Smitty Sandine managed to turn his life around during senior year. I honestly didn't think such a monumental feat was possible. Nobody else did either, but Smitty managed and he made a name for himself at Talcott High. Smitty happens to be in a few classes with me this year. We both know each other and grew up in the same neighborhood just a couple of blocks apart. Sometimes we'd stop and say hello to each other in the hall during passing period, but I wouldn't say we were anything more than acquaintances.
Smitty is the fat quiet kid in class; the strong silent type who usually keeps his feelings to himself. Nobody knew how diabolical he really was until Monday during fourth hour English. Smitty and I have Mrs. Cantrell for English this year. Unfortunately for Smitty, he had Mrs. Cantrell last year too. She is a truly awful woman; the personification of evil.
Mrs. Cantrell is old as dirt, and she's been teaching English at Talcott since the time of Christ. She is a tall skeletal woman with this ugly mop of curly reddish hair piled up in a nasty bun. She has an evil raspy voice, and her wrinkled face is a mask of clownish make-up applied with the accuracy of a dead drunk firing a loaded cannon. Since the first day of the school year, I've felt sorry for Smitty because Mrs. Cantrell always targets him for bullshit.
Other than committing the crimes of being fat and quiet, no one really knew why old Cantrell had such a fixation on punishing Smitty. Almost every day like clockwork our entire class bears witness to the hell Smitty catches:
Mrs. Cantrell loves to make a huge issue out of Smitty's penmanship. She often enjoys holding up his papers or calling him up to the blackboard just so she can point it out to the rest of us.
About a month ago, she accused Smitty of committing vandalism. Somebody wrote "Cantrell should burn in hell" in black permanent marker on a locker just outside her classroom door. It turned out that Rob Oberlin wrote it. Rob is in Mrs. Cantrell's first hour class and he's on the football team. He was pissed off at Cantrell because she failed him on a test and his coach benched him when he got wind of it. Of course, Mrs. Cantrell never apologized to Smitty.
One day, Mrs. Cantrell failed Smitty on a paper assignment. She held it up to the class and loudly said: "See Mr. Sandine? Do not be him. This is someone who is bad and is a failure. You will end up in jail one day if you are him."
Smitty almost always seemed to take these injustices in stride. But Mrs. Cantrell's most atrocious act of cruelty was committed against Smitty last year in freshman English.
Although he is quiet, Smitty sure likes to eat. His momma, Mrs. Sandine, is a jovial woman who volunteers a lot of time between Blake Methodist Church and the Talcott Booster Club. She also loves Smitty to pieces and likes to indulge her son. Old Cantrell had no idea that Mrs. Sandine happens to be one of the most respected members of the Booster Club. She also had no idea that Mrs. Sandine attended college with Mr. Bowen, the principal. Mrs. Cantrell sure is a fucking idiot.
It was Smitty's eighteenth birthday, and Mrs. Sandine packed a few moist and gooey cupcakes to go with his lunch. According to some of the kids who were in class that day, Smitty couldn't wait until lunch to tear into his mom's delicious homemade cupcakes. He sat in the back row near the ditto machine and started eating while old Cantrell droned on about proper sentence structures before making everyone open up their workbooks.
My friend, Jake Holder was sitting two desks away from Smitty near the window. He described things that day as being quiet and routine; almost boring. But when Mrs. Cantrell's eyes zeroed in on Smitty eating one of his mom's cupcakes, all hell broke loose. The old witch tossed aside the textbook she was reading from, and she promptly asked Smitty:
"Just what in the hell do you think you're doing in my class, Mr. Sandine?"
Smitty just kind of paused between bites and said his mom made him some cupcakes for his birthday. He told her that he just got hungry, but he's been paying attention the whole time. Smitty even apologized, but that wasn't good enough for Mrs. Cantrell.