The first day of fall quarter I meet the young man who will kill me. Dressed in black, the stone-faced boy stomps past me to the back of the classroom. He smirks a challenge, snorting at the sharing of pronouns. I hope he’ll drop the class, but he appears every day, muttering as he shoves his way to a seat.
My other students speak to him only when necessary, and when they invite him into a small group discussion, they keep their distance. The day he uses the “N” word while talking to two young Black women, I call him aside and file a student conduct report. He starts skipping class. When he shows up, he arrives twenty minutes late, flinging the classroom door open with a loud crash.
And then, he disappears. Two weeks go by, then another. The quarter is almost over; soon I’ll be posting final grades. When my students tell me he’s been spotted at the gardens across from campus, I take the long way home instead of cutting through the park.
I used to remember all my former students’ names — the ones who doodled in their notebooks, the ones full of questions, the ones afraid to speak — but now, the only name I hold is his, never to be said aloud in case it summons him from the shadows, placing him in an elevator, on the train, or the meat aisle of my grocery store.
~
Phebe Jewell’s recent work appears or is forthcoming in Bright Flash Literary Review, Does It Have Pockets?, SoFloPoJo, and BULL. Read her at https://phebejewellwrites.com.