Five

"Get it together," I told myself. "You can do this."

Sitting behind the wheel of my car in the school parking lot, I couldn't move. I'd thought I was ready, that I could come back, but now I was drowning in doubt.

More than once since Monday I'd considered never coming back. Asking for a transfer to another school. Maybe quitting the profession. Even after setting aside fears that someday another nutcase would stroll in—armed, perhaps, with an assault rifle instead of a bomb, as had happened in so many other schools across the nation—teaching for a living had more than its share of drawbacks.

The pay was mediocre, although teachers in Connecticut were compensated better than in some other states. You took work home almost every night. Marking, preparing lessons. Budgets were always being cut back. One day you found you were out of chalk. Or there was no toilet paper in the bathrooms. Textbooks hadn't been updated since the Carter administration. Older schools had no air-conditioning. You sweltered in the months before and after summer.

As supportive as most parents were, it was the hypercritical, impossible-to-please ones that wore you down. Everything you said, everything you taught, your private life, it was all under the microscope like never before. You'd run into a parent at the liquor store, doing something as innocent as buying a bottle of Smirnoff, and suddenly you were an educator who might have a drinking problem. Everyone's phone was a camera, so you never knew when your actions were being captured on video, and when they were, it was often out of context. I'd learned that lesson in a big way a few years ago. And so many issues that today's kids were going to come face-to-face with—racism, diversity, gender identity, sexism—were now third-rail topics. You touched on them at your peril.

Teachers weren't the only ones feeling the stress, either. The kids were dealing with way more than previous generations. Experimenting with drugs and alcohol and sex, sure, that had always been the case. But they were under increasing pressure from home to do well, to make something of themselves. Flunk one exam and you were led to believe you'd thrown away your future. They were being bullied and shamed online. They were sucked into a social media vortex that was leading to depression. They were anorexic, or they ate too much. They were shamed for what they did and didn't do. And they, too, had to wonder whether this was the day someone would want to come into their school and kill them.

Not the sort of shit Beaver and Wally had to deal with when they left home in the morning.

You wanted to help these kids but more often than not couldn't find the support they most needed. Asking the powers that be for a few extra bucks for a kid with emotional problems or a learning disability could be like asking for a ticket to the moon.

And Christ, don't get me started on all the disputes over masks and the horrors of virtual learning during the pandemic. I never wanted to go through anything like that again.

But here was the crazy thing. In spite of all this, or maybe even partly because of it, I loved the job.

I loved the kids, I loved the challenges, I loved that you never went home at the end of the day without a story. A high school was a living, breathing organism where you could never predict what was going to happen. A high school was a small city filled with stories of tragedy and heartbreak, success and inspiration. What kept me going was the possibility that, even if it didn't happen every day—you were lucky if it happened once a month—you might have an actual impact on someone's life. Help them find the thing they loved. Make them look at something in a way they never had before. Maybe, just maybe, you opened their eyes for a moment.

If I walked away, I wouldn't have the opportunity to do that. And, frankly, I didn't know what else I would have done.

I didn't want to walk away. I didn't want what happened to me on Monday to defeat me.

I could do this.

My panic attack in the parking lot shouldn't have surprised me. While I hadn't had any formal counseling or therapy since the incident—not yet, anyway—Marta had had plenty to tell me when we had a private moment.

"You think you're okay, but you're not," she'd said. "Your view of the world will change. Things you could slough off in the past may seem like a big deal. You may have a degree of paranoia. You'll worry all the time about Bonnie and Rachel, more about them than yourself. Don't beat yourself up if you feel overwhelmed, like you can't handle things like you used to. At least for a while. You're fragile, even if you don't want to admit it."

I suspect she'd told Bonnie all of this, too, although Bonnie'd probably already figured it out. Before deciding to go into teaching, and ultimately moving up to running a school, Bonnie had considered following her older sister into law enforcement. She went so far as to attend a police training academy in Bridgeport before deciding it wasn't for her. But she learned a few tricks that had served her well, including, once, breaking up a fight between two students, one of whom had a knife. (This hadn't happened at her elementary school, but at one of her first teaching gigs, in a high school.)

A shot of that kind of courage was what I needed right now. When I had faced Mark LeDrew, I hadn't had time to think about my actions. Now I had too much time to think.

I took a deep breath and got out of the car. Walked at a steady pace toward the front door. Pulled it open, entered the building.

Holy shit.

There must have been a hundred kids there. Standing in the main hall, applauding and cheering as I entered, a banner strung above them that read we love you mr. b. Among them were various members of the staff, and right up front, Trent, who had a big grin on his face as he brought his hands together.

I stood there dumbfounded, and I'd like to say I was able to hold back the tears, but I couldn't. I was overwhelmed. The stress of the last four days erupted in the form of wracking sobs.

The crowd pushed forward and surrounded me. Everyone offering hugs, patting me on the back, squeezing me, saying things like "You're the best" and "We love you" and "You saved us."

That went on for a couple of minutes. My heart felt like it would burst.

Trent waved a hand in the air and said loudly, "Okay, everybody, if you can give me a moment."

The crowd quieted. When there were only a few murmurs, Trent said: "Mr. Boyle, on behalf of the staff and students of Lodge High School, we want to say a heartfelt thank-you. Without your courage, without your sense of duty and decency, we might be in a very different place today, a place we don't even want to imagine. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts, and to show my own personal appreciation, I'm springing for coffee today."

Laughter. Someone handed him a mug and passed it along to me. I wiped away some tears before taking it in my hand, took a sip, grimaced, and said, "Even worse than usual."

Another wave of laughter. I handed the mug off to someone and Trent gave me a hug and a handshake. His was the first, but not the last. One kid after another came up to put their arms around me, and plenty of them were crying, too. This whole exercise was a tension release for all of us.

One girl, whose dad managed a Home Depot, put a hundred-dollar gift card into my hand.

"I can't take that," I said.

"He said you have to."

A grade nine boy handed me a pastry box tied up with string. "Cupcakes," he said.

A tenth-grade student in a wheelchair rolled herself up to me, took my hand in both of hers, and squeezed it. "My parents love you," she said, her voice breaking.

I leaned over and gave her a hug.

I felt I needed to say something to the assembled crowd. I raised my hands, palms down, signaling everyone to hush.

"Look, um, this is all very kind of you. I think..." I stopped, needing another second to pull myself together. I continued, "I think everyone here, all of you, deserve a lot of credit. The love in this school, it... it doesn't matter what comes our way... the way we feel about each other, that will always get us through the good times and the bad."

One kid shouted, "You're a badass, Mr. B.!"

I smiled, shrugged. "What happened Monday... will be with us a long time. Forever, for me, I guess. What I want to say is, I wish things had gone differently. I wish... I wish I could have helped Mark LeDrew. I feel like I failed him."

Someone said, "You didn't fail us."

"Okay, well," I said, forcing a smile, "we should all get to class. And I need to find a drinkable cup of coffee."

As the kids and most of the teachers drifted away, two staff members stayed. The first was Sally Berwick. She'd no doubt been told that Mark LeDrew had her on his mental list. She put her arms around me and began to weep.

"It's okay," I said, patting her back. "It's okay."

Her body trembled. She hung on for about twenty seconds, stepped back, wiped the tears from her eyes, and, looking slightly embarrassed, whispered, "Sorry." With that, she went off to class, leaving just one staff member who wanted to say something.

Herb Willow.

Round-shouldered, balding, a pair of wire-rimmed glasses hanging off the end of his nose, he stepped forward and extended a hand. No hugs from Herb, but that was okay. A handshake would suffice.

I took his clammy hand into mine, and he gripped it hard. Locked onto it so that he could pull me in close to him. He put his mouth close to my ear and whispered.

"I know you told the cops it was all my fault, you motherfucker. Don't think for a minute that I'm going to forget that."