Page 6 of Bad Reputation

“I wasn’t looking for a sweet payday. I sued for wrongful termination—and won—because it was a fight that had to be won.” She was here today for other teachers who might find themselves in the same situation. As much as Maggie hated this, she had to be public about her win. It might give someone else the confidence to fight.

“Oh really,” Rylee sneered. “Then why didn’t you return to teaching?”

“I thought I was going to. But my case shows how things have changed in American public schools. Teaching is hard under the best of circumstances. I taught three classes of drama and two of stagecraft every year. Most school years, I directed two plays and a musical. I’ve sewed costumes and painted sets and hung lights. My days were regularly twelve hours long, once I tacked rehearsals and construction meetings onto the end of a regular school day.” Maggie hadn’t realized how hard she’d been working, the constant furious paddling she’d been doing, until it had stopped.

“My word,” Denise said.

“That’s not unusual, by the way. Almost every elementary, middle, and high school teacher has a schedule like that. Many of us coach or lead clubs or spend extra time mentoring or tutoring, in addition to our teaching. But when I won my case, the idea of going back to that schedule in such a hostile environment—I just couldn’t.” She’d been wringing herself dry, all while vipers had waited in the grass to pounce.

“Because you were too busy promoting yourself and your agenda?” Rylee demanded.

“I don’t have an agenda.” Maggie sounded almost desperate. “But the things the school board didn’t like inCovering the Spreadare real. Queer families exist. Parents sometimes pressure their kids in unhealthy ways. People use strong language. Teenagers kiss and break up and learn who they are outside the roles society and their families want to put them in. But that’s the point: drama is about our very humanity. Art can’t be art, it can’t teach us anything or entertain us, if it denies thosethings. If we scrub all the so-called difficult content out, it’s just a puppet show—and not a very good puppet show.”

Rylee was steaming mad now. She was trying to hide it, but a vein in her temple had started to bulge. “So anything goes?”

“That isn’t my position at all. I was always acutely aware of the responsibility I had to my students to pick works they could understand thematically and artistically, andCovering the Spreaddid that.”

“And the court agreed with you,” Denise put in.

“Yes.” That was why Maggie had to sue. She had to make sure that some other teacher had the precedent of Maggie’s case for protection.

“You have an answer for everything, don’t you? But I’ve done my research, and I know that you’d been planning this for years,” Rylee spit out. “You did a study, right? About teaching high school students to kiss?”

She’d been braced for this. Rylee’s “research” had clearly consisted of downloading Parent Led’s talking points.

“No, I didn’t.” Maggie certainly wasn’t going to let Rylee lie about her. “I wrote my master’s thesis about the challenges and best practices for directingRomeo and Julietwith a teenage cast. It was based on my experiences and those of two other drama teachers. How do you make sure everyone is comfortable with the blocking? What does negotiating consent look like?”

“You mean intimacy coordination?” Denise asked.

“Yes. Most high schools won’t have someone doing that exclusively, the way they do on Broadway or in Hollywood, but you still need to think abouthowto direct those scenes and the feelings of everyone involved. Not because there’s something dirty or wrong about kissing, but because you want to do it well, for the actors and the audience.”

“If I could get in here,” Zoya Delgado said, piping up for the first time. “I totally agree with Maggie. Sex is part of human experience, so it would be weird if film, television, and theatre didn’t represent it at least some of the time. But you have to be responsible about it.”

“Do you use an intimacy coordinator onWaverley?” Denise asked.

“We haven’t,” Zoya said slowly, as she watched Maggie with a gleam in her eye. “But we should.”

Across the table, Rylee was incensed. “I can’t believe you are all pretending that this is normal. It’s disgusting. Teenagers kissing in front of an audience while you applaud? What filth. I, for one, am glad you aren’t teaching anymore.”

And there was the toxicity that made returning to teaching impossible.

Maggie’s classroom had felt like a space where anything was possible. She had helped her students grow, and they had produced truly beautiful art together. But she had no idea how she was supposed to go back there knowing it was a minefield. Whatever bonds of trust she’d needed to be a good teacher had been shredded.

Even now, faced with the vitriol in Rylee’s eyes, it was hard to imagine how any of those bonds could be remade. The woman, and the people who agreed with her, despised Maggie and everything she stood for. Maggie knew her own position was right, but seeing that hatred felt awful.

“I ... disagree. And so did the court. But I have to say, it doesn’t feel like a victory. It feels like we all lost something.”

Denise let the sadness in Maggie’s answer sit in the air for a minute before saying, “Well, after a break for some local headlines, we’ll talk to Zoya Delgado, the showrunner for Videon’s hitWaverley, which has also come under fire for some risqué content.”

Lana Larkin, the boozy grandma of the panel who’d become famous doing fashion commentary during red carpets, piped up for the first time. “It’s all the butts! People tuned in for the butts.”

That was ... succinct and probably true. The cast of the show had some very nice butts.

Denise ignored Lana. “We’ll talk about how they film those steamy scenes, and the drama around the cast for the upcoming season, including the casting of Tasha Russell and Cole James.”

“Woo-hoo, that man,” Lana said with a wolf whistle. “I cannot wait to see his—”

“And we’re out,” the producer called as the light by the camera flipped to red, and thus the world would never know which Cole James body part Lana was dying to see.

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