Here Lies Bridget

by Paige Harbison

  C H A P T E R N I N E

  When my eyes opened again, I was on the f loor of the boardroom. I stood quickly, my legs still sore from their lack of real use. I stepped easily out of Brett’s too-big shoes and sank into a chair.

  I looked at Anna, who was standing in the same place she’d been before it had all happened.

  “Anna, that is freakin’ enough, what is going on? ” I looked at the unmoving people in front of me. “And why are they acting like I’m not here? Seriously.”

  “They can’t hear you, Bridget.”

  I threw up my hands and braced myself for another vague explanation. “Why not?”

  She took a step toward me before saying quietly, “It’s not the time.”

  There it was. Vague.

  I was starting to feel frantic. “You said that already! What does that mean, Anna?” She said nothing. “I mean, I don’t even know you, and here you are doing…whatever this is. It’s like an intervention or something except it’s…not. Plus, I don’t have a problem that needs…intervention-ing.”

  1 2 8

  P A I G E H A R B I S O N

  I waited for her to speak. When she didn’t, I let out a noise of exasperation. “Can you at least answer one question for me?”

  Anna smiled. “I can try.”

  I sat up in the chair. “Am I dead?”

  The smile faded from Anna’s face, and my heart plunged.

  But then she shook her head.

  “No, Bridget, you’re not dead.”

  Something about the way she said it made it seem like I needed to ask my next question.

  “Am I…alive?” I asked hesitantly, certain I didn’t want to hear the answer.

  “Not

  exactly.”

  I stared at her. She was looking sympathetically at me. I cast a f leeting glance toward the other people in the room.

  “Well,

  is it a dream, or something?” I laughed nervously, worried about what this meant.

  “You don’t need to worry, Bridget. Not yet, anyway.” She took my hand, and the smallest inkling of serenity washed over me. “All right?”

  I nodded, realizing that I had no option but to be all right with that. “What did you feel, seeing what you did?”

  I scoffed defensively. “Um. I don’t know, I was there the first time, I don’t see why I needed to see it again.” That wasn’t completely true. It was a little humbling to see what Brett thought about me. But, I mean, it was just Brett. “So are we finished now? Can I go back to school?”

  Anna simply looked at me. Yeah, I knew we weren’t finished yet.

  “Fine,” I said.

  Anna glanced at the ground again, and I saw a pair of slightly worn, long, leather men’s shoes.

  Already I knew the drill. I stepped into them, sighing and privately shuddering to think what embarrassment I was going to have to watch next.

  1 2 9

  When the ground reappeared again, I was in my Tech Ed classroom. I knew exactly whose head I was in—Mr. Ezhno’s.

  I watched his hands nervously organizing and reorganizing the papers on the desk. The clock on the wall told me that it was about ten minutes before anyone should be arriving.

  He turned to the chalkboard and opened a brand-new box of chalk. I felt him smile and realized that he was excited.

  He

  wrote

  Mr. Ezhno on the chalkboard, considered it for a moment, and then erased it. Picking up the piece of chalk again, he wrote John Ezhno. He thought that might make him seem more approachable and less patronizing.

  I remembered the day now. It was the first day of this school year, and Mr. Ezhno’s first year teaching at our school. Judging by his thoughts now, it seemed like it was his first year teaching ever.

  He looked at the clock again. Two minutes had passed. I remembered what happened next.

  The door opened and I waltzed in, carrying a small gift box. I smiled, and walked over to his desk with my free hand out.

  “Hi, my name is Bridget Duke. I thought I’d come introduce myself, since you’re going to be my teacher.”

  I felt Mr. Ezhno’s spirits rise as he shook my hand. His thoughts said something about it being already not as bad as everyone said it would be here.

  “John Ezhno. It’s nice to meet you, Bridget.”

  I watched myself hold out the box. It contained a Mont Blanc pen. Meredith had sent me to class with it, in an effort to welcome the new teacher. Since it was such a small school, it was kind of a big thing when we got a new teacher. And, typically for her, Meredith was irritatingly on top of this kind of thing. I had agreed to take the gift with me, saying grudgingly that at the very least it might get me a better grade.

  1 3 0

  P A I G E H A R B I S O N

  Mr. Ezhno opened it and was genuinely pleased by it.

  “Miss Duke, I’m not sure what to say, this is so generous of you. Tell me, are you interested in Technology Education at all?”

  I remembered rolling my eyes internally at the question, but having just enough decorum to keep that to myself.

  “You know, I’m more into…other things. But that doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy your class, right?” I watched myself smile, fully aware of which smile it was. It was the suck-up smile.

  But Mr. Ezhno seemed to buy it fully, which made the current me feel guilty.

  He laughed and agreed, saying that he, too, hoped the class would keep me interested. “Thanks again for the pen, that’s really so kind of you.”

  “No problem, Mr. Enzo.”

  “It’s ‘Ezhno.’” He smiled, hoping to come off the right way.

  I knew that he hadn’t.

  I watched my smile ebb a bit as I said, “Okay” and then ducked out of the classroom, promising to be back soon.

  Mr. Ezhno toyed with the pen as he sat there, feeling content. He thought about all of his friends, the naysayers, and felt fully behind what he’d said before. He’d said that children and teenagers weren’t all bad, and that they just needed the right kind of teacher. He’d told his friends how he hoped to change his one tiny place in the world for the better, simply by teaching kids the way they needed to be taught.

  Images of enthusiastic students being impressed by his tech-nological prowess danced in his head. He was thinking of field trips and heated debates about why things worked the way they did. Awed faces of excited students, hoping that maybe today would be the day that he showed them one of his “Electricks,”

  as he would call his feats of electric magic.

  Still thinking optimistic thoughts, he busied himself around 1 3 1

  the classroom, trying to make it seem inviting and fun. The blocks he had set up on the front table in a Jenga shape—he’d had to get there an hour early to do it—waiting for students to choose a block to write their name on with a wood-burning pen. He thought it a clever way to remember their names and to have as a first project.

  When the students started pouring into the room, a rush of nervousness went through him. He felt like he was about to step out onto a stage. He was organizing his papers once more when he heard a crashing sound come from his right.

  A couple of male students were laughing loudly at the pile of blocks one of them had knocked over with his backpack.

  They headed toward the back of the classroom, not cleaning up the mess except to kick the ones on the f loor out of their path.

  “That’s all right, gentleman,” Mr. Ezhno said, mostly to himself. He hurried over to the mess and started trying to reassemble them quickly. But every time he placed one back on the table, another one fell off. He thought regretfully of arriving an hour early simply to put his creation in the way of the door.

  Once everyone was in the classroom, except for me—I knew myself to be outside waiting to come in a minute or so late—Mr. Ezhno cleared his throat and started to speak.

  “Hi, everyone, uh, I’m John. John Ezhno, and I’m here to teach you about technology.” He smiled
jovially, but quickly realized that only a few of the students were even looking at him. He coughed again. “Could I—could I have your attention, please?” He felt guilty, like that by gaining order in his class he would somehow look like a jerk.

  Just as the muttering was ceasing and more people were giving Mr. Ezhno their attention, I pulled open the door and sat down next to the seat Jillian had saved for me.

  1 3 2

  P A I G E H A R B I S O N

  “Even hotter than last year, Duke!” Matt Churchill’s voice came from the back of the classroom.

  “And you’re even more aggravating,” I said, though I was surprised to see that enjoyment of the f lattery showed all over my face, exposing the fact that I wasn’t annoyed at all.

  “I’d like to go ahead and get going here, so I’m going to ask you all a couple of questions. Who here thinks they might want to do something in this field when you grow up?”

  “When we ‘grow up’? What are we, six?” Logan said, his tone nasty. Even I had thought that was rude. Now it seemed downright disrespectful.

  I felt Mr. Ezhno’s embarrassment. He felt the way adults do around children when they’ve never had any and it’s clear why.

  “I still wonder what I’ll be doing when I grow up,” Mr.

  Ezhno said with a smile. “No, but what I meant was, do any of you intend to go into a field like this as a career?”

  The silence that followed was even worse than a comment from the boys in the back.

  I remembered that the rest of the class carried on that way.

  No one was very interested in what Mr. Ezhno said, and no one paid any attention to his instructions. When he told everyone to grab a block and began demonstrating how they were to carve their names, everyone just talked amongst themselves.

  I watched as I engaged in catty conversation with Jillian.

  An overall feeling of unease crept upon me as I watched Mr. Ezhno pull out his completed wood block. It was impressive, and had obviously had a lot of care put into it. No one even looked up. He headed for his desk, where he spent the remainder of the class.

  The world spun fast again, and I found myself in the staff lounge.

  I looked down at the lunch Mr. Ezhno had packed for him-1 3 3

  self. A peanut-butter-and-honey sandwich, evidently a favorite from his childhood (and mine), a somewhat bruised banana, a thermos of clumped fettuccine alfredo left over from the restaurant he’d been to the night before and an iced tea.

  He was just about to take a bite of his sandwich when he heard his name on the PA system.

  “John Ezhno, please report to the main office, John Ezhno, please report to the main office.”

  He sighed and repackaged his lunch in the brown paper bag he’d just removed it from so carefully. Stuffing it back in his valise, he headed toward the office.

  When he got there he was faced with what were apparently the same agog faces that he’d been noticing for days. There had been whispers and pointed looks in his direction. Now that even the receptionists were looking at him like that, he was certain something was wrong.

  I spotted one of the receptionists’ one-a-day calendars. This was the day of my accident.

  “You called me?” Mr. Ezhno asked.

  She nodded with a distinct look of disapproval and pointed toward the headmaster’s office.

  Puzzled, Mr. Ezhno walked in to see the headmaster looking just as disapprovingly at him from behind his desk. He shut the door.

  “Kevin, what’s going on?”

  “Why don’t you take a seat, John?”

  A nervous tremor coursed through Mr. Ezhno’s chest as he sat obediently on the comfortable leather couch against one wall. “Thanks,” he said, knowing it was the wrong response but having no idea what the right response could be. He knew he hadn’t done anything wrong, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be afraid.

  1 3 4

  P A I G E H A R B I S O N

  “Do you have any idea why I’ve called you in here today, John?”

  Mr. Ezhno’s apprehension rose slightly as he recognized the fact that he was being spoken to like a badly behaved student.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Something to do with Meredith Duke?”

  Mr. Ezhno’s eyebrows came together in sincere puzzlement at the mention of my stepmother’s name.

  I, too, had no idea what this was about.

  “All right, John, I’m going to be honest with you. I haven’t known you long and don’t know much about your character.

  So, unfortunately, I have to go by what the students have been talking about. Rumor has it you’re…involved with Mrs.

  Duke.”

  I felt the combined—and substantial—shock of Mr. Ezhno and myself.

  What rumor? Who had started that one?

  “Excuse me?” Mr. Ezhno sputtered.

  “Miss Duke came in here complaining that she had trouble getting to your class on time, yada yada yada, and then by the end of the conversation told me about how the ‘real problem’—” he put the words in finger quotes “—was coming from home.”

  The headmaster sounded tired as he rehashed our meeting.

  “She said that she’s been uncomfortable with her stepmother’s new…suitor, and that she has to see him five days a week. She also said that she was tired of the meetings that were happening between you and Mrs. Duke.”

  “The

  meetings she’s tired of are parent-teacher conferences.

  And of course she’s tired of them—they’re measures of behavioral correction. Hell, I’m tired of them. Mrs. Duke is a perfectly nice woman, but there’s absolutely nothing between 1 3 5

  us at those meetings except talk about Bridget’s behavior in school, I assure you.”

  I felt the anger he felt toward me. He thought that I’d made up this huge lie to get out of trouble for tardiness. I understood that. If I’d been scared and creative enough, maybe I would have woven a web like this.

  “Well, the problem has come to be this, John. It seems she’s let this romance between the two of you—whether it be fictional or no—” he looked skeptical “—slip to the rest of the school.”

  Mr. Ezhno’s heart was racing. “So that’s what all the looks I’ve been getting are about?”

  “Probably. I waited a few days, you know, to see if things would die down, but the rumors are all over the place. You must see the problem I’m faced with here, surely.”

  The headmaster waited, and I felt irritated with him for being so condescending.

  “Well, of course, that can’t happen, I realize that. But what do you expect me to do?”

  “John, I’m not able to keep on a staff member if he or she has become involved with a student’s parent. Especially when it hasn’t been kept quiet, and it’s such a small school as this.

  Even more especially when it’s a high-profile student. And let’s face it, you haven’t been here long, you don’t have any tenure or reputation to speak of. Maybe things would be different if you’d been here longer.”

  “But

  I

  haven’t been having an affair, I hardly know the woman!” Panic rose. “I realize how it must look, but you can’t do this to…me…you can’t just…”

  “Look, I know how frustrating this must be, John…”

  Mr. Ezhno thought about his words carefully before speaking, so that they didn’t come off as “nuh-uh!”

  “Listen, Ransic, this isn’t ethical and you know it. You 1 3 6

  P A I G E H A R B I S O N

  know Bridget Duke, and you must see that this is an act for attention, or something else. I just can’t believe you’d fire me because of the lie of a contemptible little girl like that.”

  The headmaster looked like he was concentrating as he stared down at the pen he was fiddling with. He set it down.

  “John. My hands are tied. I’ve had parents call in already, worried about how this is affecting students and equality in the
classroom. With Bridget’s father being, well, who he is….

  do you know who her father is?”

  “Yeah, I watch ESPN,” Mr. Ezhno spat, thinking irritatedly of the expensive sports package he’d just bought for his brand-new TV.

  “So then you know that he’s powerful.”

  A horrible thought slipped into Mr. Ezhno’s mind. “Donates a lot of money to the school, does he?”

  A minuscule hesitation gave Mr. Ezhno the validation he’d feared.

  “John, he’s going to be furious when and if he finds out about this. And beyond the Duke family, the school’s reputation is at stake here. This is a prestigious institution, and this kind of unprofessionalism just will not f ly.” He looked earnestly at Mr. Ezhno. “I know that there’s a chance this isn’t the case, but I have no way of really knowing that. It might have been different if no one else knew, maybe there would have been time for a meeting or something like that. But the problem is that, at this point, it’s common knowledge even if it is a fabrication.”

  Mr. Ezhno’s heart was still racing. Only now he was feeling something I’d felt before, too. The feeling that the pin had been pulled on a grenade and nothing could be done to stop it from exploding.

  Just as Mr. Ezhno was standing to leave and his thoughts 1 3 7

  turned toward resentment of me, I felt the rush of leaving his mind.

  “How did that happen? ” I asked Anna, as soon as I could see again. I now felt my own frenzy as strongly as I’d felt Mr.

  Ezhno’s. “I never said he was, like, doing stuff with her!” I concentrated and things began to come back to me. “I said some things that…I guess they could have sounded that way…”

  I thought of my poorly chosen words. Like how I’d said I had to see him five days a week.

  I winced as I remembered my conversation with the headmaster. Now that I thought of it, I’d had no clear segue between talking about Meredith’s imaginary lover and talking about how much I hated the parent-teacher conferences.

  I looked at Anna, who was still watching me with that same blandly compassionate look on her face.

  It was like she knew what I was thinking.