Student Bodies

by Sean Cummings

  “Betty,” I said, this time scratching under the Great Dane’s chin. “Do you have any idea what the hell that thing was in the video? It only took a human-like form after Twyla’s grizzly spirit creature of doom wrenched it off me. Does this have anything at all to do with the ‘that which is yet to come’ stuff you spoke of that day in Holly Penske’s office?”

  The dog’s tail thumped against the floor and Betty said, “What I spoke of isn’t a specific event. It’s the dangers you are going to face in your new life as a Shadowcull. I daresay this is the second event of many that will shape your life, Julie.”

  I looked at Mom and noticed that she was picking at a small stain on the table with a fingernail. “I get the feeling that Dad’s got some seriously unfinished business and I’m on the receiving end of it.”

  She glanced up from the table and let out a weary sigh. “Sweetheart… I didn’t think you’d be put to the test so early on. But there was no way on earth I was going to allow you to simply become a coven puppet. The world of witches is a deeply political one, Julie, but from the day you were born your father and I made a conscious choice to save you from the life he led until you were ready.”

  Marcus reached for my hand and then locked his fingers around mine. “The last time I looked Julie was pretty much leading that life.”

  Mom simply nodded and continued to pick at the stain on the table. “She is and she isn’t… Julie wears the weapon of a Shadowcull, but she’s making her own way and her own choices. By the time Julie’s Dad walked out of the coven, it was too late for him. He’d been used as a pawn and when he chose to leave, well, let’s just say that it wasn’t exactly on the friendliest of terms.”

  “And now I’m just fighting the good fight, huh?” I asked. “How the hell am I supposed to know if what happened at school today isn’t related to Dad’s unfinished business?”

  Mom shrugged. “It probably is and now is as good a time as any to talk with him… Even you, Marcus.”

  He pointed to his chest and gave Mom a slightly stunned look. “Even me? Um, wow.”

  “That’s right, Marcus, even you,” she said. “We’ll head to the cemetery after supper. In the meantime, the afternoon is yours.”

  I fired off a message to Twyla with a request for anything close to an update at her end, and then Marcus and I headed over to his house.

  What can I say about the Guffman residence? Well, it’s about five blocks from my place. Marcus lives on a quiet cul-de-sac. His house, like mine, looks pretty much the same as every other house in the Lake Sundance community except there’s a Fifth Wheel trailer parked on a cement pad adjacent to their driveway. We arrived shortly after two in the afternoon and the smell of freshly baked cinnamon buns filled our nostrils the moment we stepped inside. Marcus and I are a bit of an anomaly compared to most kids our age. My mother works from home and Amanda Guffman, believe it or not, is a stay-at-home mom and she sells Tupperware, of all things. (Seriously, they could film an early 1960s period piece in Marcus’s house with his mother as the star.)

  “Hey, Mom!” Marcus shouted as he closed the front door. “I’m back early. You got my text about school being canceled, right?”

  Marcus’s mom, a slender woman with wispy blonde hair and rectangular eye glasses, stood up behind the large island as we walked into the kitchen. “I got it,” she said, waving an oven-mitted hand at me. “Hi, Julie… how are you holding up after yesterday?”

  I shrugged. “As good as can be expected given the situation. There was a memorial service at school. Everyone was crying.”

  She headed over to the oven and opened the door. A wall of heat rolled out and my mouth began watering the moment I laid eyes on the giant, puffy, golden brown cinnamon buns. She pulled out the thick aluminum baking tray and placed it on a cooling rack, and then she shut the oven door with her foot. “I remember that a student passed away after a bad car accident when I was in high school. Everyone was pretty upset about it back then, but I sure don’t remember having a memorial service or grief counselors being called in. Things are different now.”

  Marcus pulled out a stool on the opposite side of the island and took a seat while I hovered over the cinnamon buns. “So how did you deal with it, Mom?” he asked.

  Amanda Guffman swatted me on the shoulder with an oven mitt, so I took a seat next to Marcus and watched as she began separating the buns with a ridiculously long knife that looked like it should be in a slasher movie instead of a suburban kitchen.

  “There was nothing to deal with, sweetheart,” she said as she lifted one steaming hot bun out from the tray and placed it on a side plate. “I imagine there were a lot of students who knew the boy, but I don’t think anyone felt a need to speak with a grief counselor. In those days, you talked to your parents. A lot of parents nowadays are too busy to talk to their kids. It’s sad, really.”

  She slid the plate toward me and promptly lifted another bun out of the tray for Marcus. I grabbed a napkin out of the napkin holder and bit into the cake. “Oh my God, this is so unbelievably good!” I sighed as I chewed sticky, rich, buttery awesomeness. “I’m totally moving in.”

  She snorted. “Yeah, well don’t get too comfortable. Wallace and I have a goal of retiring to our Fifth Wheel and travelling as soon as Marcus goes to university. Nothing personal, Marcus. We still love you, but the open road beckons.”

  “I’ll miss you, Mom,” he replied as he grabbed the plate and started pulling apart the sticky bun like he was searching for a gemstone. “Actually, I’d probably starve to death without you so make some room in the trailer.”

  I gave Marcus a slight shove. “Um, yeah, this isn’t the 1950s. Guys cook nowadays.”

  “Well, there is the microwave,” he said through a mouthful of bun.

  Amanda Guffman leaned over the island and beamed at us. “So, you two have been going together for a couple of months, now. It’s awfully cute, by the way, you know, seeing as how you two have basically grown up together.”

  I felt my face flush with embarrassment. There’s nothing worse than a parent gushing over their teenager’s romantic life. Marcus took another bite of his cinnamon bun and then wiped his mouth with a napkin.

  “Um, Mom? This is like a no-fly zone. You don’t see me asking about you and Dad, do you?”

  She had a faraway look in her eyes and her smile broadened. “When Wallace and I started dating, we were in university. He was studying chemistry. He drove an old Dodge Monaco that was as long as a yacht and he had crazy sideburns and wild hair. He looked like a mad professor, but my God, he could dance up a storm. We used to go to the Uptown, a nightclub on First Street. It’s gone now.”

  “Gag,” said Marcus through a mouthful of sticky bun.

  She reached across the island and gave him a swat on the shoulder. “Don’t make fun, Marcus. Those were special times in our lives. Believe it or not, you and Julie will one day pine for the days when love was in the air and–”

  “Again, gag,” Marcus interrupted. I gave him a swift kick on the shin with the side of my foot.

  “Anyway,” she continued. “We were inseparable from the very first date. Your dad can still dance, by the way. Oh, isn’t there a Christmas dance coming up tomorrow night? I’m surprised it hasn’t been canceled.”

  I raised a finger. “Holiday dance – we’re all about the political correctness now.”

  She arched her eyebrows. “Well, you two are going, aren’t you?”

  My stomach made a funny churning sound as I spun around on the stool to look at Marcus. He gave me an uncomfortable glance and then returned to his snack. I hadn’t thought about going to the dance, partly because I hate that kind of crap, but mostly because I’m not a girly-girl. I put on the tiniest amount of makeup necessary to highlight my eyes, but I don’t go to town layering on the stuff with a trowel like a lot of girls at Crescent Ridge. My wardrobe consists of jeans, T-shirts, hoodies and sweats – I don’t own a dress and I wouldn’t be caught dead in a set of hee
ls, they’re lame. (That and I’d likely break an ankle). Some might call me a tomboy, but I’m not anything like that. I just dress the way I want to – that’s how I’m hardwired.

  But it might be fun to go to a dance.

  It might even be romantic. Slow dancing with Marcus in the darkness amid the glow of soft lighting. We’d only been officially dating for a short time and we’d limited ourselves to going to the movies, holding hands and of course making out during the boring bits.

  “I’d like to go,” I said after a moment of daydreaming. “But we’ve got other plans.”

  Marcus made a grunting sound. “You’re telling me. Maybe we’ll hit up the Valentine’s dance. It’s only two months away.”

  Amanda Guffman gave a small shrug and took our now empty plates. She stuck them in the dishwasher and then pointed to the basement stairs. “Alright. Out of the kitchen, I need to clean up. Maybe there’s something you can watch on the dish in the family room. You can hang out in Marcus’s bedroom downstairs if you like, but keep the door open. While I think it’s lovely that you two are seeing each other, I will kill my son if he makes me a grandmother before I’m forty-five.”

  Marcus made a choking sound. “Mom… not cool!”

  “A bit too informal, son?”

  “Ya think?” he answered as he shook his head. “Thanks for the snack, we’re going to hang in my room and surf on my laptop.”

  And so we headed down into the basement. Unlike my house where our basement is primarily a magical laboratory, the Guffman household has a family room to die for complete with a fifty-two inch high-definition TV, theater-style chairs with drink holders no less, and surround sound. There’s a massive rack of DVDs containing the past fifty years’ worth of Doctor Who and to top it all off, the rack is designed to look like a miniaturized TARDIS.

  Did I mention that both Marcus and his dad are huge Doctor Who fans? Me? I don’t get the show and I find the fact that the Doctor needs to have a sexy female companion to be the height of misogyny.

  We padded across the plush gray carpet and into Marcus’s bedroom and let me just say that it’s a bit like walking into nerd central. There’s a mural of the Milky Way galaxy on one wall, and another mural showing a star chart on the wall directly opposite. Marcus’s prized possession is his Celestron NexStar 6E telescope complete with an on-board computer for something Marcus calls “sky alignment”. It rests on an aluminum tripod and the whole thing weighs about fifty pounds. I should know because I’ve helped him haul it upstairs, into his father’s SUV and then up to Nose Hill Park to gaze at the heavens.

  I took a seat on the edge of Marcus’s bed as he unplugged his laptop from his twenty inch monitor. He placed the laptop on the bed and then grabbed his phone and started sliding his fingers across the screen. Seconds later he placed it on his desk and then crawled onto his bed next to me.

  “We’re on your bed,” I snickered. “I hope your mom doesn’t accidentally walk in on us.”

  Marcus shook his head. “She won’t. Mom trusts me.”

  “So, what were you doing with your phone?” I asked.

  He clicked on the YouTube icon on his desktop and a browser opened up, then he ran his finger along the mouse pad and clicked on “My Videos”.

  “I’m emailing Twyla to make sure she got the link that I sent earlier.”

  “Good thinking,” I said. “So, I have a hypothesis about that ream of paper we found.”

  “I’m glad someone does, because I don’t have a clue at this point.”

  I pointed to the laptop. “Go to Facebook. I want to see Travis Butler’s page.”

  Marcus clicked on his bookmark and the page loaded in less than three seconds. He typed Travis’s name in the search engine and a tiny icon appeared with a picture of alive-and-well Travis Butler sucking back on a bottle of beer. Marcus clicked on the link and Travis’s Facebook page opened.

  “OK, cool,” said Marcus. “His parents didn’t delete the account yet.”

  Marcus ran his finger along the mouse pad and then clicked on the link. Travis’s wall appeared and there were a ton of messages of condolence from Crescent Ridge students. We spent the next few minutes reading through each one until we came to a wall posting from Mike Olsen. It was time-stamped Friday at 3.48pm. The posting said, “Got the stuff for the project yet? What’s the next move?”

  Marcus and I looked at each other and then back to the screen. “You don’t think this has anything to do with the ream of paper, do you?”

  “Maybe,” I replied. “Scroll down some more, I want to see if Mike posted anything else.”

  Marcus did as I requested and between wall-postings ranging from pictures of half-naked Maxim cover models and the occasional link to a video on YouTube, it looked like any other teenager’s Facebook wall.

  “Look,” said Marcus. “A posting from Christine Beals. It says ‘About project dork. I’m in. So is Mallory Russell.’ Jesus, you were right. This is some seriously disturbed shit.”

  I felt a little bit sick at seeing my hypothesis being proved. It’s one thing for a student to wind up being harassed by one person at school, but a collective effort among three or four students suggested a sick and twisted conspiracy.

  “Open Mike’s Facebook page. I bet they’re talking to each other about this so-called project on each other’s walls.”

  Marcus shrugged and typed Mike Olsen’s name in the search engine. Just like before, a picture appeared, only this time showing Mike Olsen dressed in his football uniform, so Marcus right-clicked for the link to open in another browser tab. He scrolled down through more than twenty wall postings until he found one that was time stamped Friday at 3.52pm. It was a message from Travis Butler.

  “Got the stuff. Five hundred pages of pure gold. We fill it up on Monday morning so meet me there early. 7.45am.”

  Unreal.

  Mike and Travis had planned to stuff every one of the sheets of paper into Willard’s locker so that when he opened it, he’d wind up buried in an avalanche of pure concentrated hate. This wasn’t about a bullied kid; this was about something far more invidious. I flushed with anger as I remembered how lonely Willard Schubert looked that morning at McDonald’s. The poor guy was the lowest form of life at Crescent Ridge High School and at least four of the most popular people had decided to target him with a mean-spirited prank designed to humiliate him.

  “Assholes,” Marcus snarled. “Total freaking assholes! What the hell did Willard ever do to deserve this kind of crap?”

  I placed a calming hand on Marcus’s shoulder and squeezed. “This is beyond bullying; this is, well, it’s just something else entirely. And I bet the ream of paper is just the tip of the iceberg. Scroll down some more; we need to go back three months to the start of school.”

  And so we did.

  What we discovered was a horror show for Willard Schubert. It was a simple hyperlink so we clicked on it and what we found ignited a blaze of anger in the center of my chest.

  There were snapshots of Willard in the boy’s locker room. The first one we saw showed Willard standing in his underpants, his acne-covered shoulders facing the camera. A smirking Mike Olsen was in the frame wearing a pair of winter gloves as he held Willard in place long enough for the camera person, who could be none other than Travis Butler, to take the picture. Another photo showed Willard Schubert from the waist up as he was showering in the shower room. The caption read, “No amount of soap is gonna wash away this kind of grease!”

  Marcus started shaking. “Unbelievable,” he growled. “This is nuts, Julie.”

  We flipped over to Mike Olsen’s page and continued scrolling down his wall. There was a shot of Willard Schubert picking his nose and another one showing him getting nailed in the groin with a soccer ball.

  “It’s a campaign of humiliation, Marcus,” I said, barely managing to contain my anger. “And the thing that sickens me is that it’s all in the public domain. Why the hell hasn’t anyone reported this? Why didn’t Willar
d do something?”

  “Do what precisely?” Marcus quickly snapped. “We live in a society that’s hooked on reality TV. The Willard Schubert Show is just another human soap opera and people love to mainline this crap. Why watch the manufactured reality shows on network TV when you can watch someone you know, right? And nobody is going to report it – nobody in high school rats on anyone unless it has to do with dating and infidelity. Christ, Willard’s probably been picked on all his life and what we’re watching right now is just more of the same from the usual suspects.”

  “I’m not sure what to do about this,” I said.

  Marcus shrugged. “We could report this to the school, but with Travis not even in the ground yet, how much do you want to bet the school isn’t anywhere ready to deal with a bombshell of this magnitude? Damn it, Julie, this is bullying on an epic scale. There might only be two ringleaders, but every Like posted by each person who has seen the pictures of Willard means that in their own little way, those people are condoning it.”

  I nodded and closed the computer. I draped my arms around Marcus and embraced him. “Tell me what it’s like,” I said quietly. “Tell me so I can understand what Willard is feeling.”

  Marcus’ eyes darkened. “It’s like a siege,” he said, exhaling heavily. “You go to school knowing that you stand out because everyone knows you’re the target. You hear the whispers behind your back and you’re constantly looking over your shoulder; when you open your locker, when you’re changing after gym… when you’re peeing in the urinal or sitting on the toilet. Adults don’t remember what it was like to deal with the BS that goes on in the crowded hallways or behind the dumpster at lunchtime. They’ve forgotten how a bullied student was the worst-kept secret in the world because when they were our age, they saw it every single day and did nothing to stop it from happening. It was far easier to let someone else get slammed than to become a target themselves. Everyone at Crescent Ridge used to see me getting trashed all the time and you try to numb yourself from it all.