Chapter 19 – Going Back to School
Back to school.
Those dreadful words meant something entirely different this year for me and my friends, Tom and Win. We had just spent six weeks hiding in our cabin in the woods, and we were starting seventh grade on October nineteenth.
There were consequences, of course, to what we had done, and we were about to face them. The weekend, since we had been picked up by the police walking down Route 15 on Friday morning, had been filled with activity and drama. Not so much for us as for the adults. We all had baths, had haircuts (we all wanted Beatle cuts, but our Dads thought differently,) ate lots of food, and kept our mouths shut under a constant barrage of questioning.
The police questioned us, our parents questioned us, the Town Selectboard questioned us, and lots of reporters tried to, but our parents wouldn’t let them. They had an emergency meeting of the School Board on Saturday, at which all of our parents showed up. The police were there, the principal of our school was there, and some of our teachers were there. Reporters were there from the Free Press and the TV stations; our parents tried to get them thrown out, but it was a public meeting, so they couldn’t.
We were not there. It wasn’t considered that we should have any voice in what happened to us; we were just kids. Besides, we had just taken matters into our own hands for six weeks, and they all wanted to make sure that didn’t happen again.
From what we found out later, the meeting quickly became confrontational. The principal and the teachers were focused on one thing – punishment. What we had done, deliberately skipping six weeks of school, was unforgiveable, and we had put ourselves so far behind that it would be practically impossible for us to catch up. So they said. What they wanted to do was make us take sixth grade over again.
Well, they didn’t get very far with that. My Dad, who was a professor at UVM, proceeded, with unassailable logic, to argue that, since we had missed six weeks of seventh grade, not sixth, we weren’t going to make up anything by taking sixth over again. The teachers were certainly entitled to load us up with as much extra homework as necessary (thanks, Dad) and make us go to Summer School next year if we didn’t catch up, but repeating sixth grade was pointless, and just seemed like a punishment, with no objective value.
The other parents loved what my Dad said, and Win’s Mom backed it up by standing up and saying that, if it was punishment they wanted, they could leave that to the parents, who would be happy to oblige. The teachers weren’t happy with that, but they eagerly grasped at the idea of threatening us with Summer School when it became obvious that repeating sixth wasn’t an option. The School Board seemed to side with our parents, and they got a surprising assist from the police.
Chief Mulrooney was there primarily to update everyone on the progress of their investigation. The main focus of the investigation was simple – where had we been for the last six weeks? Since none of us had broken down, and weren’t about to, they had nothing to report. But that didn’t stop the Chief from showing up at the meeting and blowing his own horn about the fantastic detective work that had resulted in the recovery of the “Missing Boys.” His pet theory, right from the start, had been that the Gypsies who worked at the Fair had either outright kidnapped us, or, at the least, had influenced us with their scheming ways to run off and join in their criminal culture.
He repeated this opinion, again, even though it didn’t really fit with any of the facts, and suggested that, if anyone deserved to be punished, it was those damned carnies. Well, those damned carnies were now spread out all over the eastern half of the country, and none of them had committed any crimes, at least with regard to us, so he was just spouting off in vain. But it may have helped our parents’ cause a little bit, and, at the end of the meeting, the School Board voted unanimously that we would be readmitted to school on Monday, as regular seventh graders.
Now, if there were any words more filled with dread than “back to school,” those words were, without a doubt, “Summer School.” I had never suffered that fate, but some of my friends had. Imagine losing the best part of your year. Watching your friends go off to play baseball, go swimming, go camping, while you trudged, head downcast, back to the same building you had hated for nine months. It was the worst fate imaginable, and now, with our parents’ blessing, that fate would be hanging over us all year.
The other consequence, which we didn’t take too seriously, was that the three of us, plus our buddy Rollo, who had been with us for the first four weeks, were forbidden to associate with each other. Come on, how long do you think that was going to last?
Rollo had actually helped us out a lot. For one thing, he hadn’t talked. Even though he had caved in and decided to go back home, he didn’t rat on us, and I’m sure they put a lot of pressure on him. The other thing was, he had agreed to let our older friend, Karl, drive him to Boston, where he called his parents collect from the Greyhound station. That sent the cops off on another wild goose chase, thinking we might be in the Boston area when, in fact, we were up in the woods, just a couple of miles from home.
The best thing about it for Rollo was, that, since he was back in school two weeks before the rest of us, he was the solitary hero, and didn’t have to share the glory with anyone for two solid weeks. How he loved it!
We were all “grounded,” of course, so we didn’t see or talk to anybody over the weekend. School on Monday morning was our first contact with any of the other kids in Essex. At our school, Prospect Street School, the seventh grade traditionally gathered outside the door at the east end of the building before the bell rang.
The teachers were ready for us. As I walked up the hill towards the school, I could see the faces of the kids turn my way; every one of them anxious to ask me about the adventure. But there, watching like an ugly, beak-nosed hawk, was Mrs. Angolano, who would be our homeroom teacher for the seventh grade.
Before I had a chance to talk to anyone, she had ordered me to a spot off towards the northeast corner of the building. When Win arrived a couple minutes later, she had a spot pre-selected for him to stand, and the same for Tom and Rollo. She was obviously determined to keep us apart. She couldn’t keep us from talking to the other kids, though. Of course, we didn’t tell anyone where we had really been; we kept that secret for a long time. Mostly, we listened to a lot of congratulations and welcome backs. Even with Angolano hovering over us, everyone was in a good mood, and we were the heroes. Even Kate and Jackie, and the other “nice kids” couldn’t keep the gleam out of their eyes when they talked to us.
When we trooped into our homeroom, it was the same thing; Mrs. Angolano had chosen our seats ahead of time, well separated. This was the way it was going to be, for a long time. But we knew there would be an end to it; keeping us separated would require a lot of diligence on the part of the teachers, and we knew they couldn’t keep that up for long.
Every class that morning was the same, but different. Meaning the teachers tried to keep us apart, and not talking to each other, but each teacher had a slightly different attitude, ranging from open hostility to indifference. Most of our classes had the same kids, because they had us in sections, and Win and Tom were in the same section as me, but Rollo was in a different one. As we moved along through the morning, the novelty started to wear off a little, because we were mostly with the same kids.