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It starts the day Bobby Johnson falls asleep in class.
It’s not the sleeping in class that she minds; there are ways she can handle that, and there’s no need to embarrass him about it right then and there. It’s when he wakes up from a nightmare during her lesson about parenthetical statements, screaming, and sends the entire class into chaos and himself to the nurse’s office, that Ms. Appleby begins to see the problems.
There are students roaming her halls with bags under their eyes, and not the usual kinds of ‘tired high school student’ bags. Some of her best student’s grades begin to slip, and she recognizes the glassy eyed look on several of her students faces as they stare out the window during lessons.
The Power Rangers have been active in Angel Grove for about seven months, fighting Rita’s minions and doing the best they can to protect the citizens of Angel Grove. But while the Power Rangers might pull them out of burning buildings or rescue them from the curse of an evil spell, they can’t be there after to help the students as they try to cope with what’s happened to them.
Someone else is going to have to do that.
First she goes to the school nurse, and gets information on all of the students who are reporting problems. It’s supposed to be confidential, but Nurse Emerson and Ms. Appleby go back many years. She carefully considers the range of students, wondering how best to help them.
“A support group?” Mr. Caplan asks when she submits the paperwork.
“For victims and survivors of monster attacks,” Ms. Appleby says, handing him a pen, “I assure you it’s entirely necessary, sir.”
“I don’t know, Susan,” Mr. Caplan says, frowning, “Lots of people are being attacked by monsters, and the last thing these kids need is a label. They’ll bounce back, I mean, kids are resilient!”
“But Henry,” Ms. Appleby argues, “They’re also our students, and they need our help! There’s nothing wrong with offering support. If we don’t help them, who will?”
“I’m afraid it might open up some very difficult questions with the school board,” he says, and he hands her back the paperwork, unsigned. “There are things happening that people are still scrambling to deal with, and we can’t be liable for something like this right now, not with what everyone is dealing with. You understand?”
Ms. Appleby doesn’t point out to him that is exactly what the support group is intended to do, but she tries not to hold it against him.
With running a support group from the school out of the question, she turns to the only other places she knows for help: Ernie, and the Library.
Ernie’s Juice Bar is the perfect place to hold the support group. There are lots of students who frequent it, and it represents a place of safety in the community that didn’t always exist. It may not be invulnerable from monster attacks, but Ernie does his best to make it feel like it is.
“Why, sure thing, Ms. Appleby,” Ernie says when she asks him, as he dries out a blender, “I’d love to help with something like that.”
“I knew you would, Ernest,” she says, and he wrinkles his nose at the use of his full name. “I was hoping we could use the little spare room in the back, so as not to be too conspicuous, for the children who might feel embarrassed about attending.”
“It’s yours, whenever you need it,” he says, and she gives him a firm handshake before accepting the free smoothie he’s made her.
The library is her best resource for learning how to actually help the students. Getting them to show up is one thing; knowing what to say to them is another.
Ellie the head librarian raises her eyebrows when she sees the stack of books Ms. Appleby carries over to her desk.
“You know we have a five book limit,” Ellie says, eyeing the large stack. She tilts her head to read one of the titles, and then glances back over at Ms. Appleby.
“I do know that dear,” she says, “But I’m afraid I have a lot to learn in a very short period of time.”
“Well,” Ellie says, and she starts marking the library cards inside the books, “For this I can make an exception.”
“You don’t know how much I appreciate it,” Ms. Appleby replies.
She spends her weekend absorbed in the books. She watches her neighbor’s young children Saturday afternoon, and she has them draw and color signs she can post around the school and at Ernie’s announcing the group, with the first meeting to be Monday after school. While they busy themselves arguing about the colors of pencils to use, Ms. Appleby buries herself in her books, and contemplates getting a second degree in psychology.
It isn’t until Monday morning when she arrives at school, her brain filled with terminology like PTSD and Emotional Resilience and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, that she realizes with some horror that she forgot to formulate a lesson plan for the day.
Her class sits down and looks at her expectantly, and so she just smiles and informs them that they’re going to be discussing the importance of the question mark today.
***
Its fifteen minutes into the start time of the first Monster Attack Survivor Support Group before anyone other than Ms. Appleby shows up.
Jennifer Condolr gently pushes the door to Ernie’s back room open, where Ms. Appleby has set up a circle of chairs and a table with some refreshments. Ms. Appleby is sitting in one of the chairs, waiting, and she smiles brightly as she welcomes Jennifer into the room.
“I don’t really know if I qualify,” Jennifer says, tugging on her book bag nervously, “I mean, I wasn’t really, you know, attacked, and stuff.”
“Well, we can talk about that,” Ms. Appleby tells her, gesturing for her to take a place in the circle, “But the group is for anyone who feels they need support.”
“Isn’t there anyone else?” Jennifer asks, and Ms. Appleby is about to open her mouth to say that she’s certain there will be when the door opens again, and in stumbles Bobby Johnson.
***
The first week is hard. Convincing people that they should come and then getting them to open up about their experiences turns out to be a bit of a struggle. So she enlists the help of some of her students who are handling things better to get the students who need the help to come.
Trini Kwan volunteers to come and talk to the group, and several of the younger girls who admire her show up to listen. And Zachary Taylor comes and explains about how he copes with the stress of the monster attacks through dance, and brings his whole dance class with him.
It takes a little while to catch on, and in the meantime Ms. Appleby keeps teaching her classes and trying to help her students with their schoolwork, but when it finally does catch on, it’s like a stampede.
There are so many people in the meeting by the time school lets out in May that it’s standing room only. Then, she has to start holding two different meetings every week, so that everyone who wants to come can. Finally, they have to move the meetings out into Ernie’s bigger public area because they’ve gotten so big, and that encourages even more people to come.
“Survivor Night” becomes a regular thing a Ernie’s Juice Bar, and Ernie even hires some actual therapists to come in and give talks to the young people about how to cope with these new, traumatic experiences.
For most of the students, it begins to make a difference. The fact that they aren’t alone seems to be what resonates the most, and Ms. Appleby sees friendships spring up between the unlikeliest of kids simply because they were attacked by the same monster. Bobby Johnson stops falling asleep in class, and with some extra tutoring, she’s able to help the kids who have fallen behind catch up in time for the new school year in the fall.
“I have to say, Ms. Appleby,” Ernie says to her one night while they clean up, “You’ve pulled together a pretty amazing thing here. I didn’t know how it’d turn out when you came to me with it, but these kids sure needed this. You’ve given them something important: a way to keep living in a really scary world.”
Ms. Appleby smiles at him, and though it’s not the first time she’s heard it, it still warms her heart every time. “That’s what teachers are supposed to do, you know. Prepare you to be your best self when the world is good, and to be able to keep going, even when it isn’t.”
***
It’s December of that year before Mr. Caplan knocks on her office while she’s grading papers.
“Ms. Appleby, I’ve been thinking,” he starts, and she places her chin on her hand to give the appearance of delighted curiosity, “The students need to have some sort of stability to help them deal with all of these monster attacks. We should create a student group that helps the kids who need it.”
She has to resist the urge to roll her eyes at him as she goes back to grading her papers and says, “Oh, don’t worry. I’m sure I can come up with something.”