Page 99 of The Rebel of Raleigh High
I reach up and run my fingers through the ends of his wavy hair, pretending to assess his head. “Hmm…”
He leans back for me to get a better look at him. “Well? What do you think? Did I grow into it?”
I angle my head to one side, squinting.
“You are skating onsuchthin ice right now,” he growls.
“All right, all right. Yes, everything’s in proportion now. You’re lucky. You would have looked real weird riding around with an extra,extralarge motorcycle helmet.”
We quietly joke with each other, our shoulders and our legs pressed up against one another, neither of us able to get close enough to the other person. After a while, the atmosphere in the gym changes, the air vibrating with tension, and the smiles fade from everyone’s faces.
Principle Darhower enters and walks stiffly toward the small microphone stand that’s been set up in front of the bleachers. His face is pale, and his hands shake as he reaches inside his suit pocket and pulls out a square of paper. You could hear a pin drop as he unfolds it and begins to read.
“When I was a kid, my father was my idol. He was a stock car racer, and every weekend my Mom would sit with me in the stands, and we would watch him race. In high school, I decided I wanted to be just like him. I wanted to be a Nascar driver, and that’s all there was to it. It was seriously all I could ever imagine myself doing.” His voice rings out, clear and loud, reaching every corner of the gym. “I didn’t care about math, or science, or history. I never paid attention in my language classes, and I didn’t care about my GPA. I didn’t need any of that to be a Nascar driver, so I didn’t even try. My father knew how badly I wanted to follow in his footsteps, so he suggested I get my GED and take an internship with his sponsor, learning how the industry worked, learning how to build and fix engines, and most importantly learning how to drive. But I decided not to get my GED.”
He pauses, taking a breath. His hands are shaking so badly now, the paper in his hands shakes too.
“I stayed in high school because I actuallylovedshowing up every day. I loved my friends. I loved my teachers. I loved feeling like I was at a place thatmattered, even if I didn’t particularly want to give my studies my all. School, for me, was a safe place, where I felt at home, and I didn’t want to miss any of it.
“My father died when I was the same age as many of you are now. Five days after my seventeenth birthday, another stock car crashed into him on a corner, and he went hurtling into the barricade at ninety-three miles an hour. He was killed instantly. I was there, sitting in the stands with my mother as I always was whenever he raced, and I watched that day as my hero died. It was…officially,” he says, his voice breaking, “theworstday of my life.
“A week later, I went back to school, andIwas a wreck. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t function. I was a zombie, stumbling through my day, a war raging inside me because I now hated something that had consumed my entire life. I didn’t want to be a Nascar driver anymore. I didn’t know who or what I wanted to be. All I wanted was to have my father back.
“Grief was a long, lonely road for me. I didn’t want to be consoled. I didn’t want to feel better, because feeling better somehow felt like Icaredless, and that…” Principle Darhower dashes at his eyes with the back of his hands, and my throat begins to ache. “I didn’t want to dothat. Eventually, when the grief became too much, it nearly finally broke me, and it was my friends and my teachers at school who I turned to for help. They consoled me. They held me together. Theysavedme. It was then that I decided to teach. To help continue on a legacy of support and care that had been shown to me at a time when I needed it.
“Two weeks ago, one of the students at this school, one ofmystudents, did something terrible. People were hurt. Lives…were…” He clenches his jaw, his nostrils flaring. “Lives were taken,” he rushes out. “Many of you lost friends. Many of you are feeling the same way I felt after I lost my father, crippled with grief and alone…and I am standing before you now…humbly apologizing to each and every one of you. The world has changed so much since I was at school, but that is no excuse. It wasmyburden of responsibility to ensure that this school was a safe place foryouto come to every day, and…two weeks ago, I failed you. This tragedy never should have happened. It should have been prevented long before any of my students ever felt the need to harm others. What he did was wrong. There’s no excuse…ever…for the kind of violence we suffered through here. But I became complacent. My vision became narrowed by years of routine and ritual, and I wasn’t looking for the unexpected. And I am profoundly and deeply sorry for that.
“Today, we return to Raleigh with heavy and broken hearts, but please know…I will never allow anything like this to ever happen to our community again. I promise to keep yousafe. I promise to dobetter. Now, let’s go and shine…and let’s help each other remember how to breathe again.”
* * *
SILVER
I don’t thinkI’ve ever been this nervous. Alex has been to the house before, but never under these circumstances. Never as the boy I’m dating. Not as my officialboyfriend. God, it’s still so weird to think of him in those terms. It feels stupid. Childish. Immature. Alex was shot not too long ago and nearly died. Seems to me there should be a weightier title for him now.
“Silver! Can you remember where we put that photo album with that one picture? Y’know, the one with you hiding behind the couch, taking a shit in your diaper?”
Dad islovingthis.
In turn, I have learned that it’s possible to love a parent but also want them to writhe in pain. Nothing serious. A broken toe would be nice. Or surprise root canal surgery.
I almost trip over my own feet in my haste to make it down the stairs and into the dining room. Mom’s laid out the table with all the fancy cutlery and dishes, six places set around the massive, formal dining table that only gets used at holidays and for special occasions. I gape at the set-up, holding out my hands just as Dad enters the room. “What the hell isthis?” I demand.
Dad takes a bite out of an apple. “Your mother wentmad.”
“We’re not Catholic. Wearen’t, are we? Why does it look like the Pope’s coming for dinner?”
“We've lapsed,” my father confirms. “But, sidenote.I’verecently taken up praying again. Funnily enough, my renewed faith coincided with the night you asked to go spend the night with a guy who looks like something out of Sons of Anarchy.”
“Dad. Please shut up.”
He holds his hands in the air, still brandishing his half-eaten apple. “All I’m saying is, I think I’m greyer than I used to be. If I start clutching my chest at dinner and I slump over my plate, face-down in my stroganoff, it’s because I’m faking my own death and I can’t live with the knowledge that I basically gave that little punk permission to defile you.”
“DAD! Oh my fucking god.No! Don’t ever open your mouth again. Especially not in front of Alex.”
He laughs like the evil monster that he is as he turns around and heads into the kitchen. I pace anxiously up and down the hallway for the next thirty minutes, worrying at my thumbnail with my front teeth, trying to come up with a decent excuse to call off the entire dinner. I come up with plenty of solid reasons, but every time I pull out my cell to text Alex, I realize how stupid I’m being and talk myself out of it.
At six thirty on the dot, the doorbell chimes. I just so happen to be banging my head against my bedroom door at the time, so Max gets there before me, screeching like a banshee at the top of his lungs. “ALEEEEEXXX! IT’S ALEX!”
