Don't Care High (2 page)

Paul laughed. “I thought guidance would be really busy in a big school like this.”

“Nope. No one wants counselling. Don't Care has no problems — none worth caring about, anyway. We never even had anybody with ambition until today. Besides, the guidance office is three-quarters filled up with old, unused application forms.” Sheldon glanced at his watch. “We'd better start walking if we're going to be ten minutes late. You've got English next, right?”

“Yeah. How'd you know?”

“Most of the people from our homeroom are in that class. You see, we don't have course selection here anymore.”

“But every school has course selection,” Paul protested.

“Yeah, well, not this one. Nobody fills out the cards. And they can't force people to pick, so they just assign classes. They did it to you, didn't they?”

“Well, yes, but I figured because I was registering late —”

“Oh no. It's policy. The word is a couple of years ago they asked some girl if she wanted to take industrial arts, cooking or infrared astronomy, and she said, ‘What's the difference?' They dumped selection for the whole school right on the spot.”

As they navigated the hallways, Paul's eyes examined the passing parade. His new fellow students were making their lethargic ways in various directions, drifting in and out of classrooms, to and from lockers, and scanning bulletin boards with great disinterest. There wasn't a school jacket or school letter in sight. And, Paul thought, glancing at his notebook, he was apparently the only one who had bothered to bring something to write on. The people themselves were physically no different from the students at Kilgour Secondary School back home in Saskatoon — except for the eyes. The Don Carey students seemed to have their eyes focused on infinity, or at least on some place outside the walls of the school. Their behaviour was normal enough. They talked, moved, laughed. But if eyes were the windows of the soul, these people had their blinds drawn. All except Sheldon.

“How about you?” Paul asked, following his new guide through the shabby cream-coloured halls. “You seem to care.”

“Oh, I only came in halfway through last year,” Sheldon replied airily, “so I still care a little. I don't know how long it'll last, though. This morning I went into the washroom to visit Don Carey's big invention — I figure as a student here it's my duty to patronize the sewer system every now and then — and someone had written ‘Who Cares?' on the wall. Underneath it — I counted them — forty people wrote ‘Not me'. So I was looking at it, and for one brief moment it seemed so right. Then the room went out of focus, and when I came back to myself, there were forty-one ‘Not me's' on that wall.” He smiled engagingly. “It'll happen to you too, Ambition.”

Paul laughed nervously. “The name's Paul. And I don't freak out that easily.”

“We'll see. Right turn.”

They entered English class right on time ten minutes late, and were among the first to arrive. The subject was Shakespeare's
Hamlet
, and while Paul tried to concentrate, he found himself marvelling at how the teacher seemed unperturbed by the fact that her students were trickling in twenty, thirty, even forty minutes late, and in the case of Wayne-o from homeroom, a scant seven minutes before the end of the hour.

“… and these are some of the things I'd like you to keep in mind when you read the play,” the teacher was saying as Paul watched Wayne-o establish himself at a last row desk. “Any questions?”

Paul, who wanted to ask if the school library had multiple copies of
Hamlet
, raised his hand. A surprised hum swelled in the classroom.

“Bad move, Ambition,” came a whisper from Sheldon.

Paul felt the red returning to his face. Meanwhile, the teacher, who had turned away secure in the knowledge that there would be no questions, looked back to discover the source of the murmur.

“Yes? You have a question?”

“Oh… uh… no. Not me. No question.”

“Your hand's still up,” whispered Sheldon.

Painfully aware that he was once more the centre of attention, Paul nonchalantly swung his raised hand over to scratch his forehead. The hum faded.

The morning progressed, and deep shock set in as the former student of Kilgour Secondary, Saskatoon, made his way through Don't Care High, Manhattan. He walked through the alien halls feeling like a visitor from Mars, watching the natives drift about aimlessly and marvelling at some of the sheets tacked up on bulletin boards:

It was dated 1941, and in its forty-four years of posting, had not managed to attract a single volunteer.

Underneath that:

Paul sighed. Not only did no one care enough to sign up for these things, but no one could even be bothered to take the notices down when they became obsolete. What a place.

As he entered his geography class, he heard a voice call out, “Hey, Ambition. Over here.” There at a back row desk was Sheldon Pryor, smiling and waving. Paul joined him, grateful to see a familiar face.

Mrs. Wolfe began the class with what she called a geography game. “Now, I want everybody to participate.” The hum swelled. “You've each got a card with the name of a country and several clues describing that country's industries. When I call on you, you read out the clues, but not the name of the country. That's for the class to guess. For example, if I were to say that a country was the biggest producer of steel in the world, you would of course say the United States. You see?” Dead silence. “Okay, let's start with —” she consulted her class list — “Dan Wilburforce.”

Dan concentrated on his card. “Uruguay.”

“No, no, no! I
told
you to read only the clues! We're supposed to
guess
what country it is!”

“Oh. Okay. Woolen, cotton, and rayon textile manufacturing, meat processing, cement manufacturing —”

Mrs. Wolfe was getting desperate. “What's the point? We already know —”

A hand shot up. “Venezuela?” came a wild guess.

“All right, all right!” exclaimed Mrs. Wolfe. “Forget the game. We'll just read the cards as a point of interest. Who's got Brazil?” There was no answer. “Well, come on! Somebody's got Brazil. I handed it out.” Still nothing. “Look, people, this is impossible! Someone has Brazil!”

Mrs. Wolfe became so upset that she began to march up and down between the rows of desks, checking each card. She stopped before one boy and completely blew her stack.

“You! You've got Brazil! Why didn't you say something?”

The boy looked confused. “But you said we shouldn't tell.”

The door burst open and Wayne-o breezed in. “Hi. Did I miss anything?”

“We played a game,” Dan Wilburforce announced blandly.

Mrs. Wolfe screamed, but no one seemed to notice.

Sheldon leaned over to Paul. “Come on, Ambition, don't look so freaked out. Think how funny this is.”

“Mom, I'm home.” Paul staggered in the door of apartment 3305, his ears still popping from the high-speed elevator.

“I'm in the kitchen, dear.”

Paul tossed his coat unceremoniously over a chair and headed through the apartment, mentally planning out his sob story for maximum effect. He decided to start with:

“Mom, I've got to talk to you about this school you've sent me to!” As he entered the kitchen, he saw his mother taking a cake out of the oven.

“Well, how was it? I'm dying to hear about your first day.”

“Well, Mom, it's like this….” He paused. Should he talk about the dilapidated building that was fated to come down upon his head sometime between now and graduation, or should he concentrate on the zombies who hummed every time anything school-related was mentioned? And what about the “Don't Care” thing? She probably wouldn't believe it anyway. He only half believed it himself. “This school isn't like Kilgour, Mom. It's kind of —”

A high-pitched beeping cut the air. Paul winced as his mother went to answer the phone. He wondered what was so wrong with the old kind that just rang. It had probably taken a team of scientists five years and several million dollars to develop a sound so irritating to the nerves.

“Hello?… Oh, hello, Nancy… No, I'm not busy at all. I've just finished some baking.”

Paul groaned inwardly. Auntie Nancy. Now there was a sore point and a half. It had been Auntie Nancy who had convinced his father to apply for a job in New York. Auntie Nancy had organized the whole move. Auntie Nancy, who was snug in a ranch house on Long Island, had arranged for this apartment up in the clouds; Auntie Nancy was responsible for placing the family in the attendance district for Don't Care High.

“So, Nancy, did Harry let you order the dishwasher?… No? But did you explain to him that you're the only house on the block with no dishwasher?… Oh, he's so stubborn, that husband of yours.”

Paul wandered out of the kitchen, feeling a slight shred of satisfaction that his Auntie Nancy was not getting the dishwasher she had been nagging for as long as he could remember. He straggled into his room and went to stand listlessly by the window. Thirty-three floors below, the rush hour traffic jam was assuming its usual mammoth proportions. A Volkswagen had rear-ended a limousine, and the two drivers seemed to be squaring off, cheered on by a bus stop full of people. Coupled with the construction on the road, the accident made the street impassable. The honking of horns and the barrage of jackhammers wafted up to his aerie. He slammed the window shut and gazed through the glass at the apartment building across the street. That was always a lively showcase. A few floors below, a woman was shaking her mop out the window in proud defiance of all city ordinances. Directly above her, a man in goggles was welding something to a large metal contraption that looked like a chrome torpedo. The man paused in his work, seemed to see Paul and immediately closed the blinds.

Through the wall he could hear his mother still on the telephone. It seemed to be shaping up into one of their longer conversations. He decided to postpone his case against Don't Care High for at least a few days. He could already hear the “You haven't even given it a chance yet” lecture, one of his mother's favourites. Then his father would deliver the crowning touch with “Life is what you make it.” It was a devastating combination.

He threw himself backward onto his bed to mull over his first day at Don't Care High. Of his classes, Sheldon was in two, and he was beginning to recognize some of the familiar faces from homeroom in the others. The most prominent of these was Wayne-o, who was apparently registered for all six, yet on time for none. The best prospect for a friend was definitely Sheldon, who was certainly amicable enough, and the only student Paul had yet encountered who cared about anything. Sheldon had even promised to arrange things with Feldstein, the major locker baron of the school, so that Paul could have a locker instead of living out of a plastic bag.

He sighed. It looked like, for the next little while, he would just have to see what happened.

F
eldstein looked like a normal person, Paul thought. He must have been an exception to the rule at Don't Care High, since he seemed to care about at least one thing — lockers. The locker baron hung out in the first floor east stairwell at all times when he wasn't in class. There he sat in majesty in an old armchair with the stuffing bleeding out of it, nestled beneath a flight of stairs.

“You know Paul from our homeroom,” said Sheldon.

Feldstein looked blank. “Who?”

“The guy with ambition.”

“Oh, yeah — cool. How many lockers do you need, man?”

“Uh… one is just fine,” said Paul.

Feldstein looked a little shocked. “Just one? Okay.” From his pocket he produced a map of the school hallways with his many holdings indicated in red. “It's a tight deal this year, and I couldn't get a lot of the good locations. But I have got one with a southern exposure. At about quarter of two, the sun is reflecting off the windows across the street right at this little baby. Interested?”

“We'll take it,” said Sheldon decisively. “It's just down the hall from mine.”

“Zero — forty-two — two,” said Feldstein, quoting the combination from memory. “It's number 746B. Enjoy.”

“Thanks… uh… Feldstein,” said Paul. “I guess I'll be seeing you in homeroom.”

Feldstein shook his head. “No, man.”

“Feldstein's not too big on homeroom,” Sheldon supplied. “He has a lot of business responsibilities.”

“Oh, well, what do I owe you for the locker?”

“Forget it, man. You'll pay me later.”

“Oh no. I have money.”

“Not money,” said Feldstein in disgust. “I just did you a favour; someday maybe you can do me a favour.”

Paul opened his mouth to protest, but Sheldon burst in with, “Thanks a lot, Feldstein. See you around.”

As they made their way toward homeroom, Paul complained nervously to his companion. “Why did you get me into this? I don't want to owe that guy a favour! He's some kind of gangster!”

Sheldon just laughed. “He's harmless as a puppy. He called in my favour last year. You know what it was? He needed a cake. You know why? Because he was hungry. Big gangster.”