Chapter 4

Ms. Howard winked at me as Adela and I entered her classroom for history class, to find that we weren’t alone there of those involved with the activities earlier. Larry Scott was present, as was Jordan Lerner, not to mention Marcie. The worst part was how much I drew attention to myself despite my efforts to avoid doing so. I did my best to focus on the lessons, as did others, especially Ms. Howard reading aloud from the account of her ancestress, Theresa Howard, who had been a slave and schoolmistress back in that era. This semester’s course, American History 1865-present, naturally included references to the waning days of slavery in the United States at the end of the Civil War, and so Theresa’s memoirs mattered considerably, especially as a rare literate freedwoman in those days.

“Now, class, any thoughts about today’s lesson?” Ms. Howard asked us, only to have a very unrepentant Larry Scott perk up and raise his hand.

“Yes, I wonder what it would have been like to own your sweet black ass!” Larry chuckled.

“Mr. Scott, that is highly inappropriate, racist, bigoted, and disrespectful. You, come with me to the Principal’s office! Now! The rest of you, class is dismissed for the day! Be sure to check up your assignments, of course!” Ms. Howard said as she grabbed Larry’s hand and all but dragged him to see Dr. Goldman.

“Wow, what a douchebag! I don’t know if Andrew is a bigger dick or Larry is, though the smart money says Larry at the moment, given two incidents versus just one, assuming that both of them weren’t involved in the attempt to gang-rape me in the boy’s locker room, of course. What a bunch of asswipes!” I smirked as Adela took my hand to the final course of the day: Algebra 101.

“Luckily, you get me, Sarah, and Katrina for this class!” Chloe said as she took my hand and Adela gave me a kiss goodbye for now.

“Of course, most of the time, we’ll need to focus on the math,” I noted as Mr. Glenn Wang, our math teacher began his lesson.

“Okay, this is just the first day of the semester, I know, but even so, it’s important to get things moving right away. I am your teacher for this year. My name is Glenn Wang. Yes, before you ask, I’m from Hong Kong, originally. I was born there when it was a British Crown Colony and I left before it became a Chinese territory again. I am fluent in English, Mandarin, and Cantonese. That being said, I’m not here to teach any language but mathematics, the universal language of science and logic. In this case, algebra, which is a science brought to us long ago as a means of dealing with mathematical symbols. Now, who here can tell me what a variable is?” Mr. Wang inquired of us.

“A variable is a number that is represented by a symbol rather than by itself,” I answered.

“Close, and essentially accurate, but to be more precise, it’s a symbol that stands for a more specific numeric value, such as if x represented ten. So, using that particular variable of x, supposing that we don’t know that it represents the number ten, and then multiplying x by six, you would have an algebraic equation of x times six, or 6x... ,” Mr. Wang continued, admittedly doing his best to keep algebra interesting for the students, and he had some success.

Until, that was, none other than Andrew Corbin walked into the classroom, late and furious, and confronted Mr. Wang, “Hey, Mr. Wang, you gonna put me in detention like that stupid hoe Ms. Howard did with Larry? I’m fucking tired of teachers picking on me and my friends and siding with this dickhead over here!” he added, pointing to me, “You got a problem with us, you can suck our wangs, Mr. Prick!”

“Mr. Corbin, I have a class to teach here! I don’t know what happened with Ms. Howard and Mr. Scott, though I am sure that I will find out soon enough, but this isn’t ‘Ranting at Teachers 101, ‘ nor is it ‘Racist Tirades 101.’ It’s Algebra 101. You have two choices, young man. You can go to the principal’s office right now and join your buddy in detention or worse, or you can fucking sit your sorry, ignorant ass down and learn a goddamned thing, do you hear me? I was in the Royal Navy. I don’t put up with your kind of shit! I’m 66 years old, old enough to legally retire, and I’m divorced, so I don’t have to put up with anyone’s crap for much longer, I can tell you that! “ Mr. Wang put Andrew in his place fast.

“Look, Mr. Wang, I’m sorry, but I guess that I got upset because ... Larry is more than just my best friend. He’s my boyfriend and we ... both got dumped by our girlfriend, Katrina Vandernoot here! We’ve got a lot of things to figure out. I’m sorry. I guess that I’ve been a real douchebag. I will try to do better about things and see if I can reason with Larry, too. Today has been a real eye-opener for me,” Andrew said as he sat down.

“Thank you, and now back to class!” Mr. Wang smiled, following that up with saying, “By the way, I’m retiring at the end of this school year. This is my last year! I don’t have the time, energy, or patience for any more teaching anymore. I used to have a passion for it, but now it sucks out my soul. I’m going to retire and go live somewhere really nice.”

The rest of the session was a little duller, for the most part, but Mr. Wang really tried to engage the students and keep it from being the dronefest that many teachers turned their classes into at times. Unfortunately, in my case, Sarah abruptly decided that she would sit on my lap again, while Katrina openly flirted with me and Andrew actually made a concerted effort to be nice to Chloe and me, much to my shock. He also flirted with Mr. Wang, which was a bit of a jolt to me as well. Even so, it offered one of the more comic moments in class toward the end.