Page 15 of Karma Kitty Christmas
“Oh, but it is,” Isaac assured him. “The trick is to find somebody—even if it’s just one person—you can talk to. Someone who loves the job. Loves the kids. Can tell the administration to go suck rocks when you’ve got a toolbox in the front office. Carly Vogel taught me that, God love her, and I hope she’s in a retirement villa somewhere warm, wearing nicotine patches and getting laid, because it was the best advice going into the profession that I could have gotten.”
“So, you and Roxy?” Luca surmised.
Isaac shrugged. “Me and Roxy,” he said. “We were both in the same credential program. Masomat High School was hiring math teachers—they had a twenty-to-one program—”
“What’s that?” Luca asked, curious.
Isaac rolled his eyes. “Common sense. Most schools have to apply for grants to get it. Basically it’s a policy of only having twenty students in basic freshmen classes—pre-algebra and English, although they should include everything else. But this was a grant for only twenty kids per pre-algebra classroom, and the grant is to pay the extra teachers. It’s how a lot of teachers get hired on, and then the school loses funding, and of course the profession eats its own, so the few teachers left after the initial hiring burst are there to teach thirty-six kids per class. It’s awesome?”
“Oh my God,” Luca said, feeling like his brain had been assaulted by too much bad information at once. “Let’s go back to ‘the profession eats its own.’”
Isaac took a glum bite of his sandwich. “It’s… it’s not for the weak, Luca. Besides knowing mathreallywell, you also have to know politics—which I don’t and Roxy sort of does, but she doesn’t like to fuck with it—and they throw kids at you who have third- or fourth-grade skills—”
“But shouldn’t they be in remedial classes?” Luca asked, appalled.
Isaac set his sandwich down regretfully. “Do you remember maybe fifteen years ago—probably when you were back in high school—there was a thing called No Child Left Behind?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, what it was—what itreallywas—was a way to blame teachers for every kid who had a problem learning. That philosophy and a lot of those policies have hung around. If a kid, or even an entire class, isn’t at grade level, the teacherisn’t allowed to go back and reteach the lesson, or make sure half the class has the skill. Theentire classmust move up, and if not, the teacher takes the heat. So the result is, when the kids get moved up to high school, your supersmart, A-level kids are in the honors classes, and that’s about fifteen percent. And the other eighty-five percent, who needed help or, hell, a little bit of slowing down, weren’tallowedto get help or a little bit of slowing down, and they are either below grade level or so disillusioned that it doesn’t matter. And if you complain about it—see, politics—you’re considered part of the problem, and you’re fucked.”
It was dawning on Luca that Isaac swore a lot, but hearing him talk about his profession, he was beginning to understand why.
“That’s awful,” he said, dazed. He could vaguely remember taking classes, passing classes, having teachers tell him he was a good student, and figuring that was nice, but he couldn’t wait to get out and get a real job. He’d had no idea what his teachers had gone through for any of that to happen.
Isaac shrugged and reconsidered his sandwich. Took another, more enthusiastic, bite.
“It’s got its hard parts,” he confided. “About a week before school starts in the summer, I have a series of nightmares: My alarm doesn’t go off and I sleep through the first week, my pants fall down in the middle of class, or—and this is my favorite—I’m standing on top of a desk, screaming at the top of my lungs, and they keep talking over me. And the worst part of that one is that it actually happened during student teaching.”
Luca’s chuckle rumbled out from his stomach, surprising them both.
“That’s terrible,” he said, holding his hand over his mouth so he didn’t spit food. “Is that true?”
“Yeah.” Isaac nodded. “Yeah. I… I mean, I was the twinkiest of twinks. What high school kid was going to listen to me? Half the juniors had thicker mustaches than I did at twenty-three. But I had a degree in math and nothing to do with it, and everybody said, ‘Hey, you’re gonna be a teacher, right?’ So I thought, ‘Why not?’” He blew out a breath. “And my parents died when I was right out of college, and I was a mess. I mean, amess. I spent three months after their car accident hitting every club between here and San Francisco—I’m lucky I survived. They didn’t have PrEP back then, and I’ll be honest, sometimes I was too high to be safe.”
“What made you decide to clean it all up?” Luca asked, suddenly curious—and aching for the lost young thing he could still see in Isaac, for all that he tried to be a boring, quiet little widower.
“I don’t know,” Isaac said, sighing and falling back into the hard patio chair. “I met Todd, and he was… well, he was solid. He was steady. He… well, he treated drug use with disdain, which was funny because Imethim in a club. I wondered sometimes if he was there twink-fishing so he could have someone young and pliable, you know? Somebody to form in his own image.” His mouth hardened, turning down at the corners, which was too bad—he had a mouth for smiling, or kissing, or giving… uhm. Never mind. Luca veered away from the crude sexuality. Isaac was cute—oh God, was he—but he was still a “mess,” as he put it.
But a mess worth knowing.
“Obviously he didn’t know how to cook a twink,” Luca said, keeping his face straight.
Isaac’s eyes lit up, and then that mouth—that puffy-lipped, mobile mouth—widened into a joyous smile. “Lightly pan-fried so he’s still a little flaky,” he said, and the angry moment, the bitter moment, eased.
Their eyes locked, and Luca knew what was in his own face—he’d never been particularly mysterious, but for a moment, he saw the softness he’d been hoping for. He saw recognition.
He sawwant.
As if surprised by his own emotions, Isaac jerked his head, breaking contact before he closed his eyes and turned his face to the sun.
“You are so cute,” he said after a breath. “And I could like you so much. But right now I’mso very angry. That wouldn’t be fair to you.”
Luca’s heart skipped, and he tried not to be afraid. “Hey, buddy—don’t worry about me. I’m just here for the yarn.”
Isaac smiled, still scenting the breeze. “Okay,” he said softly.
“Okay what?” Luca asked suspiciously.
