Here she was, a black teacher, one of the few who remained at the school, the rest quitting after a year, moving on to one of the better-funded districts if they lucked out into a position, or they quit the field altogether. She’d stayed, and each day she tried again at connecting with her students, believing she could help them a little along the brutal path of their lives. Javion should be appreciative, but he never said anything, looked bored half the time, and his passiveness pissed her off—the way he made a mockery of her and the work she put into her classroom planning. Every day she’d dreaded seeing him a little bit more, seeing him judge her while putting in such minimal effort himself.

Finally, having had enough, one day she told him to hold back after class. The school had instituted a new policy that students couldn’t carry their bookbags around, so he stood in front of her holding the mess of his binder and textbook, papers sticking out of both.

“I got to go to my next class. If I’m late I’ll get detention and—”

“It’s okay, I’ll write you a note,” she interrupted. “Look, Javion—” She stopped, and took a minute to think about what she wanted to say, how best to say it. “You’ve got to participate more. I’m trying and I need you to try too.”

He’d shrugged her off. Even after she was trying to reach out and help. He kept looking over her shoulder toward the door, shifting his feet, impatient for her to get this talk over with. “Is that it? Because, lady, I hafta go.”

Lady. His casual disrespect made her want to scream. “Have to go,” she corrected. “We just had a lesson on this. You don’t remember?”

Javion ignored her question. He was waiting her out, hoping she’d get through with what she wanted to say and then he’d be free. He was treating her as if she was someone meant to suffer through and not the other way around. “And no, that’s not it,” she’d snapped. She hadn’t meant to, but there was something about him—it wasn’t like he was the first apathetic student she’d ever had, but he unnerved her more than the others. Javion met her eyes and she thought the corner of his mouth upturned a little, into a slight smirk, but she couldn’t be sure.

“Don’t you want to be better than this? Do you care at all? Because from what I see it looks like you don’t. I want to teach students who give a shit about their education.”

“Whatever,” he said, and that was it. Nothing else. She didn’t know what else to do, what else to say, so she sighed and wrote him a note for his next class and told herself to forget it.