The Year of the Gadfly by Jennifer Miller Page B

woman whose girlhood iteration I had loved, and who, before she stopped speaking to me, had been my closest friend. My mother had spotted her in Nye months ago, and yet I had not run into her at the bookstore or the bar or the pharmacy. She was unlisted and, despite my efforts, untraceable.
    I stumbled into the bathroom. Without turning on the lights, I shook a couple of extra-strength Excedrin from the bottle (headache remedy and daily caffeine dosage all in one!). As I brushed my teeth, I ran a hand through the red mess of my hair. A little greasy but not too bad.
    Back into the dark bedroom, I put on the week’s final pre-ironed shirt and pants. I was out of clean socks, so I pulled yesterday’s from the hamper. I slid on my beat-up brown loafers, then remembered the snow and pulled on a pair of boots instead. I grabbed a banana from the kitchen and my satchel from the doorknob. In the car, I turned the defrost on high and pulled out of the parking lot—thick forest swinging away from me—and onto the road. My head throbbed with sleep. Cold and wet have always been my least favorite physical states. The doleful landscape rushed past as I maneuvered my Sube around the slick contours of Mountain Road. Within ten minutes the woods gave way to Mariana’s sweeping lawns, now covered in snow and blank silence.
    I turned onto school property and realized I’d inadvertently pulled into the student carpool line instead of the faculty entrance. Twelve years of the same daily routine were hard to shake.
    Inside the building I ran into Headmaster Pasternak conducting a tour for parental hopefuls. Most of the fathers were slicked and shined, their suits impeccably tailored, their bodies smelling of expensive aftershave. Despite the weather, the mothers wore high heels.
    The group walked down the hall with the detached confidence of CEOs. They paid no attention to the students who, in their haste to make the bell, did look a little like underlings sent to make Xeroxes and fetch coffee. Only one couple, clearly the outsiders of the group, seemed genuinely intrigued by the commotion of students changing classes. The wife wore a hemp tunic shirt and a gray braid down her back. Her husband had a dearth of hair on his head and a great deal of it over his lip. They whispered back and forth like kids on a field trip—the ones who lag behind and make trouble. They reminded me of my own parents.
    As I approached, I heard Headmaster Pasternak intone:
“
The Community Code is the foundation of this school, Mrs. Simpson, and our students—”
    Then Pasternak saw me and threw his hands up with joy. “Mr. Kaplan! Good morning!” He beamed as if I’d just sold him a winning lottery ticket. “Mr. Kaplan teaches freshman biology and sophomore chemistry,” Pasternak told the parents. “He’s an alum of the school and quite distinguished—BA from Stanford, PhD from UCLA, and quite a few publications at the young age of twenty-eight. We call him
Mr.
Kaplan at his own insistence, by the way . . .”
    Pasternak shook his head like he couldn’t believe a PhD would voluntarily choose not to flaunt his title. Whether he really believed this or whether it was for the parents’ benefit, I couldn’t tell.
    â€œMr. Kaplan is here as part of the College-Based Education Initiative I was describing.”
    â€œExcuse me, Mr. Kaplan?” A man in a pinstripe suit raised his hand like he was signaling for the check. “I’d like to know what you think about the school’s science facilities. I mean, are they up to date, technologically speaking?”
    â€œMr. Hughes,” Pasternak butted in, “our laboratories are brand new. We’ve taken great pains to provide the most up-to-date equipment.”
    â€œBut Mr. Kaplan, what’s your take? I can’t imagine that students at an elite school in the twenty-first century are still playing around with