The Last Teacher Read Online Free PDF

bothering to teach them about classic literature while the human population kept declining? In another few years, the population would dip below five billion. Then four billion. It could only end one way. Would any of her students care about The Awakening or The Stranger when they were wrinkly and old and alone? Definitely not. So why was she insisting on teaching them about those things instead of the few subjects that would really matter to them for the rest of their lives?
    Another can was empty. She put it aside, scanned the cans next to her, counted ten, then opened the eleventh.
    On Monday, she would go back into her classroom, toss a copy of a book, any book, out the window, and ask her three remaining students what they wanted to learn about. If they named something that she didn’t know anything about, well, then they could look it up on the internet and she would learn about it along with them.  Or they could just talk about life, about everyone they knew who had headed south so far, about the people they knew who refused to migrate even if it meant they would eventually be all alone.  They would talk about anything the kids wanted.
    That was the last coherent thought she had before the room started wobbling. When she closed her eyes, the room still felt as if it were spinning around her. With all the proof she needed, she knew it was time to fall asleep and worry about the future another day.

Twelfth Call
     
     
    “Ray, honey, if you’re there, please pick up. It’s your mother.”
    All of the messages had been similar. As if Ray needed her mom to identify herself on the voicemail twelve different times.
    She hadn’t bothered to turn her ringer back on the next morning until her headache went away. After listening to one message after another, each more worried and anxious than the previous one, the pain in Ray’s temples started to pulse again.
    She was still in the process of getting the nerve to call her mother back when the phone rang again. The cat, her cat, jumped off her lap and disappeared.
    “Hello?” she said.
    “Ray?”
    “Hi, mom.”
    “Ray?”
    “Yes, mom, what do you need?”
    “I’ve been trying to call you all night and all morning. I thought something might be wrong.”
    “You’re talking to me now, mom. What do you need?”
    “I thought something might be wrong.”
    Ray pulled the phone away from her ear, took a deep breath, then put the receiver back up to her mouth.
    “Nothing’s wrong, mom. I didn’t want to be bothered. It’s been a long week.”
    “You’re telling me. We just had two more caravans arrive.”
    “That’s good, mom.” But even as she said it, she knew what was coming next.
    “When are you coming down, honey?”
    “I don’t know. I guess after the school year is done. I don’t want to abandon my students.”
    “When will it be done?”
    “I don’t know, mom.  When it’s over.”
    When she closed her eyes, she thought of Eric storming out of her class, of Kelly and Debbie doing their best to be quiet while they cried. When she re-opened her eyes, her cat had returned and was rubbing against her ankle.
    A steady stream of purrs could be heard after she offered her hand and the cat started pushing the corner of its mouth against her knuckles.
    For some reason, she had never gotten around to naming it. It hadn’t been wearing a collar when it arrived at her doorstep, and she wasn’t sure if it was because the owner didn’t want anyone to know who had abandoned it or if it was because the cat had always been more of a neighborhood cat than a house pet. Instead of coming up with a new name for it when it arrived at her doorstep, she had simply begun calling it You .
    “Hey, You, you want some food?” and “You’re so cute, You,” and so on.
    She couldn’t think of what was keeping her from giving the cat a name.  It wasn’t as if she were going to leave it behind when she migrated south. The cat had come to depend on her. And her on it.