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“There you go,” I say. “See? It was a tiny mistake over there, but it’s not so hard to fix.”
Claire smiles up at me. “Thanks, Mr. Richardson. Appreciate it.”
I straighten up with real pride warming my chest. I really do love what I’m doing here. It’s not everyone’s dream to work at a small high school serving a bunch of small towns, but I have everything I could ask for here.
Just about.
I shake off that thought as I continue pacing through the classroom. There’s no point in dwelling on that one thing I don’t think about. I gave up on it a long time ago, and I’m at peace with that. Hitting my thirties this year has made it clear to me that that’s simply not something that’s going to be part of my life. Becausethisis my life. And I don’t want to lose it for anything.
A bubble of laughter draws my attention to the opposite end of the classroom. The kids don’t need to be silent while they work, as long as they aren’t being disruptive, but the group of three boys huddling their desks together in the back corner have definitely been inching closer to “disruptive” as summer vacation draws near. I can’t tell what they’re conspiring over at the moment, so I simply keep making my rounds, trying to be casual about edging closer to the boys. Another student stops me along the way, and I do my best to concentrate on helping him with a problem.
The laughter bubbles up again.
My teacher instincts are tingling. I’ve been doing this work full-time since I got my degree, and over the course of all that time I’ve honed my knack for spotting the troublemakers. I won’t lie, being a big, bearded guy has helped me deal with teens who think they’re in charge. I rarely need to raise my voice. It’s often enough to let the kids know I’m onto whatever they’re scheming about. Butsomething is worrying me about this particular incident today. The boys in the corner are a little too giddy about whatever trouble they’re concocting, and that’s rarely good news for anyone.
Finally, I get through students who need help and manage to sidle up close enough to the group of boys in the corner to overhear their conversation. They lower their voices, but not enough. Teenagers rarely realize how loud they’re being. Plus, they assume thirty is far older than it actually is. I can hear them fine, though I’m not going to let them know that if I can help it.
“…that gay little café,” one of them says, and all the boys chuckle.
My stomach sinks. My instincts are right. Whatever this is about, it’s not your average sort of classroom trouble making.
“…do it again?” one of them says.
“Wait until they wash it off first. Then they’ll have to clean it again.”
This earns enough laughter that even other students start casting glances at the group. The boys break from their huddle when they notice the attention, all three shooting nervous looks at me. I school my face into neutral, stern teacher mode, hoping I don’t betray how I actually feel.
The boys quiet down after catching my eye, dropping into whispers. Whatever they’re concocting, I can’t hear it anymorewithout getting much, much closer, but the second I do that they’ll clam up. They know I’ve noticed them. There’s nothing more I can gain indirectly, though they haven’t said or done anything worthy of a reprimand. My hands are tied, but my gut isn’t ready to let this one go.
The classroom has settled down, even the boys in the corner, so I retreat to my desk. I could spend the rest of the dwindling class period grading while my students work, but my mind is still churning over the snippets of conversation I caught from those boys in the corner.
Gay little café. Do it again. Wash it off.
It doesn’t take a detective to put the pieces together. They’re teenagers living in a small town in the middle of nowhere. They must have tagged something. But my heart sinks as I narrow down the possibilities of what the “gay little café” could be. There aren’t a lot of things fitting that description around here, even with this high school serving multiple towns in the district. The most likely possibility is … the cat café.
I hunch forward on my desk to disguise a sigh. Rainbow Rescue Cat Café opened over in Tripp Lake a few years ago, and it’s always stood out. It’s the only business on Main Street that hangs a Pride flag in the window all year long. It’s hardly a secret that much, maybe all, of the staff are queer, including the owner of the place. She doesn’t seem to care who knows or what people make of that information.
That’s always terrified me.
From a business standpoint, isn’t it risky to be so …out?Even these days, there are plenty of people who will either boycott or target your business if you’re loud enough about something like that. What does it really benefit her or the café? We aren’t in Seattle where everything is rainbow Pride flags all the time. Small towns are just … different, even in this day and age.
Worse, my own students might have targeted the café. The most likely solution to this puzzle is that they went there and tagged the windows or something, and all I can really do is pray they didn’t spray paint anything too vile.
Or is that all I can do?
It’s all I want to do. It’s all I’m inclined to do. It’s all I have done for the last thirty years of my life. I’ve hung back, too scared to speak up, too scared of what peoplewould assume aboutmeif I stood up for someone else. But I’m the authority figure here. It’s my job to not just teach these kids, but also impart some life skills on them.
The bell signaling the end of the class, and the end of the day, shrills through the classroom. A flurry of movement shatters the quiet murmuring of studying students. Kids dive for backpacks, shoving their things into their bags as quickly as they can to join the crush of students flooding into the halls and making for the exits like ants escaping a flooded anthill. The really savvy kids noticed the time before the bell rang and already had their bags packed, and they’re out the door while the others are still cleaning up.
That first group out includes the three boys in the corner, the boys who probably tagged that café with something I dare not think about. They don’t so much as glance over their shoulders before they bolt. Not that I make any effort to stop them, to question them. No, I sit at my desk and watch like the coward I am, then say goodbye to the rest of my students, some of whom wave and smile on their way out.
I let out a long, slow breath when the last student is gone and the school quiets. It’s incredible how quickly it goes from halls echoing with noise to the occasional passage of a lone person. I should sit here and finish the grading I didn’t manage to do during the class period, but the absence of my students is not making me any less distracted. Thoughts of that “gay little café” still clutter my mind, crowding out my hopes of getting any actual work done.
I should go to the superintendent and report the incident up the chain, get it out of my hands. What can I personally do about three teenage boys being teenage boys? But a piece of me doesn’t want to pass it off yet. I mean, I don’t actuallyknowwhat they did, right? I’m assuming based on a few clipped lines of conversation. They could be lying. I could be misinterpreting things. It would be much more prudent for me to go to the café andsee the damage for myself before making some kind of report. Besides, don’t I owe my own community that much?
That latter thought seizes my stomach like a fist. My community. Right. I might be gay, but the LGBTQ community has never been mine. Mostly because they don’t know I’m one of them. Almost no one does. So what good is my symbolic act of care if I’m going to run right back into the closet as soon as it’s done?
That voice in my head isn’t wrong, as mean as it might be, but some part of me can’t let this go. I’ve hidden this part of myself for thirty years. It feels like the absolute least I can do to go see if my students actually spray painted that café or not. If they didn’t, great. I can buy a coffee or something and be on my way. But if they did, I need to have proof before I report it. Because I know the second an issue of homophobia goes up the chain in this school, I’m going to distance myself from it as fast as I can.
