“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.” —  Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 

~*~

Though it was small enough, it was not the kind of small town where a regular group of locals met at a diner or pub every night to talk about the day’s news.  Nor was it a place well-designed for vicious rumor mills and small-town gossip. In a lot of ways it was a point in between, a mix of both and neither, not quite suburban but with too many fields to be an urban city, and definitely not farmland.

I was born here, grew up in the same house all my life aside from occasional visits to relatives or family reunions out of state. Otherwise, life in my town was comfortably familiar. Things seldom changed. The teachers my older brothers had were now my teachers, the same way I inherited their nicer day clothes.

There were hayrides and pumpkin carving contests in the autumn.  And summer brought out the family dogs to lie down in the middle of the sprinklers, cooling off as best they could, tongues lolling with unrestrained relief.

The familiarity was comfortable enough to be unnoticeable, just an understanding that “This is how things are around here”. The biggest news in recent memory was talk of a second grocery store opening. This is why, when anything remotely out of the ordinary happened, it was palpable.

I was wondering about this as I got off the bus.  I shuffled to my locker before homeroom. Ugh, Mondays, bane of students and late sleepers everywhere.

I found my friend Arthur at a nearby locker.  I walked over and slouched my whole weight against the wall as I dove into my observation.

I started, “Hey, do you ever go to a familiar place but as soon as you walk in you know something’s different?”

Arthur looked up to me as he grabbed a notebook from his shelf.

I continued, “Maybe you go away to camp only to come back and find all the rooms repainted and the dining room and living room switched places?  Or mom’s gone and someone else is sitting there when you walk in? Or you see that the bird cage is missing and everyone in the house is keen on changing the subject, but, look, isn’t this new goldfish they picked up so nice?”

“Uhhh…”

“It feels weird today, Art.”

He bit his lower lip, considering. “I never came home to a new room or anything but, yeah, I think I do know what you mean. It’s the teachers. They’re not fussing for us to get to class like usual.”

I shifted my grip on the books I was holding.  I said, “Hey, do you think something’s the matter? Are we going to get some grim announcement this morning? ‘Attention, students, the creepy janitor turned out to be a werewolf.  We’ve taken measures to protect your safety by not allowing you to use the bathrooms during classes.’”

Arthur grinned.  “It would be as good a reason as any we’ve gotten so far on why we can’t obey the whims of nature.”

“Do you think Harris would tell us what’s up?”

Arthur shrugged.  “As the only one in khakis who’ll actually talk to us like we’re equal, I’d give it a resounding… maybe?”

Mr. Harris, or just Harris as he preferred, wasn’t so much older than us students but he never pretended to be one of us. He wasn’t so far removed, though, to be relegated to the role of Teacher alone, which made him ideal as a confidant and group coordinator.

I glanced at my cell.  “There’s still a few minutes before the bell. Come with me and we’ll ask him?”

Arthur followed behind me to the science wing. I was hoping I could pop in, quickly ask, “Hey, why’s it weird here this morning? You know what I mean?,” and get a down to earth answer like, “Morning to you, too. Last I heard the Board of Ed and the teachers aren’t seeing eye to eye on next year’s contracts.”

Harris liked to tease me for all my spontaneous horror story conspiracy theories but he really did listen.

When we arrived at his door, Mr. Harris wasn’t in his office.

That was odd because he was always in his office in the mornings, already jotting down notes and fielding an onslaught of phone calls and students dropping in. I was a regular, having met him as the coordinator for a teen group I went to after school sometimes.  Since I got to know him there, I was used to dropping in to chat for a bit before or during classes.

Complaining about being misunderstood by my parents to Arthur was one thing, but Harris empathized like someone who’d been through the same and came out okay on the other end.

Besides, I liked going to his office. It had tons of pins and stickers on a board across from his desk, and posters of Harvey Milk, one of what looked like a billion ways to build communities, while the rest were a general barrage of inspirational messages that would have looked cloyingly ridiculous in someone else’s office.  In Mr. Harris’ room they just felt right, an extension of him in slightly more cheesy words and with weird fonts.

The posters were there, all of them.  So were the buttons and his stacks of sticky notes.  Everything but Mr. Harris was where it ought to be.

I looked at Arthur and shrugged.  Maybe he ran to the bathroom or really needed another cup of coffee from the teacher’s lounge.  So, I passed the weirdness out of my mind and walked back down to my homeroom as the second bell rang.

I was just coming through the door as Ms. Toffman said, “…in a car accident this Saturday.  He passed away the next day.  We will attend a vigil for him on the football field today at noon.”

With a sinking feeling shooting down to the pit of my stomach, I raised my hand and didn’t wait for Ms. Toffman to call on me. “Sorry I’m late,” I said.  “Who was in a car accident?”

Ms. Toffman turned her focus on me and replied softly, “It was Mr. Harris, the social studies supervisor.  I’m sorry.  We’re all going to miss him.”

As Ms. Toffman’s mouth formed the final couple of syllables, I slunk down further and further into my chair, not listening to the strange words.

Car accident.

This weekend.

Mr. Harris was gone?  It was surreal.

My phone vibrated, signaling a new text.  It was from Quinn, one door over.  We both attended Mr. Harris’ after school group.

I blinked hard to dispel the tears welling up. The text read: “Cassie! Did you hear?”  There was three frowning faces after.

I waited until Ms. Toffman’s attention was focused elsewhere in the room and fired back, “I can’t believe it.”

When homeroom was over, I headed off to my first class. Pre-calc wasn’t usually such a difficult subject for me.  I understood it intuitively, the way Arthur did literature. But not today.  My thoughts swam.  I tried to remember the last time I saw Harris, what we’d said.  It was probably when I stopped in to ask about this month’s group meeting; I liked knowing what to expect in advance.

Had I said good-bye before getting on the bus back home?

Or was the last time when I popped into his office, taking a lifesaver from the candy bowl as I prepared to unwind my latest creative tale to him?  I couldn’t remember.

It kept repeating in my head, a slow chant refusing to disappear: he’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone.

I texted Arthur as covertly as possible, sure he had already heard the news but not wanting him to miss out just in case.

Without a coordinator, would the group stop meeting?  Mr. Harris suggested the group start after reading a response question I wrote in his class. I had loved the last five months of going there, meeting up with other LGBTQ teens.  Would it be cancelled? Would it get a new teacher?

Weirdly, I kept thinking of the ridiculous posters in his office, fervently hoping that–no matter what–they would stay up.

Mondays sucked on their own by virtue of being Mondays.  This one was so much worse.  I scrawled down the pre-calc homework, expecting the bell to ring, indicating time to go to the next period.  After that, we’d go down to the field for the (don’t say it, just don’t say it) vigil.

Yeah, the school’s atmosphere was definitely different.  I realized with a start that I’d picked up on it as I walked in; the apprehension of my peers and the uncomfortable brow-wrinkling of the teachers had been heightened more than usual.

I willed myself to be calm as I asked to go to the bathroom.  Once I got there, I slammed a stall door shut.  I cried then, real unrestrained tears without care who heard.

A car accident.

That was it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR – Aleks S. is too chipper to have the vaunted Russian soul, though he keeps trying. Hailing from lovely New Jersey hasn’t helped much over the years but it is a great source for story fodder (all names have been changed). He thinks (aside from abstract noun answers of the love-friendship-beauty-justice variety) that large fluffy cats, chosen family, and ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’ are what is best in life.