The M.I.L.F. Man

Hasta la vista, baby

I promised to tell you about Walther, so...let me go on and do that to give you a little breather before I dive back into the drama—yes, I'll throw you right back to all that by the end of this chapter. Just...chill.

Anyway, first I had to get used to how casual things were on that campus. Swear to God, the usual boundaries and pecking orders didn't seem to apply. And there was none of that underlying, omnipresent tension that you felt walking onto most public-school campuses by then.

Maybe because they only had, like, 250 kids in all. Yeah, they had a strict enrollment cap and a waiting list a mile long. The average class had only 10-15 students, tops, if that.

But whatever the reason, as I walked through, I couldn't get over how informal and chummy things were. Kids and teachers and admins all having very animated conversations with each other—kids arguing about books, too, right? Little circles of friends sitting on the grass talking about how "...swear to God, that Booktok table at Barnes & Noble makes me so sad."

I mean, I actually heard this one little dude blurt out, "No! No! Trump's the symptom, not the problem!" And then go into this little tirade about how "fundamental unresolved racial and societal issues" had come home to roost—Malcolm X said the same thing after Kennedy was assassinated, right? He got censured even by the Muslims for it, too. And here was this alabaster white kid blurting that shit out and getting big ups.

I felt like I'd gone through the fucking looking glass with these kids...

Crazier still, students could just come into the building and walk around, go to classrooms, eat breakfast, whatever they wanted the minute they got there. The office staff would just wave and say, "Hey, Susie!" or whatever—totally chill.

At Valencia, they had all kinds of security and teachers and admins assigned to keep the kids in the cafeteria or outside before that first bell rang. If you were caught in a hallway, you'd better have a signed pass or a parent with you—and even then, security would "escort" you to the office just to make sure.

There was good reason for all that, though. The kids really did do some pretty stupid stuff in the stairwells and restrooms and things whenever they got the chance. Some weekends they broke in and spray painted the walls or stopped up all the toilets—symptoms of "fundamental unresolved injustices," like that kid said.

But at Walther, when Big Ben sounded—I could not wait to tell Chas that they used that chime—everybody just started strolling, and I do mean strolling, toward whatever building they had classes in.

I got a lot of smiles and nods like they were expecting me, right? And the kids in Ramona's class all came right over to say, "Hey! Cool! Welcome" and stuff like that, before taking seats at one of the two big, round tables in the middle of the room.

Ramona sat across from me at the smaller square table that "connected" the two round ones for this particular session where she needed to use some special equipment. But most of the time after that we would sit at the round tables with the kids. Who were always passing me little snacks because they were allowed to eat and drink in class, too.

I mean...I can't even...

Just watching her that first day made my head swim. She interacted in so many different ways. Sharing desktops and sending them little messages while she was maybe collaborating with two or three of them on her big screen at the same time.