“DON’T TOUCH ME!”  The boy screams menacingly, his eyes wide and frightened like a caged animal.

It is 7:28 on a Friday morning.  I have just checked in.

Three staff members surround the boy down the hall.  Anger and insolence pour off of him like beads of sweat. Without touching him, they block his movement and herd him towards his classroom.  He knows that if he so much as lays a finger on any member of the staff he’ll be sent to jail.  It has come to that.  So taking a roundhouse swing, he punches the only thing he can find – a closed door.  The heavy door is unfazed, but the impact dislocates his knuckle and raises an ugly black and purple welt.  His hand immediately begins to swell. 

And thus the day begins for both of us.

For this angry, at-risk, teenager it is just another school day; another day abraiding against the system and trying to survive with some dignity intact.  For me, it is my very first day on the job, working as a substitute in the local school system.  Because I have some experience working with emotionally disturbed children in the past, I am immediately thrown to the wolves, filling in for a “behavior support” specialist who is out sick. 

I am assigned to a school for the last-chance behavioral head cases – the worst of the worst, the meanest of the mean - so bad that either the school or the court system has removed them from their regular routine and placed them here.   In a small, converted elementary school, isolated in the rural countryside, they go through their paces.  The best case scenario is that they actually learn something in the course of the day, but everyone has learned to settle for simply getting through the day without incident if possible. 

They know the drill.  When they step off the special bus in the morning and walk through the student entrance, they are met with: “Remove your shoes, take off your coats and sweat shirts, turn your pockets inside out and pull up  your pants legs so I can see the tops of your socks.”   Having done so, they are circled with a portable metal detector to make sure they aren’t carrying contraband or anything that can be used as a weapon.  No keys, no combs, not even pencils or pens.  Writing instruments are issued at the beginning of each class period and collected when they end.

I am assigned to the “Reflection Room”, a classroom with a locked door, sparse furniture and nothing of significance on the wall.  It is to the Reflection Room that students are sent when they become so disruptive that they have to be removed from their regular class.  They are sent there to reflect upon their actions and to complete some act of “consequences” before returning. 

The room is supervised by a sturdy, no-nonsense Hispanic woman who has been doing this sort of thing for over ten years.  Most of her day is uneventful, often the room is empty.  At other times the room houses one or two students working, pacing around or brooding at their desk quietly. Only occasionally does the room erupt in rage as out-of-control students are wrestled or herded down, where they rage about until they can rage no more.  In these instances she takes charge immediately. 

But today the Reflection Room is relatively quiet on my watch so my time is spent being called to one classroom or another to help out as needed.  I sit with one student in the hall when he refuses to leave his desk and is carried, desk and all, out of the classroom.  I run a math-bingo game for one teacher while she meets with a parent and I escort students, one at a time, down to the locked bathroom when they need to use it. 

Towards the end of the day, while outdoors tossing a football with the students on a recess period, one of the older boys becomes disruptive and breaks the spirit of his behavioral “contract”.  He is told to leave the game and to go indoors to the Reflection Room, but he refuses and walks off in a huff towards the far end of the grounds.

“Just shadow him,” one of the teachers instructs me, “just make sure he doesn’t hurt himself or try to run away.”  The teacher looks at me to see how I  react.  “Don’t worry,” he says calmly, “he’s a good kid, he’ll settle down pretty quickly.”

So I just walk with the young man, we say very little to each other, both of us appreciating the calm silence.  It is a chilly, gray day, full of early winter and with a promise of the year’s first snow.  It’s nice to have time to think.

Eventually he tires of walking aimlessly and sits slumped on a picnic table where he grabs a handful of acorns that have fallen from a large oak and starts arraigning them into patterns that resemble stars, crosses and arrows.

I collect more acorns and sit down.

“You ever do Ouija board?” he asks without looking up.

“Oh, once or twice when I was a kid,” I say, “but not for years.”

“Do you believe it works?” he asks.

“No.  Not really.  I believe that it tells you what you want it to say.  Try working a Ouija board with your eyes closed and you won’t get much.”

He nods and moves the acorns around carefully into the shape of a pentagon.

“My mom does Ouija.  She thinks it works.  She won’t make any decisions without asking her board first.”

Silence.

“What do you think?” I ask, handing him an acorn that has rolled off the table.

“Are you a Christian?” he eyes me suspiciously. 

“No” I answer truthfully.  It is the first time we make eye contact.

“Good,” he says with surprise and relief, “I can’t even talk to Christians, they’re all fucked up.”

I nod without comment. 

“How long are we going to sit out here?” I ask him.

“I dunno,” his mood again turns gray, “all day I guess… and you’ll just have to sit out here with me.”  He says this like it’s a death sentence.

“Actually, no,”  I reply, “in an hour or so…” I look at my watch, “… in fifty-three minutes, I get to go home.  PLUS I’m getting PAID while I sit here.  You on the other hand, are just getting yourself into more and more hot water every minute you sit… and you’ll still have to suffer the consequences eventually.  Why not just suck it up, go in, take your consequences and be done with it?”

He looks at me.

“It’s Friday,” I continue, “everybody wants to go home… they’re not going to do much to you.  Why let this carry over into next week?  It’ll just mess up your weekend.”

I shrug my shoulders and give him that “why not?” look.

“It’s all fucked up,” he mutters.

I can’t disagree.

“Oh, what the hell!” he grumbles as he scatters the acorns, shoves himself up from the table and trudges for the building with untied shoes and sloppy trousers slung half-way down his butt. 

What the hell indeed, I think, as I follow him through the door and down the hall.