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The rest of the population begins to stir. The students come from every direction, by bus, on foot, in every size and shape of car. Some slouch through the doors, some bounce, some seem so fully grown, others are toddlers; they wear shorts and parkas and black trench coats; they are dyed and pierced and bespectacled and mascaraed and pumped up and wasted away; and none of them are typical--there is no such thing as average.
As they come in the front doors, they pass a big display case holding a new mural that is under construction by some seniors. THE THINGS WE VALUE AND BELIEVE IN, it says in bright letters, with white clouds and smiling kids made of construction paper and all the students' names and thoughts pasted on in little fortune-cookie strips of revelation. DREAMS, says one. MIRACLES. LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT. ART. But lest anyone mistake this for a giant Hallmark card, there is much more here. LONELINESS. GREED. AN EYE FOR AN EYE. PARTIES. WEAKNESS. DRAGONS. ABSTINENCE. JUSTICE. WEALTH. PEOPLE CAN CHANGE.
Nurse Buss slips down to the cafeteria to haul back a bucket of ice. "My major cure," she notes. "When in doubt, put ice on it." She flushes an amorous couple from the girls' room in the back. "We were just talking," the boy protests. The kids are already lining up outside her office: one girl is there for iron pills to treat her anemia--a poor substitute, notes Buss, for what she really needs, which is a decent diet. Another has a bruised hand from a fight over the weekend; a boy wants Tylenol for a stomachache; she gives him baking soda and water.
A girl who forgot her inhaler is having an asthma attack. Buss draws her a glass of tap water and instructs her to gulp it down quickly; the shock of the intrusion, she says, often releases the asthmatic constriction. Part 2 of this home remedy is a shot of Diet Coke; the caffeine sometimes has a similar effect. Outside, the marching band is rehearsing the borrowed strains of On Wisconsin. Buss predicts, "By November I'll be able to walk out there and play it myself."
Senior Sarah Bradberry sits on the floor, reading The Whipping Boy for her children's literature class. She scribbles answers to questions printed on purple paper, homework she should have done over the weekend. The class, she says, is easy. All the students do is interpret books written at third-grade levels. "I need the English credit to graduate," she says. Just down the hall, you see another kid, copying answers from one purple sheet to another.
Two kids wearing hats spot Detective Dreher in the hall and whip them off; this year there is a no-hat rule. "Thank you, gentlemen," he says. The school doesn't want anyone wearing anything that might identify them as a member of an exclusive group; last year, says an openly gay student, the kids who harassed him the most were known as the White Hatters, after their headgear. The administration also worried about kids' starting to wear gang colors.