Undetectable (Great Minds Thriller) (44 page)

The boys looked up at him with a combination of confusion and fear. They were three minutes into the lesson – three minutes into the first period of a Monday morning, no less – and yet Mr. Brooks was acting as if they were nearing the end of the class. Was it a trick of some kind? Was he trying to be funny, pretending that the mess of figures he had written on the board was supposed to make sense that quickly? Mr. Brooks was not someone to mess with, and so they held their tongues. But to a boy, they assumed he was messing with
them
.

“Oh, come on,” Kevin said impatiently. “David, just tell me.”

The boy Kevin had called on bent his head dutifully down to the book on his desk. He made sounds of concentration and effort. But after another minute he looked back up at Kevin, his expression hopeless. “Sorry, Mr. Brooks,” the boy said, sounding truly, deeply sorry. He seemed to be anticipating the first wall-throwing of the day. “Could you explain it from the beginning one more time?”

Kevin stared back at him, deeply concerned. David was his go-to guy. David understood everything, and he understood it
well
.

“What’s wrong with you people today?” he said, raising his voice and addressing the entire class.

They continued to regard him silently. Fearfully. No one raised his hand. No one wanted to risk saying what they were all thinking:
the problem is that you’ve gone crazy, Mr. Brooks. Who do you think we are, math prodigies? This is Algebra I, for crying out loud. Slow the fuck down.

It was like that the whole period long. Everything seemed harder than Kevin expected.
Much
harder. He felt as though every student had been subjected to some sort of brain-melting process over the weekend. Maybe they had just been playing too many video games at home.

“This is ridiculous,” he muttered to himself, when he was safely out of earshot of that first class.

But the second class was no better. By the time Kevin made it to his first break of the day, he was feeling frustrated and upset. When he walked into the teacher’s lounge, however, his mood immediately changed. Here was a chance for something good to happen. Finally.

Because here was Emily Beck. Sitting and reading a magazine by herself.

Incredible.

It was the first time they had ever been in the break room alone together. Actually, it was the first time Kevin had ever seen her sitting in here at all. In any case,
he
was not going to waste any time. He had volumes,
volumes
of fascinating things he wanted to talk to Emily about, and surely they had known each other for long enough by now to cut through the usual small talk.

“
So
,” Kevin said, plopping down in the easy chair next to hers
,
“
d
o you think I could take you out some night this week? Or on the weekend?”

He smiled confidently at her.

Look, I don’t smell anymore. I’m in shape, and I’m interesting. My personal assistant says I should be able to make engaging conversation. Which I suppose is on par with
my
mom telling
me
that
I’m
cool, but you see what I mean. For what it’s worth.

He kept smiling. Time seemed to slow down; Kevin wasn’t sure whether the clocks were actually pausing, or if he was simply holding his breath.

Emily did not return the smile. She did look kindly at him, but Kevin’s heart sank into his stomach at the expression on her face. It was a look of sympathetic kindness. Of
pitying
kindness. It was the look she would have given a student who had asked her to be his mommy for the weekend.

“No, Kevin,” she said sweetly. She looked straight at him, and even in this moment of sickening defeat he found himself transfixed by her eyes. They were so bright, so
knowing
somehow, and they lifted him up and crushed him at the same time. “We work together,” she added, an excuse so flimsy and transparent that Kevin wanted to tell her to take it back, to replace it with something harder. Something he could sink his teeth into.

Tell me you’ve got a fetish for history teachers
, he thought.
Tell me you find me repulsive, that I remind you of your drug-dealing brother, that you only date Italian guys. Anything else.

But she only looked at him, kept staring back at him with that horribly kind expression of sympathy and pity and unequivocal
no
-ness. After another minute she looked away, turning back to the magazine she was reading. Kevin found himself suddenly
very
uncomfortable, so he got up and left the room. He didn’t know where he was going, but he wasn’t going to sit here alone, stewing, taking furtive glances at the woman he pined for and wanted to impress and had learned to dance for – and had therefore gotten
beaten up
for – while she sat there reading her magazine, rejecting him over and over and over again with her silence.

He headed downstairs to the lab. He would wait there for his next class on his own.

When his Java Programming students came in he was ready. He would make this class a good class. He would not go too fast, and he would not assume anything. If an explanation was needed, an explanation would be provided. And who needed Emily Beck anyway?

It might have been a better period. His resolve was genuine, even if he
was
still distracted by Emily’s rejection in the lounge. But as the bell was ringing he saw Anselm Billaud come staggering in with his head bent low again, bent low in just the same way it had been the last time, except now Anselm was also limping.

Now Anselm was really hurt
.

All at once it was too much for Kevin. He wasn’t willing to wait, wasn’t willing to let Anselm handle things on his own this time. Something had to be done here, and he cursed himself for having let it come this far.

It’s my own damned fault. Shouldn’t have let it go when it happened the first time
.

Kevin didn’t even wait for Anselm to sit down. Everything was clear to him now, everything was
obvious
, just as it had been during his first two class periods, and he knew what to do. He marched straight over to where Connor Feeney was sitting, hauled the boy out of his chair by his shirt collar, and then without so much as a word of explanation to his class, he half-walked, half-dragged Connor out the door, down the hall, up the stairs, and straight into Principal Stewart’s office. Not surprisingly, Connor put up a respectable fuss during this process. There were cries of surprise, then anger, and then finally threats concerning the fearsome power and influence of Connor’s father; but Kevin ignored it all. He waited until he had the Feeney boy safely in the principal’s office with the door closed, and then he turned to Ms. Stewart.

“This boy beat up Anselm Billaud,” Kevin declared. “Twice.”

Connor’s eyes grew wide with injustice, and he objected so vigorously that he began hopping up and down. “That is
not
true!” he shouted.

Kevin rolled his eyes in disbelief. The Feeney boy’s protests were unconscionable. His reputation as a bully was well-known, and only last week he had nearly killed little Elias Worth.

Ms. Steward sighed, and she indicated with a nod to Kevin that his job here was done. He turned and headed back toward his class, leaving Connor there.

“You’re
done
at this school,” Connor shouted after him.

Kevin wasn’t listening. The door closed, and he hurried back the way he had come.

On his way back he ran into Elias, who was sprinting down the hall without looking where he was going. “Slow down,” Kevin said to him sternly.

“Oh!” Elias said, peering up at Kevin from under his still-enormous head bandages. “I need to go see Ms. Stewart.”

“She’s busy Elias. Come back after class.”

“Well, but – ” Elias seemed to freeze. A direct order from a teacher, yes. But also a very pressing errand to run. Very important information to give to Ms. Stewart. The competing forces held him in place, and he could not move. He looked up again at Kevin. “Can I tell
you
? And then you can tell her?”

“Of course.”

Elias relaxed. Giving the information to some teacher, any teacher, would be enough. The facts would make their way inexorably back to Ms. Stewart. This was the way of things. The natural order. “I was in the library at the end of last period,” Elias said. He looked expectantly at Kevin, perhaps feeling that this should be enough. Most teachers were essentially clairvoyant, Elias’s expression said. Surely Mr. Brooks already understood.

Kevin nodded encouragingly. “What
happened
in the library, Elias?”

“Oh. Jimmy Fleiss hurt Anselm. And pretty bad this time, I think.”

Kevin felt the hallway go suddenly out of focus around him. He squatted down on the floor, bringing himself to eye-level with little Elias. “Jimmy?”

Elias nodded eagerly. “Mmm-hmm. He’s an eighth grader. On the football team, you know him? He
hates
Anselm. I don’t know why.” Elias shrugged placidly, as if to emphasize that the motivation of one’s attacker was best left unexplored. Who could say why someone would choose to put you in a headlock? And who could predict that this headlock would lead to a gash in your skull, a gash so large that it left your own mother barely able to change the bandages without going faint? These things were mysteries to Elias, but so was the chain of events that had led him to be included in Ms. Beck’s afternoon study group. Mysteries of evil, and mysteries of wonder. And now they could add to that the mystery of Jimmy Fleiss’s hatred for Anselm. You could not explain; you could only tell, and now Elias had done that. His task was complete. “I have to go back to class, okay?”

Kevin nodded numbly at him, and the boy turned and ran back the way he had come.

“Walk,” Kevin said, far too quietly to be heard. He stood slowly, then began walking himself. Back toward Principal Stewart’s office.

Heck of a day. Turns out I’m a terrible math teacher, an undesirable date, and, most important, an awful judge of character. Which is why I’m now probably minutes away from losing my job at the hands of some punk and his well-connected father.

He opened the door to the office gently, as though fearing a trap. As though Mr. Feeney might already be there, having arrived by jet-pack at the request of his ill-treated son.

This turned out to be not far from the truth.

Ms. Stewart was on the phone when Kevin came in. She put one hand over the mouth piece and gave him a puzzled look. “I’m on hold for Mr. Feeney,” she said. “You don’t need to be here.”