THE TEACHER SURVEYS IT ALL
Otto looked at his students. How visually impaired were they? Sitting at their desks, Braille writers in hand, they all had some sort of eye clutter. Some wore sunglasses, others had milky orbs, a few sporting quite obvious glass or plastic prostheses...one poor little bastard in the back had apparently been a Thalidomide birth-no eyes (and not much of a nose) whatsoever.
You'd think society would just put these creatures out on an ice floe, or something. In graduate school, Otto had spent some time in Saudi Arabia, and had gotten the impression that any disability in an infant whatsoever condemned it to instant death-there wasn't any of the silly sentimentalism that the Western countries have for their cripples...you'd think euthanasia would be such a blessing for these people.
Such a shame-considering Otto's own upbringing, beaten by an abusive father, blue-collar pig that he'd been...and completely unappreciated by the public school system of Emeryville, California. Fortunately, he'd gone to Caltech in his early teens, but still...these little blinkers were so cherished...and subsidized by the State of New York.
And they were so dumb. Otto was posing as a math teacher, but these fourteen year olds were barely cognizant of arithmetic...so many of them, the director had apologized, had not gotten much education previous to entering the school. How sad.
And where was Daredevil? Half the adult staff, teachers, counselors and custodians alike, were visually damaged in some way, so they couldn't POSSIBLY be masquerading as a costumed hero, unless of course they were faking the blindness...and the others, the able-bodied, were barely that...fat, ungainly people, the sort that probably couldn't get decent positions in good private schools or colleges.
Otto droned on about square roots, et cetera, frustrated because he couldn't just write on a damn blackboard. He had to give it all verbally, and oh it was boring. On the other hand, he was enjoying moving his mechanical arms, because the kids couldn't see him, so he might as well have the metal appendages pick up his coffee, and not be encumbered by the cloak he'd had to wear in his interview with the Director.
Funny-the red haired kid in the front row-was he staring at Otto? It wasn't possible, was it? The boy-the Director had pointed him out to Otto earlier as actually an honors math student who was just in this backward class to tutor an especially dull and somewhat autistic student-WHAT A WASTE-but still, this Murray, or whatever his name was...he was completely blind, wasn't he?
MURRAY-OR WHATEVER HIS NAME WAS, IS DUMBFOUNDED
Oh my freakin' God. I could sense those tentacles anywhere, Matt thought. What the HELL is he doing here?
CECIL BEHAVES AS ALWAYS
"I need to talk to you, Cecil" Bentley said as she heard Cecil's voice laughing with that slut Tasha Forsberg in the hallway of the Languages wing.
"Yeah, what is it?" So coarse. "Bent, old girl, we're kind of busy."
And of course Tasha giggled. What a strumpet! Bentley knew Tasha gave big soul-hugs to even the geekiest boys, so they'd know how big her boobs were...why should their sightlessness deprive her of male attention?
"Just...just a minute, Cecil. You can go back to Trampa-Tasha in a minute."
"You whore, Bentley!" Tasha's voice was nasal, as always. Bentley had heard that Tasha lost her sight because an angry spouse had thrown lye in her face...
Cecil took Bentley by the arm and guided her roughly in a corner. "Look, are you going to give me grief because I haven't had time..."
"No, I'm late, Cecil. You know, no visit from Aunt Flo?" She hated being this vulgar, but...
"What is that to me?" His voice was lilting, and Bentley heard Cecil's cane begin tapping as he walked away from her, back to Tasha...
"It's your fault, asshole!" Bentley screamed this, but she knew, or at least she'd heard that when Cecil had impregnated the girl at his other school, he'd paid five students and two janitors to tell the authorities that she'd "been around"...so it was all up to Bentley.
Bentley was on her own.
