Page 58 of Demon Copperhead

Defeat only made Angus more determined. I didn’t get it.

I asked if she was jealous over me getting all my art attention, and she said art, was I kidding?

If I wanted to discuss unfairness, let’s talk about football.

Uniforms, equipment, buses to away games, state championships.

The school board threw money at all that like water on a house fire.

And I was like, Angus. It’s football. Take that out of high school, it’s church with no Jesus. Who would even go?

Sax had helped hatch this plan, but wimped out under pressure.

Angus was on her own. You’d think at least teachers would back her up.

This girl that aces everything she looks at, and reads books for actual fun.

But they waffled. Granted, it’s Angus, of the full metal clothes closet and opinions not kept to herself.

Plus Coach was always pulling rank on teachers to keep his flunk-ass players eligible.

Not Angus’s fault, but complicated. Finally she went to her old Jonesville Middle pal Mr. Armstrong, that helped her get an assembly set up to present the idea at the high school.

Which ended up being a small meeting in a classroom of any kids interested, aka wanting to get out of class for that period.

Sax called in sick, aka gutless. It was my art time, so Ms. Annie and I went to the assembly of Angus.

She gave her talk about improving skills, school pride, etc.

, all boss in her black T-shirt with green-skin Brainiac, plus combat boots, hair in fifty little ponytails representing nerve ends.

(No hats allowed in school. The girl could push dress code to an inch of its life.) The only nervous part of her was her eyes.

She gave examples of what some teams did, like making team shirts with math equations on them or the names of books they’d read, and wearing these to school.

“Like football players wearing their uniforms on Fridays,” she said.

“But we could pick Monday or Tuesdays, so smart kids get their own day to be lords and masters of the high school social pyramid.” That got a pretty huge laugh.

Only two teachers were there, plus the principal to make sure things didn’t get out of hand.

He looked like he was napping. One of the teachers frowned the entire time and took notes.

Angus finished up, and Mr. Armstrong said he applauded Ms. Winfield’s initiative and believed her project could notch up the culture of academics at their school.

He had knowledge of how these teams functioned, and was there to answer any questions they might have.

Frowny teacher had questions, all right.

Who pays for this. Are these kids taken out of class, and how is that made up.

Are teachers expected to put in time after school.

This lady looked like she’d gone to prom in the eighties and got frozen, big hair, big shoulders.

Scary. But Mr. Armstrong stayed on his even keel, talking about cost-benefit ratio, teachers volunteering to prep students in their subject areas, making good use of resources we already have.

Miss Shoulder Pads wasn’t sold. “I heard her say it involved having meets at other schools. You can’t tell me you’re not going to want a budget allocation for this activity.”

Mr. Armstrong said yes, probably. Shoulder Pads asked what the school board said about it. The principal woke up and said they’d already made their decision, so we really had no say. He said it’s not like we have any new information here, that those men don’t know.

We kids had zoned out, waiting for something to happen, which finally it was.

Mr. Armstrong was getting ticked off. We could always tell by his accent getting stronger.

He said with all due respect to our school board, we all know who those gentlemen are.

Which honestly, we kids did not. Miss Shoulder Pads probably did.

She was in the back of the room, and Mr. Armstrong in front, with all the kids turning back to front, watching.

You could actually hear the action. She asked him what he was implying.

(Turn, shuffle.) Mr. Armstrong said, Only that most of the men on the school board were experienced in the corporate world and coal business. (Turn back.)

She said, And is there something wrong with business experience.

He said, All he meant was that these men weren’t trained in education per se. They came up in another era when mining labor was the end game, and college was not on anybody’s radar.

Angus meanwhile is looking at me like, Help! But what did any of us kids know? As far as school board, college, radar, our general thinking on that topic was: So what and who cares.

Mr. Armstrong made a point of asking who among us kids had participated in any school activity other than football that brought us into competition with other schools.

Which was ridiculous. We had Science Fair once that some few kids had wanted to do, girls and nerds.

But not in state competitions obviously.

We said duh, no. We’d get creamed. Everybody knows this.

And he said that’s right, we would. Because every school district to the east of us in this state has AP classes and science labs and other things our students have never had here.

That’s where the bell rang, fight over. The principal had already slipped out with nobody noticing, Shoulder Pads packed up her business and left, but some few kids stuck around to disagree with Mr. Armstrong, remembering the fun times of seventh-grade Language Arts.

No, they told him. Wrong. We’d get creamed because the kids in Northern Virginia and those places just have more brains.

But outside of a schoolroom, we could whip their asses.

And Mr. Armstrong rubbed his eyes and shook his head and said, “Oh, my effing God.” Which we felt was walking a fine line, languagewise.

I was sorry for the crushed dream of Angus, but art time with Ms. Annie was all the extra I needed.

Other than it being another thing to want more of, Demon and his cravings: for food, for love and touch, and now her lit-up face seeing something I’d done right.

I didn’t really care about the main gifted thing, the spring trip over school break.

All year we had to study on this certain place and write our papers so we’d be all wised up whenever we got there.

Which makes no sense. I mean, why not just go?

Whatever. Sixth-grade trip I couldn’t, being not yet up to par on my grades.

It was just science museum in Charlotte, no overnighter due to budget cuts, so.

Rip-off. The teachers promised they’d make it up to us the next year, which I didn’t believe for one minute.

Angus said wait and see. Her failed victory of smartness thing was a setback, but in better days she was always one to tell me I should start trusting the wild ride, meaning life or whatever.

Because it’s not one hundred percent fucked up, once in a while it delivers.

And in seventh grade, holy God, it did. They said we were going to Colonial Williamsburg, plus an afternoon at Busch Gardens amusement park, and one entire day at Virginia everloving goddamn Beach.

The ocean. For my paper I didn’t even know where to start, but I narrowed it down eventually.

Currents. They travel around the earth in gigantic circles, you seriously would not believe it.

Then March rolled around and the school said there wasn’t money after all for a bus.

No trip. And I was the idiot for listening to Angus, trusting the damn ride.

But then came a last-minute save: some volunteer moms would drive us.

Hot damn. The car I got assigned to was a Plymouth Eagle wagon of me, driver-mom, her daughter Lacey, and her two bffs Gleanna and Pristene.

All being mad Christian from the same church, so they knew all these Jesus songs they sang back-to-back from the minute of pulling out of the school parking lot.

Hand motions. This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine (hold up a finger like a candle), don’t let Satan blow it out (PHWOOF!).

I thought of Mr. Peg saying a man can get used to anything except hanging by the neck.

Fine. I was going to see the motherfucking ocean.

Then Gleanna said she didn’t feel so hot, and without further ado puked all over herself and the two of us in the back seat.

Sudden death on the songs of praise. We pulled off at a truck stop where Gleanna was issued a ginger ale and her victims took our overnight bags to the rest rooms to get cleaned up and changed.

Then we headed out again, one carload of worse-for-wear Christians with Gleanna up front now, where she supposedly wouldn’t get carsick.

I had my hunches though on it being some other kind of sick, because this is I-81 we’re on.

The one straight highway between Jonesville and anywhere.

Sure enough, halfway through “I Have Joy Like a Fountain in My Soul,” Gleanna hurls again, nailing Driver Mom.

Who by now is disgusted with the whole business, and tells us at the next exit she’s going to go find a pay phone and call the Super 8 Motel where we were supposed to stay.

To let the others know our carload was turning around and going home.

My ocean quest ended in a rout, at Exit 114. Christiansburg. Irony.