"For God's sake, close that book!"
He was pointing at a girl in the front row who had slipped her English textbook up to the desk and was looking at pictures of the
Titanic.
Ben walked a step closer.
"Shut it now! You've unlocked the door! Now the spirit can get in! Do you want to freakin' die tonight?"
She clapped the book shut and put her hands up to her mouth. No one was fighting over rulers now, and all the chair legs were on the floor.
"Sit down," Ben said. "Now." Those waiting at the sharpener scurried to their desks. Ben was in control again. In the back of his mind a warning flare went up. Were these kids too young for this? Too late. A lead-in this good couldn't go to waste.
"Don't you guys know the story of Bria Patterson, the third-grade girl who died right here in this school?"
Kids shook their heads. Eyes were wide. Ben's body and voice reflected a controlled patience, the elder who bestowed cautious forgiveness for a catastrophic blunder just this one last time.
"Don't you know about second-to-last period and how you never, ever open a book that's not the subject being taught? That opens the archway from hell and lets her in through every opening, every heating vent, every window, and every door."
A boy raised his hand. He had a smirk on his face.
"Put your hand down," Ben said.
The hand went down, the kid's expression now flat. No one giggled. Once more, Ben considered what he was about to do. He had told this story up in the high school many times; it was tradition. Once, at the climax, Leah Bannister had been leaning against the wall by the door and someone in the hallway had bumped right into that spot. She had burst across the room laughing and screaming.
Well, risk none win none, right? He walked back to the center of the room. He had never started the Bria Patterson story with the idea of an open book being a doorway. That part was improvised. Quickly, he tried to think of how he could tie it back in, but he came up blank. Would the kids notice the foreshadowing he left dangling in the wind? Too late now.
"Bria was a third grader," he started. "She lived up in Kensington, by L and Erie. She had a single mom, and she went to school here the year it opened back in 1999. Bria was a white girl, and she always wore her blonde hair in two pigtails on the sides, like the little Swiss Miss character on the hot chocolate can. Now, Bria was known for two things. First, you know the little cross-ties you girls wear? You know how Mrs. Johnson yells and screams when you leave them unsnapped and casual? Well, Bria started that tradition. Ms. Johnson used to fight with her about it all the time; just ask your older brothers and sisters."
A girl sitting in the second row with expressive eyes, corn rows, and braids to one side said,
"What's the second thing she was known for, Mr. Marcus?"
He stepped forward, almost touching the desk of the boy sitting up front. He was so short that his feet didn't hit the floor. He had been slouching way down in his seat the whole period, but he was not slouching now. His hands were folded and his mouth was open. Ben folded his arms.
"Close your mouth, son. Flies are going to get in there." The kid snapped it shut and there was some nervous laughter. Ben stepped back to his power position in front of the white board.
"The other thing Bria was known for was her jump rope," he said. "You know how every morning in front of the Korean hoagie shop on the corner the girl's play Double Dutch until the first homeroom bell?"
Heads nodded.
"That was not Bria's thing. She didn't have many friends here, and the girls out on Cherry Street never invited her to jump with them. Bria jumped alone. She had a single girl's jump rope that she had probably owned since she was six. It had red painted handles, but they were rubbed down to the wood grains where her thumbs always went. Its cord was a dirty blue and white checkerboard pattern that was worn down to a thread where it always hit the street on each rotation. And Bria was never without her jump rope. It was like that kid with a blanket in that cartoon."
"Yes!" a heavy girl with big golden earrings exclaimed from the back row. "Like Linus from the Charlie Brown stories!"
"Right," Ben said. "But think about our skinny hallways. If Bria dragged that jump rope behind her everywhere she went, what do you think happened?"
The short boy in the front row dropped open his mouth once again. Then his hand shot into the air.
"Ooooh!" he said.
"Yes?"
"People be tripping over it!"
"Again, right," Ben said. "Other students were always stepping on her jump rope, and Bria was constantly arguing with them. She was always in trouble and a lot of people wondered if she was going to make it here."
Ben paused for effect.
"Then, on March 9th, Bria Patterson turned up missing."
Silence. No one moved, and Ben knew this was the critical point in the story. It was the place where anyone with a shred of common sense could poke a hole as wide as a highway into the logic of the plot. It was time to really sell here. Ben walked a few steps toward the Social Studies room. He stopped at the corner of the first row of desks and personalized the question to a dark-skinned boy with bucked teeth, black goggle glasses, and big pink albino splotches on the side of his neck.
"I know what you're thinking. If a girl was M.I.A., why didn't anyone hear about it?" He turned to the class. "It is a good question, and my answer is this. Ms. Johnson is connected. She has her own radio show and she talks to Oprah on a regular basis, I'm not kidding. She knows the mayor and the chief of police. The news only reports on people that don't have the money or the muscle to put a stop to the tattle, you see what I'm saying?"
"That's right," someone offered softly.
"And I'm telling you, when a powerful person like Ms. Johnson doesn't want any bad publicity, the news does not make it to the boob tube. Bank on it, folks. Ms. Johnson used her relationship with the police to cover this up. They investigated it in secret and when they came up with no new leads, Bria's mom went crazy. She moved down South and no one heard from her again."
He went back across to the entrance door, opened it a crack, and looked out into the empty hall. He could see the students leaning toward him out of the corner of his eye. He turned and spoke in a low whisper.
"Right out here, by this door, is where the horror most likely started." A boy near the back of the room buried his head under crossed arms and a couple of girls had their hands drifting up toward their ears. Ben walked slowly back to the center of the room.
"You know the alcove at the top of the stairs out here, right? That's where the juniors have those four little rooms all to themselves that everybody is so jealous of. What you might not know is that this place used to be an old factory, and that space wasn't fixed up in the first year the school opened. Back in 1999 the alcove wasn't four neat little rooms, but one big, dark room. It was filled with busted pieces of drywall and boxes of old, moldy shipping papers. There were stacks of splintery wood and piles of twisted sheet metal all over the floor. The ceiling was a maze of decayed pipes and dangling wires. There was a padlock on the big black doors out front, and everyone knew it was against the rules to go near the alcove, let alone in it."
A few sets of eyes drifted upward. This was perfect. The alcove was right above them.
"Don't look, for God's sake!" Ben hissed.
A couple of girls made the high-pitched "eek" sound. A boy was biting his fingernails, and a girl who had been sneaking corn chips out of her book bag had all four fingers in her mouth up to the middle knuckles. Ben sauntered back to the teacher's desk and moved aside a plastic tray bin filled with lab reports about the Ecosystem. He leaned his butt against the edge and folded his arms.
"Oh, they questioned everybody," he said. "Just because the news didn't get a hold of it doesn't mean they didn't try to discover the truth of what happened to Bria Patterson. You know the security guards here have sections they're responsible for, right? You know that Mr. Rollins has the second-floor high school rooms. Nowadays, old Mr. Harvey has the landing, the stairway, and this bottom area all the way to the lunchroom, but back then, it was under the watch of a guy named Mr. Washington. He only had two suits and both were this neon lime green color. Everyone called him 'Frankenstein,' because he was so tall and goofy, and he walked kind of pigeon-toed like a zombie."
Ben stepped away from the desk and imitated the walk for a minute. A couple of kids broke wide smiles, but most were smart enough not to trust Ben 's short moment of humor. He stopped.
"Mr. Washington was the last to see Bria Patterson. He thought he saw her standing up by those black doors, on the landing in front of the alcove. When the police went up there, they saw that the lock on the black doors had been stolen."
Ben supported his elbow on his forearm and pointed his index finger straight up.
"They took in their flashlights and floodlights and chemistry cases, their ballistics materials, DNA sample packs, and high-powered magnifiers. They dusted the place stem to stern for fingerprints, and do you know what they found?" He stopped. He put his hands in his pockets and shoved them down so his shoulders hunched up a bit. "The most frightening thing in the world of crime. They found that the evidence was inconclusive."
"What's that mean?" a paper-thin Hispanic boy with long black hair and braces said. Ben stepped into the isle between desks. He could feel kids shying away a bit as he passed.
"It means that Bria Patterson was most probably killed up there in that alcove, and then her body was removed." He made a quick path back out from the desks and back over to the classroom door. He pushed it open and it squeaked beautifully. "See the Cherry Street entrance door here?" he said. The kids stretched in their chairs for the view. Two in the back stood up, thought the better of it, then sat back down quickly. He let the door creep back closed. "Many believe the perpetrator got access through that door, and it is common agreement that the door was open in the first place because of some member of the faculty who wanted to go catch a smoke. There are only two entrances to the building. There's this door right out here and the main doors up by the secretaries. If you wanted to sneak a smoke would you go all the way up front past the secretaries, who talk too much anyway, and smoke your cig right out there on Broad Street where Ms. Johnson could see you through her office window? Hell no. The theory is that this teacher or janitor or TA or lunch assistant slipped out through the Cherry Street door, stuck a pencil or something in at the bottom so the thing couldn't auto-lock, and went back to the teacher's parking lot for a quick fix. By the way, don't smoke. It's very bad for you."
No one laughed and Ben didn't mind at all.
"And so Bria vanished. We all think someone got in through the Cherry Street door and we all know that Bria Patterson was standing up at the top of the landing. How the stranger approached her, whether she ran back into the dark alcove, how he killed her, and where he took her, all remain . . ."—he looked from one set of eyes to the next—"inconclusive."
A few kids let out their breath. Two girls looked at each other, leaned in to whisper something, and then glanced at Ben. They decided the better of it, and both straightened up. This was Ben's favorite moment in the story, because it was the false climax. They thought it was over. Now, it was going to get really personal.
"So," he said. "You know that in 1999 we only went up to ninth grade here, right? When I was hired in the year 2000 to teach the new tenth graders there had to be a space for us. That summer Ms. Johnson had construction men to fix up the alcove, and yes, you guessed it, my room was through those black doors, first room on the right. I was there for a year. Since then, you know that I have moved into 209, the eleventh graders inherited those four little rooms, and the seniors lucked out with the fancy extension they built up front. Still, I am telling you, I never want to teach in that alcove again. In fact, if Ms. Johnson told me to go back there right now I would quit. There is something evil up there. Still."
Ben had never quite had this sort of focus upon him, certainly not up in the high school. It was more than strict attention. It was a submission that was almost divine in nature. They were lambs. There was an incredible cross-current of fear and trust. They were locked in with him, frozen, terrified. But he was a teacher, right? It was his job to keep them safe, right? They would all laugh when it was over, wouldn't they?
For a brief moment Ben considered derailing. For a moment he pictured the girl in front of him, the one with the hearing aid and the wide forehead, she who possessed only four of her top adult teeth, huddled tonight under the sheets in a blind state of fear. Bria was under her bed, scratching up to grab an ankle. Bria was in her closet slowly creaking the door open, on the chair staring at her in the dark, head lolled to the side, a silhouette in the doorway, arms extended, hair still dripping the dirty water from the Schuylkill River where her body had been dumped.
He thought of more than a few angry parents calling Ms. Johnson and asking why some substitute was telling high school stories to sixth graders. He dropped the storytelling voice.
"Do you guys want me to stop?"
"No!" The chorus was nearly unanimous. Nearly. There were two girls in the back who had not responded, in addition to a boy in the end chair, second row, left. Was it apathy? He couldn't tell. And again, it was too late now to make a difference.
"I brought my stuff in a week before classes started," he continued. "I've never been much of a decorator, so I had my parts-of-speech posters, a couple of pictures of Langston Hughes, an exploded version of a Maya Angelou poem, my file case, you know. And just when I am tacking up the verb-adverb board, I thought there was something in the wall. Something moving. I mean, have you ever heard something so faint that thirty seconds after it happens you wonder whether you really heard anything at all?"