Free Eleven Twenty-Three by Jason Hornsby Page B

Let’s just wait and see what happens when
I’m done. Okay?”
    “Okay,” she says, and leans forward over the
tiny table at the corner of the dining room and gives me a gentle
kiss on my forehead. “Will you meet me here tomorrow morning? I
didn’t want to ride alone. Can we go together?”
    “Of course we can. I already assumed we
were.”
    “Thank you.”
    My mother then begins clearing our plates and
carrying them to the sink. I watch her as she cleans up. Percy
stands on the kitchen counter and watches her as well.
    “By the way,” she says, “don’t party too hard
tonight.”
    “What makes you think I was?” I ask,
grinning.
    “I haven’t forgotten about Hajime, son. You
two have always been trouble. Besides, something tells me that
tomorrow will be very interesting, aside from just the funeral.
Very…profound. We’ll both have to be strong tomorrow.”
    “I imagine we will,” I agree, fingering the
keys in my pocket.
    “And with that bug going around…it’s funny. I
only felt really ill a few times, but when I did, it was always
late at night or just before noon. I hope you and Tara don’t catch
it now that you’re home.”
     

PARENTHESIS
     
    I never wanted to be a teacher. I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I majored in American History in
college, to be honest. Maybe I didn’t want to be anything. There
were a lot of those types, I think, the ones who focused their
entire college career on a subject they would speak of with James
Barrie-esque fancy, idiotically drunk on the miscalculations of
their own innate talent. It wasn’t as if they really did have a
shot at becoming a costume designer for Broadway musicals, or the
guy who argues politics with Hannity and Colmes. None of these
people was ever going to be on the first manned expedition to Mars,
nor were they going to work as a script supervisor on the show Heroes. They weren’t going to be anything, other than maybe
the guy who brings you a two-for-one draught of beer at Friday’s
who happens to have a degree in political science, or costume
design, or American Studies, or History. They were all future
nothings. So was I.
    I graduated from college with no clue what to
do next. I had a vague idea about attending grad school, but my
grades the first time around weren’t awe-inspiring except maybe in
their absolute adherence to mediocrity, and the necessary GRE
scores to get into the schools I liked were more intimidating than
I cared to deal with at the time.
    So I just sort of slipped into teaching. What
I promised myself wouldn’t last more than a year while I figured
out what I was going to do next quickly became the next four. I was
looking at a Tier 5 contract. After the head retired and died
shortly thereafter and one of the other guys transferred to
Pensacola, I became a veteran of the history department. I judged
at our annual pie eating contest-cum-fundraiser for breast cancer.
I went to basketball games. I got involved with the school debate
team. The administrators thought I was great.
    And I hated it.
     
    The time when I really thought I made the
most difference quickly passed, and the idealistic part of me
killed himself around the end of my first year. After that, I cared
less and less but put up more and more of a powerful front of
absolute educational obsession with each passing semester.
    By the time I was in my fourth go-round of
high school history, things had collapsed for me. There were
mornings when I was absolutely certain that I had pink eye, mono,
ringworms, lice, body odor, a hangover or maybe even full-blown
next-morning intoxication, menthol cigarette-induced
lightheadedness—everything the kids brought with them into my
classroom. There were other mornings when I only came in because I
had nothing resembling lunch in my apartment. Sometimes when I
couldn’t make it all the way down the long empty corridor to the
faculty bathroom, I’d stand against the urinal that the teenagers
used and be