Free Signs of Life by Melanie Hansen Page A

eighteen, adults in a room full of fourteen- and fifteen-year-old kids.
    Kai walked amongst them, passing out his beginning-of-the-year quiz, making his silent assessments.
    “Dunno why da fuck I gotta be here, man,” one of the older students grumbled, snatching his paper from Kai’s hand.
    “You know why, amigo,” Kai said softly. “Probation officer says it’s either school or jail, right?” The kid glared, and Kai raised his voice. “I’ll take attendance again five minutes before class ends, so there won’t be any sneaking out halfway through.” A chorus of groans and muttered “fuck yous” met this pronouncement, and Kai smiled inwardly. He knew all their tricks; he’d perpetrated most if not all of them himself, once upon a time.
    “Okay, you all have fifteen minutes to complete the quiz.”
    He leaned against his desk and watched as the inevitable phones came out, quiz papers ignored, the scratching of pencils as a few kids did the work. So. Very. Fucking. Typical. Suddenly Kai was weary to his soul, weary of the uphill battle, the utter futility.
    “Why do you keep doing it, babe?” Loren asked him once as they sprawled side-by-side in their sleeping bags, the rain dripping from the towering trees above to plink on the roof of their small tent. “I mean, you have a fucking master’s degree. Go teach a lame-ass class at the community college, something you could do with your eyes closed. Collect your paycheck and sleep like a baby every night, man.”
    Kai remembered how he’d chuckled and changed the subject, convinced at the time he was making a difference, no matter how small and insignificant it seemed sometimes. Now as he watched a girl insolently hold his eyes as she tore her quiz paper into microscopic pieces and swept them onto the floor, he wasn’t quite so convinced.
    “Yo, Teach! I’m cold. Turn that off.” Another girl leaned back in her chair, waving her arm and indicating the window AC unit that was blowing merrily into the room.
    “It’s the middle of August, Tanya,” Kai said drily. “If the AC makes you cold, I’d suggest you bring a sweater from now on.”
    Tanya sneered at him, then looked around at the other kids before getting up and sauntering to the AC unit, making a big show of switching it off.
    “Fuck you, bitch! Turn that back on!”
    With another sigh Kai waded into the fray. Twenty minutes and a call to security later, Tanya was ejected and marched off to suspension. By the time Kai calmed the other kids down and regained control of the room, there were all of fifteen instructional minutes left. Once again the kids who might have wanted to actually learn something were highly shortchanged.
    As they filed out, Kai fought with all his strength not to pack up his things and follow them out the front door, never to return. He scrubbed his hands over his face roughly, and when he pulled them away, he was startled to see a girl standing next to his desk.
    “You remember me, Mr. D?” The girl was petite, slender, with light brown skin, hair a riotous mass of curls around her face.
    “Of course I do, Shauna. How’s Dante?” Shauna’s face broke into a smile at the mention of her eleven-month-old son, the reason she had to drop out of Kai’s class midyear the previous school term. She was bright and clever, had been one of his best students, and he was glad to see her back.
    “He fine, Mr. D, thanks for askin’,” she said shyly. “I’m glad I be back in your class this year.”
    “Me too,” Kai said gently. “If you do the work, you shouldn’t have any problem catching up with the credits you missed last year.”
    “I’m gonna finish this time, and graduate. I wanna get a scholarship for nursing school. Ms. Holbrook told me I prob’ly could.”
    “Ms. Holbrook would know, wouldn’t she?” Kai agreed. “She’s not the best guidance counselor here at school for nothing.”
    “She said it would look good on a scholarship application if I did some