SINCE WE ARE TALKING ABOUT 5TH GRADE HORROR STORIES pt.3 and EPILOGUE

Mr. B wasn’t really trying to be intimidating, he just was. He was easily the funniest teacher I had ever had. He had made Math fun by playing games and telling us really long stories to help us remember stuff. For instance, for Long Division, we learned Dear Mother See Care Bears. Which meant Divide Multiply Subtract Compare Bring Down. Its twenty years later and I still have no problem remembering that, but I forgot to being my Netflix with me this morning.
When people you normally like and respect and you want the approval of are mad at you, it’s exponentially more terrorfying. You mix getting in trouble with fear of abandonment. Fucking super.
Oh yeah, did I mention the fact that Mr. B (something no one of my age would have called him to his face) was about 6’5 and had a grand Selleckian mustache. And it was man, this great great man, who had just called me out of line after recess.
Everyone was staring, waiting for me to get it. I was fucked. So fucked. Word of my new nickname had already reached the post recess gossip mill and the bad ass kids had started to gnash their teeth at me and growl. Chris Richardson’s popularity was such that even the bad ass kids were his friends, so basically there was no where in 5th grade to hide.
I was hoping maybe the blow had left Chris with out the ability to remember anything after August. We’d be cool and he’d have to re learn long division, but I knew the code now; I could teach him. Let that be my punishment please.
Of course maybe Mr. B didn’t know. Maybe no one had talked. Rules of the playground and such, but it didn’t matter. They had probably CSI’d Chris’s forehead by now and matched the marking to me. The police would be here any moment. Mr. B was just stalling my escape.
When I got up to Mr. B, he just looked down his mustache and asked me, “What happened Justin?”
Well being the James Bond type that I am. I looked at him with a cool icy confidence. I was innocent. He was my tag team partner; I never would have done anything intentionally to hurt him. It was all a misunderstanding and Mr. B would see that. In fact, I know he would invite me in to the teacher’s lounge later so we would laugh about it over a couple Cokes from the soda machine. Just boys being boys, roughhousing and what not.
That confidence held up for exactly one quarter of a second before I started to ball.
I mean why did I run right after? Sprinting away from the crime scene and back to the “rugby” game like nothing had happened. I couldn’t have looked more guilty.
It was the perfect storm. There was Mr. B staring, he had was already reforming his opinion of me. I was a good kid. I only got sent to the principal’s office once when I called Alyssa Sadowski an “A-hole” (sic) during a kickball game. She was blocking third base, and I was sure that was against the rules. It was at least in extremely bad taste. Then of course later that year, I got a pink slip for forgetting to do my spelling homework, but I had climbed back up that slippery slope. I had been clean for over a year and Mr. B was just staring at me. He already knew. He had his answer. It didn’t matter what I was gonna say. He just wanted confirmation. He wanted me to lie so he lay down the hammer.
All I could see was my Mom’s very disappointed face as I was carted away to the very soothing pink jail cell at the Middleton lock up (that I had been inside of already during a Cub Scout field trip).
This was it. I was going to be labeled and I was humiliating myself. I professed my innocence through a steady dam break of spit and mucus that was pouring from every opening in my body. I began blubbering. I think Mr. B just felt bad. There would be no detention or pink slip. He took me down the hall and let me hyper ventilate for a while. It was pretty much a perp walk down the line of my entire 5th grade class. All of them barking and growling at me. It wasn’t my fault, but the jury had said other wise. In this scene, Wild Wild West by the Escape Club would be playing and “Dance to the beat that we like best/ The Wild Wild West/ WILD WEST.” (gun fire)

EPILOGUE

Now Hold On to the Night by Richard Marx is playing. Elijah is nervous. He looks in every direction to make sure no one is around. Chris Richardson stands before him (played by a young James Van Der Beek. He wouldn’t know it then, but he’d need the money later on.) VDB has his hands in his jacket staring through the glass at a flower shop. Mrs. Flynn was ringing up his mother. So Elijah has little time. They were partners once. Friends. He had to make amends.
He keeps his head low and makes sure there are escape routes just in case it’s a trap. He contains himself this time. It’s just him and VDB.

“Hey,”
“Hey,”
“Sorry about…”
“It’s OK. I got a couple stitches.”
Demurely.
“Can I see?”

VDB pulls back the bandage and reveals the swollen yellow and purple lump on his forehead. There are a couple stitches at the zenith but they barely mask an unmistakable impression of Elijah’s two front teeth. They were like two dashes on his forehead. A scarlet letter M in morse code. But VDB just made Elijah feel at ease: they were partners. He knew he was sorry. It was extremely mature for a 10 year old. Elijah would have to take the taunting barks from his classmates, but VDB never joined in and it would die by the beginning of the next week, when someone else had erred.