Chapter 10: The Gender Divide Proposal
Bill meets with Natalie and Evelyn to discuss his planned changes to the school system. He retrieves a bottle of wine to drink and chat when this arrive.
The wine, a deep Burgundy, sighed as he pulled the cork. He poured three glasses, the liquid catching the city’s electric glow from the window. “A reward for surviving the week’s chaos,” he said, handing them each a glass.
Natalie took hers with a quick, grateful smile, her mind a rapid-fire scroll of logistics and potential pushback from the school board. Evelyn swirled hers, her thoughts quieter, a deeper pool of strategic calculation. Bill let their surface anxieties wash over him like static.
“To efficiency,” Bill said, clinking his glass lightly against theirs. He took a sip, letting the silence stretch just to the point of discomfort. “Our city’s bleeding talent. We’re educating children for a world that died thirty years ago.”
“The standardized curriculum is a joke,” Natalie agreed, leaning forward. “We’re teaching boys poetry while the water reclamation filters are held together with coding from the ’70s.” Her ambition was a bright, hot coil in her mind.
Bill nodded, planting a seed. She sees the waste. She knows how to fix it. “Exactly. So we stop. We split the streams entirely. One for building, one for… cultivation.”
Evelyn’s eyebrow arched. “By gender.” It wasn’t a question. Her pragmatic mind was already there, dissecting the legal camouflage they’d need. The thought ‘expedient’ floated to the top of her consciousness, and Bill gently affirmed it.
“It’s the cleanest variable,” Bill said, his voice relaxed, conversational. “Girls’ schools become academies. Engineering, systems management, applied sciences, physical conditioning. A classical education, but for dominion.”
He took another drink, watching Natalie’s eyes light up with the scope of it. She wants to build an empire, he thought, and he fed that want. “You’d oversee the ethos, Natalie. Shape what they believe.”
“And the boys?” Evelyn asked, her tone neutral.
“Functional literacy. Civic duty. Trades.” Bill shrugged, a casual gesture belying the brutality of the sentence. “We need steady hands, strong backs, and content minds. The curriculum provides a clear purpose, pride in essential work. It’s a kindness, really.”
The idea, ‘a kindness,’ took root in Evelyn, aligning with her cold realism. In Natalie, the idea ‘necessary triage’ bloomed. Bill felt their compliance solidify, not as obedience, but as convinced agreement.
“They’ll call it barbaric,” Natalie muttered, but her smile was fierce.
“Let them,” Bill said, topping up her glass. The glug of the wine was a soft, deliberate sound. “Their outrage is just noise. Our results will be a fortress.”
He let the idea settle between them, a living thing now. The thunder rumbled closer, a low bass note vibrating through the glass. Evelyn swirled her wine, her gaze distant as she calculated timelines, budgets, the quiet dismantling of a century of precedent.
“We start with Carter High,” she stated. Her voice was flat, final. “It’s already failing. The infrastructure is a patchwork. Easier to sell a ‘specialized revitalization’ to the parents who’ve given up.”
Smart, Bill thought, and he let the approval wash over her. He felt the warm pulse of it hit her, a subtle bloom of pride that made her sit a little straighter. She believed it was her own genius. It always was.
“Perfect,” Natalie chimed in, her phone already in hand, tapping notes. “We rebrand it. The Carter Academy for Applied Leadership. Sounds philanthropic. Sounds… elite.”
Bill smiled, a genuine expression that reached his eyes. They were building the engine themselves, bolt by bolt. He leaned back, the leather of his chair sighing. “And for the boys at Lincoln? We don’t rebrand. We simplify.”
He let the next words drop, clear and heavy as stones.
“For the boys, it will be vocational fundamentals, civic obedience drills, and physical maintenance.” He watched their faces, not for horror, but for comprehension. “They will be under-educated, underspent, and utterly brainwashed into obedience. They will be the grunts and laborers of the future. Content in their purpose.”
Natalie nodded slowly, her ambition metabolizing the cold reality into a project milestone. Evelyn’s mind was already engineering the feedback loops—uniforms, merit badges for compliance, a stripped-down digital library.
“And for our girls?” Bill continued, his voice dropping into a warmer, almost paternal register. He focused the thought, planting it deep. This is the honor. This is the legacy. “For them, it will be the peak of education. Lavish spending, drilled discipline. They will be the officers, the business leaders, the politicians of our future. We cultivate them, we polish them.”
He stood and walked to the window, watching the lightning fork over the distant mesa. “Many will stay to build this city with us. Some will leave, of course. They’ll go to Denver, to Chicago, to Berlin. And they will be unwitting spies, our children in the world. Their success will bring honor back here. And they will be ready,” he said, turning back to them, his silhouette framed by the storm, “to be called upon when the time is right.”
The room was silent save for the storm’s muffled fury. The plan was no longer an idea; it was a geography, and they were already standing inside it.
Natalie finally broke the silence, her voice a mix of awe and pragmatism. “We’ll need a principal for Carter. Someone who doesn’t just get it, but who… lives it.”
Bill considered the rain streaking the window, a liquid distortion of the city lights below. “Anya Petrova,” he said, the name a statement. “She was an intern in the first civic leadership cohort. Sharp, disciplined. She sees the fractures in things.” He felt a flicker of pride—his own investment, a sapling he’d nurtured now ready for transplant.
Natalie’s nose wrinkled almost imperceptibly. “The data analyst? She’s what, twenty-six? Putting her in charge of a high school, even a rebranded one… it’s a catapult launch. The public’s gonna see a kid.”
“They’ll see a prodigy,” Bill countered, his tone leaving no room for the alternative. He sent a soft, compelling thought toward Natalie: Youth is an asset. It means moldable. It means loyal to the creator. He watched her resistance soften, her ambition recalibrating.
“Maybe,” she conceded, tapping a manicured nail against her glass. “But we need a smoother sell. Someone with a foot in the door already.” She leaned in, her voice dropping conspiratorially. “Elara Vance. No relation, before you ask. She’s the associate principal at Carter right now. Thirty-one. She’s been eating shit from that old bastard Superintendant Higgins for five years, watching the place rot. She’s got the credentials, the visible grit. The parents know her face.”
Evelyn, silent until now, gave a slow, approving nod. “A promotion from within plays better. Looks organic, not imposed. Less like a takeover, more like… a deserved succession.” Her pragmatic mind was already drafting the press release.
Bill sipped his wine, letting the idea marinate. He reached out with his senses, probing Natalie’s suggestion. Elara Vance. The surface thoughts she’d gleaned from meetings came to him: frustration bottled tight, a keen intelligence stifled by bureaucracy, a quiet fury at the wasted potential of her students. It was perfect fuel.
“You think she’s ready for the full picture?” Bill asked, his gaze locking onto Natalie. “Not just a better budget, but the split. The cultivation.”
Natalie didn’t blink. “I think she’s starving for a purpose that isn’t paperwork. Give her a real mission, and she’ll claw through a wall for it. The public will back her because she’s the familiar underdog. But.” She paused, emphasizing the condition. “Higgins will never approve it. He’s a brick wall of old-guard sentiment. He’ll call it a fad, or a scandal waiting to happen.”
A slow smile spread across Bill’s face, the candlelight catching the colder planes of it. “Then I’ll have a conversation with Superintendent Higgins.” The way he said ‘conversation’ drained the warmth from the room. It was a transaction, a realignment. “He’ll see the budgetary wisdom. The innovative potential. He’ll be… enthusiastically supportive or gone.”