focus, he said. — This isn’t about me. Sounds like your problem is a lack of focus. You don’t know what your feelings are. You’re distracted from your schoolwork. Keep focused on the important things.
Walter caught up a pencil from his desk, started tapping his front teeth with the eraser end. He dropped the pencil, slid open his desk’s top drawer and crinkled open a package of Sezme Sesame Snaps. Crunched a Sezme wafer loudly.
The boy leaned back in his chair. His mouth a straight line.
Walter finished chewing his Sezme. Swallowed. Picked sesame seeds from his teeth with tongue, then cleared his throat. He picked up his pencil. — Life is all about focus, Walter said, resuming tapping the pencil against his teeth.
— Mmm, said the boy.
— Awesome, said Walter. — Thanks for the talk. Good luck!
And the boy slipped from the office. Walter too sweaty to call out a goodbye, his hands clasped in his lap to clamp down on the shaking.
The boy left the door ajar so Walter wheeled over in his desk chair and pushed it closed himself. He turned to his computer and clicked open a new file. The boy’s name, Furey, Patrick under the file icon. Under category Hobbies, Walter typed, Likes skateboarding, into the electronic file. He clicked the file closed, then turned to his lunch bag for another package of Sezme Snaps. He jammed all the Snaps in at once, the sharp corners piercing his gums.
Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Friday, Monday. Monday. Monday. Monday.
The boy having solved his problem then.
Mrs. Mochinski
As Mrs. Mochinski pulls open the door to the school Tuesday morning, she smells that familiar smell of floor cleaner, basketball rubber, gym socks and chalk, the smell that tricks her into believing every time she walks into the school that she hasn’t yet received her Grade 12 diploma, that she hasn’t yet gotten past high school or scored a high-paying corporate job like the ones they always give advice about in the newspaper’s career section. She grabs her mail from her pigeonhole, scuttles through the hallways, traversing the long, wrong, subterranean way to her classroom because she doesn’t want to talk to anyone. Anyone. She unlocks the door of her classroom, inadvertently slams it behind her. She found the divorce papers in her mailbox this morning. Her husband’s inky signature scrubbed into the papers. He dropped them off last night, in the dark, like a coward. When she signs the papers she will be a single woman, and her life will be over.
Then she reads the memo, the paper limp in her hand. Reads that she and all the other teachers are to ‘Please refrain from discussing the tragedy with students until Principal Applegate has gathered all the facts.’ For a moment, she can’t even remember who Patrick Furey is, is sure she’s never taught him, and then her head threatens to cave in.
In her ten-minute Teacher Advisor group first thing this morning, the unicorn girl who always sits in the front shoots her hand into the air.
— Mrs. Mochinski? she asks, and Mrs. Mochinski dreads the question she knows will come, she just knows it. — Where’s Patrick today?
— Patrick? answers Mrs. Mochinski, scrambling with her chalk, her chalk holder, trying to stop her hands from trembling.
— I don’t know. He’s away obviously.
He’s away obviously. What is she? An android with a microchip instead of a heart? The stick of chalk in her hand snaps in half. She shakily fishes another one out of the box. Coughs. — Okay, time to call attendance, people, so listen up! she says.
And, accordingly, the rest of the day spirals down the shithole.
— Hanged himself is the correct grammar, Mrs. Mochinski corrects the goth girl in the afternoon English class, and immediately she wants to kick herself, correcting grammar about hanging on this day of all days, the dead boy’s desk a gaping hole in the middle of the classroom. The goth girl swearing like a trucker.
— This will be on the next quiz, she continues, trying to recuperate some kind of control. — Fumiko, quit swearing! And by the way, you people, Romeo killed himself with a vial of poison, not through hanging. Pay attention. This will be on the next quiz!
The students’ antennae spring up and they all write down Quiz on shreds and sheets of paper, backs of books, backs of hands. Then the class bursts into whispers. The worst little fucker of them all at the back of the class stands on top of his desk and whinnies into his hand.
— You at the back of the class, says Mrs. Mochinski. — You can raise your hand like everyone else, she says, and then her vocal cords kick back so she coughs. — Let’s have some respect around here, she croaks. Her voice dying early today. She tries to inhale a deep yoga breath, yoga breaths are supposed to keep the anger away.
Jésus raises his hand.
— Yes? she asks.
— Because he was a homo-sek-shhhhyoo-al, says Jésus.
The baseball caps at the back of the room howl with laughter, and she wants to shove a bar of Irish Spring soap in his mouth and scrub until it foams. She chokes on her yoga breath.
— What’s your problem, Unicorn Girl? he smirks to the unicorn girl.
— We don’t talk that way in class, Jésus. You know I think that attitude smells like poo, says Mrs. Mochinski. She grabs up her copy of Romeo and Juliet from the desk. — Where have all the manners gone? And there is no obvious indication in the play that Romeo was a homosexual, but if you have proof to support your statement, by all means educate us— using respectful and appropriate language. Please—
Her voice too shrill, the control seeping away, she coughs again, these students make her sick!
— What’s wrong with the word unicorn? asks Jésus. — Is it pronounced unicorn-ee? Shit!
Mrs. Mochinski crosses her arms over her copy of Romeo and Juliet. She wants to boil Jésus’s guts in a pot. She wants to go home and pour herself a salad-bowl-sized glass of wine.
— Homosexual? says Jésus. — What’s wrong with the word homo-sek-shhhhyoo-al? Well, he was.
— You can talk about that with the veep if you keep pushing it, Jésus.
— All right! I’m sorry.
Jésus and his little crew giggling and poking. She will get through this day. She will live to the end.
— Now, asks the dead boy’s teacher, pretending her students are nothing but the hum of the furnace, the buzz of the fluorescent lights, — Now, she repeats. — Can someone please tell me how we know Romeo’s love for Juliet is the real thing?
Mrs. Mochinski does not want to die on this Jésus hill, her hands full of paper and chalk dust. God, her underwire bra is stabbing a major artery and she may be dead before the last bell, the thousands of students trampling her body as they buffalo-jump out the door. The dead boy’s desk sits in the middle of the room and she isn’t allowed to say anything to the students because the principal doesn’t have all the facts. Why would having the facts matter?
She turns her back to the class, her copy of Romeo and Juliet clutched in her hand. She rolls a piece of chalk between the fingers of her other hand, the many eruptions in the classroom only a background hum. Her face to the board, her fingers picking up then clinking down roll after roll of chalk. Her nose moist, just on the verge of running, her wedding ring dull under the dust. The dead boy a homosexual.
Romeo and Juliet. Two dead teenagers. This is what she needs to concentrate on. Even though who besides their parents cares? Even these kids in her class care only about the sex.
— So what if he was gay? says the unicorn girl.
Good