Chapter 7: 13 Days Earlier

Rue:

Three days later, the next message appeared on the school’s Instagram. The next threat that gave teeth to the first and dispelled any notion that it was just an accident, some enterprising rat-catcher or attention-seeking hoaxer.

‘Sherman High is a nest of cheats and liars who don’t deserve a future!’

“So let’s discuss the elephant in the room,” Mr Heineman directed as the last of his Government and Politics class took their seats. There was no sign of Aust, Rue noticed. Then shrugged it off with an IDGAF scowl. 

“You’ve all seen the comment this morning on the school’s Instagram,” Mr Heineman went on. “Should this be considered a political statement? And — if so — should it fall under anti-terrorism laws in this state?”

Rue knew this wasn’t a law class. Mr Heineman wasn’t really assessing their in-depth knowledge of state legislation. This was about being able to construct an argument. And Rue reckoned he had a doozie. He turned to his class partner, Edgar Gutierrez, and began to lay things out. 

-No, it wasn’t political. 

-Yes, it should be considered an act of terror as it was designed to frighten people. 

-No, he didn’t think the school was really under threat. 

Edgar was just pressing him on how an act of terror could not be considered political, when the door to the class opened. It was Austin Freeman, complete with MAGA hat and self-satisfied grin. Rue felt sick at the sight of seeing him. Sure, he’d gone on the march Tuesday night and the two nights after: a series of peaceful protests down to the detention center, with placards and banners and singing. It did nothing. They wouldn’t let anyone inside. And a thousand, thousand Austin Freemans had been there, staring back at him from beneath red hats and behind thin badges that only half-concealed their hatred for him. Austin Freeman was everything that was wrong with this country right now. 

“Mr Freeman, better late than never,” Mr Heineman mocked, and directed the student to his usual seat. “We’re discussing political statements,” Mr Heineman went on, then gestured to Aust’s MAGA hat. “I see you brought your own prop for the purposes of illustration.”

“The hat?” Aust queried. “Yeah. It’s Dress Down Friday,” he pointed out. 

“Dress Down Friday is not a thing in this school,” Mr Heineman, retorted. “Never has been and never will be. Please remove the hat in my classroom.”

“Principal Edwards told me he was bringing it in,” Aust hit back. 

Rue enjoyed the back and forth—the inevitability of Aust’s defeat, the slim chance of unexpected resistance-drama.

“Principal Edwards may have told you the sky is green, Mr Freeman,” Heineman went on, “but I can assure you he’s made no announcement, memo or email to the faculty about anything as crass as Dress Down Friday.”

Aust muttered something under his breath; Rue was really enjoying this. 

“Well, I ain’t taking it off,” Aust declared. “So I guess you’ll just have to go get the principal in here, won’t you?”

“Oh?” Heineman replied with the confidence of a man holding an entire stacked deck of cards. “Is that so?”

Aust nodded. 

“Yup. It is,” he replied. 

Heineman stalked behind the teacher’s desk and picked up a pen in his paw; Rue head the furious scratching of it on a sheet of paper, like a claw on bark. When Heineman was done, he placed it in an envelope and signed his name across the seal. 

“Would you take this down to Mr Nimzike’s sophomore English class?” Heineman directed at Aust. 

It wasn’t a request. 

“You can send me wherever you like,” Aust replied. “The hat stays on until Principal Edwards tells me himself to take it off.”

“The hat stays on,” Mr Heineman confirmed. “But it’s going on a little journey. Six doors down the hall—” he pointed, “—that way.”

Rue sniggered under his breath. 

Aust snatched the letter and was gone. 

“Honestly,” Mr Heineman commented after Aust had left the room, “I swear the students at this school get ruder and ruder every year. Not you—” he directed, holding his hands up to the class. “—but some students.”

Rue was sitting right at the front of the class. He could see that Mr Heineman was shaking. The guy had to be in his fifties. Sharp as a tack, mentally, but balding, overweight, out of shape. Maybe he thought he’d just avoided getting punched; maybe he thought the MAGAs would be waiting for him after school. Rue dismissed the thought: this guy was a seasoned teacher in a public school. He’d probably been dealing with assholes like Austin Freeman his whole life. 

Heineman took a drywipe marker and began to write on the whiteboard:

‘Sherman High is a nest of cheats and liars who don’t deserve a future!’

“Okay,” he redirected, “political statement? Go.”

The shaking had gone out of his hands, Rue noticed. The heat of the moment had flushed away, and with it the adrenaline that had been suffusing the teacher's action. 

“I don’t really think it is a political statement,” Rue argued, eager to get in first, especially when Aust wasn’t in the room. “It doesn’t really aim at anything political. I mean, it’s not trying to take down the government, it’s not addressing the school board or the state education agency. It’s not crying out for social change. It’s just one angry loner with a grudge against the school.”

Mr Heineman raised a finger, which always meant he was about to offer a truly incisive rebuttal, when there came a knock at the door. A lone student standing outside of it. It was Tammy Harrison. 

“Mr Nimzike said I should come here,” she explained. 

“Hmm, I’m not sure who got the better end of that deal,” Mr Heineman muttered cryptically under his breath. Then, louder and to Tammy, “Very well. Come in. Sit down. You can take Mr Freeman’s seat at the front of the class. I’m quite sure he’s in yours for the next hour. Sit quietly and you might just learn something.”

Tammy sat down two seats across from Rue. 

“Where were we?” Heineman asked. “Ah yes, Mr Camposano believes that this statement—” he gestured again at the board, “—isn’t political. Who agrees?”

Tammy:

“Excuse me, Sir, but I don’t agree,” Tammy said, immediately after Mr Heineman had asked his question. Then clarified, “It is a political statement.”

Tammy stood her ground against the scoffs and sharp intakes of breath.

“Oh?” Heineman prompted, expectantly. 

“Well, I’ve actually got two things to say,” Tammy fired back, leaning into his question. “The second one is way more interesting, but let’s handle this politics thing first. It’s clearly a political statement because the poster bothered to make it. I mean, think about it, if somebody wants to shoot up a school, they just grab a gun and go do it. Why post about it first? It’s to scare people, right?”

“Maybe it’s a cry for help?” a boy across from Tammy challenged. It was the same boy she’d spoken to about Hope the other day. Ruben, was his name?

“Excuse me, but I don’t think so,” Tammy replied. “See this was the other thing I wanted to say about it. Look at the language in this post—” Tammy gestured to where the post was written on the classroom board.

“—Here they use the word ‘nest’, and in the first one they used the word ‘vermin’. They’re calling the kids here rats. This is personal to them.”

“Well—” Ruben replied, but Tammy cut him off. 

“—And another thing, these words ‘cheats’ and ‘liars’, you put them together and you’ve got someone who’s been cheated on by a girl and lied to.”

“You’re assuming it’s a girl,” Ruben hit back. 

“Please, 96% of all school shooters are guys,” Tammy informed him. 

“He might be gay,” Ruben pointed out. “Or trans.”

“Let’s ignore for a second that you’ve mixed up identity and sexuality,” Tammy schooled him, “and deal with the fact that trans and non-bianry shooters account for less than 1% of all shootings — inside school or out.”

“But–” Reuben interjected. 

“–But one in five trans kids get threatened with a weapon in school every year, y’know?” Tammy hit back, and she raised her index finger, then her whole hand to count them off.

“You seem to know a lot about this,” Ruben countered. “Maybe it’s you writing comments on the school’s Instagram…”

There was a chorus of groans taken up around the room. 

“Come on, man,” Tammy pleaded, pointing at the rules for debating on the classroom wall. “Attack the argument, not the person.”

Tammy watched as Ruben leant forwards in his chair. 

“All right,” he came back at her. 

This boy meant business. Tammy allowed herself a grin, then very quickly suppressed it. This was going to be fun — everyone in her English class was so passive — this was a way better room to have an argument in. “You think ‘liars’ and ‘cheats’ means it’s about a relationship,” Ruben recapped. “It could just as easily be about students telling their parents they’re going to a friend’s house, when really they’re going out drinking; or students lying on a college admissions form—”

“—Or the AI content of some of your homework—” Mr Heimeman broke in. 

The class laughed. 

“—My point is that you don’t have any evidence to support your claim that it’s about a breakup,” Ruben concluded. 

“No, you could be right,” Tammy conceded. “But it doesn’t change the fact that they announced it first, not once but twice! And here’s the clincher — they set the students of Sherman High up as something different to them, see? Ideologically different. We’re ‘vermin’, we’re ‘cheats’, we’re ‘liars’. They’re not. They’re above us, see? And they got the vision to see this ‘rat problem’ and the intention to do something about it. They’re setting themselves apart—”

“—Like a demagogue,” Mr Heineman broke in. 

Tammy didn’t know that word. The teacher saw the confused expression on her face. 

“Someone who appeals to people’s desires and prejudices rather than appealing to fact and reason,” he clarified. 

“So?!” Ruben retorted, his voice rising a little. 

“You said it might be a cry for attention,” Tammy rejoined, “and I agree. They want us to look at them and say, ‘Yeah! This guy knows what’s going on! They’re gonna root out all the bad people. We should listen to them!’”

“That still doesn’t make it political!” Ruben argued, his voice now on the edge of shouting. 

Tammy stood up. Walked to the front of the class and grabbed a dictionary from the shelf. She sat down, opened it in the middle and read. 

“‘Political: a particular set of beliefs or principles; activities aimed at increasing someone’s status or power within an organization.’”

She heard the hail of scoffs from the students again, but this time they weren’t directed at her. 

“She's not even taking this class!” Ruben objected. 

“And yet I still wiped the floor with your argument,” Tammy rebutted. 

“You didn’t—” Ruben started, but Heineman cut him off.

“—She did, Mr Camposano,” the teacher pointed out. “Your derriere is literally shiny from all the floor wax it just picked up.”

“She shouldn’t even be allowed to take part in the debate!” Ruben objected again. 

“You gonna tell me to go back where I came from?” Tammy baited. 

That took the wind out of his sails. 

“Back to English?” she added. 

She wasn’t talking about English. Another sharp intake of breath from everyone around her a moment ago told her they all understood she wasn’t talking about English either. 

“No,” Ruben replied, perhaps seeing the irony in his argument. 

“I don’t know what you’re more upset about,” Tammy baited again, “getting beat by someone who’s three years younger than you, or getting beat by a girl?”

“You’re not—” Ruben rejoined, then stopped himself in the nick of time. 

Tammy cocked her head to one side, objectionally. 

“You’re not three years younger than me,” Ruben saved quickly. “You’re a sophomore.”

“Yes to both, I’m afraid,” Tammy ridiculed; the class laughed. 

At this point, the door to the class opened again. There was no knock this time. Principal Edwards strode into the room dominantly. 

“I had to see this for myself,” the principal commented; his eyes flitted to the board where the Instagram comment was still written. Edwards didn’t acknowledge it, but Tammy caught for a second in Heineman’s face the compunction of a man who maybe wished he’d put a little more thought into what he wrote for all to see. The sharp bark of Edwards’ raised voice snatched her gaze back to the principal. 

“Tammy Harrison,” he directed. “Get back to class right now.”

Tammy was about to object, when Edwards added, “And you can tell Austin Freeman to come back here, while you’re at it.”

Tammy cocked her head to one side. Guess the fun was over then. She pushed herself up out of her seat and swaggered out of the door like it had been her own idea. 

Tammy told herself she wasn’t really listening to what passed between the two adults when she left the room; told herself she didn’t really care about the words that gradually grew quieter with each labored step away from the room. 

“Student enrollment decides which class the students go to…” 

Edwards’ admonishing words drifted down the hallway after Tammy. 

“We’ve had quite enough off-the-test teaching…”

The words were so faint now. So distant. So quite, that orders almost seemed like suggestions. 

“And get that nonsense off the board!”

Hope:

Hope liked Mr Nimzike’s English class. Hope liked Mr Nimzike, in that fatherly way that she’d never quite managed with her own dad. He was always away. Not just on business. Sports at the weekend. Drinking with his buddies afterwards. It was almost like the guy didn’t want to be home. But ever since her first class with Mr Nimzike, he was just there. Everpresent. Every time. And he had such a different way of talking to students than most teachers. 

“Okay gang,” he said — he always called them gang; Hope allowed herself an embarrassed smile at it. A conscious-cringe for a man not-quite ready to act his age. 

“Yesterday, we looked at Poe’s Raven as a metaphor for racism in his time and what did we learn?”

“That he was a racist!” someone called out from the back of the class. It was Tammy. Of course it was. Why’d that girl have to make things so difficult for herself? 

“No, he was,” Mr Nimzike agreed. Then launched into a few lines of the poem by way of support:

‘Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster

Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—’

And that ‘unhappy master’,” he went on, “was almost certainly the slave-owning kind. Now—”

“Excuse me sir,” Tammy piped up again. “But when we gonna talk about CRT and Poe?”

“Now Tammy,” Nimzike acknowledged, “you know Critical Race Theory is banned in schools.”

“Yeah, but that’s a bunch of BS!” Tammy hit back. 

No one gasped; no one was surprised; everyone was used to her inappropriate outbursts. Even Mr Nimzike. 

“Bad Schooling or not,” he said, reclaiming Tammy’s swear, “I figure we always do our best here. Which is why I’m not allowed to recommend Teresa Goddu’s excellent year-2000 paper on Poe and race, nor am I allowed to point you to the equally fascinating 2021 entry from Jennifer Celeste, available free online…”

Tammy scribbled the names down furiously. That girl worked too hard and played never, it seemed. Hope would take her out one weekend, maybe. To the mall. To just hang out and do nothing. 

“So gang—” another wry smile from Hope. “—Today we’re going to take a look at ‘Hop Frog’, which was one of Poe’s most interesting later works—”

Hope loved how Nimzike geeked out about books, “—where the wronged slave finally gets his own back on his abusive master. Who’d like to—” 

Mr Nimzike was interrupted by a knock on the door. It was that MAGA boy. The bully-one who always wore that hat. Austin Something. 

“Mr Freeman, didn’t you pass my class last year?” Mr Nimzike quipped dryly. He ignored the hat completely. 

“It was so good, Mr Nimzike, I figured I’d come back and take it again,” Aust joked. 

Austin Freeman had jokes? Seriously?

“Well that. And this,” Austin added, holding up an envelope with the flap torn open. 

“It’s from Heineman,” Austin informed the class. 

“And what does the Hiney Man want?” Nimzike asked to the grins of the assembled students. 

He took the envelope and read the letter. 

“I assume you read it,” Nimzike said, looking past the ripped envelope and over the top of his half moon spectacles when he was done. 

Austin smirked. 

“Well, alright then,” Mr Nimzike conceded, waving to the empty chairs, “take a seat and try not to give away the ending.”

“‘Now I see distinctly what manner of people these maskers are…’” Austin quoted in a stage voice. 

Jokes and culture? Maybe Hope had misjudged him. 

“Excuse me, Mr Nimzike,” Tammy piped up again from the back of the room, “is he allowed to wear that hat in here?”

She pointed to his MAGA hat. 

“You’re literally wearin’ a tee says ‘Eat the Rich’,” Austin pointed out. 

Hope peered round to the back where Tammy sat. It was true. She was. Hope tried to mouth the words, ‘Slow down, Tams,’ but they were swallowed up in the movement of the class, turning to gawk for themselves. 

“It makes you uncomfortable, huh?” Mr Nimzike asked. 

Tammy said nothing, but looked away to the empty corner of the room. 

“Tell you what,” Mr Nimzike said. “We’re gonna play a prank on He of the Hiney, Man. And you’ll get to be as objectionable as you like. Why don’t you go down to his class and just sit in for a while? It all cleared,” he added, waving the letter in the air like it was some royal decree. “It’s not a punishment,” he added. “You’ll be like a foreign agent. My girl in Gov and Pol…”

Nobody resisted Mr Nimzike. Nobody wanted to.

“It’s okay,” Tammy acquiesced. “I already read ‘Hop Frog’ anyway.” 

She got up out of her seat and directed her gaze at Aust. Then she added, “I always liked the way the white dictator got what was coming to him.”

Hope looked away as Tammy swaggered out of the room.

“Is anybody sittin’ here?” the words blindsided Hope. She had been lost in a world of worries, oddly not her own. She worried about Tammy and how she rubbed so many people up the wrong way that they just couldn’t see the real her. She worried about that boy she had met the other day, Ruben, and the situation with his father (he’d seemed so down these last few days). She worried about JC McMillan and what would happen to him when everything came out (I mean, you can’t hide a baby bump forever). 

“No, it’s free,” Hope said before she even realized who she was talking to. 

Austin Freeman sat down heavily beside her with a thump. 

“My name’s Aust,” he introduced. Hope stared through him. 

Aust:

“My name’s Aust.” 

He extended a welcoming hand towards Hope. He knew who she was. Everyone who knew JC knew Hope, now anyways. Aust figured he ought to poll well with white women—if high school politics had polls—but her body language made it clear: this one wasn’t a fan. He withdrew his hand and lifted his hat instead.

“I mostly wear it to piss off the teachers,” Aust joked. 

The faintest smile cracked Hope’s lips—sweet, but nervous. Aust backed off.

Aust volunteered to read the first part of ‘Hop-Frog’ to the class, breaking down the Latin from memory and the showy-off bits Poe loved. After a few minutes, they divided into paired discussion and Aust tried again to engage with Hope. 

“Whaddya think of it so far?” he asked. 

“I think it’s cruel the way the king and his ministers treat Hop-Frog,” she said, referring to the main character. 

“Yeah,” Aust agreed. “But that’s only part of the story. Look at the way Poe describes the ministers. As ‘fat and foolish’. He’s making as much fun of them as they are of Hop-Frog.”

“Is that why he takes revenge against them?” Hope asked, looking Aust in the eye for the first time. 

“It’s more than that,” Aust replied quickly. “He don’t like the way they treat his girl. Plus he don’t like the way they call him Hop-Frog. It ain’t his name,” Aust explained. “But he takes it and hides his real self behind it.”

“Like truthbats?” Hope interjected. 

“That Instagram commenter?” Aust tilted his head.

“He hides behind a name that isn’t his. And he wants revenge too,” Hope pointed out. 

“You’re assumin’ it’s a ‘he’,” Aust replied. He felt a lump forming in his throat. He tried to push it away. 

“Do you think truthbats really means all those things they’re saying?” Hope asked, correcting to the gender-non-specific pronoun. 

“Do you?” Aust returned, trying to gauge the reason for her question. 

“I think there are enough reasons for somebody to hate this school and the people in it,” Hope replied; Aust noticed she didn’t directly answer the question. 

He decided to try a different tack. 

“You know, not everyone in this school is like JC McMillan?” he offered. 

It was the wrong thing to say. Hope's entire demeanor shifted with her body weight away from him. 

“That guy’s a double-crossing snake,” Aust added, doubling-down on his distancing from JC. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be his friend?” Hope asked, narrowing her eyes and folding her arms across her body. 

Aust suddenly found himself paralyzed in the venom of his ‘double-crossing snake’ comment. 

“We hang out sometimes,” Aust confessed. “But that guy’s got a little too much church and a little too much hypocrisy for my tastes.”

“You’re anti-church?” Hope quizzed. 

Aust’s eyes noticed for the first time the small silver cross all-but hidden beneath the neckline of her tee. 

Dammit. 

“Well no,” Aust defended, back-pedalling quickly. “I mean, no one in their right mind is anti-church, right? I just think a lot of those guys don’t always practice what they preach.”

“There’s a lot of that going around,” Hope replied, then turned her body away from him. 

Aust figured he ought to poll well with white women. What was he doing that was so wrong?

“Mr Nimzike, can I go to the bathroom?” Hope asked, sudden and sharp.

“But we’ve only just begun,” Nimzike replied. 

Aust couldn’t see Hope’s face, but he saw it reflected in Nimzike’s. The man caved without a fight.

“Well alright, you can,” Nimzike replied, “but you’ve got to tell me two things about Hop-Frog first of all.”

Hope rose from her seat and directed her gaze at Aust. 

“‘Hop-Frog’ is a story about a guy who’s forced to pretend to be something he isn’t so he can fit in. And he hates living like a cipher so much that he takes his revenge and kills a bunch of people.”

Aust felt his heart sink, even as his hackles rose. 

“Very good!” the oblivious Mr Nimzike complemented, and waved the bathroom pass in Hope’s direction. 

“Okay gang,” Mr Nimzike went on — Aust shook his head and rolled his eyes a little, “—Who wants to read the next section?”

Austin sat back as one of the other students in the class read the next section. He knew this story. He wasn’t really paying attention. What Hope had said to him had stung. He was a politician—malleable, porous, all those things they write about in books. He wasn’t pretending to be anything. He was just open to pleasing other people. Adopting whatever viewpoints they held. Did that make him a cipher? No. He was a politician. He had to keep a range of views to keep a range of people onside. 

The door opened. It was Hope. She looked upset. 

“That was quick,” Mr Nimzike joked; he never could read people, Aust recalled. 

“Principal Edwards sent me back to class,” Hope told him, holding what looked like the torn-up remnants of her hall pass in her hand. “Said I wasn’t allowed out of class. I told him that Tammy and Austin had been allowed out. He sent me back here.”

“Oh,” Mr Nimzike remarked. 

Was that fear? The sudden realisation that playing fast and loose with the rules had consequences? Ha. It’d serve him right for that. And that idiot Heineman. Aust squared his MAGA hat, leant back, and waited for the fallout.