Tin Universe Monthly #6

by Brian C. Williams

  CHAPTER 38

  Jean Green was a senior at F.K.H.S. She was going to be a member of the cheerleading squad and the girl’s tennis team. Jean’s B-Average kept her parents happy. Her obituary will read all of this and the following: Jean Yester Green, 18, survived by parents, Misty and Alister Green, and younger sister Jamie Steele Green, she was found dead late Monday night in the alley near the old fire station on Lake Washington Street.

  The news report Karen watched on her laptop during study hall said the police believed this was the work of a sexual predator who had more than likely been stalking her for weeks and something went wrong within the stalkers mind that triggered the final violent act. Digging further online under the above ground news sources she found out Jean had been sexually assaulted for hours before her attacker strangled her. “Triggered the violence” That pissed off Karen when she thought about it because they did not even consider the sexual violations violence, only the wounds that finally took her life.

  The library was quite, an island to thinking, as all libraries should be. This being study hall time hardly anyone was studying. There was one or two students here and there studying but for the most part people where texting on their phones, surfing the net, or trying to hack the school computer systems on their laptops.

  Karen wasn’t studying either, though she will wish she was looking back on this time later in the year. Her mind drifted to thoughts of the smile on Fox’s father’s face and her heart started beating faster and faster retracing the words that made up Jean Green’s abit. The bile bubbled in her stomach and she quickly packed up her laptop, crammed her stuff into her bag, and headed for the bathroom to throw up.

  Further back into the isles of the library sitting by herself was Lisa Rowe. She was sitting in the floor against the door inside a sound proof study room. Her fists where balled up and her teeth were grinding together with such pressure small cracks were appearing.

  Three minutes ago she was with Joanna in Joanna’s private little office classroom when Janet Stefani came in to talk to Joanna about some yearbook stuff. Though Janet is the editor of the yearbook Principal Carol has told her in no certain terms that everything has to through Joanna for a final approval. This in the most part is because her father’s company is chief sponsor of the yearbook but also because Carol is using the yearbook as another way to kiss up to Joanna and thus in part kissing the ass of her father.

  This setup angers Janet in great depths but she really loves working on the yearbook and was the yearbook editor before there was even an F.K.H.S. back when she attended Satellite Beach High. But it’s a fact that she has to deal with, though others cannot and the whole of the yearbook staff is herself, Frank Hover, and Michelle Ried and not one of them will even attend a meeting with Joanna so it lays in the lap of Janet to deal with this issue that not one of them has say or any control of.

  Joanna was already in a bad mood dealing with Janet because Janet Stefani is one of the few people in the school with not one bit of fear of Joanna, her family, her money, or any false or real power Joanna may have over others.

  She would learn now how real that power was.

  “Joanna, we need to start planning what events we want to attend to use in the yearbo…”

  “Shut up Janet.”

  Lisa stood by because she knew what was coming. She was part of the plan of why Joanna thought this had to happen.

  “Joanna, I’m not going to put up with your…”

  “Shut up. Your father.”

  “What about my father?” Janet was confused.

  “Your father works for my father’s company.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “See Janet people see you as someone who isn’t afraid of me. I don’t like that so I took steps to make sure you let others know I Am the boss of you.”

  “Fu…”

  “Hold still. Here is where you stop and shut your mouth. Your father handles the accounting for the division he works in. All of you falls at my feet or that on paper money he handles will turn up twisted to him being criminal embezzling money if you don’t stop putting your nose into all of my activities.”

  “You can’t do any…?”

  “This is family facing family. Who do you think has the tools to win? Keep your mouth shut. This year I don’t have much interest in the yearbook so as long as I have the most pictures I’ll go with what you want but in other areas Shut your mouth or your family loses. This isn’t some high school feud. My family always plays to win.”

  Joanna begins to leave the room with Lisa as Janet sits down in a chair not knowing what to say or do but before leaving the room Joanna turns around for another uppercut, “Oh, and don’t think I’m singling you out because you mean anything to me. I have stood in the back of a jeep and shot a pink rhino and I have rubbed out the life of an ant with my index finger. To me, both are a good kill.”

  Then the room is empty of sound except for that of a young woman scared for her family.

  Lisa was the one who came up with the idea of how to rein in Janet Stefani’s mouth a bit. She told Joanna she should get some dirt on Janet or her family but she didn’t think saying that was going to be like handing a child a mild fire cracker and then the child sticking it up a friend’s nose.

  For complete disclosed honesty she would have to say that wasn’t the cruelest thing she heard Joanna say to someone today. After first period Mr. Gibbons asked Joanna about joining the golf team and he got a reply of, ‘I’ve read your school employment file Mr. Gibbons. If you couldn’t keep your wife from leaving you for another woman, then what hope are you to coach a team to a championship.’

  CHAPTER 39

  When you live in Boston you learn about Redcoats and stuff. When you live in Green Bay you know all the quarterbacks in the history of the Packers. But when you live in Florida it’s all space program history lessons.

  In this class Gail was getting the feeling in her stomach she got when Karen was teaching her something. This feeling is one part wanting to learn to prove something, one part wanting to rip her sister’s head off.

  In this situation it for the most part all boils down to nerves and the fact that people keep looking at her and whispering about her makes her thoughts of mutilation of her fellow classmates that more in touch with her heart.

  She was ready to just not make waves and inaudibly walk her way through her first day of this class when the teacher called on her to answer a question throwing a rock into her inaudible.

  And she aced the question because she’s that damn smart.

  Random student, ‘So you’re the super-brain who’s going to make me feel stupid all year?’

  Gail, ‘Your birth did that just fine.’

  ‘She’s a bitch just like her sister,’ another random student without enough staying power to deserve a name decided to go after Gail.

  Gail turned around in her seat to glare at the other student aiming venomous words at her, ‘Wasn’t your dad the guy who was once caught trying to molest a stuffed animal at a Ryan-Mart in Jacksonville?’

  Everyone in the class turned and looked at the student now red faced with anger.

  ‘How did you know that?’

  Gail points at her head, ‘You know how everything that ever appears on the web stays forever? So does everything that ever comes across my sunset.’

  ‘You probably think you’re going to make us all look bad?’

  ‘Little known facts about the space program: Challenges wreckage is contained in an abandoned missile silo on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Russia has its own space shuttle called Buran. Space shuttles are lined with kill switch dynamite in case a shuttle headed out of control in the direction of a populated area.’

  ‘Bitch.’

  Gail twisted back around in her chair now smiling and calm.

  CHAPTER 40

  Today is not just the first week of classes for Jeff. It’s also the first week he starts working again with Special-Ed classrooms. Yes, the
y still call them that in some places. I’ve never liked it and see it as a mocking segregation of students. Even if the people in charge have never meant it that way, I think it has gone the way of people taking something that was meant one way and using it in a totally negative light to the point where people only see it in the negative way it has been used.

  At his old school Jeff was first forced to volunteer helping in the Special-Ed classes after getting into a fight at school with a whole room full of football players, but even after his punishment time was up he wanted to keep working with the students. He told Karen a lot of people thought he wasn’t worth working with at different times in his life, not worth taking time for, but he wanted to show that everyone wasn’t like that, that circles have to be broken.

  Karen finds the whole thing sort of fascinating in another way. Not the fact that Jeff wants to help people. As she says, “He’s a good shithead.” Her fascination comes about because of his spouting at times of many various retard jokes. The fact that he only does those jokes around her and her family still causes pause in her thinking about him working with the Special-Ed teachers? Now she has always known that Jeff says a lot of things just to test people’s reactions.

  But still?

  This is also another reason Gail calls him the human contradiction. A guy who has problems sometimes spelling CAT with C and the A given to him but reads some of the most complex fiction books that have ever been published. A guy who has walked as an escort into clinics has also called feminism a different shade of sexist thought. This is a young man who exists as both simple and simultaneously multifaceted.

  But the factors of why he does it or how strange some people may find him helping out, the classes themselves as with a lot of schools are a secondary thought from the rest of the schools operations. Hell, not even secondary, more like last place on all priority lists.

  The Special-Ed classrooms themselves are located under the school’s auditorium and placed between two storage rooms filled with band and sports equipment. It’s basically one storage room with a cubical divider wall separating the room into male and female areas.

  I wish to point out if it wasn’t clear already that they aren’t even in the same building as any of the schools other classrooms. That’s a very important point to study and think on. These students don’t take gym with the other students, they are seldom allowed at school functions during regular school hours, and their yearbook existence will consist of one picture each in the Special-Ed section of the yearbook in the back, after the ads. F.K.H.S. is keeping up these high school traditions.

  If the school could have gotten away with it they would probably have put them in one of the boiler rooms under one of the buildings to get them totally out of sight, out of mind. Not saying any special needs situation is ever easy for a school to deal with but it is one of those “What, want a cookie?” type of situations. Dealing with it is part of their jobs.

  If your thinking this is just out of my twisted writer’s mind? This is basically how it was in my own high school but enough with the writer and more with the story.

  Jeff was walking to the auditorium when he spotted the assistant teacher for all Special –Ed classes, Jesse Walker, heading towards him from the direction of the auditorium. He knows her from his old school where she was the head teacher for the classes there.

  ‘Ms. Walker, I was just on my way to the classrooms.’

  ‘Good, I never got my notice from the office about who we would have as a student volunteer. I’m glad it’s you.’

  Jeff and Ms. Walker started walking now together towards the auditorium.

  ‘I have to say I was surprised they even have Special-Ed classes at F.K.H.S. considering how many students they keep out of enrolling here.’ Jeff

  ‘They tried to get out of it but a final vote from the school board struck down their wish to not have the classes as part of the school.’

  ‘But they took a cue from our old school in where they put you and Ms. Bika.’

  ‘Yes. Well. Let’s just say we spent a good month screaming about that to silent ears. They said things like keeping our students away from the rest of the student body would be beneficial to the daily education of both groups of students.’

  ‘Both groups? Assholes.’

  ‘I think I hear a little Karen Busiek in you seeing how insulting that was.’

  Jeff smiled, ‘She is like a scarlet fever of thoughts.’

  ‘Ms. Bika will be glad to hear your volunteering also. I told her all about you. We don’t have that many students, six to be precise, but we are hoping you can help with one student in particular.’

  ‘Really, what’s his story?’

  ‘Aaron Kenney is autistic but at his old school they keep saying he was only suffering from a form of behavioral compulsive disorder and acting up in classes to get attention. We just need to help him find things that confront him. Find a routine that helps him in his days. His mother is great but very busy working two jobs. We will need to work with him not only at school but helping her make plans for his home life.’

  ‘Is he like Martin Singler was?’

  ‘Sort of but as you know one of the biggest problems is people thinking all autistic kids are all alike. One of the reasons we want you to help with him is how well I saw you work with Martin.’

  ‘Sounds good.’

  Ms. Walker gets a big smile on her face. This year has been such a battle for her and Ms. Bika even before the schools doors opened so knowing Jeff will be there as a student youth influence on her classes makes her feel better about how the year might turn out.

  CHAPTER 41

  It was between classes so the halls were crammed with students coming, going, thinking about leaving, and stalling before doing anything much at all. These moments are usually the small pause when more than a few teachers think about quitting to go teach bad math skills to third world minds.

  Math teachers should face hanging when they say being able to balance a checkbook is ok enough. It isn’t. Not in a world economy. It really, really isn’t.

  Gail and Fox were standing by Fox’s locker making a study of Joanna and Lisa’s techniques of torturing freshmen and admiring the way they do it with only a few words as Karen pulled Jeff away from everyone else to talk about the news report and everything she was able to find out about the death of Jean Green.

  ‘You really think it’s her dad?’ Jeff and Karen both looked over towards Fox. They think she didn’t notice but she did. She notices everything.

  ‘Do you think he could have done that, something like that?’ Jeff.

  Karen shrugged her shoulders, ‘Clue, me, none, but you know what they say about things starting with plucking the wings from butterflies?’

  ‘Seeing him again is driving you nuts isn’t it?’

  She half heartedly shrugged again.

  Karen put her forehead against Jeff’s chest.

  Gail and Fox caught sight of them. Though Fox had been watching them the whole time since she saw Jeff say “her dad” and look in her direction.

  Fox, ‘Are they dating?’

  ‘No, best friends.’ Gail

  ‘With benefits?’

  ‘I think I’m too young for this line of speech.’

  ‘Youth is a falsehood, plus didn’t Karen say something about you having nude photos of Daniel Rat…?’

  ‘Fo…’

  ‘Is he dating anyone?’

  ‘I’m not up on the celebrity gossip at the present. I did hear that Emma…’

  Fox gives Gail a wide smiled look, ‘Jeff?’

  CHAPTER 42

  For someone who has the ability to briefly come in contact with any information and absorb it in all of its details into her brains, you would think Gail would have grabbed a classroom map from the student room for a quick glance, but instead she is late for a Math class and somehow has found herself on the floor that contains so far an Art class, a class lecturing on studying history as the winners wrote it
, and a class that could be about farming goats but then again she just stuck her head in that class for a few minutes.

  In each classroom she was told her the Math class she was looking for was only one door down but now she only has one room left to check on this floor.

  When she opens that door she finds a group of people singing 80’s songs. They stopped singing, looked at her, she looked at herself, she closed the door to head to the office to report herself for skipping class, ‘Man, they are letting anything be a class these days.’

  CHAPTER 43

  Joanna has always had pet spiders. While most kids were playing with robots or coloring in little church ark coloring books she played with spiders. They have always been a part of her life, a part of her family and mindset. She maybe an esprit chick, which means she is someone who wears designer cloths and there maybe some who may call her a trendoid but she has pet spiders. Is this a whisper into her predatory nature? That maybe the case or maybe sometimes some people just love things with hairy legs?

  She may also be someone who enjoys being the scratcher on other people’s happiness. A fierce force against those trying to get by, and an individualist who dabbles in darkly held cliques of essential life styles for power and control of others.

  Or as Rumiko Francis once said, “She’s a pale jerk in million dollar clothes.”

  But she just creeps me out because the lady plays with spiders. She just has to be the villain of the piece doesn’t she?

  Lisa does not mind the whole spider thing but tries not to be around during feeding times. Luckily Joanna does not wish for anyone else to feed her not so little friends.

  What do you find spiders anyways?

  Onward and upward to continue and keep things moving.

  Is there a good slang word to describe Lisa’s devotion to Joanna? Filth envy? I’m grasping at straws trying to build antagonists here without giving too much away.

  Lisa believes Joanna to be her twilight to a better understanding of and path to power.

  Bad word twilight, spit, spit.

  Maybe these two would be good as examples. Do you know how slick to the spine business men claim to have studied Sun-Tzu’s Art Of War for how they approach their business or how current military brats and future military bastards claim to study Alexander The Great for their battle plans? See that’s why Lisa stays near Joanna and puts up with her bullshit, be it shit she agrees with or not.