Lullaby for the Rain Girl Read Online Free Page A

in front, where the more attentive ones naturally gravitated anyway. I’d been appalled during my first visit to the school, when I’d observed other teachers doing this. Not me , I’d thought. Never me . 
    As a couple of kids discussed Daisy’s tearful reaction to Gatsby’s shirts, my mind drifted. The sight of the girl in the rain yesterday came back to me. The vision of her and what must have been an optical illusion—the rain not touching her face or hair, not touching any of her, in fact—was vivid in my mind, yet I found it difficult to remember what the girl had actually looked like. I was left only with a general impression of big brown eyes and straight hair hanging down to her shoulders. For some reason I couldn’t hold her image firmly in my mind. I recalled only the vague outline, not her .
    BANG!
    The sound of the ancient radiator in the back of the room kicking in jolted me into reality again. This always happened in cold weather—the radiator’s terrible, shotgun-like noise—yet it always made me jump. It obviously had just now, since several of the students giggled.
    “Man, you’re touchy today,” Dion said.
    “Sorry,” I said, refocusing on the room. “I swear I always think…” But then I realized I didn’t want to make a joke about guns going off, not with what had happened at Columbine so fresh in everyone’s minds. Our school had been blessedly free of such violence—so far. But last summer metal detectors had been installed at the main entrance, and an additional security guard now roamed the halls. It was all useless, of course—there were any number of ways for someone to get into the school that didn’t involve the front door. But it gave the office downtown some cover; they were, in fact, doing something about the violence in schools, even if what they were doing would obviously be ineffective. In the meantime the principal had taken it upon himself to try to solve the problem of unmonitored doors by padlocking a number of them, in clear violation of any possible safety code. I dreaded the moment we might have a real emergency—whether a shooter, a fire, anything that would cause a mass rush to the exits. Disaster awaited.
    “So what does it reveal about Daisy that—”
    BANG!
    “—that she becomes so emotional when—”
    BANG! BANG!
    “—she sees—”
    BANG!
    The students laughed as I shook my head, holding up my hands in defeat. “Folks, the bell’s going to ring anyway. I give up. Did you all write down the reading for the weekend?” I gestured toward the blackboard, where the assignment was scrawled.
    “How ’bout lettin’ us go early?” called one of the voices at the back.
    “You know I can’t do that, Marcus. Anyway, the bell will ring any second.”
    BANG!
    “I think that’s it, man!” Marcus shouted.
    More general laughter. I smiled, rolling with it. I knew I was finished, but I also knew that for a lesson on a cold, rainy Friday afternoon, things had gone reasonably well. I’d held the encroaching chaos at bay for one more period, one more day.
    At last the bell sounded. Much talking and shuffling and moving toward the door. A couple of kids waved to me or wished me a nice weekend; I did the same, even as I felt my headache returning full force. The relative success of the lesson had gotten my mind off it for a while. Now, with the room emptying and quiet coming on, it was back, like putting on an old familiar hat that was always much too tight. With the headache came my first hunger pang of the afternoon for a cigarette.
    Slipping on my coat and filling my briefcase with homework, I made my way downstairs, stopping in the main office to check my mailbox. The only thing in it was a powder-blue sheet on which was typed the agenda for Monday’s staff meeting. Halfway down the list I saw it— Item: Theft of Chalk from Supply Office . I chuckled and slipped the sheet back into the box, closing it and walking out.
    The steps were slippery; what was