Deviant (7 page)

“Oh, well, that's OK then,” Walt said, relieved.

“We begin the day with two hours of reading. Then we have a spelling and vocabulary test. Then mathematics. More reading. Social sciences, more reading.”

“That sounds wonderful,” Juanita said, and for some reason added in a whisper, “Danny is not a big reader at the moment.”

Danny felt betrayed by this and looked at the floor. Mr. Lebkuchen smiled. “He will be. We're only a junior high, so we appreciate that we'll be losing Danny in June, but by that time he will be among the elite readers for his grade in this state,” Mr. Lebkuchen said confidently.

“Well, that all seems great,” Walt said.

“Excuse me just one moment,” Lebkuchen said. He lifted a microphone and CD player from beneath his desk and put them in front of him. He turned on the microphone and a mild feedback loop went through the school. He inserted Aaron Copland's “Fanfare for the Common Man” into the CD player, and it began playing through the school's loudspeakers. When it reached its climax, Mr. Lebkuchen read from a piece of paper: “Math stars for the second week of January: Jane Morris 7A, Peter Farthing 8A, Marcella Hernandez 9A … well done, everyone. I expect that you all will continue to work hard.”

He turned off the microphone, put the CD player back beneath his desk, and smiled. “Our math stars,” he said, slightly apologetically.

“Yes,” Juanita said and, looking at Danny, added, “Maybe that will be you in a couple of weeks.”

Nothing could have excited Danny less, but he nodded and faked a smile.

“Now, you may have noticed how quiet it is in our school. We run the silent system here. No talking is allowed at any time—not in the classroom, not in the corridors, not at recess. The only communication is vertically, between student and teacher and between teachers and me. I don't permit triangulation, and by that I mean horizontal communication between students or even between teachers. Danny, if you have a complaint or a problem, bring it to me, and I will deal with it.”

“The kids aren't allowed to talk to one another?” Walt
said, not entirely sure he had understood what Mr. Lebkuchen was saying.

“Precisely. School is for work. They can talk or play as much as they like outside these walls, but from nine until three thirty, they are here to work. No triangulation means increased focus on what they are here to do.”

“Do you find, I mean, do the kids … silence seems …” Danny's mom couldn't phrase her objection the way she wanted to, and her voice trailed off.

Mr. Lebkuchen smiled. “It takes some getting used to, of course. It's harder on the teachers, actually.”

“The teachers have to be quiet too?” Walt asked.

“Oh yes. You could hear a pin drop in this school. And in the staff room, the lunchroom … it's wonderful. We have almost no discipline problems; silence, it turns out, is conducive to work. That's why the monastic model worked so well, and I think that's why they used to have signs that said ‘Shh' in libraries. Of course, nowadays you can't hear yourself think over the noise of iPods and computers in public libraries. No iPods allowed in the school, by the way. OK, young man? I'm sure you've got one?”

Danny nodded.

“Well, none here, please. And no phones. Not that they would work anyway.”

“What do you mean?” Walt asked.

“It was an idea I took from the Denver Public Library. They have a cell-phone jammer to stop people from talking
on their phones inside the building. I mean, kids are kids of course, and they'll always find a way around any system.”

“I'm still not getting it,” Walt said.

“We discovered that they were texting each other on their cell phones, but now we've installed a jammer and put a stop to that.”

“Oh, I see,” Walt said.

“We're still a new school, so some of the things we're trying are probably going to seem strange.” Mr. Lebkuchen's cheeks colored slightly as he explained. “For example, one of the ideas we took from the Baltimore pilot project was the gloves.”

He twiddled his fingers for a moment.

“Gloves?” Juanita asked.

“Yes, all our students wear white gloves all the time. We can spot immediately children who have been playing in the dirt or (excuse my coarseness) picking their noses. The gloves promote hygiene, discipline, and responsibility. You'd be surprised how this one little cosmetic change can transform an environment. Of course, many public schools have a uniform code these days, but we're only one of half a dozen in North America whose code includes gloves.”

Juanita looked skeptical and Mr. Lebkuchen, smiling, picked up on that. “As I've said, it may seem strange, but our results speak for themselves. We tested twelfth in the country in the Uniform Reading Test. Twelfth in the country! And that was against private schools. We beat
Phillips Exeter, Colorado Academy … many others. In June last year we got a citation for excellence from First Lady Michelle Obama. And remember, many of our children could barely read at all when they came here.”

Juanita nodded, but Walt had decided that he didn't like Mr. Lebkuchen or his school or his methods. The lack of music, the uniforms, gloves, silence, scripts for teachers … by themselves that didn't amount to much, but taken as a whole it was over-the-top. He knew he'd only get one go at this, so he launched an attack that he knew might hit home with Juanita. “That's all very well, Principal Lebkuchen, and strangely enough I went to Phillips Exeter myself, but one of the things I didn't appreciate at that school was its lack of diversity. One thousand little white boys does not reflect America.”

Mr. Lebkuchen smiled and shook his head. “Oh, I completely agree. First of all, we're a small school. Danny will be our hundredth pupil, I believe. I know all of them by name, most of their parents by name too. And we're coed here. Girls and boys are going to have to work together in the real world, so why shouldn't they start in school? And thirdly, we are very diverse. We're about ten percent Latino, we have Native American students from the Cherokee and Ute Nations, and we also have a couple of African American kids from Colorado Springs.”

“Hmm,” Walt said as Juanita patted him on the leg.

“And what's your background, if you don't mind me asking?” Walt wondered.

“Mixed-up!” Mr. Lebkuchen said with a laugh. “I was born at the hospital in Fort Carson, Colorado, not a million miles from here—my father was in the US Army—and I actually spent my early years in Okinawa, Japan.”

“How lovely,” Juanita said, embarrassed by Walt's question.

“It was certainly an experience. Anyway, after Japan we ended up in Denver; I went to East High School and then Columbia University and Teachers College in New York. I taught in the New York City public schools for three years before coming back to Colorado. I did some private tutoring and then I found out about this place, the old Cobalt Tesla Elementary, which had closed down in the late 2000s because of a lack of students.”

“It seems to be doing OK now,” Juanita said.

“Yes! Before we opened, most Cobalt and Manitou parents wanted to send their kids to one of the bigger schools in the Springs, but now my phone is ringing off the hook with parents from as far away as Denver who want to send their children here.”

“We're very grateful you took Danny,” Juanita said.

“You can thank Mr. Glynn for that. He's sponsored our school since the beginning.”

Yeah, ever since he wanted to build a casino just up the road, Danny thought.

They talked for five more minutes, Mr. Lebkuchen explaining homework, demerits, notes for being late, notes for illnesses, and so on. Juanita and Walt assured the
principal that Danny would be good, would come on time, and would do his homework. Mr. Lebkuchen said that he was sure that Danny would be an asset to the school and soon he would become a math star or a reading star or both.

Mr. Lebkuchen gave him a pair of white gloves to put on. Thus ridiculously clad, Danny was taken, along with his parents, down a pristine corridor decorated with the kind of watercolor landscapes you saw in cancer wards or insane asylums.

They stopped outside 9B and Mr. Lebkuchen said, “Miss Benson's great … you'll like her.”

He entered without knocking. All the students immediately stood up.

“Sit, sit,” Mr. Lebkuchen said affably.

“Good morning, Miss Benson,” Mr. Lebkuchen said.

“Good morning, Principal Lebkuchen,” Miss Benson replied.

Room 9B was an airy space that faced the playground and the mountains. Miss Benson was a forty-year-old white lady with brown eyes, brown glasses, and black hair cut medium length. She had an unmemorable face but spoke with a Southern twang that Danny found pleasing.

“We have a new student, Miss Benson. I trust that you can accommodate him,” Mr. Lebkuchen said.

“Of course, Principal Lebkuchen.”

There were about fifteen kids in the class. Danny recognized Tony, but when he gave her a little wave she did not wave back.

“Boys and girls, this is Daniel Brown,” Principal Lebkuchen said, getting both parts of his name wrong. “He has recently moved here from Nevada. This is his first day, and I'm sure you'll treat him with the respect and warmth we've all come to expect from students of CJHCS. Miss Benson, over to you. I suggest you hand him a workbook and throw him right in at the deep end.”

“Thank you, Principal Lebkuchen,” Miss Benson said, and gave him a little nod of the head. Mr. Lebkuchen ushered Juanita and Walt to the door.

“
Bye, love you,
” Danny's mom mouthed as they left.

“Welcome to 9B. Sit down here, please,” Miss Benson said, pointing to a desk directly in front of her, where he couldn't really see any of his fellow students. He was given the reading script for the day and in a minute he was following along.

They were reading
Oliver Twist
, which, apparently, was about a boy who lived in England ages ago.

The class was pretty straightforward. Each student took a turn reading out loud, and the teacher asked pre-prepared questions about nouns, verbs, vocabulary. You could read the questions in advance, so you'd have to be particularly dense to get one wrong—especially the vocabulary ones.

When it was Danny's turn to read, he had no trouble. Miss Benson asked him to speak up a bit, but that was about it.

After an hour of this, at exactly twelve o'clock, it was
lunchtime. There were no bells. Kids filed silently out of class and walked on the right-hand side of the corridor to the canteen.

Danny sat with his class at a long table, and the table server went up and brought back the same food for everyone, plus a juice box of either apple or orange juice. The only words spoken in the whole canteen were the servers asking kids in turn if they wanted apple or orange juice and the kids saying “orange” or “apple” in a weird whisper.

No one started eating until all the kids had been served and when one of the lunch ladies rang a handbell. Then everyone noiselessly began.

Lunch that day was chicken breast, boiled potatoes, collard greens, and a fruit salad for dessert. This is worse than the prison I was in yesterday, Danny thought, but of course, like everyone else, he said nothing.

The teachers sat in the same hall as the kids and ate the same food and they, too, said nothing, but they at least were permitted to read a book or a newspaper.

A little dark-haired, moonfaced kid was sitting opposite Danny. The kid was pale, scrawny, and fidgety with squat, toothbrushy eyebrows. When Danny looked up from his meal, the kid nodded to him significantly. Danny didn't know what to make of it, so he just nodded back.

One table over, Tony finally gave him a wave. Danny grinned and returned the wave, relieved that he hadn't been getting snubbed earlier. Tony's hair was combed into a straight bob. He was surprised to find that he liked it much
better than when it was all spiky the day before. In fact, he discovered Tony was actually very pretty.

When everyone had finished their food, the kids filed out of the canteen into the playground, leaving the servers to clean the table.

The playground was little bigger than a couple of basketball courts. Some of the boys began kicking a soccer ball around; some of the girls played with them or played their own game, which was like a cross between hopscotch and freeze tag. Many of the seventh-graders went over to a small jungle gym that had swings, a slide, and a climbing wall; some of the kids just sat down and read.

Danny shivered. The sun was shining but it was still quite cold, at least for him.

“Man, this sucks,” he said to himself.

The Las Vegas Primary School for the Arts, where he'd gone for a couple of semesters (until they'd kicked him out for not doing his drawing assignments), had even had a skate park on the grounds, where he could practice his moves at lunchtime.

There was no question of even free skating around this place.

At least he could see the supposedly famous mountain of Pikes Peak as it loomed ominously over the playground, its whole top third covered with snow.

The rest of the view was impressive too. The sky was clear and he could see the Front Range curving south, he imagined, all the way to New Mexico.

“I wish I was in New Mexico right now,” he muttered. “New Mexico or real Mexico or anywhere.”

A shadow in front of him.

The scrawny little moonfaced kid again.

“Yeah?” Danny said.

The kid gave him something.

“What's this?” Danny whispered. The kid put his fingers to his lips and pointed to the teachers on playground duty gloomily walking around.

Danny gave him the thumbs-up sign and the kid walked away.

Danny looked at the object in his hand.

It seemed a bit like an old-fashioned pager, with a small screen and beneath that nine alphanumeric buttons like on a cell phone.