The Cereal Murders by Diane Mott Davidson Page B

not to talk about sex, religion, or politics!"
     
     
"Oh, God, fuck, I'm sorry, Miss Ferrell... well, I don't care about politics anyway."
     
     
"Mac-guire!"
     
     
"Well, I don't want to go to Vassar anyway," he whined. "I can't get into Stanford or Duke. I just want to go to Indiana."
     
     
"Yes, and we've all seen just how likely that's going to be," snapped Miss Ferrell. "Let's get two more people up here. Julian Teller," she said, pointing, "and Heather Coopersmith. What school interview do you want to role-play, Julian?"
     
     
Julian shuffled between the desks. He flopped into the chair formerly occupied by Macguire, ran his hand nervously through his mowed hair, and said, "Cornell, for food science."
     
     
"All right," said Miss Ferrell. "Heather," she said to Audrey's daughter, a dark-haired girl with her mother's face, pink-tinted glasses, and thin, pale lips, "let him ask the questions."
     
     
"This is not fair." Greer Dawson was miffed. "I didn't really get a chance."
     
     
"That's true, she didn't," piped up her father.
     
     
"You will, you will," said Miss Ferrell dismissively. "This is a learning experience for everybody - "
     
     
"But the period's almost over!" Greer cried.
     
     
Miss Ferrell opened her eyes wide. The sherbet- colored dress trembled. "Sit down, Greer. All right, Julian, what are you going to ask Heather about Cornell?"
     
     
From the gallery came the cry, "Ask her about home ec! Can I learn to be a smart caterer here?"
     
     
Julian flushed a painful shade, My heart turned over. Julian touched his tongue to his top lip. "I don't want to do this now."
     
     
The exasperated Miss Ferrell surrendered. "All right, go back to your desks, everybody." During the ensuing chair-scraping and body-squishing, she said, "People, do you think this is some kind of joke?" She put her hands on her sherbet-clad hips. "I'm trying to help you." She panned the classroom. She looked like a Parisian model who had been told to do peeved. And the class was taking her about that seriously.
     
     
To my great relief, the bell rang. Miss Ferrell called out, "Okay, drafts of personal essays before you leave, people!" I fled to a corner to avoid the press of jostling teenage bodies. By the time everybody had departed, Miss Ferrell was slapping papers around on her desk, looking thoroughly disgusted.
     
     
"Quel dommage," I said, approaching her. What a pity. "Oh! I didn't see you here." She riffled papers on top of her roll book. "It's always like this until a few days before the deadlines. What can I help you with? Did you come to see me? There's no French Club today."
     
     
"No, I was here to see the headmaster. Forgive me, I just wanted to drop in because, actually, Arch loves French Club. But he's having trouble with his school-work - "
     
     
She looked up quickly. "Did you hear about this morning?" She drew back, her tiny body framed by a rumpled poster of the Eiffel Tower on one side and a framed picture of the Arc de Triomphe on the other. When I shook my head, she walked with a tick-tock of little heels over to the door and closed it. "You've talked to Alfred?"
     
     
"Yes," I said. "Mr. Perkins told me about Arch. About his academic and... social problems." Come to think of it, he'd only mentioned the schoolwork mess.
     
     
"Did he tell you about this morning?"
     
     
"No," I said carefully, "just that Arch was flunking a class." Just.
     
     
"This is worse than that."
     
     
"Worse?"
     
     
Miss Ferrell eyed me. She seemed to be trying to judge whether I could take whatever it was she had to say.
     
     
I asked, "What happened to Arch this morning?"
     
     
"We had an assembly. The student body needed to know about Keith." Her abrupt tone betrayed no feeling. "When it was over, I'm sorry to say Arch had a rather strenuous disagreement with someone."
     
     
I closed my eyes. For being basically a kind and mature kid, Arch seemed to be getting into quite a few disagreements