The auditorium usually swallows itself up in sprightly chatter, but today takes a hard gulp, and chokes, when silence demands its much needed attention. Mr. McKinley has been standing in place, microphone in hand, long before the assembly has actually assembled. Students have filed into neat rows, stowed bags under chairs, muted their cell phones. Never before has a high school seen such rigid organization of rowdy teenagers sandwiched into a singular setting.
The auditorium stage, normally full of life from the sets and props of an autumn musical, is barren. The gathering has nothing to admire as they sit and wait with mounting apprehension. There is nothing to look at, save Mr. McKinley alone at the podium, microphone in hand, standing among the thickening silence.
Kelsey Sutherland whispers a poorly timed joke from the left side third row, followed by hideous snorts and giggles from Lindsey Whiting and Britt Everly to which a disgruntled Ms. Hale physically hits Kelsey Sutherland, one of her very own students, in the back of the head to shut her up. No one else but Kelsey Sutherland would dare open her mouth at a time like this, and after that interesting exchange, no one else does.
A painful five minutes passes in no hurry.
Then ten, and then fifteen, until finally the auditorium lights disappear into enveloping darkness, dimming and leaving and dying.
Mr. McKinley, a man usually full of sprightly chatter, today takes a hard gulp, and chokes, as he sputters nervous coughs into the speaker system, a pervasive sound of electronic vibrations and hiccups that stings the eardrums of the audience. He takes a pause to himself before trying to speak again, and smiles softly at the crowd in front of him. If you sit close enough, perhaps the first five or six rows, you can watch as water wells in the corners of his sunken, dreary eyes.
However, once Mr. McKinley does begin to speak, he goes unheard. His words ebb into the background, and all the attention from the crowd of students, and the cliques of faculty members, and even Mr. McKinley, is given to the slide show that greedily devours the spotlight. We are granted only eight seconds of Aditya Khatri before a picture of him fades again, followed by another eight seconds, and another, and another.
Mr. McKinley concludes his dedication, and Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” settles among the void instead. The music choice, while touching, is trite and underwhelming. Nevertheless, Darci Lee Griffins still pretends to be caught in a chokehold of tears from the far right side wings. A teacher, possibly Mrs. Jennings or Mrs. Gregory from the looks of it, escorts Darci out into the hallway. Passing through wide double doors, Darci’s exit lets the hall’s harsh, artificial lighting escape into the darkened auditorium, a haunting change of atmosphere, until the heavy door swings shut again and chases the bright rays out into the distance.
I watch this interaction, the push-and-pull between the light and the darkness, from my seat in the corner. I wonder if Aditya Khatri was the gentle darkness we corrupted or the shining light we chased away.
* * *
“I don’t know, Mr. McKinley. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
Mr. McKinley looks absolutely frazzled, clutching a stapler from his desk with one hand and hitting it hard with another. Loose staples litter his workspace, and each time the crocodile jaws of the stapler violently snap another staple free, I force myself to hold in a shudder.
“You knew him,” Mr. McKinley finally poses aloud, testing new waters.
“Everyone knew him.”
“No, you knew him.”
“Mr. McKinley, I’m sorry, I really am.”
“What went wrong?” Mr. McKinley pleads for the umpteenth time.
“I don’t know.”
“No, please, what went wrong?”
“I’ve already told you I don’t know.”
“But you have to know something. Please. Anything.”
“There isn’t anything.”
“There’s something.”
“There isn’t anything.”
“God dammit!” Mr. McKinley erupts in tears. “God dammit, god dammit!”
I don’t know what to do, so I do nothing. I sit. I fold my hands in my lap. I watch Mr. McKinley cry.
And then, like the light that infiltrates the darkness when you don’t expect it, I cry, too.
“I only heard it.”
Mr. McKinley looks up from the open palms he’s buried his face in and looks up to meet my face. He gives back a puzzled look, not expecting me to confide in him, not expecting me to be crying, too.
“What?” Mr. McKinley asks so quietly that I can only make out his words by watching his mouth move.
“I didn’t see it. And, I don’t know, maybe if I had seen it, seen it coming I mean… then maybe I- maybe I could have said something or done something…” with every word I drag out from inside me, I lose more and more tears. Mr. McKinley’s puzzled expression changes again, distorted, overwhelmed, exhausted.
“What didn’t you see?” Mr. McKinley asks.
“I wasn’t inside the stall. I was outside, and I could only see legs knelt upon the ground through the underside of the stall walls. And I kind of know what’s going on. I just expect – ya know – horseplay. Boys will be boys. It’s just rough-housing. I still thought that we were playing around. But they were in there for a long time, shouting at him and laughing at him. Adi would fall to the ground once in a while, after they punched him up a bit. I could see it. I could see through the crack where Adi would fall to his hands and knees. Adi would stay down there until someone picked him up again, grabbing him by his shirt collar and yanking on him hard. And then finally, the climax we’d all be waiting for, Keygan Rice shoves him in the-” I cry harder. I don’t want to say it.
“Keygan Rice takes him by the back of the neck and shoves him in the toilet. And that’s what we’re all expecting, but I didn’t know he’d… I didn’t know he’d…” I don’t want to say it.
“He’d what?” Mr. McKinley asks.
“I didn’t know Keygan had shit in the toilet.” I didn’t want to say it.
There’s a long silence, the silence that demands attention and hushes an assembly of rowdy teenagers when something is grave and serious.
“Then Keygan throws him out into the middle of the bathroom floor. Trey Michaels gets behind Adi and holds his arms behind his back. He’s pulling so hard against Adi that I can see where the bones inside of Adi’s arms are bending backward and working against the resistance. Jason Hayworth pulls a cigarette out his bag, lights it, hands it to Keygan. They’re all laughing their asses off. Crying, even. They can’t stand how funny it is. They won’t stop asking Adi if he’s a dot Indian or a feather Indian. They’re poking a finger at the red dot between his eyebrows. But the fingers weren’t good enough…”
Mr. McKinley’s expression changes again, expectant, terrified, devastated.
“They ask Adi one more time if he’s dot or feather. Keygan can’t wait anymore. He tells Adi that we’re ‘fixin’ to find out’ and smashes the cigarette as hard as he can right where the red dot is. And Adi screams. Adi hadn’t said one thing the whole time, but he screams, and that’s enough for everyone. All that hard work for this. He screams and they’re satisfied.”
“And then what?” Mr. McKinley asks, affixed to each unfolding piece of the story as he learns more and more, on the edge of his fucking seat like an impressionable child by the campfire. The horrendous tales of something sinister and lurking and carnivorous in the wilderness leaves the child unable to divert his attention elsewhere. We spend our lives seeking solace from these stories, running away, hiding.
“Everyone left. Walked out the doors and left him there on the floor. He pulls himself up to the sink and tries to wash his face off. By that point, everyone had left but me. I make eye contact with Adi. I tell him one thing before I go.”
“What?”
“I don’t even know why I said it. I just felt like I needed to contribute or something. Be a part of the boys.”
“What did you say to Adi?”
“Shit-brown and dirty like your people.”
* * *
When Mr. McKinley can finally go to bed that night, he lays awake like he’s done for a week now. He remembers the day before it happened, when Aditya came into his office.
Aditya had told him that some of the junior boys were being rough on him.
Mr. McKinley laughed.
“That’s why it’s called rough-housing, son. Boys will be boys.”
He ushers Aditya out of the office and closes the door.
Seven days later and Mr. McKinley is restless, tormented each night by the sinister, and the lurking, and the carnivorous. He thinks long and hard about which of these monsters he’s created.