Chapter Two: Candice
She knocked on the door again and muttered to herself that the best part of the new school was that her daughters wouldn’t have to go to school with these losers’ kids anymore. She had seen movement in an upstairs window that had yet to be broken. One of the faded floral bed sheets hanging askew as a makeshift curtain had swayed. She stepped back and cased as much of the house as she could without entering the backyard. It was against the law, but even more against her better judgment to wade into a herd of deranged dogs barking that sounded like the last thing an elk hears before being set upon by a pack of wolves.
Candice knew they had the money. She had checked in with the One Stop market down the street and the kid behind the counter mentioned that the teenaged son and the little girl, who attended second grade with Candice’s younger daughter, had come in five minutes apart from one another the day before, each with a different EBT card, and bought dozens of cases of energy drinks. That meant the parents had already sold the drinks to the deli out by the fairgrounds at half the price a distributor could offer, and pocketed the cash.
She wished she didn’t know all the tricks. She wished she wasn’t so compelled to learn about them. But she was. She needed to know. Other tenants would offer the stories and she would accept them. The tattlers wanted her to know that they weren’t like that. But from where Candice stood, even their honesty was suspect. They may pay their rent on time, but faked a disability to get the check to do so. She wondered if they thought she was that stupid, or if they had been on the dole for so long that their rationalizing had become their truth, or if they figured as long as they got her the money, she wouldn’t care where it came from.
Such was the case with her boss at the property management company. He didn’t care. Candice had shared some of the stories with him before, and in some of the more insidious cases wondered if they should call the sheriff’s department, when for instance a unit had become a meth pipeline or unmarked massage parlor or cock fight training camp. Her boss would just ask if they paid on time. And when she told him they did, because the criminals always did, he would ask if she liked her job. She needed it, so she would nod, and then look at local job postings when she got home to no avail.
Nothing else paid enough. She was raising two daughters on her own, with nothing but a monthly pittance coming from her husband. Not that he was struggling. His salary was officially small. There were baggage handlers for bigger airlines making more than he did as a pilot for a short-hopping regional carrier, but thanks to the woman he met on a trip who had experienced a financial windfall from her divorce, Candice’s husband was able to carry on as though he owned the fleet. Whenever her daughters spent the weekend with him, she braced herself for the tales of kiddie decadence that would follow them home, the trips to hotels in the big city with atrium restaurants inside where they ate sundaes and drank hot chocolate after a day at a baseball game or on a boat tour or down a zip line. She would act very excited for them, and then scream into her pillow after putting them to bed. She vowed to wait him out, for the girls to come to some conclusions regarding why Dad danced around the question of whether they could live with him, or for his sugar mama to dump him. Whichever came first.
The charter school was the best thing to happen on her side since the divorce. At the information meetings she attended, she had yet to recognize any of the disastrous parents from her daughters’ school or from her property management rounds. And she figured even if there were some kids from the rentals who ended up at the charter, their parents were at least paying enough attention to notice that another option had become available.
Unlike the food stamp scammers she was forced to badger.
“I know you’re in there!” she hollered up at the second story. It wasn’t going to make a difference, but she wanted them to know.
The house was part of a small development of newer homes that was supposed to stretch for another quarter mile. The curbs, sidewalks, and driveways had already been poured. But the market clattered after the first phase was complete, so the developers foreclosed, the homeowners fled, and the remaining sidewalks and driveways led nowhere. Eventually a faceless speculator swooped in to buy the abandoned houses of the first phase and turn them into rentals, and here stood Candice.
She looked over at the row of driveways that fed into the row of vacant lots. She thought of the new school that would be starting from the ground up, and the hope that it would provide for people like herself, who wanted some distance from people like this, people who slithered into houses that once meant something to someone.
There was an orientation meeting that evening. She was going to bring the girls and learn about what sort of help the charter needed from the parents to prepare for the following school year. She was looking forward to getting involved.
“Go ahead,” she smiled this time as she called up to the bed-sheet laden windows. “Stay in there.”
She turned to go, but once again caught sight of some movement. She looked back up and saw the girl from her daughter’s second-grade class standing in a part of the window where the sheet couldn’t reach. The girl stared down at Candice with no discernable emotion. Before Candice could decide whether to wave at her, a hand reached out from behind the sheet and yanked the girl behind it.
The girl was still on her mind as she drove to the orientation with her daughters. She almost asked her youngest what she knew about her classmate, but didn’t feel like providing an explanation for Zoey should her daughter ask why she was curious. Candice wanted this evening to be about looking forward.
And indeed her conscience was sprinkled with pixie dust as they pulled into the recreation center where the meeting was scheduled to take place. Visions of catatonic children starting from unkempt windows were replaced by little girls in horse riding pants and little boys in soccer jerseys flowing through the play structures.
Candice stood to the side and beamed as Zoey ran to join the climb. Her older daughter, Mia, stayed by her side, feeling a bit too grown up for a playground, but wanting a comfortable place to survey the small groups of fifth and sixth graders that huddled randomly around the park. Mia was the one who had not protested at all about transferring to the new school, as whatever ties she had to any kids in her class were quite loose, while Zoey had howled about the change, thanks to her conviction that her classmates were friends for life. And now it appeared to Candice that the same sociability that attached Zoey to her old school would lead to an easy transition, while Mia’s apathy would impede her embrace of the new.
“Recognize anyone?” Candice asked.
Mia shrugged. “Nobody exciting.”
“Are you bringing any excitement to the party?”
The eye roll Candice expected didn’t happen. Mia actually seemed to be considering what she said. Candice would have been less stunned had her ex-husband called and begged her to take him back. She wanted to keep up the momentum.
“A fresh start,” she said, hoping her words echoed what her daughter was thinking.
Mia drifted away from her side, not in the direction of any particular clique, but to create some distance in the interest of drawing an invitation from one of the circles.
Candice smiled and winked at her. Mia returned a suppressed smile that she then used as the basis of a pleasantly preoccupied expression she maintained as she scanned the horizon of peers, looking for a signal.
One group apparently gave her one, as her smile broadened and she headed in the direction of a gaggle filled with girls Candice didn’t recognize, which put Candice’s mind at ease since the people she knew best in the community were those she wished she didn’t know. One of the girls wore a pair of shorts that Candice would never let Mia wear, but the others provided a sound enough first impression.
Candice inhaled with deep contentment that grew even deeper as she exhaled, then turned her attention back to the playground, where Zoey was already hanging from the center of the geodesic
dome of monkey bars, dangling face to face and enmeshed in conversation with one of the girls who had just come from horse riding lessons. Zoey saw Candice looking at them and dropped from the bars so she could wave and gesture.
“Mom!” she hollered. “This is my new friend Madison!”
Candice waved back and tried not to look too excited over the fact her playmate wore jodhpurs and a polo shirt rather than the variations on dirty pajama pants and frayed hoodies that summarized the fashion at their current school. She was calculating the number of days until the academic year ended and the new one would start when a woman’s voice interrupted her math.
“Yet another gorgeous day,” the voice said.
“It certainly is,” Candice turned into the conversation and deduced that the woman was Madison’s mother.
“Is it ever going to rain again?”
“We sure need it.”
“The dust at the equestrian center,” the woman shivered. “You’d swear it was August.”
“I’ll bet.”
“It’s like the kind of weather you see in movies after humanity has been wiped out, or just before the meteor hits.”
Candice chuckled, nervous that she couldn’t keep up. She was relieved when the woman switched to introductions.
“Jo Jo,” she extended a hand.
“Candice,” she shook it.
“Your daughter is very friendly.”
“So is yours.”
“Only if the other kid initiates.”
“That’s like my older daughter.”
“Is she coming here too?”
Candice nodded. “She’s in sixth grade.”
“Hopefully they can get a charter high school started once the elementary settles in.”
“That would be nice.”
“We got tired of commuting to St. Bonnie’s, but we’ll do it again once Maddie hits freshman year if we have to. It’s a shame the only good private school is thirty miles away.”
“What about Trinity?”
Jo Jo sniffed. “I said good private school.”
Candice played along.
“Oh,” Jo Jo put a hand over her heart as though about to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. “My God. Do your girls go to Trinity?”
“No, no,” Candice assured her, then changed the subject. “So I guess they’re going to talk about the location tonight, how they’re getting it ready.”
“Ugh,” Jo Jo grunted. “I hear about that every night. My husband is one of the contractors helping out with the renovation.”
“That’s nice of him.”
“It really is a stretch. He’s so busy during the week with the prison construction. He’s got the contract to do the electrical work. I hardly see him. Maybe that’s the whole idea.”
Jo Jo laughed. Candice joined her, and steered away from the subject of husbands.
“Kind of funny how they’re building another prison,” she said. “You’d think one would be enough for the same area.”
Jo Jo looked confused for a moment before realizing what Candice was referring to.
“You mean the state hospital?”
“Whatever they want to call it. Looks like a prison to me.”
“I guess that’s nicer than ‘insane asylum’.”
“Or ‘loony bin’.”
“A lot of electrical work to be done out there, too.”
“Shock therapy?” Candice kidded.
Jo Jo smiled, but didn’t quite laugh. Candice decided she had better follow up with something less sarcastic.
“I can certainly see why your husband would want to work on a school for a change.”
Jo Jo was happy to be talking about herself again.
“Fortunately it’s not totally pro bono. He’s volunteering his time, of course, but at least Rod Pluma’s paying for the materials on the school project.”
“The produce guy?” Candice had seen the Pluma logo on some trucks and hats.
“Rod’s way beyond that now,” Jo Jo emphasized. “He sold all his local businesses to become a Vice President of some international ag corporation. I forget the name.”
Candice was impressed. “And his kids are going here?”
“His youngest, Arturo.”
“Wow.”
“He’ll be in sixth grade, with your older daughter.”
“Great.”
The news just kept getting better.
“So needless to say,” Jo Jo circled back to her original point, “I’m looking forward to hearing more about the philosophy of the school. As fascinating as converting an abandoned tractor dealership into a school may be, I’d like to know what’s going to be happening inside of it.”
“I’ve come to all the information meetings,” Candice said, proud to know something that Jo Jo didn’t. “So I’ve heard Dale talk about the curriculum before. But I never get tired of it. He does such a great job.”
“Dale Copeland. He was head of Special Ed in the district, right?”
“Yes.”
“I imagine it’s going to be difficult to offer much of that right away.”
“Special Education? He hasn’t really mentioned it.”
“There are so many basics that need to be in place first.”
“I suppose.”
Jo Jo looked out at the playground and seemed to be measuring her next statement. Candice joined her, turning her attention to the pulse of children streaming through all the levels of the playground equipment. She didn’t want to find herself agreeing with what Jo Jo might say next, so she decided to keep from hearing it.
“He’s done a lot of research on other charter schools and private schools,” she said. “He has some great ideas on what works.”
“Good,” Jo Jo said, appearing to let go of whatever she was thinking.
They didn’t sit next to each other during Dale’s introduction. Jo Jo saw some friends who called her over into the far corner of the conference room when the adults were summoned in for the start of the meeting, but Candice couldn’t imagine anyone being disappointed in what he had to say.
As he often did, Dale started out by unrolling a reproduction of the Declaration of Independence which borrowed Jefferson’s vocabulary of the need to “dissolve the political bands” with a public school system rife with a “long train of abuses”. He read his script with enough levity to earn some giggles from those who may otherwise find the analogy rather melodramatic, but still inspired plenty of nodding heads and furrowed brows on those who owned a lot of t-shirts featuring eagles and calligraphy.
Upon rolling up the prop, he spoke in more specific terms of kids having a say in their school and their education. He envisioned a student panel that would help formulate some of the rules, and have a vote on disciplinary measures, a jury of peers in a sense. He wanted each student to always be working on a long-term project of their choice that would run parallel to the standard subjects, something like a Master’s thesis that would require planning and many stages of development: constructing a piece of furniture, publishing a web comic, recording a video series. And as each one finished, they would present it to the school before starting a new one.
He ignited the room with the prospect of what the school could be, and it didn’t come across as egotistical, at least not according to Candice. It was about the ideas, not him, ideas he had found that excited him, ideas he wanted others to be excited about, too. As if to prove that the enthusiasm was already spreading, he announced that over two hundred applicants had applied for the nine teaching positions available, and that interviews would be conducted over the upcoming weeks.
There were approving murmurs in the audience, grunts of recognition and sighs of epiphany. When he asked if there were any questions, there were none. Instead there were statements of approval and gratitude.
Dale was humbled, and seemed embarrassed by the praise after the initial offerings. He got them to start asking questions by bringing up the student uniforms and the parent volunteer hours th
at were required.
Some parents wanted ideas on how they could fulfill their volunteer obligations without being on campus during school hours.
“Can you send my child home with some stapling or copying you need done?”
“Can I type up some documents?”
“Can I just volunteer at fundraisers?”
“Can I water the plants on the weekends?”
But most of all they wanted to know what kind of accessories their children could wear as part of their uniform.
“Is a scarf okay?”
“Can my son wear a long-sleeved shirt under his school polo?”
“Does the long-sleeved shirt have to be a certain color?”
“Are colorful socks okay?”
“What color jackets can they wear?”
As cool as Dale was trying to play it, the amount of uniform questions did seem to take him by surprise. When it was clear that he was starting to make up policies as he went along, he chuckled and announced that this would be a good topic for a student panel to handle over the summer. A stocky woman with a voice twice her size volunteered to organize such a panel to applause and laughter.
Dale made a show of asking for her name and assuring her they would talk after the meeting. Then he took advantage of the merrymaking to yield the floor to Rod Pluma.
Rod and Dale exchanged a hug as they switched places. Pluma launched into his portion right away in order to capitalize on the energy in the room, and gain some volunteers for the renovation project. He appealed to people’s good old-fashioned desire to see the fruits of one’s labor, along with a just-as-old-fashioned competitive streak by playing the renovation against the prison under construction just a bike ride away.
“What do we want the focal point of our community to be?” he asked, finding a rhythm of his own once enough time had lapsed from Dale’s display and he could no longer borrow from the residual buzz.
“Which space will our lives revolve around? That John Deere sign above the tractor dealership stood lit for longer than many of us have lived here, longer than many of us have lived, period. But that building is not being torn down, thanks to us. I’ve spent my life growing things. Lettuce, strawberries, almonds, grapes, you name it…”
“A fortune!” Dale chimed in, drawing some laughs from the audience.
“I’ve grown some businesses…” Rod grinned and nodded, appreciating the moment as he silently regained the tempo of his speech.
“…And now I want to grow a school, grow a future for our kids that doesn’t include metal bars. Let’s keep them out of that new space by working with the old one.”
Candice felt as though she was at a tent revival meeting, and salvation was reached by building this school, and donations were in the form of time rather than money. She stood to be included. She wanted to be involved.
She wanted to pick up her kids from school and remember when she had been inside the building back when it was an abandoned tractor dealership. She wanted to be a yard duty who helped build the yard. She wanted to be a tutor in Zoey’s class (rather than Mia’s class, because the thought of a sixth grade classroom intimidated her), and be able to glance around the room at all the bulletin boards she helped install. So she volunteered her name for every weekend that the girls were scheduled to be with their father. She would be over the amount of required hours before the school even opened, but would keep volunteering anyway.
When the meeting concluded, she tried unsuccessfully to catch Jo Jo’s eye before rounding up Mia and Zoey for a trip to the frozen yogurt shop.
The shop was a couple of shuttered doors down from the grocery store that tried to anchor the unmoored shopping center with the unnecessarily large parking lot three blocks from their house. The girls were pleased, even Mia, since they associated even the most humble luxury with their dad.
Candice thought there would be a bit of a rush there after the meeting, but there was only an elderly man paying for his yogurt, and both of the wobbly Rubbermaid tables were available for seating. She warned the girls not to load up on too many candy toppings and wondered where everyone else could be.
They claimed one of the tables and Candice tried not to gush over how excited she was about Live Oak Charter Academy, estimating that if she pushed it too hard, there would be some pushing back, at least from Mia. She stuck to one of Dale’s talking points to keep her tone level.
“Did you notice what the initials of Live Oak Charter Academy spell?”
Zoey took a moment to visualize it. “LOCA?”
“That’s right. And do you know what that means in Spanish?”
“Life,” said Mia.
Zoey repeated the word “life” in a low, long voice, as though imitating a foghorn.
“Smarty,” Candice complimented Mia. “So how do you think life is going to be there?”
Zoey gave two thumbs up and a wide-eyed grin with yogurt brimming from her lips. Mia nodded with reserved approval, which compared to her usual reactions, was about the equivalent of her little sister’s exuberance.
“We’ll know who your teachers are by next month,” Candice said. “Mr. Copeland said they’ve had over two hundred people apply.”
Mia opened her eyes as wide as her little sister’s for the first time in months, stunned that anyone would be interested in where they were.
“Some are probably from local districts who want a change,” Candice acknowledged. “But with that many, some are bound to be from other parts of the country, or at least the state.”
“Or the world!” Zoey raised her arms.
“Times must be tough,” Mia muttered.
“I like all the different colors for the shirts,” said Zoey. “Can I get one of each?”
Candice laughed. “Just like the parents. All they wanted to talk about was the uniforms.”
“But I’m six,” Zoey said.
“Exactly,” Candice agreed. “I don’t know what their excuse is.”
“Did anyone ask how high we can wear our skirts?” Mia asked.
Candice was delighted with how bright her girls were, how observant, and how the evening was playing out.
“No,” she said. “But you would think the parents of that girl in the group you were hanging out with might want to know.”
Mia scoffed. “Brit? She’s nothing. She’ll obey when school starts. We were thinking of Kimmy Althouse.”
“Who’s Kimmy Althouse?” Candice asked.
“I played on a soccer team with her in fourth grade. You don’t remember her?”
“It was a bunch of kids wearing the same jersey all chasing after the ball.”
“She had a big mouth. Now she has big boobs, too.”
Zoey giggled.
Candice scowled. “How do you know?”
“One of the girls showed us Kimmy’s Instagram feed on her phone. It’s like a thousand selfies with the same pose.”
“And she’s coming to Live Oak?”
“Yup.”
“Why wasn’t she there? Or her parents?”
Mia shrugged.
“How are they going to register?” Candice asked. “How will they know the rules?”
“I don’t know, Mom. But our class isn’t full, so Mr. Copeland probably isn’t going to be turning anybody away.”
“It isn’t full?”
“Nope. The younger grades are, but not from, I think, fourth grade up. At least that’s what some of the kids were saying.”
Candice nodded and told herself it was still early, there was still time, that really busy and successful families often don’t pay attention to local news items.
Zoey once again bellowed the word “life” in her slow foghorn voice, long enough for Mia to snap at her to stop. Candice asked Mia to be nice to her sister, but also let the word “stop” echo in her thoughts, and remind her to not project too much into the future.