2015 – Barry’s twelfth grade
His last year of secondary school, it had then been the first time Barry was not among Eugenie’s students in Geography class, although he was quickly replaced by a new generation of Freshmen and option-taking Junior disturbers of peace, inspired to rise to his level. And weirdly, she had observed, finding it an enigma, it had been as if he had done all he could to still remind her of his existence at school. In the way of tribulations and misadventures, in a painful way.
More than once, he had passed the threshold of her classroom at the bell and sat down in the front row, equipped himself with a pen and a notebook and, seeing her staring at him with confusion, had facepalmed himself : “Oh LORD! I forgot I’m NOT taking Geography anymore!” leaving the room with some of his best comments, such as the memorable: “enjoy wanting to hang yourselves memorizing the different types of migrations, suckers!”
That seemed to be Barry’s gratitude for the gesture she had offered him the year before when she passed him for her class to release him and open his academic horizon.
Even if she tried to persuade herself that he wasn’t bothering her more than another lambda deranged student would, she had to admit that he did. He was slightly more than just an annoying kid in a sea of other annoying kids, and it sort of fascinated her to be the witness of all his effort to run her patience dry without attending her lessons. From experience, she guessed that she must be one of his favorite staff members to bugger. Some students were like that, after all, so easily bored that they would come up with anything to trigger distraction within their school day.
When she was patrolling the corridor on supervision duty, if he saw her walk near, Barry would suddenly pretend he was in a fight, push another guy against the lockers, raising his voice. Even his classmates thought that was bizarre and he was a bit unscrewed, the result being that one of his attributes –among many— quickly became the one of Douchebag Barry, or later on, close to his completion of secondary school, Douchebarry. Other times, he was alone, pacing and, running into her, made a point to whip out his cell phone from his pocket, forcing her to stop, roll her eyes, and get into arguments with him.
“But Ms White, this anti-cell phone policy is stupid” that was his favorite word after he had been detained enough times to stop using the term retarded, “what if something happens at home and our family tries to reach us, like, an emergency?”
“Oh my god, Barry, I don’t know, how do you think we did it back in my days in high school when we didn’t have cell phones?”
“Ah, yes, I forgot you told us a hundred times you grew up in a third-world country”
“It was Sweden” she corrected him. He had stared back at her, sincerely puzzled by the question. “So let me describe it to you” she granted herself that small wooden bâton de parole, “Back then, in the 90’s, there was an idea that materialized into the brains of some parents or guardians or relatives who wanted to reach their kids at school, and it was ba-na-nas. Listen to me: they would call the secretary of the school from their landline inside the house, I know, that’s crazy, and then they would say the name of a student, right? And then someone would walk to the classroom to fetch the student from their lesson to come to the phone in the office or get picked up”
“I didn’t realize you were that old, Ms White”
“Sometimes I think you miss me punishing you” Eugenie would forever remember this moment with an ache. The wooden bâton de parole had overgrown into a tree too big for her heart to contain, she guessed, and the words had been blurted out of her true self, without care, without caution. She had plainly snapped at him with this comment, and immediately regretted it. Sometimes I think you miss me punishing you. Insanity. Everyone who worked at secondary level of school knew that the words like and punishing should only be paired if you were ready to face the worst backlash. Barry, receiving this gift openly, had brought his hands to his mouth in feigned great shock while real and gargantuan satisfaction was reaching his eyes. His job was done.
All the students around started screeching and squealing like the savage monkeys they were and Eugenie realized her mistake and public humiliation too late, watched Barry slowly walk backwards through the crowd, his arms outstretched in victory and dropping a fictitious microphone. Working with adolescents usually forced you to acquire a mind that was constantly in the gutter in order to anticipate the next thing you were going to say and remain in the safe zone so as to avoid a riot but, this time, she had not been fast enough.
It was sealed. All the students in the school now laughed about the fact that the Geography teacher had asked another student if he missed being punished by her, some of them whispered in each other’s ears and giggled when she walked past them or during class, and her colleagues in the photocopy room had looked at her with a bit of disdain or, worse, pity, for about a month. There had been an anonymous piece of art left taped on her classroom door, a pupil who had drawn her with Barry on her lap, spanking his butt, with the caption ‘U missed this didnt U’ under it and, for some reason the addition of a little penis in the corner of the A4 paper.
There was nothing else to do in those moments of solitude but to accept your fate and patiently wait for it to be over, so she did, kept marching down the hallways, penalizing Barry with regular detentions and confiscations, and greeting him the next day like nothing was wrong. She wanted to stick her middle finger at him and the rest of them so badly, but she didn’t, and she kept her head high, kept teaching Geography. She was a fucking professional.
He had often sat with her on her supervision bench while she was on canteen duty, bringing his little cup of cottage cheese with him. “Ms White, do you think Stanley is hot?” Stanley, the captain of the school’s volleyball team and a very kind, polite, adorable, studious teenager, had been sitting two meters away and the whole table had turned towards her and Barry, waiting for her answer, munching on some crackers or baby carrots like a bunch of cows watching the trains pass.
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She would not fall into his imbecile trap this time, or never again ever. “Okay, Barry, see, I cannot answer this question. On one hand, if I say that I think poor Stanley here, whom you picked on while he hasn’t done a thing to you, is hot, then I will probably get fired”
“So you think he’s not hot”
The faces at Stanley’s table were mortified, and Stanley staring at Barry like he was going to stick his plastic fork in his neck.
“And then, on the other hand, if I say, to cover my safety, that I think Stanley is not hot, then I take the risk for an adolescent to believe, because you are all dramatic empty coconuts here, that a teacher thinks he is an ugly-looking individual, so I don’t want that either”
“You think he’s hot, then?”
She had sighed, tired, unwilling to negotiate –those were real days, and students never wondered if perhaps, sometimes, an adult working at the school just wanted to wrap up the day and get home and get paid, of course, they never wondered that, selfish as they were— and gotten up and off the bench to join Stanley’s table, where an audience of suspended and unsure looks greeted her. “Please, take me away from Barry Masquevert, guys” she had asked Stanley’s crowd, “tell me how volleyball is going this Spring”
On the same bench at the cafeteria, Barry kept seating next to her with his little dessert, apple sauce or cheese sticks, and pestering her with some questions that, either had popped randomly in his head at the very instant or, second option, questions he had spent an extensive amount of time preparing. Eugenie could not, for the life of her, decide which was the case. “Ms White, why are you the only teacher who doesn’t have a problem with students’ PDA in the corridor?” he had asked with a little finger on his lip, suspicious. Accusatory, already.
It was true, she saw, and she had felt in the mood to place some truths in his hands that day. Every person working at a school secretly had one or two of the policies in the rule book that they didn’t entirely believe in and for her, Public Displays of Affection were something she didn’t trust should be forced to stop or reprimanded.
In senior year, she had been able to count seven or eight girls that Barry had ‘dated’, or just made out with in the corridor, and God only knew how many more had been seduced by him outside of her field of observation. If she surveilled near him and his last conquest, he would immediately stick his tongue in the girl’s mouth and go into a passionate embrace, but she didn’t bat an eye. She would just go on walking by them, like she did the other young couples, and she would smile inside, a little uncomplicated smile. It was difficult for Eugenie to enforce regulating the manifestation of young love, remembering herself that she had been so in love with so and so in her own ancient timeline, something special, your first feelings, your first butterflies, your first kisses, and it was the reason she couldn’t bring herself to chastise it.
“You have some lettuce in your teeth” she replied to him that day.
“Nice try, but I haven’t eaten a single green vegetable for two years” he laughed, “so, why do you let us French kiss in the hallway?”
Once more, because in the end, she nurtured the goal to turn his tormenting of her into educational moments just to piss him off, she had opted for honesty : “I guess, I don’t hate seeing my students being in love. It’s a nice thing”
“We are not in love. We are horny. We are hormonal machines and all we think about is fu--” She had raised, very sharply, a finger in the air in front of his face to prevent him from using profanity on school grounds, although she was a fan of foul language herself in her private life, “… all we think about is sex” he adjusted his sentence.
“It is whatever you say, Barry”
“It makes you nostalgic because you’re old and you like to reminisce about your high school boyfriends?”
“I didn’t have any boyfriend in high school” she lied, “I was too focused on my studies”
“So you’re, like, one of those people who just uh, like, love love, or something?”
“Yes” she had answered, pleased, unsuspecting, glad that he had enough synapses awake that day to understand her.
“It turns you on?”
“BARRY GET OUT OF MY SIGHT”
At the beginning of one Freshman Geography I lesson, he had walked into her classroom and leaned over above her desk, trying to catch her attention while she was ending an email on the computer. She made a point to ignore him for as long as she could, opening another email and getting ready to answer it so his waiting time would be extended, before she realized the whole group had gone quiet. Those were the youngest high-schoolers, easily impressed, eager for any recreation the day would provide them between unbearable academics, and they were waiting, indeed, in total silence, their buckets of popcorn at the ready. Barry had created the stage that he so desired.
“Good morning Barry” she had said, preparing for the worst “if you have a question, can you make it quick? We are already behind schedule”
He had cleared his throat, awkwardly, shyly, a true born actor “Uh… I was wondering if… Gosh, your hair is turning a little grey, Ms White!”
“This is all because of you and the stress you’re inflicting on me, now, ask your question please, quick”
“Uh… You guys are going on the Fondue Geo Night this month like every year”
“Yes. Awww, you remember that, Barry, I’m flattered!”
“I was uh… hum” he looked at his feet, then back at her “wondering if I could join”
“But you’re not in Geography class anymore”
“Yes but… I miss those events, you know, fondue and Geo trivia questions”
“You do, oh my god that’s so sweet” she had melted, very much like the fondue cheese itself and moved to her core and, for a second, feeling immensely bad that she had not thought before about opening the trip to students outside of the Geography option. “Of course, you can, darling, I will add your name to the reserv--”
“Got you!” he yelled, hitting his thigh with his hand and bursting into laughter, that kind of laughter when he would open his mouth wide and no sound would be coming out of it “Ms White, you really thought anyone would go to your Geo trivia cheese evening willingly, if it was not for the extra credit? Like, counting points for questions about the climate of Patagonia or tectonic plates! Enjoy, LOSERS!” he had darted out of the room early enough to not miss his next class before the second bell rang. The Freshmen were petrified by what they had witnessed, not daring to move or laugh yet, and Eugenie had granted herself an extra minute of staring blankly at the spot where Barry had been before launching her lesson. Eventually, she had looked down at the pen in her hand and dreamed about sticking it into Barry’s throat just like Stanley had fantasized to do with his little plastic fork.