The Year of the Gadfly Read Online Free PDF Page B

by her expression might have been Siberia.) I turned to see Iris Dupont moving briskly toward me, her long brown hair swinging behind her tiny body, her breasts bouncing, a wide smile on her little mouth. Iris walked through life like she was leading a marching band. She had a picture of Edward Murrow taped to the front of her binder, and she often sat through an entire class with a pencil tucked behind her ear. Of all my students she was the most eager, the most enthusiastic, and, unfortunately, the most exasperating. If there was one member of this adolescent elite who wasn’t going to sit back and passively accept the spoils of her trust fund, it was she. I recognized in her my own teenage intensity. But on the very first day she’d foiled the unity of opposition I tried to foster within the class. I had intended to create an alliance against the despot (me) that would eventually mature into respect as my subjects (the students) worked harder and harder to meet my demanding standards. But Iris bounded across the picket line and disrupted my planned student unity before it coalesced. I needed to regain the upper hand and return Iris to her place in the proletariat. But I had to tread carefully. That girl had ambition like the young Clark Kent had strength, and like Kent, she didn’t yet know how to harness her power.
    Iris walked straight toward me, and for a moment I was sure she was about to salute. I prepared to bar her way, but then her parents strode up, seemingly out of nowhere, clearing her a path through the doors. The Duponts presented as a nondescript pair in their well-tailored suits, but their simple looks were deceiving. I knew from frequent mentions at the last faculty meeting that these two were Superparents: parental mutants whose excess of money and social clout made them myopically bent on their child’s protection and success.
    As Mr. Dupont walked by, he looked me over like he was appraising a watch. As Iris passed, she smiled, but I returned the uncompromising frown that was quickly making me notorious among the student body.
    On the auditorium stage Headmaster Pasternak had stepped up to the lectern, his body rickety but implacable, like a battered fence that refuses to fall down. He’d been my junior-year English teacher, and even then he was a crusty old man who didn’t teach so much as creak. I remember him churning through the hallways, scattering students to their classrooms with all the force of a manual lawnmower. He was appointed assistant headmaster after I graduated, and when Elliott Morgan, the previous HM, retired, Pasternak took over the post.
    â€œI am delighted to see such a strong turnout for tonight’s event,” Pasternak intoned.
    As if a single junior or junior parent would pass on the opportunity to soak up even a droplet of sweat perspired from the foreheads of these panelists. And Pasternak knew it. He’d done everything in his power to cement Mariana’s place as the paragon of New England prep schools, including a new College-Based Education Initiative geared to giving Mariana students the upper hand in a college admissions system that had spun out of control. Not only would students declare academic majors, but standard courses like biology would also have specializations, such as microbiology. When Pasternak learned that I was involved with the UMass entomology project (the man has spies scouring half the educational institutions in the Northeast), he offered me a position and a hefty salary for my trouble.
    My UMass grant was pitifully small and the work didn’t even start until spring, so I welcomed the money. But there was another reason I agreed to come. As a student I’d never been given a fair shot at this school, and I liked the idea of returning with total immunity. So here I was, exonerated from my boyhood improprieties and energized as I hadn’t been in ages. If the classroom was a cell, then I was its nucleus. The