Free This Is Not Your City by Caitlin Horrocks Page A

couldn’t tell whether or not he meant to do it. The sound level in the room rose, tidal and swelling; it broke over her, and she turned to the board and wrote, Third Conditional: If the class had listened to Ms. Larcom, they would not have had to go outside.
    â€œRecess!” the eye-poker said.
    â€œNo,” Eril said. “This is a punishment. Get in your line.”
    â€œBoots come first,” the eye-pokee reminded her. “Then line.”
    â€œNo boots,” Eril said, and stared them all down. It was strange, she thought, the way they didn’t protest. They howled bloody murder at boys working with girls, but she could lead them like lambs out onto the frozen dirt of the yard. They stood there in a line in their socks, without coats, and she looked at each of their feet: stripey, mismatched, Spider-man, Barbie, plain white athletic. Two girls were in tights, one boy barefoot. She saw faces at the windows of the other portables and waited for someone to come outside, to tell her to stop. No one did. Finally she looked at her watch. It was almost time for math. “Back inside,” she said, watching them file past, shivering. Surely they’d tell their parents, the parents would tell Steckelberg, and she’d be fired. She felt only relief.
    But Steckelberg never came to talk to her. No one came,
and Eril wondered if the kind of parents who sent their kids to Morningcroft ever actually asked what they did there. Eventually the children had neat lists of sample sentences written in their notebooks, four kinds of conditionals plus mixed clauses. If Sammy had not made farting noises, Ms. Larcom would not have taken his lunch. If Lindsey had not passed notes about Ms. Larcom in class, Ms. Larcom would not have cut a piece of her hair off. If PJ had not put a tack on Donald’s seat, Ms. Larcom would not have made him sit on a tack himself to see how he liked it. If Donald weren’t always such a know-it-all, Ms. Larcom would never have put masking tape over his mouth.
    The animals were getting worse, too. The fish tank was thick with algae and thicker with snails. One night Eril had worked late with only a desk lamp on, and she’d seen them emerge, inching out of their hiding places to climb up the walls, their slimy gray bodies pressed against the glass. That night, at another staff meeting where no one would meet her eyes, Eril stayed after to talk to the principal.
    â€œIt’s about the animals,” she said. “Something needs to be done.” She explained about the death, the stink, the strange, unsettling ways they were all falling apart.
    â€œThat’s good material,” Steckelberg said. “The circle of life. Plan some lessons around it.”
    â€œIs that really a lesson we want them to learn? Aren’t they kind of young?”
    â€œYou seem to be teaching them all kinds of lessons, Ms. Larcom. I’m really not sure why you’re objecting to this one.”
    Eril looked at him, swallowed, tried to think of a way to explain herself. Wondered if he shouldn’t be the one to explain himself, if he knew what she was doing and hadn’t intervened.
    â€œJust make it to the end of the semester, Ms. Larcom. That’s all any of us are expecting. Just make it to June.”
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    Binx made it to April 21st. Eril found him dead that morning and emptied the pencils out of a rectangular box in the supply cupboard. She lifted the bulging rat into the box and covered him with a tissue. She closed the lid, Scotch-taped it shut, and wrote “Binx” across the top. Then the students began arriving
and there was no time to bury him. Before Eril could hide the box, they saw it and demanded to bury the rat themselves. Eril assigned them into groups to handle formalities like “Eulogy,” “Gravesite Selection,” “Hole Digging.” They scheduled the funeral for after lunch. But when Eril went to pick up the coffin from