There was something of a suicide cluster at the high school. It started with William Talbot, a thin red-haired junior who was sort of an outcast type kid. Listened to heavy metal and seemed to hate everyone. When we heard about it in the teacher’s lounge, we were all thinking the same thing. Glad he pulled the gun on himself and not 30 of his classmates. Still a tragedy though. Bill Hernandez had to announce it to the school over the intercom. I still remember his voice shaking through the tinny little speaker in the lounge. Shit gig, being the principal.
Then came Carey Lau. She was a volleyball champ and one of the overachievers. No one expected that. She’d been accepted to Duke and was on track to become a damn senator or CEO, then drank a bottle of Round-Up weed killer over Spring Break. Took her a week to die. That one really shook me. Carey was in my AP Environmental class the year before. I wrote her a letter of recommendation and her mom sent me an email once the Duke Letter came in, thanking me for Christ’s sake. I’m still a little glossy and stupefied as I sit here typing her name. You absolutely never know when some unseen pressure will suddenly release itself. Like when Mount St. Helens went from a dazzling snowcapped summit to a column of death and ash.
The students were obviously distressed over Carey. They held a candlelight vigil in the gymnasium where she scored so many points for the Middletown Lions. Coach McBride hung her photo by the door to the girl’s locker room for the remainder of the semester. There was so much open grief and mourning in the hallways and in classrooms that no one expected Allan Buckner would put a car battery in his JanSport and hurl himself into the Middletown quarry. It’s a popular swimming spot in the area. The cops shut it down every ten years or so when a drunk senior jumps into the dark water and doesn’t resurface for a few days. They shut it down again after Allan Buckner.
By that point, it had occurred to the staff and faculty that there might be a problem. This might be a copycat situation. We had meetings. The principal brought in a specialist who taught us how to identify students who might follow suit. She said that after Marilyn Monroe died, dozens of teens around the country started overdosing on pain meds. Never mind what happened after Kurt Cobain. She said that young people are drawn to the kind of attention suicide brings and want that for themselves. I don’t know if I buy that, but I know it’s terribly sad, whatever the cause.
There was Richard Steiman’s father, which doesn’t really count as he wasn’t a student. We did have to offer support for Richard, who found his dad hanging from a string of Christmas lights wrapped around the basketball hoop in the driveway. He’d even go so far as to run an extension cord from the garage to make sure he was lit up. It had almost started to seem like some kind of comedy sketch when the biggest shocker of them all came through the Middletown High School PA system. Mackenzie Rogers and Paul Sanchez were found in Paul’s car, half-parked in Pike’s pond. We knew it was a suicide pact as the water only came up to the window, so they had to submerge themselves in the footwell of Paul’s Nissan Maxima. When they found the bodies, their hands were still clasped together behind the brake pedal.
Mackenzie and Paul were King and Queen of the prom. No one, absolutely no one, expected this from them. I was at a loss. The message came over as I stood at the copier printing out the day’s labs. Principal Hernandez said that students could go home if they wanted to. But also that there would be counselors at the school if students wanted to stay and talk. To my surprise, I walked into a full classroom for my first block class.
I stood there like a fool for a moment, thinking about something I could say that might bring some comfort to the kids. Then I started choke up a little and turned around to face the board. Not knowing what else to do, I pulled the cap off my green dry-erase marker and started writing out the lesson plan for the day.
“Mr. Jennings?” I heard from over my shoulder.
I turned my head slightly.
“Are we really going to do bio today?” asked Mackenzie Odel, the other Mackenzie in my AP Bio class.
A vortex of silence opened as I thought about how to answer.
“I… I don’t know what else to do…” I stammered. “I…”
I trailed off as an idea came to me. Something one of the English or Art teachers might do.
I turned to them.
“There’s no use pretending we’re not all a little shook up right now… So in honor of Mackenzie and Paul… I’d like to ask each of you to come up to the board and write one word that you think of in celebration of their spirit.”
I turned and erased the bio lesson and wrote their names in large letters across the whiteboard.
“I’ll go first,” I said.
I wrote the word “free” on the board.
It’s something that I always associate with teenagers.
“Someone else…” I said. “Geoffrey?”
Geoffrey looked up at me in terror. He shrunk a little at his desk.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to…” I said.
“It’s not that… It’s just… I know I’m sad about Mackenzie and Paul. And everyone else. But it’s just that I have another problem… And I’m tired of being ashamed of it…”
I stiffened with fear, thinking the next suicide was about to happen in my homeroom.
“Mr. Jennings, I can’t come up to the board because I currently have a boner.”
The class turned and giggled. Mackenzie Odel covered her mouth.
I laughed a little, squinting and confused.
“I know we aren’t supposed to talk about these things, especially in light of all the tragedy beset upon our school, but I refuse to be ashamed of a very common physiological response for someone my age, and politely decline your invitation to memorialize Mackenzie and Paul on the whiteboard.”
I laughed again, this time out of sheer dumbfoundedness.
“… Geoffrey, I appreciate your candor but…”
“Mr. Jennings, I too have a boner right now. A real ripper, sir.”
I looked over at Billy Sauders and could see the tip of an erection covered in the blue mesh of his gym shorts sticking up above the desktop.
I started to get angry. I stepped back a foot or two and bumped into the whiteboard.
“What the heck is going on here… I know you’re all upset right now, but this… This isn’t the way to deal…
Another hand shot up. This time Kayla Ortanelli.
“Me too, Mr. Jennings. I believe boners exist beyond the rigid confines of gender and am unable to come to the board as well.”
This was too far. I stepped back toward the students again.
“Now this has to stop. You’ve had your fun, but this is not acceptable behavior under any circumstances…”
“But we all have boners,” the class said.
All hands went up into the air. Twenty-eight sets of eyes all looking at me.
“We are young and many of us have not yet experienced the thrill of human intimacy. And with all the death and sadness around our community, we fear some of us may never get to experience this great joy of life.”
I was dumbstruck. Had no idea what to say and stood there for like a minute or two. I stood there so long that the dynamic started to shift. It started to be that it was I who was waiting for some kind of answer from them.
“We demand an assertion of value. Just like the Barthelme story in AP Lit,” they said.
“I… I don’t know what to say,” I said. “I’m… I don’t know how to assert value… of that kind at least.”
They all looked at me as if I should know what to say. Like when a parent looks at their toddler waiting for them to say please.
“Tell us it will all be okay. That we will eventually all get laid, whatever that looks like for us as individuals.”
“I don’t know if I can promise that…” I said.
This was something I was sure of.
The class seemed to think for a moment.
“Then at least try to assure us that it is okay for us all to have boners right now, despite this seemingly endless suffering.”
I straightened myself, blinked a few times, and started to respond.
“Yes… It’s okay to have boners… Even now.”
My voice cracked again as I spoke.
Everyone seemed to relax a little. Some looked out the window and seemed to be lost in thought. No one took out their phones, which is probably the most unrealistic aspect of this story.
“I have a word for Mackenzie and Paul,” said Mackenzie Odel, with her hand raised high.
I turned and walked out of her way.
She walked up to the whiteboard, pulled the cap off the green dry erase marker and wrote the word “unfurling.”