Nan Cappo

...Her mother would be appalled if she knew how much time Bernadette spent dreaming of her teacher’s face. She dreamed about the rest of him, too, but the expression Mr. Malory wore while he savored his students’ search for the answer was the picture that sweetened her sleep most nights. His greenish-gray eyes would scan each knitted forehead, his upper lip would thin in ever-so-slightly malicious amusement, and the hand not holding the clipboard would ravage his hair into a wiry reddish halo.

Like now.

“Green Team, listen up. In Wuthering Heights, Bronte introduces Heathcliff’s personality by using a nonhuman image.” Mr. Malory took off his reading glasses and slipped them into his sport coat pocket. “What is that image?”

He verified that the two lines of juniors facing each other across the desks in his Advanced Placement English class were paying attention. A smile flitted across his mouth. Oh, she liked his mouth.

“Come on, you loafers. At least pretend you read it.” His cultured, resonant, distinctly British voice slayed his girl students and made the boys feel dully American. And rightly so, Bernadette felt. She herself would rather die than muff a book bee question.

Brains were racked and memories probed, but Wuthering Heights had been four weeks ago.

Beside her, Nadine scowled behind 400/200 wire rims. The scowl was meant to suggest intense concentration. From long experience as Nadine’s debate partner, Bernadette knew it actually meant, “I don’t have a clue.”

“You get it, Bet.” Even in a whisper Nadine’s voice came out startlingly deep, at odds with her fragile appearance. She was the only person who called Bernadette by her initials (the “e” stood for Elizabeth).

Bernadette grimaced. She’d gotten the last two.

From her other side came the jingle of heart shaped earrings. “Heathcliff, Heathcliff. Horseshit,” Lori muttered.

Try “Heathcliff, Heathcliff, he’s our man.” But Bernadette didn’t say it out loud. Lori Besh stood five feet ten inches and had biceps defined by years of cheerleading handstands.

“Eh, you bunch of sissies. Will you let the Blues eat your lead?” Mr. Malory’s mocking voice enchanted Bernadette. “Ms. Terrell? Is there more to life than debate?”

She could see the page etched in her mind. But she made her voice tentative. “A pack of dogs?” she asked. “They come in and they’re as brutal and unfriendly as their, uh, master?”

People were funny. They could hold a God-given gift like a photographic memory against you. But Frank Malory wasn’t so petty. His glinting smile made her stomach muscles tighten pleasurably. Mr. Malory thought her memory and her brains first-rate.

Catcalls and hissing came from the Blues. Her answer put them behind by three points.

“Give me two Hardy novels names for their protagonists,” Mr. Malory said.

“Jude the Obscure and Tess of the D’Urbervilles.” Anthony Cirillo snapped out the answer for the Blues. Figured. It annoyed Bernadette when a good mind was wasted on a jerk. Anthony probably thought it was his acne that kept him dateless, but she had news for him—it was his personality. His job at McDonald’s was not the only reason she and Nadine called him “McAss.”

He caught her eye and rounded his mouth into a fake “O” of alarm.

Just then Wickham’s principal, Mrs. Standish, knocked on the open classroom door. “May I interrupt you, Mr. Malory?” Her face was a mass of fine wrinkles all upturned at the moment in an inquiring smile.

“Absolutely, Mrs. Standish. Always a pleasure.” Mr. Malory settled a hip on the edge of his desk and loosened his tie. More than one girlish moan was quickly concerted into a cough.

The principal opened her mouth to read from a paper in her hands as David Minor delivered himself of a truly impressive sneeze.

Everyone waited expectantly. Would Mrs. Standish, a.k.a. Spic ‘n Span, send David to scrub his hands as she often did to students who disturbed the germ-free order of her school? Not today, it appeared. She ignored him.

“Mr. Malory. Class. I’ve just heard some intriguing news from Dr. Genevieve Fontaine.” She gave the first name a French pronunciation, with a soft G, and looked over her paper at them. “Dr. Fontaine chairs the research committee of the National Computing Systems Classics Contest.”

Mr. Malory’s foot stopped swinging.

“Dr. Fontaine informs me that Pinehurst Academy”--she waited out the usual boos--“finished second in the Classics Contest this year with a score of eighty-five percent. A very good score on so challenging a test, I thought.”

More boos. Nobody cared what Pinehurst did.

A bizarre thought occurred to Bernadette, and her glance flew to her teacher. A tiny nerve under Mr. Malory’s left eye was jumping. His skin, always pale, gleamed damply paper- white.

“Wickham High School,” the principal continued, watching Mr. Malory now with arched eyebrows, “received... ninety-two percent. The highest score in Michigan!”

She tried to hand Mr. Malory the paper, but he didn’t seem to see it. “You’re”--he swallowed--“you’re certain? They said Wickham?”

Mrs. Standish gave a roguish laugh and stuffed the paper into his fingers. “Now don’t act so shocked, Mr. Malory. Your students might think you didn’t expect this of them.”

Mr. Malory didn’t answer. He was reading.

Nadine shattered the silence with a croaked, “We won?”

“We beat Pinehurst?”

“Get out of here!”

“We won!”

"I don’t believe it!”

“Oh, I knew we could!” That could only be Lori. What a twit. Bernadette’s own mother wouldn’t have put money on them. Not to beat Pinehurst.

Pandemonium reigned…..

Bernadette needed the time, because a little voice in her head was trying to ruin her mood. From across the room came another David burp to punctuate the question the pesky voice wanted to know: How could Wickham students possibly have outscored Pinehurst?