Good Intentions
an excerpt

It was Friday morning, and Scott was back in the white classroom on the second floor of North Eastland High School. Joel was seated next to him in the same desk from the day before. Each boy had his paper in front of him – Joel’s was typed up and Scott’s was handwritten in the script that he had perfectly so many years before. The rest of the class filed into the room.

“Thanks for helping me revise my paper last night, Scott.”

“No problem, Joel. And if I hadn’t, then I would’ve been stuck rehashing every detail of what had gone on at school yesterday to my Dad for the fourth time. Don’t you hate it when your parents just keep trying to fish information out of you when there’s nothing left to tell?”

Joel started to look down at the paper and Scott realized what he had down. He remembered that Joel’s mom’s only interest was her own game show obsession and that his father focused on his daughter’s athletic endeavors. Scott also realized that even though h had known Joel for over two months, he had never actually met Mr. Thomas. He was usually at the school working the girls on his team through a hard practice during the day and out drinking with his friends in the evening. Because of what happened to his mother, Scott did not think that the amount of alcohol that Joel’s dad consumed was safe, but he did not want to ruffle any more feathers at the Thomas home – he thought they had enough problems already.

“I’m sorry, Joel. I forgot about how your parents are. I’m sure that my dad would love to hear how your day was.”

Scott could not make out what Joel said under his breath. The door of the classroom opened, and Mrs. Yelverton entered again and took roll on the second day of class.

“Now, class, I trust that everyone has an essay to turn in to me?”

No one said a word either way.

“Excellent. Why don’t you all go ahead and pass those to the front of your rows – or columns, rather. I mean, if you think about it, they are more like columns, as you do say of someone like Krystal here that they are sitting in the front row. So by that convention, we’ll use the word columns. So go ahead and pass them forward to the person in your column in the front row.”

She walked across the front row gathering the papers. She shuffled through them, picking out a few and placing them on the top of the pile. In doing so, she showed off her red painted fingernails which matched the hue of her hair. She sat down at a desk in the back of the room and placed the reordered pile directly in front of herself.

“Let’s take a look at how well you did.”

Scott was concerned. Was his English teacher about to grade the entire class’ papers while he sat waiting with nothing to do but reread Ulysses? This was unlike the behavior Scott had ever seen exhibited by another English teacher. But then Mrs. Yelverton got up out of her chair. She walked to the back of the room and opened up the tall wooden cabinet. She took out a large piece of equipment that reminded Scott of an overhead projector. He did not know what his teacher expected to do with it, though, as by his understanding, an overhead projector only worked successfully with predominantly transparent sheets of plastic. However, this was not an ordinary overhead projector. As she hooked the device up on the desk next the one which she had taken a seat at a moment before, she explained what was going on.

“Class, I believe that it is important to learn from mistakes. Not just your own mistakes, though. The mistakes of others, too.”

Mrs. Yelverton flipped a switch on the machine and asked Iola, the girl seated closest to the door, to turn off the lights in the room. As she rose from her desk, Scott noticed that the girl had purple hair. He thought it actually looked good. However, he questioned whether or not Iola was actually a name. Scott then discovered, as the lights went off, that his suspicions were right, to a certain extent. The machine did project images to a screen. However, unlike a standard overhead projector, it used a camera to gather its image, so it could easily project an image from an average piece of paper. This was apparent as the front page of one of the student’s paper was now enlarged in front of their eyes. In the upper right hand corner the name Joe “Hot Dog” Seelig appeared. By the light of the projector, Scott saw the boy in the same red hat from the day before smile and chuckle. Scott guessed that it was his paper that Scott was now looking at.

“Well, Mr. Seelig, it seems that once again you are in my English II honors class.”

The boy in the hat called out back to her without turning around.

“Third time’s the charm, Mrs. Yelverton.”

“Yes, well we’ll see about that. Mr. Seelig.”

An uncapped red pen appeared on the projection. It started making marks all over the top of the page.

“Using MLA conventions, your name belong on the left hand side of the page. Minus two and a half points. And for the last time, Mr. Seelig, I don’t care whether you think ‘Hot Dog’ is an awesome nickname, as you wrote in an essay when you were actually a sophomore in a sophomore English class. That’s another two and a half points. Take note, class, that we have not even begun to look at the content of Joe’s paper, and yet the highest grade he will be able to earn on it is an A minus.”

“What else is new?”

“This is not a chance for you to defend a doctoral thesis, Mr. Seelig. Your work must speak for itself in this classroom. Now, class, let’s all take a moment to read Joe’s introductory paragraph.”

Scott noticed that whenever Mrs. Yelverton spoke directly to the boy she called him “Mr. Seelig,” but when she referred to him while speaking to the class as a whole, she called him “Joe.” Scott read the introductory paragraph of Joe’s paper and began to understand why he was taking the class for the third time:

Over the summer, I read The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumbass. However, like many other great literary works, Dumbass was not the original author. He actually stole most of text of the novel from a lesser known writer, the Earl of Sandwich. Such plagiarism in the world of literature is not unprecedented, however, as it is common knowledge that the Bible was actually written by space aliens. According to renowned literary critic Rosie O’Donnell, both of these supposed authorial exchanges are merely cover-ups for the 9/11 conspiracy. This, however, is a prominent theme in The Count of Monte Cristo. In the long-ass story, The Count (who, unsurprisingly, is a vampire) is imprisoned in a secret prison operated by the CIA in Switzerland – and you thought they were neutral! He passes the time in captivity singing songs of his childhood, such as Sir Mix-a-lot’s “Baby Got Back” and the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe,” but the CIA guards do not like this, so they cut out his tongue. In the next paragraph, I’ll tell you how this is symbolic of something, but right now I’d like to draw you a picture of a very explicit sex scene that did not get published in the final edition of the book.

This was all that Scott could see on the screen at the front of the room – it appeared that Mrs. Yelverton had folded the picture that Joe had drawn underneath so that it would not be shown. About a minute after Scott finished reading what he would call a paper only in the loosest sense, he heard his teacher’s voice.

“Has everyone had enough time to read this?”

Again she got no response.

“There are a number of problems with this introductory paragraph. Namely, the entire paragraph.”

She drew a large X through the entire body of text on the screen.

“Mr. Seelig, if you expect to graduate this year, I suggest that you either change your tune or transfer to another English class. Just because they’ll let you take an honors class again doesn’t mean that you should. I don’t even need to look at the second page of this. This paper gets no credit. And I advise the rest of you to not include drawings in your papers, especially not ones of such a graphic nature. Let’s take a look at another paper.”

Scott did not see a problem with the way Mrs. Yelverton was handling the class. Joe’s paper certainly was not worthy of receiving any score in his opinion. He felt confident that his own paper would receive a grade of an A, if not full marks. Joe’s paper, which now had a red slashed zero in the top margin, disappeared from the screen. It was replaced by an essay that had been handwritten on college ruled notebook paper. It took Scott a few moments to realize that this was his own paper.

“Two and a half points off, again for the improper heading. Another five point points for handwriting a paper.”

Scott turned his head around and stared at the teacher. He was incredulous.

“What?”

“Your paper must be typed. This handwritten paper is completely inappropriate and unprofessional. It was therefore implied that your paper should be typed.”

“Oh, come on! How many of the rest of you thought that it was implied that we were required to type our responses?”

The class was silent. Scott looked to Joel for support, but he was looking down at his desk and hiding his face from Scott with his hand. Scott felt betrayed.

“Fine. Whatever. I can deal with it.”

“If that’s all, Mr. Myers, I’ll continue. Well, it seems that you’ve selected King Lear as your topic for this paper. No credit.”

As she said this, she wrote at the top of Scott’s paper the same slashed zero the she had assigned to the paper that had gone before his.

“No credit?”

“No credit. The assignment clearly asked for you to write about a book you read.”

“I did.”

“King Lear is a play, not a book.”

“How do you suppose I read it if it was not in a book?”

“Do not get uppity with me, Mr. Myers. It is not my fault that you did not read the directions properly. And furthermore, I will give a caution to everyone present, lest you make the same mistake that Scott has just made. Do not ever choose to write about, discuss, or compare another work to anything done by William Shakespeare. His work was simply low class poetry of the time.”

And then Scott realized that no matter what reasons Virginia and Tony had for disliking this woman, he now had his own. He stood up and aced the woman. He had to squint a little because he was being partially blinded by the projector.

“No Shakespeare?”

“No Shakespeare.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Yelverton, but I believe that you should not be telling us that an author is completely worthless.”

“I never said that Mr. Myers, because I do not consider Shakespeare to be an author by any stretch of the imagination. Now I will kindly ask you to retake your seat, or I will have to send you to the principal’s office.”

“See you later, then.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’m not going to be told by some insecure woman who gets her pleasure from grading students’ essays on a large projection screen unfairly that William Shakespeare is not a brilliant writer. I would rather be punished by Mr. Edwards after listening to him compare what I’m going through to how this is only his second year as principal of this school. Joel, I’ll see you after class.”

Scott picked up his textbooks and headed out of the classroom. He took the stairs and went directly to Mr. Edwards’ office with no hesitation. However, when he reached the door, he was faced with a dilemma as he went to knock on it.

Well, Scott, you’re screwed now. You have totally ticked this woman off. There’s no way you’ll be able to do well in her class. Of course, eventually it would’ve come out that she hated Shakespeare, and you would’ve lost it then. It had to happen, and it just happened to happen today. You pretty much have to options now – someone has to go. It can be you, or it can be her. I know you said that you didn’t want anyone to purposefully get hurt anymore, but this woman sure is asking for it. You could go in that office right now and get her canned, just like you did with Ms. Thompson. But, on the other hand, you could just ask to be transferred to another English class. Heck there’s probably another honors level teacher here since the school is so large. I mean, you wouldn’t have a class with Joel, but you also wouldn’t have a class with that sorry excuse for a teacher. It’s a toss up. Just go in there, explain to Mr. Edwards what happened, and see where he wants to go with it.

Scott knocked on the door, and immediately got a response.

“Come in!”

“Good morning, Principal Edwards.”

“Good morning, Scott. I didn’t expect to see you until lunch for our special program.”

“To be honest with you, sir, I wasn’t planning on seeing you until then, either.”
Scott had actually not planned on seeing Mr. Edwards at lunch. Instead, he wanted to “conveniently forget” about be shown around school, but this was no longer a viable option now that the principal had just reminded him about it in person.

“Well what seems to be the problem, Scott.”

“I was sent here by my English teacher.”

“I can’t imagine you acting out in class, Scott – tell me what happened.”

“Well, my teacher, Mrs. Yelverton, had given us an –“

“Stop for a moment. Did you say ‘Mrs. Yelverton?’”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now Scott, you might recall that this is only my second year as principal of this school.”

Knowing that his fate rested in the principal’s hands, Scott wisely decided not to make a sarcastic remark.

“I seem to recall that.”

“Well, when I met her last year, I was surprised by her teaching methods as well as her disciplinary methods. However, I made it perfectly clear to her that I wished for her to send any trouble making students directly to me instead of dealing with them herself. Now tell me why she thought you deserved to be sent to my office.”

“I disagreed with how she was marking my paper. She took off points because I hand wrote it and because it was on King Lear.”

“My goodness, do I love King Lear! It’s my favorite play!”

“Mrs. Yelverton said that my paper was not worth any credit because it was written on a play, not a book, which was what the assignment specified. But, I read it out of a book! It’s not like I just saw the play but didn’t read it myself.”
Scott was careful to not mention that he had read the play before the summer, but since the assignment sheet had not excluded doing so, he felt that there would be nothing wrong with casually omitting that fact.

“Scott, when it comes to a question of semantics like that, there’s only one source I use: Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary: Eleventh Edition. Would you mind getting it down for me?”

Mr. Edwards gestured to a bookshelf on the side of his office. It was the only book on the top shelf and it was placed next to a picture of a small girl who Scott could only assume was the principal’s daughter. As he reached up to grab the book, Scott thought that for a former biology teacher, Mr. Edwards certainly had a part of himself that loved the humanities if he had a favorite Shakespearean play and had a favorite dictionary.

“Let’s see here… ah! Book. Noun. Now let’s see here. Well, that works. So does that. There we go! Here’s what I was looking for: definition six B: ‘The script of a play.’ There you go, Scott. Let me write this out for you.”

Scott watched as Mr. Edwards scribbled on a sheet of paper. He was unable to read the handwriting from across the desk upside down, but he figured it was a request to award him credit for the paper.

“I appreciate this, but it seems to me that Mrs. Yelverton has something against Shakespeare.”

“I seem to recall that. Don’t worry, it will all be taken care of.”
Mr. Edwards scribbled some more. He then took a stamp out of his desk – it was the kind with the ink pad inside of itself. He pressed it down on the bottom of the note – ‘K. Edwards’ appeared in a blue handwritten script. As he replaced the stamp in the drawer, Scott noticed that there were at least ten more identical stamps in the desk. He also notices a less fancy notepad in the desk that had been decorated with exact duplicates of the principal’s signature in various colors. Mr. Edwards apparently had a lot of fun in his office playing with his stamps.

“Now, Scott, I want you to head back to your class and hand this note to Mrs. Yelverton. She will understand exactly what it means. And if she gives you any more trouble, just come speak with me about it?”

“Do you mean I’m not in trouble?”

“Of course you’re not in trouble, Scott. At least, not this time. Be careful. Just because that woman has issues doesn’t mean you can go wild in her class – not that you would.”

“Thank you, Mr. Edwards.”

“Now go on ahead and get back to class. I’m sure you don’t want to miss anything.”

“Yes, sir.”

With the note in hand, Scott left the principal’s office victorious. He had not taken any direct action against Mrs. Yelverton – no slander or downright lies – and yet his fate was not horrible at all. He was proud of himself. And should any other problems arise, he had Mr. Edwards permission to come sob about it to him. It was an almost perfect arrangement. The only problem was that Scott didn’t want Mr. Edwards to think that he was acting out in class – which would be taken as a breach of their agreement – so he would have to do his best to make sure that his visits to the office were few and far between. As Scott walked down the hallway back to class, he heard someone playing the guitar – it was coming from the other direction. Backtracking, he followed the sound of the music. It lead him to the guidance hallway, which had its door left wide open. He looked through the doorway to see the guitar and the girl who was playing it. She was sitting in a chair next to the open doorway on the inside of the first office on the right. Scott could not see if anyone else was in the room, but when the small girl finished playing the song, Scott heard the voice of who he assumed belonged to a male guidance counselor.

“That was very good, Anita. Would you like to tell me about that song?”

Anita sat in the chair and stared straight ahead, not acknowledging the man’s voice.

“Why do you like that song?”

Again, the blond girl sat in the chair, giving no response. Scott noticed, though, that she would blink, but it was clearly not in any correlation to what the man was asking her. He heard the loud sigh of the guidance counselor.

“Why don’t you play another song for me, then?”

Anita looked down at the guitar and began playing again – a new song this time. Because of his limited musical knowledge, Scott could not tell if this was an original composition or if it was a well known song. What he did know was that he loved the way it sounded. He sat in the main hallway just outside of the door to the guidance hall just listening to Anita play her guitar. She would never sing with it, but only play. Each time she finished a song, the man would ask her similar questions to the one’s Scott had heard before. Once or twice, though, Scott heard some more personal questions, such as “How do you feel about your brothers?” or “Why do you still do this?” Scott could only assume that the “this” the counselor was referring to was not answering him, because the girl would never say a word to the man. But when the counselor said that there was only time left for her to play one more song, Scott looked down at his watch and realized that the first period of the day was nearly over. He hopped up and ran down the hall, up the stair, and burst through the door in Mrs. Yelverton’s room. Because the lights were still off, he did not make as much of a disturbance as he might have expected. He looked at the paper on the projection screen – it belonged to Joel. Although it had been typed and the name was in the upper right hand corner followed by a complete MLA heading, Mrs. Yelverton was in the process of putting a zero at the top of the paper. Scott assumed that this was because of the fact that Joel had written his paper on Romeo and Juliet. Scott walked to the back of the room and handed the slip of paper to his English teacher. She carefully looked it over.

“Class, that will be all for the day. Please read the first hundred pages of Ulysses for Monday. Have a pleasant weekend.”

Just in case Mrs. Yelverton wanted to speak with him after class, Scott hurried up and got out of the room as quickly as possible so that she would not have a chance. She did not seem to pursue him, though. Outside of the classroom, Scott met up with Joel. The bell had not rung for class to be dismissed, so they just waited outside of the door.

“Are you in trouble?”

“No. As a matter of fact, I don’t think that we’ll be getting zeroes on our papers.”

“But she just gave me –“

“I know what grade she just gave you. You can thank Mr. Edwards and the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary: Eleventh Edition for the reversal on that decision.”

“If we were in Moscow between 1922 and 1991, then the dictionary would have to thank me, as it would have been a Russian reversal.”

Scott stared at Joel. He then heard a voice come from behind him.

“That was pretty ballsy of you, man.”

Scott turned around. It was Joe, the boy in the red hat.

“You know, this is the third time I’ve taken that class, and I’ve never seen anyone pull shit like that. I mean, sure, I’ll turn in a paper that makes no sense just to piss her off, but that was classy. Real paper – looked pretty well written to me.”

“This is really your third time to take the class?”

“Yeah. I’m a senior in a sophomore English class. I’m also in a senior year English class. That one’s no sweat. This one wouldn’t be a problem, either, if it weren’t for that bitch.”

“Then why do you take it? Couldn’t you just take the standard level class instead of the honors level and avoid her.”

“I could, but it wouldn’t be worth it. You know how she said I was risking not graduating on time? Well even if I do pass this class, I can’t graduate until the end of the summer because I’m so far behind in math that I gotta take two summer school courses. Might as well have the fun of not doing work and pissing her off now.”

“Right.”

“What’s your name again?”

“Scott. Do you really go by the nickname ‘Hot Dog?’”

“No, that’s actually the dumbest nickname I could think of at the time. Someone put the nickname of ‘The Yellow Dart’ on a paper at the beginning of last year. When I realized that she hated it, I decided that I’d have to start that, too.”

Joel chimed in, suddenly, once he realized that Joe had mentioned “The Yellow Dart.”

“That was pretty cool. Did that person also use some ‘triple space action?’”

Joe gave him a funny look.

“Yeah. He actually did. How did you know that?”

“Oh, it’s just an online cartoon thing that he was referencing about writing an English – or rather Englilsh – paper. It’s pretty funny. You should look it up.”

“And who are you, exactly.”

“I’m Joel.”

“Oh, you were doing real well in there. Until the whole ‘Not another Shakespeare’ thing went down.”

“Oh, thanks. Hey, you’re a senior. Maybe you know my sister – Virginia Thomas?”

“I don’t know any Virginias. There was some Thomas girl who I knew in middle school, but I think she moved away. We hooked up once, though. I don’t know. Well it was nice to meet you guys, but I’ve got to hurry up and not go to my next class, if you know what I mean.”

Scott did not have a clue what Joe meant, but he played it off nonchalantly.

“Yeah. See you around.”

The bell rang, and Scott and Joel walked off.

“How do you do that?”

“Do what, Joel?”

“Talk to people like that? I mean, you hardly know him.”

“So?”

“Well, it just seems hard to figure out what you have in common.”

“It’s not the talking I have problems with, Joel, it’s the listening.”

“How’s that?”

“What?”

“I said, ‘How’s that?’ Oh. I see – that was a joke. Well done.”

“I’m embarrassed, actually – I stole that from my dad.”

“Bad call, there.”

“So how’d class go without me?”

“Horribly. Just horribly. Everyone was doing really badly – I mean, if you made it past the first page, chances were you were down to only ten points left. It was like some Hell bent video game where you have to go through some dungeon that pretty much takes away all of your health but a heart or two, and then you save your game. Then you go to fight the boss of the dungeon, but you don’t have enough life left to beat to boss. So you’re screwed. you can’t go any farther without dying, and you can’t backtrack without dying. It’s exactly like that.”

“It probably wasn’t exactly like that.”

“Okay, it was only sort of like that. But it was bad. Except for one paper – Krystal’s. Full marks.”

“You’re kidding! Everyone else fails, but Krystal got a perfect score? How is that possible?”

“She’s good.”

“She can’t be that good. This teacher has it out for everyone. Wait – is Mrs. Yelverton an Episcopalian?”

“What? I don’t know? Why?”

“Nevermind. What’s Krystal’s last name?”

“Williams. Why?”

“I was just wondering if Krystal might be Mrs. Yelverton’s daughter, but I guess not.”

“I don’t think Mrs. Yelverton would do nepotism. I’m surprised she’s even married.”

“I hadn’t even considered that. I feel sorry for that man – I think we know why your brother and sister hated her.”

“Yeah, I think so, too.”

“But how’d this Krystal girl do so well?”

“She’s really smart.”

“I don’t like her.”

“You haven’t even met her.”

“So?”

“So you shouldn’t make a snap judgment like that on someone. Imagine if you had done that with me. Then we might not be friends right now.”

Scott remembered back to the day in late June when he had met Joel. He clearly recall the decision that he had made out by Joel’s mailbox that he would not like Joel at all. He thought it best not to let Joel in on this secret.

“That’s a good point. But still.”

“And she’s a good singer.”

“Matter of taste.”

“And she’s hot.”

“She’s not that hot.”

“She totally is. I don’t know a guy at this school who wouldn’t go after her.”

“You don’t really know anyone here, though – no offense!”

“Yeah. But that doesn’t mean I don’t hear people.”

“I hadn’t thought about that.”

“Well my next class is this way – maybe I’ll see you at lunch?”

“No, I have to do that new student lunch garbage that I told you about last night.”

“Oh yeah. Then I’ll meet you at the bike racks after school.”