror knocks my book bag off the armrest, sending it airborne. The contents—binders, papers, pencil case, gym shorts, sneakers, lunch—are scattered to the four winds, raining down on the pavement.

The pickup screeches to a halt. The driver jumps out and starts rushing after my fluttering stuff. As he runs, papers fly out of his shirt pocket, and he’s chasing his own things, not just mine.

I join the hunt, and that’s when I get my first look at the guy. He’s a kid—like, around my age! Why are you driving? I gasp, still in shock from the near miss.

I have a license, he replies, like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

No way! I shoot back. You’re no older than I am!

I’m fourteen. He digs around in his front pocket and pulls out a laminated card. It’s got a picture of his stupid face over the name Parker Elias. At the top it says: PROVISIONAL LICENSE.

Provisional? I ask.

I’m allowed to drive for the family business, he explains.

Which is what—a funeral parlor? You almost killed me.

Our farm, he replies. I take produce to the market. Plus, I take my grams to the senior center. She’s super old and doesn’t drive anymore.

I’ve never met a farmer before. There aren’t a lot of them in LA. I knew Greenwich was kind of the boonies, but I never expected to be going to school with Old MacDonald.

He hands me my book bag with my stuff crammed in every which way. There’s a gaping hole where the mirror blasted through the vinyl.

I’m running late, he stammers. Sorry about the backpack. He jumps in the pickup, wheels it into a parking space, and races into the building, studiously avoiding my glare.

Still no sign of Stepmonster on the horizon. I call again. Straight to voice mail.

I decide to tackle the school on my own. Maybe I can get a head start filling out forms or something.

The office is a madhouse. It’s packed with kids who a) lost their schedules, b) don’t understand their schedules, or c) are trying to get their schedules changed. When I tell the harassed secretary that I’m waiting for my parent and/or guardian so I can register, she just points to a chair and ignores me.

Even though I have nothing against Greenwich Middle School, I decide to hate it. Who can blame me? It’s mostly Chauncey’s fault, but let’s not forget Parker McFarmer and his provisional license.

My phone pings. A text from Stepmonster: Taking Chauncey to pediatrician. Do your best without me. Will get there ASAP.

The secretary comes out from behind the counter and stands before me, frowning. We don’t use our phones in school. You’ll have to turn that off and leave it in your locker.

I don’t have a locker, I tell her. I just moved here. I have no idea where I’m supposed to be.

She plucks a paper from the sheaf sticking out of the hole in my backpack. It’s right here on your schedule.

Schedule? Where would I get a schedule? I don’t even officially go to school here yet.

You’re supposed to be in room 117. She rattles off a complicated series of directions. Now, off you go.

And off I go. I’m so frazzled that I’m halfway down the main hall before I glance at the paper that’s supposed to be a schedule. It’s a schedule, all right—just not mine. At the top, it says: ELIAS, PARKER. GRADE: 8.

This is Parker McFarmer’s schedule! It must have gotten mixed up with my papers when we were gathering up all my stuff.

I take three steps back in the direction of the office and freeze. I don’t want to face that secretary again. There’s no way she’s going to register me without Stepmonster. And if there’s a backlog at the pediatrician’s, I’m going to be sitting in that dumb chair all day. No, thanks.

I weigh my options. It’s only a fifteen-minute walk home. But home isn’t really home, and I don’t want to be there any more than I want to be here. If I went to all the trouble of waking up and getting ready for school, then school is where I might as well be.

My eyes return to Parker’s schedule. Room 117. Okay, it’s not my class, but it’s a class. And really, who cares? It’s not like I’m going to learn anything in the next two months—at least nothing I can’t pick up when I get back to civilization. I’m a pretty good student. And when Stepmonster finally gets here, they can page me and send me to the right place—not that I’ll learn anything there either. I’ve already learned the one lesson Greenwich Middle School has to teach me: fourteen-year-olds shouldn’t drive.

That’s when I learn lesson number two: this place is a maze. My school in LA is all outdoors—you step out of class and you’re in glorious sunshine. You know where you’re going next because you can see it across the quad. And the numbers make sense. Here, 109 is next to 111, but the room next to that is labeled STORAGE CLOSET E61-B2. Go figure.

I ask a couple of kids, who actually try to tell me that there’s no such room as 117.

There has to be, I tell the second guy. I’m in it. I show him the schedule, careful to cover the name with my thumb.

Wait. His brow furrows. What’s—he points to the class description—SCS-8?

I blink. Instead of a normal schedule, where you go to a different class every period, this says Parker stays in room 117 all day. Not only that, but under SUBJECT, it repeats the code SCS-8 for every hour except LUNCH at 12:08.

Oh, here it is. I skip to the bottom, where there’s a key explaining what the codes mean. SCS-8—Self-Contained Special Eighth-Grade Class.

He stares at me. "The Unteachables?"

Unteachables? I echo.

He reddens. You know, like the Untouchables. Only—uh—babbling now—these kids aren’t untouchable. They’re—well—unteachable. Bye! He rushes off down the hall.

And I just know. I could read it in his face, but I didn’t even need that much information. Where would you stick a guy who could annihilate a backpack with a half-ton pickup truck? The Unteachables are the dummy class. We have a couple of groups like that in my middle school in California too. We call them the Disoriented Express, but it’s the same thing. Probably every school has that.

I almost march back to the office to complain when I remember I’ve got nothing to complain about. Nobody put me in the Unteachables—just Parker. From what I’ve seen, he’s in the right place.

I picture myself, sitting in the office all day, waiting for Stepmonster to arrive. If she arrives. Chauncey’s health scares—which happen roughly every eight minutes—stress her out to the point where she can’t focus on anything else. To quote Dad, Jeez, Louise. He really says that—an example of the sense of humor of the non-California branch of my family.

So I go to room 117—turns out, it’s in the far corner of the school, over by the metal shop, the home and careers room, and the custodian’s office. You have to walk past the gym, and the whole hallway smells like old sweat socks mixed with a faint barbecue scent. It’s only temporary, I remind myself. And since my whole time in Greenwich is temporary anyway, it’s more like temporary squared.

Besides—dummy class, Disoriented Express, Unteachables—so what? Okay, maybe they’re not academic superstars, but they’re just kids, no different from anybody else. Even Parker—he’s a menace to society behind the wheel of that truck, but besides that he’s a normal eighth grader, like the rest of us.

Seriously, how unteachable can these Unteachables be?

I push open the door and walk into room 117.

A plume of smoke is pouring out the single open window. It’s coming from the fire roaring in the wastebasket in the center of the room. A handful of kids are gathered around it, toasting marshmallows skewered on the end of number two pencils. Parker is one of them, his own marshmallow blackened like a charcoal briquette.

An annoyed voice barks, Hey, shut the door! You want to set off the smoke detector in the hall?

Oh my God, I’m with the Unteachables.

Two

Mr. Kermit

The first day of school.

I remember the excitement. New students to teach. New minds to fill with knowledge. New futures to shape.

The key word is remember. That was thirty years ago. I was so young—not much older than the kids, really. Being a teacher was more than a job. It was a calling, a mission. True, mission: impossible, but I didn’t know that back then. I wanted to be Teacher of the Year. I actually achieved that goal.

That was when the trouble started.

Anyway, I don’t get excited by the first day anymore. The things that still get my fifty-five-year-old motor running are the smaller pleasures: the last tick of the clock before the three-thirty bell sounds; waking up in the morning and realizing it’s Saturday; the glorious voice of the weather forecaster: Due to the snowstorm, all schools are closed down . . .

And the most beautiful word of all: retirement. The first day of school means it’s only ten months away. My younger self never could have imagined I’d turn into the kind of teacher who’d be crunching numbers, manipulating formulas, and counting the nanoseconds until I can kiss the classroom and everybody in it goodbye. Yet here I am.

I sip from my super-large coffee mug. The other teachers call it the Toilet Bowl when they think I’m not listening. They gripe that I owe extra money to the faculty coffee fund because I drink more than my fair share. Tough. The students are bad enough, but the dunderheads who teach them are even worse. Colleagues—they don’t know the meaning of the word. A fat lot of support they ever offered me when it was all going wrong.

Mr. Kermit.

Dr. Thaddeus is standing over me in the faculty room, his three-thousand-dollar suit tailored just so. Superintendent. Major dictator. A legend in his own mind.

Christina Vargas, the principal, is with him. Nice to see you, Zachary. How was your summer?

Hot, I tell her, but she keeps on smiling. She’s one of the good ones, which puts me on my guard. Thaddeus uses her to do his dirty work. Something is coming. I can smell it.

There’s been a change in the schedule, the