Frazzled Ms. Frizzle and Her Magic Fucking School Bus

The staplers are out of staples, pens out of ink, empty markers, erasers worn thin. They stopped allocating money toward in-class resources during the pandemic, and, now even though the students might be coming back, they’ve decided it would be best to save money by fostering a more technology-focused learning environment. I could care less, but Ms. Frizzle was pissed.

“Do you have a cigarette?” she asked me.

“Yeah—but, we’ll have to go off school grounds.”

She looked out the window at the barren, browning, childless fields.

“So all the fucking kids don’t see us?”

“Not my rule,” I said, standing and leading us to my spot down the road, just inside the woods.

She lit up. She was an aggressive smoker, long, fast pulls.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.

She shook her head. Then said, “You know—that fucking bus brought so much money into this school. I was supposed to take them to the bottom of the ocean today. Look—look at me, I put on this stupid god-damn dress and everything. Now they’re selling it.”

“I know,” I said. “I know.”

It was a stupid dress. It was purple. It had seashells on it.

“It’s like, we went to the center of the earth—the fucking center of the earth, man. Where’d you go on your last field trip?”

“Plymouth Rock.”

“Exactly, like, I get it’s a pandemic and we need to cut costs and blah-blah, but these kids, they come here for the bus.”

I didn’t want to rub her the wrong way, but I couldn’t help pointing out, “it is just for your class though—I mean, it’s cool, I get it. It’s just, we’ve got a lot of other teachers here and, like—I don’t even have erasers anymore.”

She scowled.

“It’s a magic-fucking-school bus,” she said with a finality that implied the context of why we were there: so I could shut up, she could vent, and we could take one more meandering step into our bus-less, eraser-less, pointless futures.

“It was magic, man,” she said, wiping away her tears with the sleeve of her utterly ridiculous, purple, seashell-covered dress.

I handed her another cigarette after she threw hers into the grass. We stood there, smoking, watching thin milky spirals slip through the blades.

Zoom Adventures in Klarvendale

“Roy?”

“Here.”

“Clark?”

“Here.”

“Jason?”

“Here.”

“Jack?”

“Jack?”

“Has anyone heard from Jack?” I ask, looking at the little Zoom boxes, trying to spot him.

Jason unmutes.

“Mr. Davis?”

“Yes?”

“I haven’t heard from Jack.”

“Thank you, Jason.”

“Anna?”

“Here.”

“Great—okay, so, today we are going to talk about direct and indirect characterization in The Great Gatsby and—Clark?”

“Yes, Mr. Davis?”

“Could you mute, please?”

“Sorry, Mr. Davis.”

“Okay, so this week—oh, there’s Jack. Hold on.” I move my mouse over to the ‘Participants’ window of the Zoom class and click ‘Admit.’

Jack pops up on the screen. He looks different, a bit older, and he is wearing a crown.

“Hi Jack, how are you doing—“

“Hi. Mr. Davis! I can’t hear you very well! I just wanted to sign in to say goodbye.”

“Jack. Your connection is bad. Where are you? Is that a crown?”

Jack’s face lights up in a smile. He holds up his phone so that we can see behind him. It is an epic landscape of mountains. There is a vast sea of tents and medieval-looking soldiers traipsing about.

“I’m in Klarvendale! It turns out my parents aren’t my parents. My birth parents are wizards! Check it out!”

Jack holds up his hand and a fireball appears. He shoots it up into the sky, then another, and another, laughing as he does.

“So,” Jack says, “I was transported here through a—like—portal thing in my bathroom, and now I’ve gotta beat this evil Green Prince guy. It’s wild, Mr. Davis. I just wanted to let you know I can’t come to class anymore.”

He hunches his shoulders against a violent wind that erupts around him. In the background, two enormous dragons fly overhead.

“Shit,” Jack says, “Sorry, Mr. Davis, I’ve gotta go. Thanks for everything and sorry about not doing my homework!”

Jack leaves the Zoom class.

I look at the other windows—teenagers trapped in boxes, cameras tilted up to hide their messy bedrooms, staring blankly out at me.

“Okay, so who can give me an example of direct characterization in The Great Gatsby—Clark, Clark!”

“Yes, Mr. Davis?”

“Please, I told you guys before. If you’re going to cry, please mute. Okay?”

Clark sniffs, wipes away his tears, and says, “Okay. Sorry, Mr. Davis.”

Why Did Jane Throw Herself Out of a Window

One of my students pulled me aside in the hall today. With her mask on it was hard for me to understand her, so she pulled me into a classroom and said:

“Mr. Davis, I need your help. But first, you have to promise me something.”

I frowned. “Okay. Are you having trouble understanding the novel?”

She rolled her eyes as though I were the child asking a dumb question. “No—no, it’s not that. Just—will you promise me something?”

“Promise you what?”

“Promise…” she stepped back, “promise that you won’t kill Mr. McCleary.”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. I hate Mr. McCleary. He is my boss. He is a wretched turd. But kill him? I hadn’t thought about it. Well—not seriously.

“Jane, what is this about?”

“Promise me?”

“I promise I won’t kill Mr. McCleary, now what?”

“Well, so—I’ve been living this day over and over again for the past few years. Yes, like Groundhog Day. Only, I think I’ve figured a way out. I’ve helped everyone at this school except—well, you. And I think that, if I can figure out what would make your life better, I could do it and leave but—to be honest—you’re kind of a miserable piece of shit.”

“Hey! You can’t use language like that to me.”

She shrugged. “Well, technically, I am nineteen now so I think I can—and I mean, really, I’ve tried. But you just get up, take a shit, come to work, leave, watch TV and go to bed. Nothing goes right or wrong and nothing cheers you up and—well, I’m not sure what to do next and I didn’t want to make you aware of it again because—well, what happens—but really, I’m out of options.”

She had started pacing about halfway through her speech, speaking faster and faster. As it ended, she sat.

“So…say I believe you—not saying I do, but if I become aware as you say—what exactly happens?” I asked.

She slouched—it was an act so mature and adult and not at all like the timid middle schooler I’d been teaching for the past three months. Well—,” she cringed “—once I convinced you that the day was really going to repeat, you went and pushed Mr. McCleary out of a window.”

“Well—”

“And” she cut me off, “the second time, you beat him to death with our literature textbook. Then, there was that time with the stapler, and—”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The idea of it made me so giddy and excitable. I wasn’t totally convinced, but I found myself uncontrollably looking around the room for something new and interesting I could kill Mr. McCleary with. Jane sighed, shook her head, and walked to the window. She opened it, turned, and said, “I guess I’ll try again tomorrow.”

Then, she threw herself out.

I picked up a chair, broke a leg off, and made my way toward Mr. McCleary’s room.