Little card

Our advisor at the high school paper Mr. R described himself as a “very sick man” once. We didn’t think much of it. At the time he had his head in a desk drawer and was threatening to slam it on himself, though I don’t know why. He said he was in love with one of his students, although he wouldn’t say who exactly, although we all knew it was Laura, who was there in the room, doing her homework, pretending none of us were there.

“It’s eating me alive,” he said. He was a young guy, I don’t know how young, shy of 30. “It’s going to destroy my career. I’ll be a pariah.” Rebecca was there — she was editing a piece. Travis was locking in the layout of the next issue which had to go out that night. Scott was sawing into a desk with a razor, he was almost halfway through it. I was just standing there.

“I’M MARRIED,” he shouted, though his voice was pretty muffled inside the drawer. “DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT?”

I remember once real late, working on an issue, it was just me and Mr. R and I was venting about this one history teacher who I said didn’t like me because she said I wasn’t applying myself. I think I was pulling a C in the class and I was worried, about my transcript, about all that, and Mr. R said to me, real flat, “It doesn’t matter if you get a C or an A. It’s all the same. It literally doesn’t matter at all.” I remember at the time I found that comforting.

Anyway that night a little while after Mr. R said he was a sick man, a few of us were on the computer and he told us to move over. “I want you all to see something,” he said, “every one of you.” He opened up internet explorer and logged onto a site called Busty Teens Cum-Blasted. Rebecca choked down a little gasp. “This is what exists in our world,” he said. His eyes were glued to it. He scrolled down a bit. “This is what we have to protect you kids from.” He walked away. We all sat there looking at Busty Teens Cum-Blasted for a couple seconds longer until Travis closed the window.

Scott and Travis were working at the computer and Rebecca and Laura were in the corner talking quietly and I was next to them packing my stuff because I was trying to leave and Mr. R dry heaved in the trash can. “Where’s my gun,” I think he said.

“Did he say ‘where’s my gun?’”

“I don’t care,” Laura said. “I don’t care.” Rebecca just looked down and shook her head.

He went to the bathroom and came back a half hour later. His head was soaking wet. “Laura, can I talk to you outside?” he said.

“No.”

Mr. R just stood there in the door. He walked out again. We heard him raving to himself as he got farther away.

“I’m almost done here,” Travis said. “Ten minutes.”

I remember one time in Computers. Mr. R used to teach in the middle school, and he taught Computers. All we did was sit there and do these typing lessons all day. We could have talked, I don’t think anyone would have had a problem with that, but we always just sat there and typed in silence. One day this girl Ashley started sobbing and no one knew why. Everyone’s typing slowed down, you could tell. Mr. R was reading PC World Magazine for a while, he didn’t even look up, but she just sobbed louder until Mr. R stood up and he walked by and dropped a bathroom pass next to her and went back to his desk. So she got up and left and we all went back to typing.

Mr. R came back with a gun. He started waving it around and shouting, no real words, just vowels and w’s. I slid out the window — it was on the first floor and it was one of those small rectangle windows that opens in the middle at a hinge, so it wasn’t easy. I grabbed Rebecca and yanked her through because she was standing right by the window just screaming and she weighed like 60 pounds.

“THIS WORLD IS DRAWN AND COLORLESS,” he shouted. “THE BEST WE CAN HOPE FOR IS THAT OUR SUFFERING IS BRIEF.” I saw he was reading off a little card. Laura wouldn’t look at him, but she was shaking. Travis and Scott were at the computer watching him, looking more curious than anything. Rebecca was face-down in the wet mulch, she may not have been conscious at this point. “WE ARE STRIKING OUT AGAINST THE CRUELTY OF A PLANET THAT WANTS US DEAD. I AM DOING YOU A FAVOR.”

He took a shot right at Laura’s head and she dropped like it hit her, although it hadn’t. I saw it whiz by and lodge itself in a desk, although I know when you’re in these kinds of situations you embellish after the fact and it seems unlikely I actually saw the bullet do anything, but that is what it did. Mr. R swung the gun to the other side of the room and plugged Scott a couple times in the stomach, because he never liked Scott, and then he shot himself right in the heart, although he survived, although he was in a pretty heavy coma for a while and then when he woke up he crawled out of his bed and jumped out the window, although he was only on the third floor and he landed on the awning in front of the place so he hung on for a while after that. Scott was in the hospital for like a week before they booted him out because his parents’ health insurance cards were fraudulent, but he was pretty fine after that anyway. Laura married our math teacher like a week after graduation and they moved out west and I think she went to work and he quit teaching to work on bikes (motorcycles, I mean) even though he wasn’t making any money off it last I heard, which was a while ago.

We got a new student advisor for the school paper whose name was Ms. Willis. I remember Travis called her a cunt one day for some reason and that same day she tripped and nearly bit her tongue off and the paper was discontinued after that.