Final Grades

Sebastian Greaves woke to his alarm at 5:15 and slapped the old clock, knocking his school badge onto the floor. Some mornings he hoped the clock would stop in the night. One morning of reprieve after eighteen years of perfect attendance didn’t seem like much to ask.

He sat up anyway.

In the bathroom, he flipped the switch and a bulb above the mirror popped. He stood on the cold tile, mentally adding light bulbs to his shopping list, then reached for his toothbrush. The wintergreen woke him more effectively than the alarm had.

He dressed in faded slacks and a shirt that might have been fashionable in the nineties, retrieved his badge, and slipped the lanyard over his head.

The morning news was discussing another bill to raise teachers’ pay. Sebastian put a filter in the coffee maker.

“I’ve seen this movie before,” he muttered. “It’ll be a cold day in hell.”

He spread cream cheese on a half-toasted bagel. Behind him, the coffee dripped into the pot, each drop distinct beneath the voices on the television.

Outside, the October air was cool and damp. His badge tapped against his chest as he walked to the car. Tap, tap, tap. Styx’s “Miss America” resumed halfway through the second chorus when he started the engine. He shifted into first and drove, the cylinders’ ticking fading as the engine warmed.

---

The parent drop-off line already stretched around the corner. He drove past it into the faculty lot and found someone in his usual space.

“What a jackass.”

He parked two spaces over. Probably a substitute. Every veteran teacher knew better.

His classroom smelled stale. He switched on the thermostat, dropped his backpack beside the desk, and opened his laptop as the ventilation began to hum.

Two parents wanted to know why their children were struggling. A retirement consultant wanted to schedule a meeting. The principal wanted quarter grades finalized by the end of the day.

“Shit.”

Sixty projects waited beside his laptop.

It was one of his favorite assignments:

Write a two- to three-page biography of a figure from the American Revolution who lived in the colonies. Your subject need not have supported independence. Then write a one-page diary entry that person might have written.

Some of the diary entries were little more than lists of dates. Others made him forget he was reading lined notebook paper. Those were the ones he asked permission to save for next year’s classes.

He pulled the first project from the stack. Sixty in one day. He wouldn’t have much time to enjoy them.

He finished three before the first bell. First period was his conference period; he managed eight more in those fifty minutes. When the bell rang again, he looked at the stack. It barely seemed smaller. The ventilation hummed overhead.

“Morning, Mr. G!”

Julie stood beside his desk, holding both straps of her backpack.

“Have you graded our projects yet?” she asked, trying very hard to sound casual.

“Not yet, Julie. They’ll be in the gradebook today.”

He gave her a small smile. She returned it and took her seat.

Somewhere in the stack was hers. He wanted to give it more than five minutes.

“Good morning, class.”

A few students muttered greetings. Most stared back at him.

“Today, you’ll work in groups of three or four to make a poster comparing the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution.”

Several students sighed and looked around for their friends.

“Is this for a grade?” Jason asked.

“What do you think, Jason? Everything is a grade in here.”

Jason looked down at his desk. Sebastian turned to the board, although there was nothing else he needed to write.

The students moved into groups. Most appeared to be working. He sat down and reached for another project.

“Mr. G, can we have five in our group?”

He answered, found his place, and picked up his pen.

“Do we have to do pictures?”

Between questions, he could hear pencils scratching across paper. A chair leg squeaked. Someone clicked a pen, stopped, then started again. Sebastian read the same paragraph twice.

---

The remaining classes blurred together. He graded seven more projects between interruptions, then three during lunch. He never got around to eating.

Finally, the students left.

For a few moments, the silence was a relief. Then he became aware of the stack again. Thirty-nine projects. He had promised they would be done today.

Out in the hall, the janitor pushed a broom past his door. Sebastian almost called good night, but the man had already gone by.

He pulled the next project toward him.

Jason.

Sebastian sighed, then worked his way through the cramped handwriting. It wasn’t that bad. Jason had confused Samuel Adams with John Adams and credited John Hancock with writing the Constitution, but there was some effort here. At least it wasn’t AI drivel.

He wrote a few corrections, put a large 78 at the top, and circled it.

The next project was better. The one after that was worse. He read, wrote, circled, and moved each to the finished pile.

After number forty, he stood to stretch. His ears rang and he steadied himself against the desk.

“Really shouldn’t have skipped lunch.”

The teachers’ break room had the same gray walls and peeling paint as the rest of the school, but it also had a vending machine. He fed it two dollar bills and pressed D4 and E8.

The spiral rails turned with a mechanical whir that filled the little room. It reminded him of the manufacturing plant where he’d worked before teaching. He’d hated having to shout over the machinery just to speak to the person beside him.

A bag of barbecue chips fell. Then a chocolate bar.

The second clunk seemed to hang in the air.

He opened the chips on the way back. Every time he reached into the bag, the foil crackled beside his ear.

The stack was waiting on his desk. He could have sworn it had been shorter when he left.

He set the chocolate aside and picked up the next project.

A Day in the Life of Thomas Paine, by Julie Harold.

He sat a little straighter.

She had done the research. The quotations supported her claims; the diary entry sounded like someone with a life beyond the events in the textbook. He slowed down. At the bottom of the last page, he turned back to the first and read a passage again.

It was the best work he’d seen on this assignment in years.

He wrote “103! Amazing work!” across the top and circled it. He pictured Julie trying to look unsurprised when he handed it back tomorrow.

BANG!

Sebastian jerked in his chair.

The furnace. Somewhere down the hall.

“Christ Almighty. This place is going to fall apart someday.”

He placed Julie’s project on the finished pile and took another. Nineteen left. He would have liked to write her a longer comment. Perhaps tomorrow, before class.

The scratch of his pen grew louder with every note. The next student had made Thomas Jefferson a general at Bunker Hill. Sebastian underlined the sentence. The pen caught on the paper.

BANG.

He lifted the pen and tried again.

Another project claimed John Smith had married Pocahontas on the White House lawn. He read the sentence twice, looking for something he had missed.

BANG—BANG!

He wrote a question mark in the margin. A large one.

There were fewer projects now. He checked the clock, then realized he hadn’t noticed the time. He checked again.

The next page was gibberish. He could make out individual words, but they wouldn’t form a sentence. He followed a line with the tip of his pen and lost his place halfway across.

BANG!

He set it on the finished pile.

Three left.

Ten minutes. He could finish three in ten minutes.

There were drops of red ink on the next cover page. He moved it away from the finished work. Another drop appeared between the student’s first and last names.

He held his pen still.

BANG.

Two left.

This one was covered in red. It spread from the top of the page, passing over the title and down through the first paragraph. He leaned closer. He could still see the bottom few lines.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

The last project.

He laid it in front of him and smoothed the page. All he could see was red. The paper. His hand. The desk. On the floor, the unopened chocolate bar lay beside his shoe.

He tried to find a place to write the grade.

BANG!

Silence.

He waited for the next sound. The ventilation. The scratch of his pen. Anything.

His fingers loosened. He watched the pen fall, saw it strike the floor and splash in the small pool of blood at his feet.

He heard nothing.

Sebastian closed his eyes and smiled.