The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman by Ben H. Winters Read Free Book Online

one more piece of evidence,” Bethesda went on. “When I asked other teachers what they knew about Ms. Finkleman, no one knew much, except for Ms. Zmuda, who once sat next to her in Nurse Kelly’s office, getting faculty flu shots. She saw that Ms. Finkleman has a tattoo on her arm. A tattoo of …” (Bethesda ostentatiously flipped open her SPDSTAMF spiral notebook to read, though of course she knew the quote by heart.) “‘A kind of a strange-looking man with long hair and piercing eyes.’”
    Then Bethesda put down the spiral notebook and read aloud again from
The Fabulist:
“The Red Herrings weren’t afraid to wear their influences on their sleeves—sometimes literally. Little Miss Mystery proudly sports a tattoo of Ozzy Osbourne on her right arm.”
    Shelly held aloft a picture of Ozzy Osbourne, who (Bethesda explained) was once the lead singer of a band called Black Sabbath. And he was definitely a strange-looking man, with long hair and piercing eyes. Bethesda crossed her arms across her chest and wrapped up in her best closing-argument voice. “There you have it, my friends. Mystery … solved! ”
    The classroom burst into applause. Bethesda’s tough lawyer-lady face broke into a wide smile, which grew even wider when she looked over and saw that Mr. Melville, for once, was smiling, too.
    Then there came a voice from the back of the room. It was Tenny Boyer, who in no one’s memory had ever volunteered a classroom comment, in Mr. Melville’s class or in any class, ever.
    “Play the record again!”

9

“GREENSLEEVES”
    As soon
as the bell rang, Ms. Finkleman knew something was wrong.
    Sixth period was seventh-grade Music Fundamentals, and it usually took the students of seventh-grade Music Fundamentals at
least
five minutes to get settled. Five minutes for the birds to stop their wild chattering, for the wildebeests to stop snorting and huffling about, for the orangutans to stop howling and hooting and hurling pencil erasers.
    Today, however, fifteen seconds after the bell, Ms. Finkleman looked out from behind her music stand and twenty-four pairs of eyes stared back. Twenty-four pairs of hands, folded in twenty-four laps. Twenty-four students, quiet, composed, and intent. If Ms. Finkleman didn’t know better, she might even have said
respectful.
She had heard other teachers speak of respectful studentsbefore, but had always thought it was just a legend, like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. But now, here they were: a roomful of children waiting quietly for her to begin teaching.
    Ms. Finkleman felt a sharp pang, which she recognized as her keen agouti instinct for impending danger. A little voice sounded insistently in her ear.
    Something is wrong,
said the voice.
Run!
    “Um … good afternoon,” began Ms. Finkleman tentatively. “We will, uh, we will start with song number four in your books. That’s ‘Greensleeves.’”
    She paused for the big burst of noise that always erupted when she asked her class to do anything. But not today. No one shouted. No one collapsed into unprompted gales of laughter. No one got up to sharpen a pencil. No one farted or sneezed or coughed a loud on-purpose cough. They flipped their songbooks open to song number four, looked up, and waited. Ms. Finkleman heard her heart beating in the eerie silence of the room.
    She cleared her throat and started teaching.
    “Okay. Now, ‘Greensleeves’ is probably the most well known of the folk songs we’re presenting this spring at the Choral Corral. And it’s, um, it’s really quite beautiful. As I believe I mentioned Friday, it was written in the late1500s. The authorship is uncertain, although—” “Ms. Finkleman? ”
    She looked up. It was Todd Spolin. Todd had long, stringy brown hair, and his face was perpetually squinty. He was the kind of kid who slouched way down low in his chair, snapping his gum, aggressively uninterested. Except for today. Today he was raising his hand, smiling pleasantly, and waiting