They knew I
didn’t do it because I was in Phoenix with my Dad that week and didn’t get back
till the day after vacation ended. In other words, the day after the locker bomb
went off, and Schuler and Davis were killed. But they think I’m the next geek
who might get inspired and decide to blow up some jocks, or even worse, some
cheerleaders. They knew what the jocks almost did to me, and after what I said
at the assembly, they were all over me.
Before the
assembly I had been invisible; after it, I became like a monkey in the zoo.
Or a serial killer who got off but one who everyone knows is guilty. One who
kills old women and little girls and cripples. The only thing I got out of it
is a free shrink, and I can’t talk to him anyway. He asks questions I’d rather
walk on hot coals than answer, like how I feel about my parent’s divorce. Or he
asks his bonding questions, like whether I’m into Game of Thrones.
The only
one I can really talk to in the whole world is my photography teacher, Mr.
Tweed and that’s because we just joke all the time. Unlike everyone else, Mr.
Tweed doesn’t assume that I’m molded in the nerd template just because I’m
short, wear thick glasses and have acne. He’ll be like, “Yo, Hughie, you send
your application to MIT, yet?” cause he knows I have a C average. Plus, he lets
me use his office when he’s not there, just to chill and get away from people.
Mr. Tweed tries
to come off like a cool Lebowski dude or something, but I think he was a bit
like me when he was in high school. That time he stopped Schuler and Davis and
those other guys from attacking me in the locker room, they
just ignored him like Mr. Tweed was just another geek kid to them at first. And there was a horrible pause where I thought he was
going to leave me there. Then Mr. Tweed started screaming like a madman. No one ever
heard him so much as raise his voice before, and they stopped right away and
ran off leaving me there with my pants down around my ankles.
The next
time I saw Mr. Tweed after that, I avoided his eyes and was going to go the
other way, but he was just like, “so Hughie, you starting at quarterback
against Monroe tonight?” And I was like, “Yeah, they wanted me to, but I have a
date with Scarlett Johansson, so…” Mr. Tweed has a thing for Scarlett.
The first
time I saw him after the assembly, I thought Mr. Tweed was going to use our
rapport to try and be the one adult who could get through to me.
“Dude, I
heard about you said at the assembly,” he started.
“Yeah?” I
said.
He leaned
in close and whispered.
“I totally
get it. I empathize with whoever did it too.”
I couldn’t even
respond.
“Doesn’t
mean we could ever do what they did, just makes us human. But don’t tell anyone
I said that, okay?” he added with a wink. “It’s like Salem around here, and I
don’t want to be the next witch they hunt.”
Everyone
thought it was going to be a long police investigation, but they were shocked
when after just one week, they arrested Mr. Tweed. There had been all this talk
of massive resources and experts coming in from the FBI maybe, even. Only they
didn’t need to cause, after all, not only did they find ammonium nitrate in his office, they found
hundreds of photos of Schuler and Davis taken with a high-power lens.
Apparently Mr. Tweed had been obsessed. There was no need for a big CSI investigation. Of course, if there had been, they would have discovered that the bomb had had a timer device. And maybe they would have even found out that the bomb had been placed in the locker room over a week before it went off.
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