The Last Teacher Read Online Free PDF Page A

there would be fewer students. Word in the teacher’s lounge that morning was that Harry Rousner, the Biology teacher, was in one of the cars that was heading south. But only three students remaining? She was sure each of them saw the cringe of pain that made the corners of her mouth curl inward.
    “Okay,” she said, nodding her head. “No big deal.” She handed out three copies of the quiz.
    “What’s this?” Eric said.
    Ray smiled and said, “A pop quiz.”
    Before she could say anything else, before she could explain what she intended, Eric groaned, crumbled the paper into a ball, and tossed it across the room. If Zack Childers were still one of her students and not travelling south on a major highway, the quiz would have bounced off the side of his head.
    “This is lame,” Eric said. “This is like, what, the tenth quiz we’ve had this year.”
    “Eric”—
    “No one cares about your stupid quizzes. Give me an F. I don’t care.”
    “Eric”—
    “Do you think it’ll impact what college I get into?”
    Kelly’s eyes darted toward the window and her lip started quivering. Everyone had known, prior to the school year starting, that all of the colleges and universities around the country had already stopped accepting new admissions. Her students’ formal education would end with their high school diploma.
    Eric was shaking his head and blinking over and over.
    “Are you going to put this on my permanent record?” he said. “Well, let me know if you do. At least something I do will be around forever, right?”
    Debbie Vandenphal put her hands to her face and began to tremble.
    “Eric, it wasn’t that type of quiz,” Ray said quietly, her words barely audible.
    She wanted to explain her intention, to inspire them while acknowledging what was going on around them, to help them get through being a teenager with as little damage as possible. But instead, she said nothing.
    “Screw this,” Eric muttered, standing from his desk, hauling his backpack over his shoulder, then walking out of her classroom.
    Kelly Abraham was still looking out the window.  Tears were streaming down her cheeks, collecting at her chin, then dripping onto her desk. Debbie Vandenphal’s face was still buried behind her palms.
    Ray picked one of the many empty seats, halfway between either girl, and sat down. From where she sat, the teacher’s desk seemed impossibly far away.  Traces of things that had been written on the chalkboard over the years, only to be erased, offered glimpses of a different world.  Sitting there, she tried to think what she would want a teacher to tell her if she were a teenager facing all of the problems they knew were coming their way.
    Then, with a sigh, she said, “Class is dismissed.  Have a good day,” and she watched the two girls collect their things and leave, just as Eric had done.

Eleventh Drink
     
     
    She got roaring drunk. Of course she did. It wasn’t something she normally did, or even something she planned on doing, but no one could blame her for stopping by the liquor store after a day of teaching like the one she had just had.
    Her cat—not really her cat but the cat that had shown up on her doorstep after being abandoned when its owner left during one of the migrations—walked back and forth over her lap as she sipped from the next can of beer.
    In a way, the cat was no different than her students. It had shown up in her life one day, needing to feel as if everything would be okay, and she had done her best to make that happen. It was much easier with the cat, however—a bowl of food, a gentle rub under its chin—than it was with her kids.
    With another can empty, she put it on the table beside her and popped open the next one.
    What was she supposed to tell her students, that everything was going to be okay? They all knew that wasn’t true. Sure, there was no war or starvation or suffering, but mankind was slowly disappearing from the world all the same.
    Why was she