“The place is old,” Kristen said. “I think it opened at the turn of the century.”
“It looks wonderful. I’m amazed at the service.”
Kristen smiled. “The food here is quite excellent, and some of the waiters have been here for years.”
“What else is on the agenda?”
“Too early in the year for baseball,” Kristen said with a shrug. “Wrigley Field would have been killer. Let’s just walk around the loop and act as if we were tourists.”
“Sounds great to me,” I said with a grin.
“Everything sounds great to you,” Kristen pointed out.
“Everything that involves you… yes.”
“Sweet!”
The meal was as excellent as we expected. Kristen left a large tip.
After that wonderful weekend with Kristen, school almost seemed to be a let-down.
A high point of the day was after third period music class, when I showed Mr. Proilet some arrangements that I worked on over the vacation.
“Jim,” my teacher said. “These are getting better and better!”
“Thanks,” I said, a bit happy about the praise.
Pulling the last set of sheets from the bottom of the pile, Mr. Proilet looked at the conductor’s score and frowned. “Try as I might, I can’t place this tune. You didn’t put a title on this.”
I looked at the arrangement that drew my teacher’s attention and blushed. “This wasn’t meant for the band… at least, not yet.”
“Oh?”
“It’s a song that I’m working on writing. It’s not finished.”
“A song for your muse, huh?” Mr. Proilet asked with a gleam in his eye.
“Yeah,” I said, reddening even more. “Another song for Kristen.”
Mr. Proilet glanced at it for a few moments before handing that arrangement back to me.
The two of us stood near the doorway to the music room. Mr. Proilet looked around to make sure we were alone. “What did you do to Ms. Taylor, Jim? She seems furious today, and she seems to think that I’ve unfairly interfered in a discipline situation.”
“I don’t know,” I said with a sigh. “I avoided doing anything even remotely disruptive on Friday. I didn’t even open my mouth once. She seemed a bit more mollified. Maybe that’s the solution to whatever it is that is bothering her.”
“Well, I know for a fact that she’s definitely not mollified. In fact, I think she’s out for your blood for some reason.”
“Huh?”
“My boy, my advice to you is to be on your best behavior today. Ms. Taylor is angry about something and it’s about to explode.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, a bit worried at the seriousness of my teacher’s words.
“Just be on your best behavior.” Mr. Proilet seemed that he was about to say something more, but then shook his head and said, “Do you have your music room pass?”
“Yeah. It’s in my attaché case. The hall monitors know me; nobody asks me for it much anymore.”
“Keep it handy when you go to the lunchroom, OK?”
I shrugged. I opened the case and pulled out the pass.
“Good, Jim. Please tell Kristen that I’ll have the keyboard ready for her on Thursday.”
“All right.”
I left the music room feeling the paranoia that Mr. Proilet instilled in me. I walked slowly toward the end of the school where the cafeteria was located.
A voice jarred me out of my reverie. “Jim Crittenhouse?”
I didn’t recognize the voice, and I looked up to see a hall monitor glaring at me… the same hall monitor that previously let me pass without question since the beginning of the school year. “Yeah?”
“Hall pass,” the monitor said, her voice harsh.
Luckily, my pass was in my hand, since I heeded my music teacher’s advice. “Here.”
“It’s undated,” the lady said accusingly.
“Yes. It’s good for the rest of the school year. See where Mr. Proilet and the Assistant Principal signed it?”
The hall monitor scanned every inch of the pass, looking at me as if she just caught me sneaking out of the girls locker room.
Finally, the lady said, “Well, it seems mostly in order. Maybe your teacher should be issuing these once a week instead of for an entire school year. These things can be misused, you know.”
“I’ll let him know,” I said.
The hall monitor was about to give me back my pass, but then pulled it back, saying “Maybe I should keep this one.”
“Huh? You said it was in order!”
“I said it was mostly in order.”
The two of us stood in the hallway in confrontation. Other students passed by, slinking away behind the hall monitor’s back. The hall monitor barely noticed the other students, but was only intent on me for some reason.
I looked at the hall monitor’s name badge. I said, “Mrs. Sneely, maybe you should take me to the front office if you have a problem with my pass. You’ve accepted this pass many times before and there was never any problem with it until now. Maybe Mr. Yank can resolve this matter.”
The lady glared at me. Mr. Yank was the name everybody called Mr. Yankovitz, the school’s Principal. She knew that I just called her bluff. Of course, if she took me to the office, she’d be “abandoning her post,” allowing miscreants such as me to wander the halls causing all sorts of mischief. She also knew that there was nothing wrong with this pass. Looking as if I just forced her to suck a raw egg, she finally handed the pass back to me. “This is the last day I will accept this pass from you, young man. Have a proper pass next time, or I will indeed escort you to the office. Do you understand?”
I took the pass. “Yes, ma’am,” I answered, oozing the respect that I definitely did not feel for that woman.
“Get going to class!”
I walked quickly down the hall and out of range of the hall monitor from hell. Oh, yeah, I thought to myself. I’ve got to get to that important lunch class, don’t I?
In the lunchroom, Kristen, Patty, and Sherry were already eating.
It was Patty who noticed something. “What’s up, Jim?”
“I just got stopped by the Hall Monitor Gestapo!”
“Huh? Which one?”
“Mrs. Sneely,” I answered. “She was right outside the music room. She hasn’t asked me for my pass in over a month, and today it’s no longer good enough.”
“That’s weird,” Patty said.
“My poor, picked-on baby,” Kristen said, pursing her lips in mock kisses.
I took a few deep breaths to put the nasty incident behind me, and listened to the girls talk. About ten minutes before the end of the class, Patty turned to me and said, “Jim? Can the two of us talk in private?”
I looked at Kristen for permission. She simply shrugged.
Patty and I said good-bye to our friends, and we found another table that was mostly empty. “You are definitely upset, Jim. Is it about the Hall Monitor?”
I wondered how much to tell Patty. I figured that there wasn’t much harm in talking with her. “Yes,” I answered. “The weird thing about it was that Mr. Proilet warned me to have my pass out. It was as if he was warning me that something bad was about to happen.”
“That is weird,” Patty agreed. “Did he say anything else?”
“He told me that Ms. Taylor is on the warpath with me. I’ve been very quiet in her class, and she seemed maybe a bit closer to normal on Friday. I have no idea why she’s so angry at me all of a sudden. It doesn’t seem fair.”
“Is she the teacher who has you on detention?”
“Yeah,” I said.