Safe

by Mark Zubro

  In the hush before school the office atmosphere was like the funeral home when my great-aunt Gladys died last year. Only one secretary was on duty. She sipped coffee and smiled at me.

  The door behind her burst open with a shattering crash. A man in a charcoal gray suit flew butt first into the room. He stumbled, tripped, and fell onto a desk top. The stuff on it flew in every direction. He skidded to the far end, teetered on the edge for a second, then flipped backwards onto the floor. The secretary yelped, rolled backwards on her swivel chair, and slopped coffee all over herself.

  The guy in the suit was our principal, a man in his mid-forties, Warren Ashcroft. He scrambled to his feet and sidled away from the open doorway to his office.

  Without turning away from the doorway he just flew through, Ashcroft said, “Marjorie, call the police.”

  Two people emerged from an office that said Assistant Deans on the door. The woman was Mrs. Coleman, the assistant principal. The man was Mr. Kingsley, the dean of students for discipline.

  Nobody noticed me. They all followed Ashcroft’s gaze back into his office. Frank Boyer appeared in the entrance.

  The first thing I noticed was the large, six-inch knife gripped in Boyer’s right fist. He ignored everybody else and concentrated his attention on Mr. Ashcroft.

  Everybody in school knew Frank Boyer. He was at least six foot six and well over two hundred pounds. He always looked like he hadn’t shaved for three weeks.

  He was old enough to have graduated, but he’d flunked too many classes. Rumor was he only had enough credits to be a junior. I think he may have been held back in grade school once or twice as well, which is how he wound up being in the same year as me. His parents always managed to get him readmitted to school. They probably didn’t want him hanging around the house.

  Last year I tutored him for a while. The school has this program where the brighter students work with those having trouble academically. It works for some kids because it’s easier for them to deal with help from someone their own age. Frank liked me, which was good. He also didn’t learn much. I think he put up with me because I listened to his tales of daring rebellion without laughing of sneering. He interpreted my silences as approval for his tales of meanness, bullying, and stupidity. A lot of them I simply didn’t believe.

  To graduate we had to do so many hours of community service. By working with him, I got lots of those hours out of the way.

  I heard the last time he got suspended was for trying to attack a teacher. Supposedly, if he broke any more rules, next time he’d get expelled. I can’t imagine that was a comfort for the teachers.

  Marjorie, the secretary, as silent as I, managed to creep carefully around the wall of the room, and into another office. A few seconds later, we all heard her over the school intercom calling security guards to the office. A few seconds after the intercom clicked off, I heard her talking to what I figured was 9-1-1 asking for help.

  Meanwhile Boyer and the administrators did this minuet around the secretary’s desk. The teenager flourished his knife and emitted a string of abuse at Ashcroft, most of which suggested Ashcroft do obscene, physically impossible things to himself.

  Before their dance started, Ashcroft had his back to me. When they’d waltzed one hundred eighty degrees around the desk, Ashcroft finally caught sight of me.

  He yelled, “Get out of here.”

  Boyer turned his red-rimmed eyes on me. Ashcroft jumped over the desk and slammed a fist into the hand with the knife. The weapon shot out of Boyer’s grasp and flew by my head. I snatched it from the floor. I looked up and saw Boyer with an enormous bear hug around Ashcroft. Mrs. Coleman jumped on Boyer’s back and tried twisting his head around as far as she could. He tried to bite her. Mr. Kingsley grabbed one of Boyer’s arms and tried prying it away from Ashcroft.

  A minute later a subdued but unrepentant Boyer lay panting on the floor. Mr. Kingsley sat on Boyer’s rear holding the overgrown teen’s right arm taut behind his back.

  Seconds later two cops rushed through the door. I got rammed up against the wall because I had the knife.

  “Not that one,” Ashcroft said. “This one.”

  The cops released my arms. Those few seconds of my arms being yanked and twisted behind my back scared the hell out of me.

  I was told to sit and wait.

  I listened as the adults talked. The problem started because this was Boyer’s first day back from suspension, and Ashcroft had been repeating his warnings about this being Frank’s last chance. This suited Boyer who took him at his word. He probably hoped his parents wouldn’t be able to find another school to take him in.

  The cops apologized all over the place for hurting me. One was this young blond who I thought was hot in his uniform. I liked the way his gun rested on his slender hip.

  Ashcroft tried to say a few kind words to me, but I think he was still pretty shook up as well. When he found out I worked for the school newspaper, he told me that absolutely no word of this was to be written about or appear in the paper. I knew it wouldn’t. Ashcroft would issue a few commands to old Trumble and that would be that.

  The secretary was really nice, offering to get me ice, or make me some tea, or call my parents, and making sure I was okay.

  After things cleared out, when I asked her for Kyle Davis’s schedule, she hesitated a second, but I gave her a forlorn look. I told her it was for a newspaper article about him, and I wanted to say some nice things, but I needed to talk to kids who knew him.

  “That poor child,” she said. “He was always so polite when he was in here.”

  “He came here?” I asked.

  She glanced away from me. She either didn’t want to talk about it or wasn’t supposed to tell. Whether it was because she felt sorry for me or for Kyle, or it was an okay thing for her to do, she made me a copy of his schedule.

  They gave me a pass admitting me to second hour. My part in the excitement hadn’t taken that long to sort out. They took Boyer away in handcuffs. I left while they tried to stick him in the cop car. Boyer put up a struggle so everybody stared at that and didn’t notice me leave.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Monday 11:55 A.M.

  By noon word was around the school that Boyer had destroyed the central office and Ashcroft was in the hospital. Kids will believe anything.

  At lunch I usually sit with my buddies from the baseball team, but I wanted to get started on the Kyle Davis article.

  One thing I discovered when I went to talk to the teachers about Kyle was that the cops had been around to question them about his death. I hadn’t heard any rumors about them questioning kids. As far as I knew, Kyle didn’t have any friends for them to question. He didn’t really have any enemies that I knew of either. Thinking about it, I guess kids were kind of hostile to him in an indifferent way. Like they didn’t much care he existed, but if he was around, he made a good punching bag, not even important enough to hate.

  Kyle Davis’s first hour class was English Literature with Mrs. Templeton. I had her last year for Honors English, and she was pretty okay. She gave me lots of good criticism on my writing, none of it snarky. She didn’t fawn over you. She was just nice and pleasant and competent.

  I caught her in her room, and I explained why I was there.

  She said, “Kyle was a sad boy. This isn’t for you to put in your story, and normally I wouldn’t say anything about one student to another, but I think you’re a sensitive and sensible boy, and if anyone can write a fair article about Kyle, you can.”

  I could feel my face turning bright red.

  She continued, “Kyle was the kind of boy who gets lost in the system. He never caused teachers any trouble. I looked through his files when he was my student, grades poor, but not failing. If a student doesn’t cause disruptions, or they don’t actually fail, teachers rarely suggest a student for special services, a psychological exam for instance.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Too much paperwork with so
many needy children around who make overt disruptions. Kyle was the kind who would get lost in the parade of dysfunctional children.”

  “I thought teachers had to report child abuse cases,” I said.

  “Dysfunctional doesn’t mean abused,” she said, then added, “I could tell the other students didn’t like him, that they picked on him. A teacher can do only so much about that. I can control my classroom. I can’t control them once they’re in the hall. We can rail about injustice and unfairness, but children can be cruel. I asked him once if he wanted me to give the students a general warning on his behalf. He told me no.”

  “Did he talk to the administration?”

  “He told me he tried to once, but that Mr. Ashcroft told him to act more normal.” She harrumphed in the way only an old English teacher can. “That man…Well, you’re a student, and I shouldn’t criticize another member of the staff in front of you.” She sighed. “I can say this. I talked to Kyle several times. He begged me not to say anything to anyone. Despite that, I called his parents once and suggested psychological testing or that Kyle see a counselor. They flat out refused. After that Kyle became far cooler toward me.” She reached for a tissue and wiped at her eyes. “I think I did the right thing calling them. I guess he didn’t forgive me. I talked to the school psychologist and social workers, but they said that starting such a procedure in a child’s senior year was unheard of as if the seriousness of a child’s problems depended on their year in school.” She wiped away another tear. “It was so sad.”

  We talked for a little while longer, then she checked her grade book for the other kids in Kyle’s class. She said, “I don’t remember any of them being friends with him or even talking to him.”

  In the list she read out, I only recognized Frank Boyer’s name, and I didn’t think he’d be much help. I wrote down the first five names so I could go talk to them.

  I found the kids without too much trouble, but in talking to them, I didn’t discover one positive thing about Kyle Davis. They confirmed that he had no friends. Kyle always ate lunch alone, in good weather on one of the benches near the football stadium bleachers. When it rained, he huddled under the overhang of the closed concession stand. In cool weather he wore the same blue hooded sweatshirt days on end. In warm weather he never wore shorts to school, just jeans that got more raggedy every day of the school year along with black or gray T-shirts that he seemed to change about once every couple weeks.

  At least they’d noticed that much. Nobody knew his parents. They also thought he was gay, but no one could give a specific reason for thinking so. Nobody mentioned him being with any kind of friend, much less a boyfriend.

  Wanda Atkinson said, “He was yucky. Most of the time, he just growled or grunted at people.”

  Nick Boxmeyer said, “He was such an oddball, weird. He wanted to be different. The best part was when we would shove him in the halls. His books would go flying, and he’d mutter and call us names, most of us had never heard of.”

  Angel Crandall said, “I felt sorry for him, but what could I do? I couldn’t go up and talk to him. The kids would have laughed at me.”

  Patrick Detmer said, “Frank Boyer was his biggest tormentor. Like one time Frank ripped Kyle’s English book in half, you know like down the spine, and like it made this really cool sound, and like Kyle started to cry, and like he never turned Frank in because he was scared, so like he paid for the book himself.”

  Gina Evenson said, “I went to the same schools with him since kindergarten. He used to fight back some, physically hit other kids. The thing I remember most is that in second or third grade for show and tell, he brought in a pet hamster, and Frank Boyer snuck back in at recess and threw the little animal across the room with such force that he crushed it. Nobody saw him do it, but everybody knew it was Boyer. I don’t remember what happened to Frank, if he got punished, but I’ll never forget Kyle. He cried, took the dead hamster in his hands, and carried it out of the room. It was gross to touch a dead thing. I’m afraid we laughed at him for crying and for being gross and touching a dead thing. I guess maybe we shouldn’t have done that.”

  I was torn. I know as a reporter you’re supposed to be objective. I wanted to say to all of them, ‘you were a cruel piece of shit’, but I held back. I may not have actively done something mean, but I didn’t do something to help Kyle either. I told myself that he’d never been part of my orbit, but that didn’t make me feel better.

  None of the kids I talked to said anything about Kyle complaining to anybody about how he was treated. Still nobody gave him any credit for not being a rat fink and telling on them to the authorities. I was beginning to think he should have shouted from the rooftops, but I wasn’t sure that would have done any good either.

  All these conversations pretty much blew lunch hour. I ran through the lunch line to grab some juice and a burger and headed to class.

  I spent the afternoon only half-paying attention. I thought a lot about Kyle and his life. He must have been a sad kid, but pretty angry too at all the abuse and loneliness. He had to have some outlet, or maybe killing himself was it. I hoped his life wasn’t totally empty and without meaning.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Monday 3:17 P.M.

  After school, Jack McVeen and I worked out in the weight room off the north side of the gym.

  Jack’s been my best friend since he moved into our neighborhood in sixth grade. We play sports together all year round. We’re about evenly matched in talent. We both made second team all state in baseball last year. When we’re not officially on a team in the winter months, we still work out and get involved in intramural and pick-up games. With all the athletic stuff I’ve done I’m in pretty good shape. When we went to get my senior year graduation suit, the tailor commented that he had to make the shoulders extra big to accommodate my muscles, but take in the waist a lot because I have narrow hips. My mom and my aunts always tell me I’m handsome. I think I look okay.

  I want Jack to be among the first I tell I’m gay. It’s one thing strangers finding out you’re gay, but you tell a best friend, and they reject you? Man, that’s more than I wanted to risk, but I’d vowed to myself that I’d tell him someday soon. I wanted to be relieved of the pressure of holding in what shouldn’t have to be a secret.

  Jack’s dated lots of girls. He doesn’t much talk about what he has or hasn’t done with them. He’s more the kind who doesn’t need to brag or feel the need, just kind of confident in himself.

  He’s stayed overnight at my house a bunch of times, and I’ve stayed at his mom’s a couple times on weekends when she’s got custody. Staying overnight at his dad’s is not an option.

  The only negative thing about Jack was that he could be moody. During those times I’ve learned to leave him alone. He generally comes out of it pretty quick. He has a reputation for a bad temper. That came about because he’d wrecked a kid’s motorcycle with a baseball bat. Our freshman year some senior was picking on him. Jack never smarted off to the guy. He just took a bat one day after school and pulverized the bike. He got suspended and was made to pay for it, but the kid never bothered him again.

  He’s quiet, but we confide in each other. I doubt if I’d ever make a move on him. If we ever did anything, he’d have to initiate it.

  While we dressed after our showers, I told Jack about the article on Kyle Davis.

  “The kid everybody picked on?” Jack asked. “I only ever heard about him. I don’t think I ever met him. He wasn’t in any of my classes.”

  Since there were no other kids around, I told him about Frank Boyer’s episode in the office.

  Jack said, “You were really there? Why didn’t you tell everybody? I’d have given anything to see that.”

  I told him it wasn’t a big deal and asked him not to tell anyone what I’d told him. I knew he wouldn’t. He asked if I was giving him a ride home. I told him no. On deadline days I could rarely do that. I usually had newspaper work to do. Even though I’d already turned in m
y column and my article on the holiday basketball tournament that morning, I wanted to stop by the newspaper office and see if I couldn’t figure out a way to get more information on Kyle.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Monday 4:04 P.M.

  As I neared the newspaper office, I heard the click of computer keys and the murmur of voices. In the room the entire staff hunched in front of computer screens.

  The place was so crammed you could hardly move around. Darlene huddled on the floor in one corner, with mock-ups of the front page spread out around her. She liked to look at the hardcopy of the paper. She said it gave her a better sense of the whole aesthetic.

  Ardis Creighton, our photographer, sat in another corner with Bert. They were fussing with a camera and color pictures. She was ignoring Bert’s complaints with calm finality. She could drive people nuts trying to get eight million different angles for a picture just to get it right, but her photos were really good. Some of them had been displayed in a gallery in Riverside last summer. She even sold a few. I really liked them. She was especially good at action shots.

  Chris Johnson’s fingers raced over the computer keys. Chris barely glanced at the rest of us and when he did, he always stared with black scowls. He wrote a couple stories each issue, did some proofreading and assisted Ardis with photos when events were going on in different venues at the same time. Almost every day he wore a black leather jacket, black T-shirts, and sometimes black leather pants. Chains that gleamed like ice draped on his black leather boots. He rode a motorcycle to school. He was a senior, and once you got used to the scowl, a pretty okay guy.

  Mr. Trumble was at the largest desk muttering into a phone.

  Steve stood at one of the filing cabinets next to Darlene. He had a copy on his laptop and was making corrections electronically. Steve was pretty much Darlene’s go to guy when she was swamped like today. When he read proof, he always found every mistake.

  Darlene glanced up at me and smiled.

  I sat down on the floor and told her what I’d learned so far about Kyle. She frowned through the whole story. When I finished, she shook her head. “Poor kid. That story about the hamster is so sad.”