How She Stays

TW: This story contains themes related to mental health, school violence, and slight gore.

It was a cold August day, the first time I went back. Four months is enough time, at least that’s what my contract declares. Many others have already returned. Colleagues and candle vigils. Not letting the terrorists win, whoever the terrorists are. As far as I’m concerned, they did. 

She had the afternoon off. She was going to leave. And I asked her to stay. To help me with something after the bell. Some minute project so trivial I can’t even remember what it was; the only thing I can’t remember from that day. Of course, she agreed. Ever helpful, ever eager. Ambitious for a purpose that went beyond herself. 

She was a child, really. Not in spirit, not in soul. But her years halved mine, a fact she reminded me of constantly. Upon my ever growing back pain and greying hair, she took great enjoyment in teasing me of my impending death. Though she never said it so frankly. The grim reaper sat in the corner of every room she walked into. She herself was nothing but purity, the most sincere kindness only found in folktales. But she was sad. She was very, very sad. Despite her measured smile, her eyes deceived her. Much as mine deceive me. 

And she told me this. Back in the winter months when there was no sun to brighten the world. She always asked, always inquired. About myself, and my wellbeing, and my day. An outsider may say obsessive, but I never would. She just cared. In the simplest form of the word, she cared so much. And she was so sad. 

Standing behind my desk, I find it hard to breathe. Grasping the edge of the warned down wood, I try to remember the box. How long I’m supposed to hold my breath. If my eyes should be opened or closed. It rarely works. My wife, Reel, holds me each night so I can fall asleep. She listens to me scream in unconscious agony through the early hours of morning. I scared my kids once. I hadn't meant to, I never would. But on one particularly horrible night I wailed so loudly it woke them up, resulting in tears and night terrors. Little Joey and Patricia’s frightened faces scarred into my brain. That’s when I agreed to see a therapist. 

I wonder if she ever saw a therapist? She talked a lot about that sort of stuff, but rarely in relation to herself. Even as a young lad, I knew I was different. I suspect she knew the same. I’ve never seen such regulation in reaction. Calculation in chaos. Solving problems before they were even recognized to be such. 

I am lost in the room I've taught in for years. For an empty building, it feels very heavy. 

She only cried once. A single tear down her cheek, clipping on her nose and rolling over her mouth. She apologised. I offered a hug. I never found out what made her cry. 

She was waiting for me, with nowhere to go. So, she circled the halls. Wandered around the building pretending to admire crooked artwork to pass the time. She always felt like a visitor, even in the places she called home. She worked quickly. Never rushed, but always with the utmost efficiency, completely counter to myself. I was always behind on these things, or really all things, hence why it had to be later. Had I done what I was supposed to do, what I should have done, she…

There were eleven minutes left in the period when an announcement went over the speakers. No matter how much you practice it, nothing prepares you for the real thing. Responsible only for the wellbeing of the eleven adolescents in front of me, we “hid” behind the back table, tipping it over as a barricade. During the longest minutes of my life, all I could think was, “Who will pick Joey up from school, and Patricia from practice? I hope Reel falls in love again.” 

I live for my kids. I will die beside my wife. 

In the most horribly irony, we had had the conversation before. Gun or knife. The sort of typical topic we’d converse on a Tuesday afternoon. She was adamantly gun. “It’s so cruel to die a painful death,” she had said. “To know you’re going before you go, without enough time to come to terms with it. I’d much prefer to just be going about my day, and then… not be going about it anymore.” 

She was stabbed seven times. There were no other casualties. The only other person injured was the man who stumbled in from the street. He had sustained trauma to the head from being pushed into a locker. But he lived. I often wonder about the intentionality of that.

She was found with the knife in her hand, the man unconscious across from her. It would have been self-defence. Yet they found her clasping the blade, as if protecting it. Protecting us. Protecting him.

And I hate him. With a hatred that pounds through my hearts and flows through my veins until it releases in the most agonising rage as water from my eyes. 

In the moments after, I looked for her. Looked among the field we were herded onto, with frantic parents coming from all directions. I was convinced she had simply taken off. A bit out of character, but given the events understandable. It truly had not crossed my mind that anything could have happened to her. 

I don’t remember driving home that day. 

They cancelled exams. We just didn’t come back. And now… here I am.

Back. 

When I was sixteen I got stricken by a severe case of pneumonia. The doctors told my mum I might not make it. I read lots of comic books, listened to the few records I owned, and spent the better half of the semester in my bed. My mum was concerned, obviously, but I really wasn’t. People get sick all the time. Doctors can be wrong. More than that, I just felt it. I had more things to do. More life to live. A wife to meet and kids to have and many kids to teach. 

I wonder if she felt it. When she woke up that day, did it feel like all the others? When she wandered the halls, did she know? When I asked her to stay, did it ever cross her mind to say no? There’s a part of me that’s scared she did. And she stayed anyway. For no other reason than I asked her to. 

Immoralized in these hallways, the plaque a reminder of her that day. Irrelevant to me, as I don’t need a plaque to remember. The time since then has passed like purgatory. This school I once delighted at now merely a reminder of my failings. She would be ashamed of me for thinking such things, for blaming myself. She would lay out an argument, so logical, so articulate, spreading out how my feelings, while understandable, do not align with the facts. She would console me without pity, comfort without condescending. 

In one of our final conversations, which of course we didn’t know at the time, we had debated a similar matter. The words she said will ring in my ears until I’m buried in the ground. 

“If it were I who had needed something, would you allow me to apologise for asking for help? That’s rhetorical, we both know the answer. It does not matter if it’s getting something from the printer or listening to the struggles you're facing. I have autonomy over my own life, and it's with that autonomy that I choose to put some of it towards you.” 

August is a wretched month and I doubt ever to like May again.