Presence

By one thirty, the building stirred with a collective urging: five hundred students waiting for seventh period, the final bell, release. Katherine liked this time of day, the morning's files stacked on her desk like plates in a magic act. She started at the top, feeling a little like a magician.

"Brace yourself, Katherine," came Barbara's voice through the intercom. "Johnson just threw the Murphy girl out of class."

Katherine sighed. She cleared a spot on her desk for Andrea Murphy's voluminous file, moving aside a begonia plant in dire need of water. Pot-bound and rusted at the edges, the plant was a gift from one of her first students, a boy so long graduated that she would need help from a yearbook to summon his name. She remembered his bulky body as he collapsed on her desk, prostrate with despair over--what? A heartless girlfriend? A D-minus? She had not heard from this boy in years, and yet the plant called up his ruddy face each morning: a reminder that teenagers, who were not good at gratitude, often had to be read between the lines.

She stepped into the waiting area, where Andrea Murphy was just coming through the door--sullen, long limbed, chin lifted against the world. "I've got about two seconds till last period," Andrea announced, "so let's make this quick."

Katherine said nothing. Barbara offered a sympathetic arch of her painted eyebrows without looking up from her desk. They would repeat this scene twenty times, with different players, before the week was up.

Andrea slouched into Katherine's office, glaring as if the surges of adolescence were entirely Katherine's fault. "That--woman--is a Nazi."

"You would be referring to Mrs. Johnson?" Katherine asked.

"You know what she had the nerve to say to me? 'You're all mouth, Little Miss.' Right in front of everybody." Andrea draped herself over the chair as if she were made of seaweed.

"Would it kill you to sit up?" Katherine asked.

Andrea did, peering out from beneath a fluff of white-blonde hair. "Man, could I ever use a cigarette."

"Really?" Katherine said. "Let me run right out and get you one."

Andrea looked up, startled, then begrudged Katherine a small smile. Her lower lip sparkled with a recently acquired gold ring. Then she seemed to recall her current melodrama, placing a thin, bejeweled hand across her forehead. "She runs that class like a goddamn prison, Mrs. Mitchell. Then you make one little complaint and she kicks you out."

"Yet somehow you manage to carry on."

Andrea's blue eyes glittered briefly. "I want to switch into Mr. Hardaway's class."

"He's full."

"I already asked him. He said he'd fit me."

"Don't lie, Andrea, it's tacky."

Andrea glanced out the window. "OK."

"Suggestion?"

Andrea rolled her eyes indulgently.

Katherine leaned forward, propping her chin on her fists. "Pretend you're a teacher in this school."

"Here we go," Andrea said. Katherine was always asking Andrea to pretend. Pretend you love math. Pretend you're going to college. Pretend you're a guidance counselor despairing over a smart girl's lost potential. Usually it worked; Andrea was the kind of kid who had to be tricked into seeing life from the outside in.

"Pretend you're, oh, I don't know--Mr. Hardaway, say--and along I come with a proposition."

Andrea sat up in earnest. "Go."

"Mr. Hardaway, I've got a new student for your English 311. Lovely girl. You might know her--Andrea Murphy?"

"I know her," Andrea said, her glinting lips blooming into a grin. "Great kid, great kid."

Katherine nodded. "Oh, I agree. However, you might be wondering why she needs a new English class in April, when add-drop's been over for seven months."

"No, not really," Andrea said. "Send her in."

Katherine folded her arms. "It's my responsibility to inform you that she's been thrown out of Mrs. Johnson's class."

Andrea's mouth opened...