EDITOR:
MIRIAM BELLE
CREATIVE CONSULTANTS:
MIRIAM BELLE & SIMPLY_CYN
*
TUESDAY
"Tell me again what you saw," Andy Shaver leaned back in his large, comfortable chair and scratched his full bushy beard. The chair was meant to imply the position of someone in authority. It quietly said that only a person in charge could sit in such a luxurious and stately chair. It had belonged to three principals before him and all of them had possessed that unquestioned presence throughout the school. In his mind, the chair that sat beyond the Royal Oak desk in the principal's office was a throne. Thus, as the one sitting in it, he assumed responsibility for those who didn't. Of course, their "rule" had been in slightly less cynical years when respect for authority was far more common than it was today.
And until today, Andy had been sure there was nothing happening inside the confines of his school that he couldn't handle.
"Mr. Shaver," Jesse sighed and rubbed his temples, "How many ways can I tell this story?"
"Right now, I have thirty students who are all on suspension for conducting what can only be described as an orgy in the biology classroom," Mr. Shaver said frankly, "I have a very emotionally disturbed teacher who will probably will never teach again, let alone escape the impending lawsuits and possible jail time. I have damn near sixty parents who want to blame and lynch someone and the press is about to start making up their own stories. You'll tell the story as many times as you have to."
"I told you, I was walking by the classroom when I heard some funny sounds," Jesse said, "I opened the door and saw everyone doing, well, each other. Mrs. Brewster was with Daniel Miller and Tina was in the corner with a bloody nose. I got her out and ran for help. That's it."
Mr. Shaver frowned and removed his wire-rimmed glasses from his round, beet-red face. It was very clear that Shaver was more comfortable with his nose buried in school business reports and administrative duties than anything close to dealing with sex. He still couldn't believe the event had even happened. He'd never dreamed in a million years that so many students, so many good students would go on a sudden sexual tirade like this. And the notion of Diane Brewster, one of the most respected members of the faculty, being involved still seemed ridiculous to him. He wouldn't have believed it had he not been the one to pull her naked body off the top of her desk. The look on her face as he covered her with his jacket haunted him. She was scared to death and yet caught in the throes of some animalist lust.
"Daniel Miller wasn't even at school yesterday," Mr. Shaver said, "I was in there, and I can tell you I didn't see Daniel.
Jesse shook his head, "Sir, he was. I saw him. Everyone saw him. Ask the other kids."
"Everyone in that classroom has been questioned thoroughly, and no one can remember Daniel being there, let alone anything else," Mr. Shaver replied.
"They have no memory of it?" Jesse asked himself more than he did Mr. Shaver. Had Daniel been able to wipe out people's memory of the day that completely? He recalled the night they had messed with the strippers at The Lucky Beaver. Daniel had made them all believe lies about what happened to them. Could he have mind-wiped an entire student body and faculty? If Daniel could do that then might be no limit to what he could do. The bottom line was, he had the power to do it and he had shown he wasn't afraid to use it.
"No memory at all," Mr. Shaver confirmed, "Nor does Mrs. Brewster."
"Check the attendance logs," Jesses said suddenly, "That'll prove he was here."
"I already did, Jesse," he replied, his hands up in a calming motion, "He wasn't here yesterday. And even if he had been, what would that prove?"
Jesse opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of it. How could he honestly tell Mr. Shaver that Daniel had been given the gift of complete mind control from a funky old hag as some kind of cosmic twist of fate? That Daniel had then mind-fucked thirty kids and one teacher into an orgy and then somehow erased their memories of the experience, leaving them with nothing but a lot of unanswered questions and deep psychological scars? Shaver would have him locked up in the booby hatch.
"Jesse," Mr. Shaver smiled and put his glasses back on his blunt nose. The hefty man walked around his desk and stood in front of Jesse, his hands buried in the pockets of his slacks. He asked, "Have you seen Daniel since yesterday?"
"No," Jesse shook his head. That was odd indeed. Jesse had tried calling Daniel's house several times but to no avail. Under the direction of the authorities and school faculty his parents had confined him to the house. They said that until they knew what was happening, he was to stay close to home. As much as he wanted to find Daniel and figured what the fuck he was doing, he also had grown a little fearful of his friend. A part of him warned that staying away from Daniel might just be for the best.
"Look," Mr. Shaver sighed, "This has been an ordeal for everyone involved. As much as I appreciate what you did for Tina, I also know that you're hiding something."
"I'm not hiding anything, sir," Jesse reassured him.
"You're a good kid. An honest kid I think, and that's why I know you're lying," Mr. Shaver said, a hint of disappointment creeping into his voice. Jesse wanted to crawl under the rug and die. He had always known he was on the up and up, and that most of the staff liked him just fine. He even had come to think of some of the teachers as friends, in a strictly academic sense of course. Jesse had always taken pride in the looks of respect he got from the faculty, and he knew that not only was he good student, he was a damned good black student on top of it all.
"Mr. Shaver," Jesse ran a hand over his shaved scalp, "If you want to figure this mess out, then you gotta talk to Daniel Miller."
Mr. Shaver nodded. He wasn't happy with any of this, and he was tired of pressing Jesse for the details. He returned to his seat of power and sat down not feeling at all like he was charge. In fact, Shaver had never felt more out of control in his life. His authority as principal wasn't enough to solve this and it goaded him to no end. He felt bad over his impotence in the matter and he felt even worse over his lack of knowledge about it but the most horrible part was that so many lives had been affected so adversely. It hadn't been a school shooting, but after seeing the blank, shell-shocked faces on the kids in that room as they were pulled out by the staff and police... hell, it might as well have been.
And then there was poor Diane Brewster...
Mr. Shaver folded his hands together in front of him on the desk and looked at Jesse for a moment. Finally, he spoke, "Okay. I'm not going to question you to death. But please, if you can remember anything, call the police or call me. This is serious Jesse."
Jesse sat in silence, all of sudden feeling very hot and embarrassed. His baggy jeans seemed to confining on him, his Redwings jersey uncomfortably itchy. He could feel something, no, someone in the back of his mind. Someone was picking around and digging for information and he knew exactly who it was. Jesse took a deep breath and blocked himself off to Daniel. There was a moment when he could feel the burn of Daniel's anger touch him. It was hot and painful in his mind for a few seconds, and then gone. Daniel was pissed.
And Jesse didn't much care at the moment.
"You're excused," Mr. Shaver said.
"Thank you sir," Jesse stood up and left as quickly as he could. He was already feeling guilty over what he and Daniel had done to the strippers at The Lucky Beaver on Sunday night, and now he was fighting off guilt over his classmates. He knew he wasn't the one responsible and yet he couldn't shake the feeling that he could've done something to prevent it. As much as he may not have liked some of them, they didn't deserve all that. Jesse wondered how they would deal with it all, how many would be able to move on and process what had happened to them. How many wouldn't?
Once out in the hallway, Jesse wasn't sure where he was going to go. It was three-thirty and school was over. Steady streams of freshman, sophomores and juniors were filling the hallways in a stampede to go home. The entire senior class had been dismissed for the rest of the week. It made Jesse realize just how small the school was. Thirty seniors constituted a quarter of the school population, and when they weren't there the normally frenzied rush to get the hell off the campus seemed less than spectacular.
A few of the lower classmen regarded Jesse with strange looks and questioning glances as they passed by to their lockers. Maybe it was the look on his face that made them all not commit to asking him questions, or maybe it was the fact that they just didn't know what questions to ask. Either way, he was a small stationary island in the flood of students flooding the halls as the three-thirty bell finally finished ringing.
Jesse took a deep breath and walked to the gym. The huge gymnasium was alive with echoes and ghosts of the voices outside in the parking lot. The lights were dimmed down low and the doors to the locker rooms all shut tight. For some reason, Jesse had the crazy image flash in his mind of sailors securing their ship before a storm. Button down the hatches and secure the rigging and all that bull shit. Get below deck and stay there until the storm was over.
That's how the school felt, all the students and teachers buttoning up the hatches and getting below deck before they got swept away by the storm.
"What the fuck am I going to do?" he whispered and walked into the shadows of the gym. Jesse nearly had a heart attack when a voice spoke back to him from the far corner of the gym, echoing and seemingly bodiless.
"That depends," the voice said.
