“Every Friday, from now until the end of the school year, the six of you will leave my classroom at two p.m. and come into Room 501. You’ll sit in this circle and you’ll talk. When the bell rings at three, you’re free to go home.”
This is the catalyst for the narrative. The plot is dependent upon the fact that the teacher in room 501, Ms. Laverne, has come up with a rather unique decision for occupying school time. Room 501 is not Ms. Laverne’s regular classroom, but what used to be the school’s art room. One might well think that hearing this proposal of having an hour of free time to do nothing but talk would be greeted with cheers, but the students are strangely resistant. One inquires why this experiment can’t just as well be conducted in their regular classroom. The answer is also unique in that Ms. Laverne makes it clear that she doesn’t want to be close enough to hear what the students are talking about. It is their room and their time and their decision only about what subjects are suitable for open discussion. Even still, the reaction is negative as the students seem to rather oddly unwelcoming to what seems like the dream come true of most kids in school.
“That’s stupid…We could be talking in class if we wanted to be talking. You trying to change the art room into the A-R-T-T room—A Room To Talk."
As is of then the case with these kinds of things the name by which this opportunity will come to be routinely referred to begins as negative. Amari expresses his opinion of the idea being stupid without much gusto: the narrator is not even sure if he actually said it all, maybe it was imagined. But the explanation for why it seems stupid to him is made with far greater confidence. The initial rejection of the idea of having this time to themselves is stupendously wondrous. But perhaps that is only as it should be. After all, the set-up is not that terribly far removed—details, details—from a sort of detention-as-punishment set-up. Except there is no teacher oversight. The purpose remains the same, however, as far as these types of stories go.
That day, I remember all of us in the ARTT room leaning in toward each other. But what is frozen in my mind, even more than that, is later the same day. Ashton, Amari, Esteban and Tiago left the school together walking four across. So close that their shoulders were touching. Me and Holly walked behind them. A double wall against the neckers who were waiting right outside the school yard. Three tall eighth-graders who glared at Ashton but walked backward, away from the six of us. Three tall eighth-graders who looked from Amari to Tiago to Esteban to Ashton, then kept looking to me and Holly, then turned and walked quickly, really quickly, away from all of us.
And here it is. The purpose of placing any set of diverse kids with disparate problems into a situation that coerces conversation—or, under more rabid circumstances, enforces it—remains the same regardless of details. The kids are expected to learn things about each other that makes them understand each other better which leads to bonding against common enemies. Of course, there is one element of this revelation that the kids in the ARTT room are bonding against common enemies that perhaps demands some clarity.
It’s called necking. In the olden days, necking meant “kissing,” but not anymore. Now it meant running up to someone and slapping their neck. Hard. How did the same word that described two people in love become a word that described something so mean?
Here is the quote that gives context to why the bad boys of the school are referred to as “neckers” in case this was unclear and it definitely should bet to a lot of readers. Necking seems a particularly bizarre kind of bullying-as-sport to conduct on what seems to actually be school grounds. Or in very close proximity, anyway. One has to wonder what kind of school administration would allow such behavior to develop into an activity to be feared as a matter of course on a daily basis, but then again that is also usually one of the purposes of the gathering together a group of kids like this. In almost every case with this kind of plot, the school in question is experiencing a definite systemic failure somewhere.
