Читать книгу Angela 2 - David A. Bedford - Страница 5

On the first day of eleventh grade, Angela went through the doors of Sam Houston High School relaxed, slightly tanned, and happy as she saw Fiona coming toward her down the hall next to Benjie.

“Well, here we go for one more time around,” commented Fiona when they reached Angela.

Angela gave them her sunshiny smile which made people stop and look and not a few boys go weak at the knees. “Maybe it will be better than tenth grade,” she said.

“You know it has to be!” answered Benjie. “Especially since we start each day with Perez and end with Romano. And it’s thanks to you that we still have Romano.”

“I didn’t do any more than you guys did. Plus Yves and lots of teachers and parents,” protested Angela, turning an almost imperceptible shade of pink. “Of course we still have to put up with Newsom in physics and Logan in trig,” she went on. “And our Spanish teacher – what’s her name – what is she like, do you know?”

“Sepúlveda,” said Benjie.

“Say, pull the what?” Fiona countered and all three laughed.

“No,” Benjie corrected. “That’s her name. It’s more like Seh-POOL-veh-dah.”

“I guess she’ll teach us how to say it,” said Angela.

“You better believe it,” answered Benjie. “My brother had her. He says she’s from Chile and she’s a dragon on pronunciation.”

“Oh, no!”

“I guess it’s all part of her teaching plan. We’ll get it, even if Coach never will,” said Fiona. “Speaking of, shouldn’t we be getting to home room? Look at the time!”

The three walked into the classroom as the bell rang and took the front and center seats that had been left open by those less inclined to be the targets of teacher attention. Coach Ferguson got up from his chair, walked around to the front of the desk, opened his grade book, and surveyed the class while chewing his gum vigorously. He began taking roll between chews. He had no trouble with names like Cooper, a traditional Anglo-Texan appellation, but insisted on calling Fiona Banbury “BAN-berry” instead of “BAM-bree.” She and Angela looked at each other knowingly as he stopped to chew his gum before he got to Fournier, Angela. When he said “Furry-near” both of them got the giggles. It had been the butchering of their surnames the first day of tenth grade that had drawn Angela and Fiona together and started their friendship.

They went through the pledges to the US and Texas flags mechanically and then only half-listened to the welcome and announcements. The bell rang and the three friends set off for English class. As they were all in the honors program, they had all their classes together except for PE (Why do they allow PE right after lunch? thought Angela) and fifth period, when Angela had dance.

The KittyKats (Kitty Johnson and her permanent retinue consisting of Kat, Casey, Ashley, and McKenzie) approached them in the hallway. Angela got herself ready for a confrontation, hoping she could manage to answer insult with grace. She turned her eyes toward Fiona, who, Angela could tell, was ready with a sarcastic comeback. Benjie looked as though he was eager for a fight. The KittyKats, however, never looked at them, but instead passed them by with elaborately ostentatious indifference.

“Well, now, that is an improvement!” exclaimed Fiona.

“It’s, like, weird! Ghetto,” said Benjie. Fiona sniggered.

“What a relief. Maybe things will go smoother now,” added Angela.

“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t count on it,” Fiona advised.

***

The trio settled into the front row, each saying “Hello” in turn to Mrs. Perez, who was greeting the returning students and welcoming the new ones, working on putting faces to the names on her class list. Angela sat with Fiona on her left. To her right, a new girl was busily working with pencil on a sketch pad. Angela leaned a little forward and over to look at the drawing and found herself staring at a caricature of Mrs. Perez. The girl looked up and smiled.

“That’s good!” said Angela.

“Thanks,” answered the girl.

“I’m Angela Fournier.”

“Hi, I’m Michaela Carmin.”

“How do you spell that?”

“Well, it sounds like ‘McKayla’ but it’s spelled like ‘Michael’ plus an ‘a’ at the end.”

“It’s pretty,” said Angela.

Michaela gave her a friendly and unselfconscious smile.

“That’s a good drawing,” Angela went on. “It has her personality down perfect. And it’s kind, even though it’s a caricature. How do you do it?”

Michaela smiled with a touch of embarrassment and a barely noticeable lifting of her left shoulder. “I draw what I see. She seems nice.”

Angela liked Michaela’s unaffected simplicity. We’ll get along, she thought.

Mrs. Perez called the class to attention after the bell rang, looking over the students with a mix of the stern disciplinarian and the understanding mentor. Every eye was on her and all the mouths were shut.

“Good morning,” she said, “and welcome to junior English, American literature. Since this is an honors class, don’t expect that we will be content just to read some books and write reports. We are going to explore the connection between the authors, the texts, and the social conditions in which the texts were produced. Fenimore Cooper, Hawthorne, and Poe may seem dated if you read their works in a vacuum; but those texts become rich when you consider the events, issues, and conditions of the time that they deal with. The same goes for the most recent literature and everything in between. We will also read a popular science fiction novel, maybe Jurassic Park, or maybe something by Le Guin. You will all write a ten-page paper this year on one work by an author you pick. Yves, take that defeatist look off your face. You will do it, you will do it well, and, even though you may not think so at this point, you will enjoy it.”

Angela turned and smiled at Yves, who became visibly calmer. He smiled back.

“Now, as this is an honors class, all I’ll need to do is point the way and coach you as we go along. We will discover a lot together. What I demand of you is to believe in your capabilities and to stay focused and on task.”

When the bell rang, Angela stood and said, “This is going to be work but I’m going to learn a lot! Like last year, only more so.”

Michaela smiled and nodded in agreement. “It’s gonna be good.”

***

On the way to trigonometry, the flowing mass of kids separated Angela from Benjie and Fiona momentarily. As Angela was about to make her way back to her friends, she felt an unfriendly tap on the shoulder. She turned and found herself facing Kitty with the Kats providing interference behind her so they would not get pushed.

“Running scared, Fournier? I would be if I were you,” Kitty challenged.

“Hello, Kitty,” retorted Angela, looking her directly in the eye. Don’t take the bait, she thought. Make her do all the work. Or maybe she’ll just go away!

Kitty insisted. “You better check out the competition. You are about to be dethroned.”

Angela merely looked at Kitty, saying nothing.

Kitty was getting frustrated. “There’s a new dancer now, Sonya Aleksandroff, and she’s had way better training than you have. She and her family immigrated. From Russia! They have the world’s best dance schools there. Sorry to burst your balloon.”

Fiona was now standing beside Angela. “Kitty!” she exclaimed. “How do you it? Come up with such, like, amazing phrases?”

Kitty tossed her head, turned toward her retinue, and began to walk off. “Just trying to be of service!” she called back to Fiona and Angela. “Whatever!” added Ashley and McKenzie together.

As they approached Logan’s room, Fiona told Angela not to pay any attention to Kitty, but Angela wasn’t listening. Her feelings were all jumbled up and she didn’t like it.

***

Mr. Logan took roll, looking, as always, at the students as though he had never seen them and was not sure what to make of them. Angela heard a breath being let out noisily and looked around to see Benjie smiling at her with an expression of resignation. Fiona patted him on the arm. Angela smiled back, feeling a surge of affection and forgetting the new dancer for the moment.

Logan started the lesson, addressing the back wall where it joined the ceiling. “Hello, class,” he said. Benjie turned to the back with an expression of sarcastic surprise and bewilderment. “What class?” he mouthed silently. Angela had to fight back the sniggers and she could hear Fiona making squeaky noises.

Logan ignored them and went on. “This is trigonometry. Trigonometry is really quite easy. It’s all based on measuring the angles of triangles. Imagine an angle with the vortex at the center of a circle. It’s called a central angle. When a central angle intercepts an arc with the same length as the radius of the circle, that angle is said to measure one radian.” He wrote “1 rad” on the chalkboard. “You can see that such an angle measures 1 rad regardless of how large the circle is.”

Angela heard Benjie whisper to Fiona, “Why in the world would we want to know that?”

Fiona said, “Shhh…” quietly.

“… the circumference of a circle having radius r is 2πr. As a result, a circle has the length of 2πr over r, which is 2π. Angles which measure a full rotation measure 2πrad. Now, as a full rotation, or 360º, equals 2πrad, 180º is πrad, and one degree equals π over 180 rad.” Logan managed a smile directed at his writing on the board, so taken was he with the beauty of it.

By then Angela’s head was spinning. She put her fingertips to her forehead. Fiona whispered, “You’ll get all this. I’ll explain in our study sessions if you need it.”

Logan was drawing on the board now. There was the sun directing its beams just left of vertical down on the Earth. He placed two dots on the surface, labeling one Syrene and the other Alexandria. He drew straight lines from those two cities to the exact center of the Earth. “In the first century BC, a Greek philosopher named Eratosthenes figured out by these angles and by the distance between Syrene and Alexandria in Egypt” (he wrote the distance on the board) “the circumference of the Earth, accurately to within five hundred miles. He also calculated the tilt of the Earth accurately and worked out the distance to the sun. Homework for tomorrow: take these values and calculate the circumference of the Earth. Any questions?”

In the apprehensive silence that followed, Michaela, looking at the board, exclaimed, “That’s pretty, Mr. Logan!”

***

“Did you see his face?” asked Benjie with glee when the three of them plus Michaela were in the hall going to the next class. “That was brilliant.”

Fiona added, “Logan didn’t know what to think. You overloaded his human interaction programming.”

“But I really meant it,” protested Michaela. “I’ll make a sketch, or maybe a painting and show you!”

“That’ll be cool,” said Angela. “We like what you said and we like you,” she went on, unable to suppress her most appealing smile. She never noticed, but everyone going by paused briefly, looking at her, and then resumed their paths.

“Awright!” Michaela answered.

The next period was Spanish. Angela sat, her friends on either side, and looked intently, with her eyebrows raised and her lips slightly puckered. Mrs. Sepúlveda was not at all as she expected. She was short, intense, and sixty-ish, and she looked German. The teacher explained how the class would be conducted. Then she told the students to put everything away. She picked up a book and said,

“Es un libro.”

From there she began to ask questions and, because the objects she was talking about were right in front of them, everyone understood and answered. For the whole period they never wrote anything down or opened a book. When the bell rang, Mrs. Sepúlveda told the class,

“Hasta mañana.”

Angela, Benjie, Fiona, and Michaela stopped briefly outside the classroom door.

“That was great!” said Benjie. “I understood everything and I can remember it.”

“No homework in this class!” exclaimed Angela.

Fiona agreed but looked worried. “It’s good,” she commented, “but I can’t help but feel something’s missing. Not writing anything down and not having to study for the next class makes me nervous.”

“Don’t worry,” counseled Michaela. “She looks kinda fierce, but she’s really a teddy bear, I think.”

Benjie and Fiona looked at her with puzzled expressions. Angela smiled broadly.

***

At lunch Angela, Fiona, and Benjie sat together, with Michaela across the table. Almost immediately Yves walked up, carrying his food tray, and sat next to Michaela. Angela did the introductions. After exchanging impressions of the morning classes, they moved to debriefing the last part of the summer. They were so fully engrossed in their conversation that they jumped when Kitty, who had been standing behind Yves and Michaela without being noticed, spoke up.

“Fournier, you need to watch out for yourself. You see that girl in the short pink jacket?” Kitty pointed to a corner of the cafeteria. “That’s Sonya. She says she’s going to trim your troika!”

All five looked at Kitty in complete silence.

“That’s Russian for cream your bootie,” she persisted.

“Kitty, I don’t believe you,” countered Fiona, pulling Benjie back down onto the seat by his shirttail. “Go back to your hole!”

Kitty sauntered off displaying a pleased smirk.

“Don’t pay any attention to her,” said Fiona to Angela.

“I won’t,” she answered.

“Her nose is crooked, anyway.”

They all stared at Michaela.

“Well, it’s true!” she continued. “Look, I’ll show you.” She pulled out a pad and began sketching.

The others laughed, but Angela could not help feeling out of sorts. She began to grow eager to get to dance class, yet she was dreading it at the same time. She hated the negative feelings she was getting about Sonya, whom she had not even met. All of it together made her frustrated with herself and anxious. She stood and picked up her tray.

“Well, guys,” she said, “I guess I better head to P.E.! So much fun on a full stomach… See you later.” She smiled at her friends as she left, though the smile seemed fake to her and she wondered if it did to them. After dumping her tray and going to the gym to suit out, she took off at full speed when told to run around the entire perimeter of the school grounds. She seemed to regain a little emotional balance with each step.

***

Angela felt considerably better when she joined Fiona and Benjie at their usual seats in Newsom’s class, especially after beaming her smile at them.

“Ugh, physics!” exclaimed Benjie. “Count on Newsom to make it as unpleasant as possible.”

“Hush! Here he comes,” Fiona cautioned.

Newsom walked to his desk, opened his grade book, and began taking roll without any preliminaries. After calling the last name, he closed the register and looked over the expectant faces silently. After half a minute or so he began talking.

“In my class you will listen and take notes. You will not talk. I will ask the questions. We will get along fine if everyone refrains from challenging my authority.” He looked straight at Benjie, who stared back with undisguised contempt, but said nothing. Angela heard Fiona take a deep breath and let it out slowly. She looked at Michaela, who sat nearby, and saw that she was making a sketch, an amused expression working across her face. Newsom was too preoccupied with trying, unsuccessfully, to make Benjie cower, to notice.

“Physics describes in mathematical terms the gravitational forces that govern the stars, the planets, you, and me. It gives the numbers that made the Big Bang put out the elements that go into making up all matter. It also describes the forces at the sub-atomic level, where gravity has no effect. The physics that deals with gravity is Newtonian physics, or classical mechanics, and relativity. The other is quantum theory. The two together are the ultimate key to the universe and enable us to explain how we got here.”

Newsom looked at Benjie defiantly, but Benjie merely continued writing in his notebook, looking as though he were hanging on every word. Angela could see the sarcasm in the slight arch of his eyebrows and smiled, in part at the humor of it and in part because she was happy to see him control himself better than last year. She returned her attention to Newsom, who had gone back to previewing the course.

***

As they walked to history, Fiona told Angela and Benjie, “The Newtonian stuff, as far as I know, is mostly normal math and is pretty easy to grasp. Now, relativity is a bear. If he makes us show why e equals mc squared, you get all these hairy square roots and Lorentz transformations. And nobody understands quantum theory, not even the scientists!”

“How do you know all this?” asked Benjie.

“Well… I read ahead sometimes.”

“Do you understand all that?”

“No. I told you not even the physicists understand the quantum bit.”

Angela perceived that Fiona was feeling anxious, which was unusual and not at all reassuring. Benjie voiced her concern.

“Well if you don’t get it how are we supposed to?”

Fiona made a face. “He did say that we were going to do just a little bit on relativity, didn’t he? I don’t think he’s even going to go into quantum. How can he?”

“I wasn’t listening.”

Angela jumped into the conversation for the first time. “Well, this is the same stuff the seniors had last year. If they passed, I suppose we probably can too, if we work hard.”

All three stopped in the middle of the hall as Benjie and Fiona looked at Angela. She gave them her best smile and they began to calm down. They walked the rest of the way to Romano’s room in silent but palpable companionship.

Romano still sported last year’s ponytail, but he had replaced the earring in his left lobe with a small stud. He had his feet propped up on his desk and was chatting with students when Angela, Fiona, and Benjie entered. The bell rang. Romano put his feet on the floor, stood, and greeted the class.

“Hello, everyone. I’m Mr. Romano and this is American history class. ‘The business of America is business.’ You have all heard that phrase, because if you hadn’t heard it before, you did just now.” Angela looked around and saw several people smile, though the new students seemed not to know how to take him. “This is how our country got its start. In England some businessmen received a concession from the British crown and created a publicly traded corporation called The Virginia Company. Most of the shareholders stayed behind in England, but some moved to the new world and set up the Virginia Colony. It was a business venture. If the agricultural production of the colony made money, the shareholders made money.

“Among the first settlers were indentured servants. These were people who agreed to have their way to America paid in return for working for the Virginia Company for seven years. At the end of that time they received some land and at least one share in the company. The colony was ruled by a meeting of the shareholders, each of which had as many votes as they had shares. Settlers who could not go to the meetings for various reasons chose one among them who could go, to vote for them by proxy. In time Africans were brought in as slaves and that is an entire story unto itself.

“But notice that how a country starts is how a country is for a very long time. The colony’s set-up brought rule of law, as the freemen were British citizens. It also brought representative government in the shareholder meetings, a link between voting rights and land ownership, and a money-making purpose as the prime motor. By introducing slavery it nearly caused the new country to split in two one hundred and fifty years afterwards. We still feel the effects.

“Now there was a second Virginia Company, created soon after the Virginia Colony got under way. The Puritans who had fled persecution in England and settled in the Netherlands owned a lot of stock in this new company. When they discovered they had almost one half of the stock, they bought enough more to control the company. They moved it, headquarters and everything, to America. During the crossing they got off course and landed in Massachusetts, where they set up the second British colony in America. They shared the elements I mentioned with the Virginia Colony, but they also had two important elements of their own: local government by town meetings and a strong accent on Puritanical religion. You also have the beginnings of a North-South distinction.”

Hands shot up in the air all over.

“You mean the Puritans weren’t the first colonists from England?”

“Business was as important as religion to them?”

“How many g’s in ‘Virginia’?”

“How many n’s?”

Romano moved his hand in an arc and the class went silent. “No, yes, and one each,” he answered. The class laughed. “At least, as far as I know. I am willing to be corrected. We are going to spend a lot of this year seeing how these themes have played out over nearly three hundred years, and the dangers of using terms such as ‘American values’ and ‘the Fathers of our Country’ without knowing what and who we’re talking about. It is a fascinating study and you will end up appreciating your country more than just about anyone you know. That’s what I want you to get out of my course.”

Angela, Fiona, Benjie, Michaela, and Yves gathered in the hall after class before they went their separate ways.

“Mr. Romano is interesting and he has good bone structure,” said Michaela.

“You’ll learn plenty in this class,” added Fiona.

“Yeah, I’m glad we have him back,” observed Yves. “Our little plan last year really rocked!”

“To think we could have lost him!” Fiona replied.

“Why, what happened last year?” asked Michaela.

“I’ll tell you all about it,” offered Benjie.

Angela, who had been thinking quietly all along, smiled and said. “You know, what he said today really explains a whole lot.”

“Well, we’ll just have to convene a study group of us five and talk things over,” answered Fiona.

In comfortable agreement, the group broke up, Benjie and Michaela walking off together in earnest conversation. Angela felt a strange, unpleasant feeling rising in her throat and pushing down on her stomach. Disappointed with herself and confused, she took courage and headed toward the dance studio.