In The Middle of Middle America Read online

  “What the hell happened?” I ask as everyone breaks into applause.

  “Principal Klay just said the school is sending thirty tenth graders to Europe this October,” my new best friend says.

  And when everybody has sat down again, and the assembly room has fallen silent, I tune in to what Principal Klay is saying for the first time.

  “The trip will largely be supplemented by the State thanks to Senator Edgar Owen, who ultimately chose our school out of the hundreds of schools throughout Kansas. However, it won’t be totally free for those lucky enough to come. The full cost for each student is one thousand, eight-hundred dollars. The State of Kansas are sponsoring each student up to one thousand dollars, and I am proud to announce that the school will be able to supplement each student for a further four hundred dollars…” he pauses for an applause, almost bowing in anticipation of it, but it doesn’t come, so he just continues. “Meaning the personal cost to any student wishing to take this once-in-a-lifetime trip is only four hundred dollars.”

  A mumbling echoes through the room; each student turning to the student next to him or her, plotting how they can possibly convince their parents to part with that amount of cash.

  “You think you’ll go on the trip?” I say, nudging my new friend.

  “Hell no,” she says, “I ain’t got no passport. And I ain’t got no four hundred bucks, either. If I did, I sure as hell wouldn’t be wasting it on no trip to no Europe. What bout you? I bet your family all good for the money, right?”

  “Oh, that trip doesn’t interest me,” I say. “I’ve only just come from Europe, haven’t I?”

  She snorts a laugh out of her nostrils, then leans closer to me.

  “So when you gonna ask Meric out on a date?” she says.

  I laugh. And when I stop she is still just staring at my face.

  “Really?”

  “Well if you’re gonna leave it up to him, girl, I don’t think you’ll ever date again.”

  I stare over at Meric in between the bodies of the other students as they stand to applaud Principal Klay again. Meric remains seated, his head down, his heavy fringe covering his eyes.

  “He’s just… he’s just not my type,” I say loudly over the applause.

  “How do you know?” she shouts back at me.

  “Well... just look at him… he…”

  “Look at him? All I see is a great head of black hair. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Meric’s face. And I’ve known him ten years. He might be a pretty boy under those bangs, you know?”

  “But he just doesn’t... he doesn’t seem as if he’s the type of guy I’d even get on with.”

  “Well… you don’t know that for sure, ’cause Meric don’t speak. Maybe Meric’s full of genius. He could be the funniest guy in the world. Who knows? But if a psychic told you you gotta date the guy with the initials MM and then you join a new school and on the first day you sit next to Meric Miller then, girl, you gotta ask him out. Come on,” she says, just after the applause dies and all of the bodies begin squeezing themselves out of the assembly room.

  “Come on where?” I ask.

  “Come and ask Meric out. Do it low-key… ask him if he’d like to have coffee after school or something.”

  LUCY DECKER

  “Rough day?” Mia asks as she sits herself into her oversized armchair opposite me.

  “Rough as the rest of them,” I answer.

  “Do you find it boring, teaching the same curriculum year after year?”

  “Oh, it’s not the teaching that has me tired,” I say. “In fact, that’s the only thing that keeps me going. No… it’s the other thing… it’s just exhausting me at this point.”

  “I’m so sorry, Luce,” she says, “I really thought it was going to happen for you this time.”

  We sit in silence, not watching the episode of Sally showing on her television in the far corner of the room, even though we’re staring at it. We’ve had this conversation so many times before. Mia must be sick of hearing me moaning about the fact that I can’t get pregnant.

  “Isn’t it Zachary’s birthday soon?” I eventually ask, breaking the silence.

  “Yup. October twentieth,” she says.

  “What should I get him this year?”

  “Oh... don’t worry about it.”

  “No, don’t be stupid. Of course I’ll get him something. He’s my brother-in-law.”

  She looks around herself, as if Zachary is going to walk into the living room, even though he hides away in his office almost every time I come over to visit my twin.

  “Don’t get him anything. Just throw a hundred dollars into a card. He’s saving for a Vespa.”

  “A Vespa?”

  Mia scoff-laughs.

  “You know Zachary,” she says, shrugging. Then she just leaves it there and we get back to not watching Sally Jessy Raphael even though we’re both staring at the television again. “I was reading the other day…” Mia says, readjusting her seated position so she’s face-to-face with me, “an article about pregnancies. Wanna know how old a female is at her most reproductive? Have a guess…”

  “I dunno. Twenty-five?”

  “Uh-huh,” she says, shaking her head. “Way off. Fifteen.”

  “Fifteen?”

  “Us humans, we’ve evolved too much,” she says. “We’re not supposed to live to eighty, you know. We really were only supposed to live thirty or forty years. And fifteen is the ripe age for pregnancy. It’s when a female is at her most fertile. It’s when males are most fertile, too.”

  “Great,” I say, “maybe I should have sex with one of my students to get pregnant.”

  We both laugh, then turn to watch Sally staring down the camera lens and lecturing us once again about how great a country America is. Our televisions sure do like to tell us that.

  “So, what’s your next step, aside from underage sex with one of your students?” Mia asks.

  “I’ve another appointment with my doctor next week. But at this point, I think IVF is my only hope. I’ve had eleven fails with these sperm donations.”

  “What’s the cost of IVF?”

  “Ten thousand,” I say. “I’ve nearly four thousand saved… don’t know how old I’m gonna be before that other six thousand comes along. I’m living on scraps trying to save.”

  Mia tuts.

  “And work was a strong no on a salary increase?”

  “It wasn’t even a ‘no’.” I shrug. “They just waved me off without even listening.”

  “Assholes,” Mia says. “Why on earth are teachers so badly paid? It don’t make any sense. It’s got to be up there with the most honorable of any careers you can choose. Educating the youth in society. Surely that deserves more than the average salary.”

  I shrug my shoulders again. It’s an argument I’ve been involved in lots of times and yet I’ve never worked out an answer to it. It plainly doesn’t make sense. Friends keep telling me I chose the wrong career. They’re wrong. But only because I didn’t actually choose it. I fell into it. I’m a History Major. I got a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. A Masters in Media History from Boston University. I was meant to be a… a... well, I’m not sure what I was meant to be. But I’m pretty sure I wasn’t meant to be teaching American History at a High School in the middle of America. I thought I was being progressively liberal, and way ahead of my time by studying and traveling all through my twenties. I thought I’d be richer of mind for those experiences. But although Edinburgh was beautiful, if a little rainy, to live in, and although the six months I spent in Rome were idyllic and the year in Greece was beyond glorious, there are times when I’m alone in my tiny house in Lebanon that I begin to feel like I wasted my twenties. I didn’t end up with the great career I could have had because the traveling and studying was proving too alluring for me. No love life blossomed from that allure either. And despite thinking I was being liberal and opening my mind up to the world, I’ve somehow ended up with a narrow life. A nar
row career. And a very narrow salary. No husband. No kids. No one. I’m good with being a teacher. I am. And I’m good with living in Lebanon. It’s where my life started. And it’s where my twin sister and my folks live. Being in Lebanon makes me feel as if I’ve come full circle. But what I’m truly missing, all I truly yearn for, is to become a mother. I don’t want a career change. I don’t want a man. I just want a child. I have a calling to hold a baby. My baby. And time is ticking. I’ll be forty-two soon. My biological clock ticked over while I was traveling the world on the student loans I am still, to this day, paying back.

  I let out what must sound like an exhaustive sigh which makes Mia stick out her bottom lip. I feel terrible burdening her with all of this. Especially as everything worked out perfectly for her. A great husband. Two perfectly healthy and beautiful kids.

  “Oh,” I say, “I do have some good news, I guess. I’m heading back to Europe. For twelve days. It’s for a school trip. The principal asked me to chaperone some of the tenth graders to London, Paris and then on to Rome.”

  “Oooh,” Mia says, raising her eyebrows, “sounds like the perfect opportunity for you to have sex with one of your students then.”

  MERIC MILLER

  My hand shakes as I pour the coins into hers.

  “Thank you,” I manage to mumble, which is unusual for me—not because I don’t like being polite, but because I’m too shy to talk most of the time. Though I don’t think the girl behind the counter heard me ’cause she turned around to spill all my change into the register just as I said it.

  I take a deep breath before I lift the tray, and all I can see as I walk toward them is me tripping and this tray smashing to the ground just before my chin does.

  “I’ve never seen teenagers sit around and drink coffee my whole life,” I hear her saying to Wendy in her really cool accent just as I lose the panic in my stomach by reaching their table and resting the tray down safely.

  “Thanks Meric,” Wendy says, picking up her oversized cappuccino.

  “Yeah, thanks Meric,” Caoimhe says.

  Then she clinks her mug off of my mug that’s still steaming on the tray before she turns to Wendy so they can knock their mugs together.

  I sit into the chair between them, hoping that I might actually speak. I would sure like to speak. But here I am, finally sitting with them, my mouth closed and my eyes staring down at the edge of the table. It feels really awkward. Especially ’cause they’re being silent too, and staring at me… waiting for me to say something. I’m not sure if it’s more awkward or less awkward ’cause Wendy is here. I was so shocked by Caoimhe asking me out for coffee that I said nothing at first, then she blushed in the silence and turned to Wendy to say. “Cause you’re coming, too Wendy, right?” I didn’t care that Wendy was coming. I thought having her here would make it feel less like a date for me and Caoimhe. But as I stare down at the edge of the table in this awkward silence, I’m starting to wish Wendy wasn’t here and I was just staring into Caoimhe’s pretty eyes instead. And then I laugh at the thought of me having the balls to stare into a pretty girl’s eyes.

  “Whatcha laughing at, dude?” Wendy says.

  “Oh,” I say, shaking my hair before lifting my gaze from the edge of the table to stare at the wall in between the two girls, “just… you know, sometimes you just think of something and it makes you laugh.”

  “Well, what were you thinking of that made you laugh, Meric?”

  “Oh… I was…. ah….” I brush my hair down over my eyes.

  “Leave him alone with all the questions,” Caoimhe says, just before she takes a sip from her coffee. And as she does, I shift my eyes to take in her pretty face from behind my hair; even if, as I stare at it, she begins to wrinkle all the prettiness up.

  “Uggh,” she says, “why on earth do yis drink this all the time? It tastes like shit soup.”

  Me and Wendy both laugh. In fact Wendy laughs so hard that she folds herself on to me, and slaps at my arm. Ain’t nobody ever done that before.

  “See… she’s a funny bitch, ain’t you, Irish?” Wendy says.

  “Yes she is,” I manage to say, even surprising myself. “She is one funny bitch.”

  Then the laughing stops immediately and Wendy leans off me, to wave her finger from side to side just inches from my face.

  “Nah-huh,” she says. “We can call each other bitches, but you can’t, brother.”

  I immediately look back down to the edge of the table.

  “Don’t mind her, Meric, she’s just pulling your leg,” Caoimhe says. And as she says it, she nudges my elbow with her elbow and my stomach immediately flips itself over.

  “S’what do you do in your spare time?” she asks. I gulp, then reach for my mug, slowly picking it up before I take a sip from it while I lift my gaze again to stare at the wall in between the two of them.

  “You’re right,” I say, placing my mug back down on to the tray that I still haven’t moved from the table cause I wouldn’t know where to put it. “This does taste like shit soup.” It gets a laugh. But not as big a laugh as when Caoimhe first said it. Which I guess is how jokes work. So… I lightly cough into my hand, then look up at her through my hair. “I don’t know, really. Not much to do round here. I like to um… I like to…” Come on Meric… think for God’s sake… what are you interested in?

  “Meric likes to write, right?” Wendy says, butting in and taking me out of my awkwardness.

  “Oh yeah,” I say. “I run the school newspaper. Well... it’s called a newspaper, but it’s more of a newsletter. One page. Well, one page printed front and back. It’s called The Median Times.”

  “It’s good,” Wendy says. Then she takes another sip from her oversized mug.

  “Really?” I say, turning to her. “You read it?”

  She swallows her mouthful of cappuccino, then creases her lips downward.

  “Sorry. No. I don’t read it. But it’s good that you have an interest in being a writer.”

  “So you wanna be a novelist when you get older or something like that?” Caoimhe asks.

  God, I love her accent. My eyes light up. I can’t believe I’m having an actual conversation with an actual girl.

  “Well… not really a novelist. I’d like to work in news,” I say.

  “That’d be cool,” Caoimhe replies. “Really cool. So... like, have a column in a newspaper or something like that?”

  “Or be a TV reporter,” I say. “Like Sarah-Jane Zdanski. She grew up not far from here. And she’s on TV all the time. She’s awesome. I love her.”

  “Please,” Wendy says, holding her mug of coffee with both hands just below her chin. “Which boy ain’t in love with Sarah-Jane Zdanski?”

  “No. I... I… I don’t mean in that way,” I say, stuttering. “It’s not because of how she looks. It’s... it’s because of her reporting style. I think she’s really good at it.”

  Wendy raises one of her eyebrows at me. Really high. As if she don’t believe me.

  “Hold on,” Caoimhe butts in, “who the hell is Sarah-Jane Zdanski?”

  BRODY EDWARDS

  “Ya gonna do something or not, dude?” Stevie says.

  “Hey,” I say, slapping his shoulder, “you haven’t exactly got your game in play either, dude. I haven’t see you even talk to the Irish chick once yet.”

  “Well… you ain’t spoken to Decker either.”

  “Yeah, I have,” I say as we both stare at her standing with her back against the wall on the other side of the cafeteria. “I asked her that question in class today about FOX News.”

  “No, you doughnut,” Stevie says, and we both immediately start giggling, “I mean you haven’t said anything to her about... you know… you have to try have sex with her before the end of October. That’s the dare.”

  “Yeah, and you gotta have sex with Irish.”

  “Oh, I will, don’t worry about that. I’m just saying, my job is to try to convince some new chick to get my dick wet. But you have to
convince a woman we’ve both known for two years to get yours wet. So you’ve got more work to do. You have to at least let her know you’d be up for it. Right now she sees you as just one of her students. You’ve gotta change her mind on that. You gotta start dropping little hints, ’til she starts to realize she can do you, dude.”

  “I guess you’re right,” I say, “Just a little hint here and there can’t hurt, right? Then, who knows? Maybe in Europe, huh?”

  “I’m gonna fuck Irish way before we go to Europe, dude. But if you wanna wait that long, be my guest.”’

  “Fuck it,” I say. Then I fist-bump Stevie and get to my feet, taking my tray from the bench and carrying it outstretched in front of me, my juice carton slipping from side to side. I stare at her as I walk to the trash can, then I empty the tray into it, spin the tray onto the rail really coolly and move in closer to her.

  “Hey Miss Decker,” I say. Then I wink. “That a new shirt?”

  She looks down herself, then back up at me, her eyebrows raised.

  “No. I’m pretty sure I wear this every week, Brody,” she says.

  “Well, it looks good on you. Really brings out your eyes,” I say.

  Then I just walk off, and as I do, I stare over at Stevie and hold my fist up.

  LUCY DECKER

  I pace the front of the classroom—my go-to stride when I want the energy in the room to lift. The striding helps keep their eyes moving, and that, in turn, ensures the cogs inside their brains begin to churn. It helps them tune in to what I’m saying, rather than daydream, which I’m pretty sure is the default setting for any teenager in any classroom. The key with teens is to talk with them, not to them. There’s a gulf of a difference between those two approaches that most educators unfortunately never realize. It’s also vital to use references that would interest teens, too. Teaching the phraseologies straight out of decades old textbooks is practically sleep medication for fifteen year olds. It definitely was for me when I was that age.