by R. A. Nelson
Out.
Patient.
That’s exactly what I do.
I race down the hall and turn at the first intersection I come to and hide in the janitor’s closet. Ms. Foster’s anxious steps click past me. I wait in the ammonia-scented dark, count to 140.
When I open the door, she’s gone. I’m not used to coming to the bastard’s class from this direction. I descend the stairs and there it is, first door on the left. The door is shut. I peer through the glass, see rows of dark heads.
Get ready.
push
Enter.
As I push through the door, Mr. Mann sees me.
This is the last microsecond before the car wreck, two drivers, two people sliding together, helpless before their own momentum. The crash is imminent, but in this last moment we can still pretend things are normal before our lives are changed forever.
Then.
I shove the door so hard, it bangs against an unused podium in the corner.
There’s an air-emptying, collective inhalation. In spite of everything, the primary emotion suffusing the room is one of wrongness—I shouldn’t be here, not this period. These faces are alien, removed in time from my connection to this place. I fight the urge to run back out.
“Carolina, I—”
The bell rings like a shriek, making everyone flinch. The class stands uncertainly, wondering looks on their faces. Imagine what they would do if I knocked their teacher on his ass.
“It’s all right,” Mr. Mann says as they begin reluctantly filing out. He shuts the door behind them. Waits, touching his hair, rubbing his hands together. Starts to say something when he feels like it is safe. I cut him off.
“I can’t believe you turned me in.”
“Carolina, no, I thought it would—”
“You’ve got them thinking I’m crazy. A head case. In need of help.”
“What am I supposed to think? When you—”
“Shut up, just shut up. There’s nothing you can say.”
I take one long step and shove him hard against the blackboard.
The metal chalk tray shivers and falls off with a clang.
My face is numb. I’m not doing these things; I’m witnessing someone else do them. This never happens in your own town, your own school. How will it play out? Do I have a gun? Should I scream? Fall to the floor, protect myself? I’m witness to and agent of the fear at the same time.
Mr. Mann swipes at my arm, trying to get control of me, misses as I jerk it away.
“Let’s go, come on,” he says quietly.
But he can’t get hold of me. His next class will be here soon. Schuyler once did the calculations, actually, how long our breaks last: we have exactly 7.5 minutes before the kids start coming in— less if some of them have lockers close by. If Mr. Mann doesn’t want it all to blow up right here and now—
We struggle, a flurry of intense arms and noises.
Stalemate.
Mr. Mann realizes he’s the center of gravity in the room and lets go first. He steps through the door without me. I have no choice but to follow. He makes his way quickly up the hall and around a corner. He’s heading for his office. I’m right on his tail; I slam the door shut behind us when we get there.
He won’t sit down. Is probably afraid to. “What do you want?” he says.
“You know.”
“No, I don’t. I don’t know anything about what you want anymore. This is crazy. After last night, you’re lucky I didn’t call the police.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“You don’t understand, do you? You really don’t understand.”
I lean in close, menacingly, spit the words out. “Then teach me.”
He makes a pained face. I say it again.
“Teach me.”
“For Christ’s sake, Nine. Are you out to ruin me? Go ahead then, turn me in.”
“Like you did me.”
He chews his bottom lip. “No. I was only trying to help you. I thought it could have been some help.”
“Stop pretending to be a grown-up, Richard. You suck at it.”
He laughs bitterly. “Shit.”
I grab his wrist and hold on. I dig my fingernails into the skin covering the bones and tendons there. I dig in harder and harder. I haven’t done this since my seesaw days. I have to do it now. To keep from biting.
He lets me.
I dig harder and harder. Surely he will bleed soon. Or scream.
Neither happens. I let go. The skin is not even broken; it’s marked with angry crescent moon indentations. Badges of my frustration.
“What can I do to make you stop?” he says.
“I’ll stop when you stop.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Stop being with her. Stop loving her instead of me. Stop stop stop!”
“Carolina.”
“Stop calling me that! Do you love me, Richard?”
“Nine.”
“Do you love me? It’s an easy question. It used to have an easy answer.”
In my peripheral vision I see someone hover past his door.
“Well, do you?”
“Nine, I—”
“Do you! Do you do you do you!”
Only now do I realize I’m screaming.
I’ve grabbed Mr. Mann by his shirt. I’m shoving him against the cinder block wall harder and harder, screaming at him. He’s putting his hands on me, trying to get control of the tornado I’ve become.
“Nine, please, Nine!”
This is where you slap someone hysterical; I’ve seen it in the movies. A good stinging slap to make my feet touch the floor again. But he can’t do that; it’s beyond the realm of possibility. But it’s possible for me. So very possible. Every time I get loose, I’m swinging at his face. His eyes become blurry comet streaks as our heads jostle, arms move, shouts echo.
I have to stop this—I’m going too far, my fury is too huge. What am I trying to do?
Hurt him. Kill him. Make him feel what I am feeling, even if only for a second.
Stop it, stop it now.
I spin away and slump against the door, scrabbling at the knob. I’m spilling into the hall now, pushing away from the door, backpedaling, now finding my feet and running. Running anywhere. The halls are emptying, but there are still a few kids here and there. I’m banging past them, trying to find my way to some kind of exit, some kind of door that will lead me out of this nightmare, show me things I can understand again.
Where is the parking lot from here? I’m disoriented. People are shouting now; I’m not listening. I run. At the intersection of a hallway I crash headlong into a solid mass of human being—it’s a large person with hugely sturdy legs. I sprawl to the floor, feel my cheek kiss the cold surface. I’ve never seen the tiles this close, the big square tiles in the hallway. Gray, flecked with bits of black and brown in random sprinklings.
Someone helps me up. I slap and tear and pull at this someone, feeling large hands under my arms, lifting.
He’s saying something to me, but I can’t understand the words; I’m fighting him too hard. We’re walking away fast, but it’s not really my legs doing the walking; it’s somebody else and my strides are matching his.
He’s much stronger than me; there’s only one thing, one thing I can do, swing and make it good, make it count. I get one arm free, swing as hard as I can with my fist, connect against the meat and bone of his face.
Zeb Greasy.
the dripping years
“Here.”
Schuyler hands me a cup of water.
He didn’t skip on Senior Skip Day, either. Today he’s playing office aide.
I can see the reflection of my own devastation in his eyes, the way the blood has drained from his face. “Now what is—?” he starts.
“Wait,” I say. “Please.”
I can’t bear to look him in the eye.
Instead I look into the paper cup and sip. Sip again. My hands are trembling so much, the water p
ulses in concentric circles. The forest fire of my anger has settled down to a few smoking embers. I’m coming back into myself, realizing the horror of what I’ve just done.
The clock on the wall makes a sound like a blade coming down with each tick.
I know he’s aching to talk, but I appreciate that he is letting me have a moment to collect myself, survey the carnage.
Zeb Greasy and the other People Who Count are behind closed doors debating my future. His door is thick, but not so thick we can’t hear the subsurface rumbling of their voices.
At the other end of this narrow space is Ms. Jackson. She’s the person who checks students out for doctor appointments, field trips, attempted homicides. Her desk is surrounded by American flags, desperately misshapen bald eagles, wooden slogans:
I’m supposed to be cheered by this display. Ms. Jackson never looks up. She’s not a color.
I look up. Schuyler’s holding a pen above some official-looking documents.
“Talk to me,” he says.
“No.”
He leans forward and whispers, “Don’t worry about her.”— Ms. Jackson—“Just talk to me.”
“It’s too much. I don’t know what to say.”
“But what did you do? What’s going on?”
He knows I’ve never been in trouble before, not for the slightest infraction, going all the way back to seventh grade, when Ms. Collins caught me chewing gum.
I take another sip, put the cup down. “Just fill out the papers for me, please. I can’t do it. I have to get out of here, Schuyler. You have to trust me. I’m losing it. I can’t stand it anymore. I’ll go crazy.”
I can’t tell him everything, not now. We have to have each other. That’s all we have. Nobody else knows us at our centers. If Schuyler finds out about Mr. Mann—I’m so terrified maybe I won’t even have him anymore. Not in the same way. Best friends don’t do this to best friends. It will never be the same again once he knows. And I’ll be all alone, stuck inside here. Stuck inside my head. No way out anymore.
He opens his mouth but is drowned out by the squawk box on the wall ordering all the graphics geeks to multimedia. As if the world hasn’t just come to an end.
“Come on. Talk to me, Nine.”
“Please. You know what to write; just do it.”
“Okay. Name, rank, serial number.”
“Stop it.”
“I’m sorry.”
Schuyler scratches away for a while. Have they called my folks? Does it matter? This is a dream. That’s it. Just ride it out, daylight will come.
A door opens in the dream and God appears. No, it’s not the Almighty, it’s Zeb Greasy. Dream over. The look on his face says he’s extraordinarily disappointed. The blotchy red spot on his cheekbone says to my horror that I nailed him a good one; my knuckles are still smarting. He motions me inside.
Schuyler reaches across the counter and gives my hand a squeeze just before I go in; this makes it infinitely worse. I slip through the door, let it swing shut behind me like a vault.
“I saw her just before it happened,” Zeb is saying to the assistant principal, Mr. Pendergraff, as if I’ve gone deaf. Mr. Pendergraff is the Head Butt-beater and Discipline Guy. “I knew something was wrong.”
I can’t think anything but the most basic thoughts. A person who shares my name is in tremendous trouble. For some reason I’m here, watching. Part interested, part stupefied.
Now Zeb Greasy’s addressing me, my hearing miraculously healed.
“You want to talk about it, Carolina?”
I don’t speak, don’t even shake my head. Do I ever want to talk about anything again? I don’t know. Will they beat my butt? They can’t do that these days.
Zeb’s office is large. Lots of polished, beveled wood: his desk, his nameplate, lacquered copies of the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights.
“Have a seat.”
Zeb gestures and I sit. His chair makes an officious farting noise as he settles into it.
I turn my attention to Mr. Pendergraff. He remains standing. He is just the opposite of Zeb Greasy. Small featured, small boned, small voiced. If they lock us in a cage together, he’s a dead man.
Mr. Pendergraff creases his flat butt against the edge of a table. He’s wearing colored prescription glasses that scream Gamblers Anonymous. His wrinkly skin has no snap; surely he must be a smoker.
“I’ve called your parents, Carolina,” Mr. Pendergraff says. “Do you understand what I’m saying to you?” He’s mouthing the words as if I’m a lip-reader or buzzed on Ecstasy.
I devote just enough juice to the question to allow me to weakly nod. This is happening to someone else in a galaxy far, far away. Through some tangle in the space-time fabric of things, I’m able to witness the destruction of this strange, obsessed girl.
“You physically assaulted Mr. Deason,” Mr. Pendergraff says. “Like to tell me why?”
“No. I can’t.”
So they think this is all about me and Zeb. They don’t know what happened in Mr. Mann’s office. Don’t know I almost wanted to kill him.
Where is he? What is he thinking right this moment? Is he terrified, praying I won’t tell? Or maybe he doesn’t pray.
Maybe he needs to start.
“You realize, don’t you, that we could expel you for this, Carolina,” Mr. Pendergraff says. “Technically. You know what that means, right? No diploma. Repeat of your senior year.”
My heart plunges into my sneakers.
“But to tell you the truth, we don’t want to do that. I’ve pulled your file—” Mr. Pendergraff touches a manila folder on the table with the tips of four fingers. “You’ve never given anybody a lick of trouble. Straight As since the eighth grade, which is as far back as our college reporting goes. Perfect attendance five years running. You don’t even skip on Senior Day. So tell me about it. Why did this happen?”
“I can’t—it just—happened.”
“Talking is always better, Carolina. Believe me. I’ve been at this thirty-five years. Talking is better.”
Nothing.
I won’t do it. I refuse to make this easy for Mr. Mann.
“Look, I’m not here to make your life miserable,” Mr. Pendergraff says. “I’m here to help. Mr. Deason says you were called into the counselor’s office just before the—ah—incident. Now, what’s said there is private, I know that. But a student like you—a girl!—just doesn’t go off like that for no reason a few days before she graduates. Something sparked it. I need to know what that something is. You’ll feel better once you get it off your chest. Trust me.”
I wish I could cry, scream, anything to get him to shut up and just get it over with. But he marches on.
Thirty minutes later, it’s still on my chest and I’m still not in a trusting mood. Mom is in the outer office. Dad can’t be reached; he must be out at the test stands again.
All I know is, it is finished.
School. For me, at least.
I’m suspended the last three days of my senior year.
A permanent blot on my perfect, stainless record. Surely not even Hub Christy could manage this achievement.
Mr. Pendergraff assures me I can still attend graduation and the baccalaureate at the Civic Center.
“The police—”
Did he really mention the police? But why would they be interested? For the first time, the full consequences of what I’ve done sink in. I’ve assaulted a faculty member. Two, if truth be known. He promises not to call them.
Why can’t I stop? Why can’t I just tell them, End it all now? Do I really want to take Mr. Mann’s head, push it under, hold it there until the bubbles stop rising? What am I turning into? What is he?
Where is he?
Mom.
She breaks down, collects herself, breaks down a second time. Finally is able to talk to the Head Butt-beater, then we talk together, Mom getting more and more stridently hysterical. Why do adults think teenagers will heed their words of
wisdom if they repeat them three times? Four? A hundred? At top volume? Do they really believe we are that thick? We heard you. The first time. We’re beating ourselves up worse than you could ever imagine.
Shame.
I’m rolled up in it. Festering, smelly, crazy with fear, nuclear embarrassment, self-loathing. I’ve transformed myself from the sweet, perfect daughter she knows into something lower than a hairy clog in the bottom of a bathtub drain. Worse, I’m afraid for her, afraid she will blow up some important plumbing in her head with all the weeping and pleading.
“Darling, darling, tell me something!” she begs.
“Mom. Mom. Mom.” I want to shake her, hold her, crush her unnaturally curly head into my arms.
“What?”
“Please, let’s just go home.”
“But we have to work through this, sweetheart! Mr. Pendergraff—”
“Doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“But won’t you tell us why you did this thing? What’s happened?”
“I can’t, really I can’t. But please don’t worry, okay? It’ll be okay, it will.”
Will it?
She daubs at her eyes with a hay fever tissue. Her words come out between gulping sobs. “How can you tell me not to worry, sweetheart? It’s impossible. Your principal! Impossible. I knew something was happening, I knew it! But I can help—your father and I, we can help. But you’ve got to talk to us, darling. Don’t shut us out.”
She starts to say something else; it becomes a wail of despair instead.
Is this how it happens?
All those people who do dumb, crazy, idiotic things—does it start with something like this? I’m getting stupider and stupider. By some reverse alchemical process, my forehead has been transmogrified into a substance thick enough to block gamma rays.
Thank goodness they’ve sent Schuyler up the hall on an errand. He’s not here to see this, to watch us stumbling along like victims of an air crash as Mr. Pendergraff escorts us out.
Mom clutches my middle as we stagger up the hall, putting her head against my shoulder. She’s desperate to make me ten again, the last time she could truly understand me. Or take me in her arms without my chin resting on her forehead. I’m aware of the tendons radiating out from my neck, the pressure she is putting there.
