Jim held up a costume based on the monster from the latest hit horror movie and asked, “How about this one?”
Pete sneered instantly, rubbing a hand over his crewcut. “You crazy? Everyone’s gonna be that this year.”
“Yeah,” Oliver chimed in, shoving his glasses up his pudgy nose. “And this is our last time, man. You can’t go out on a lame note like that. You got to stand out, you know?”
Jim nodded and put the costume back, but made a mental note and muttered, “Everyone, huh?”
They were seventeen and graduating high school that year. This would be their last Hallowe’en together as friends. Pete was set up for college by his father and Oliver had earned several scholarships by being an all-around nerdy genius.
Jim had been somewhere in between but had once thought of himself as valedictorian material. He’d been on the way to gaining scholarships, too. A few college recruiters had even called, making their campuses seem appealing on all sorts of levels.
Now, though, Jim was signed up to head off to boot camp and pull four years in the Air Force not long after graduating. And he hadn’t even served in ROTC.
To say this crash and burn bothered him is to call a tsunami a spit in the wind.
While he was with his friends Jim bought a mask they all agreed was extreme and cool.
Later, he went back to the store and bought the costume everyone was likely to wear. He checked out at a different clerk, not that the one from earlier would have bothered to wonder why anyone would need two costumes. Jim preferred to play it safe, that’s all.
#
Jim held his breath as he bent over the pan of water. He rinsed the photograph and lifted it by the top corners. Turning, he hung it on a clothesline with a clothespin, then checked for exposed negatives. “Okay, you can switch lights.”
Oliver changed the room from red to ordinary light. “That looks great.”
“She always does.”
“No, man, I meant what you did.”
The picture showed a cheerleader mid-jump. Superimposed on her exposed skin were the scales of a lizard. It made her seem unearthly, extraterrestrial maybe.
Oliver slapped Jim’s back. “You are damned good at this stuff.”
“What, trick photography?”
“No trick to it, right?”
They laughed and admired the cheerleader’s picture for a few more seconds, then Oliver said, “You going to the dance?”
Jim glanced at the floor, then stooped and picked up a plastic lid from a film canister. “Uh, no. Couldn’t get a date.”
“Yeah, right.” Oliver scoffed with a hissing, snotty sound.
“You know Brenda will go anywhere with you, scales or not. Or did she find someone el–”
“Knock it off, Ollie.”
That stopped Oliver, who hated that nickname. He glared and adjusted his glasses. “Loser.”
Jim smiled. “Yep, that’s me. Ask anyone. Start with Mister Forheiser. He’ll tell you. He spotted me as a loser before anyone else.”
“What the fuck you talkin’ about, Jim?” Oliver had backed up a bit, intimidated by Jim’s sudden vehemence. He knew that Jim and Forheiser, the trig teacher, had a monumental feud going on, one that began at the very start of Jim’s senior year, but he’d never seen his pal so upset about it.
Jim took a breath. “Come on, let’s show this to Brenda.” He snatched down the still-dripping print.
“She’s gonna want a copy.”
“I’ll come back later and make some; come on, we’re late for class change, the bell rang a long time ago.”
#
What Oliver never knew about Jim was what Forheiser had done to him. It had started on Jim’s first day in Forheiser’s class, when the sneering, patronizing teacher who preened about being the most-hated and dreaded teacher at the school announced everyone’s IQ scores and disdainfully predicted each one’s grades.
When he came to Jim he pretended to be impressed, then said, “Jimmy here thinks he’s smarter than everyone, but you know, I’m betting he barely makes a C in this class. Good looks and superficial smarts don’t cut it when the exact, right answer is called for, and you can’t charm an algorithm, now can you Jimmy boy?”
Instant mutual detestation had condensed like a sudden shower of ice-cold, polluted rain.
Sitting day after day in that cold pool of bile had worn Jim down, and the harassment and mockery was more than he could stand, and so he began slipping up, and soon he’d ruined his bid for valedictorian by earning first a B, and then a C, as the bastard had predicted.
“No college scholarships for you, Jimmy. Hope your daddy’s rich.”
“He’s dead.”
A look of feigned surprise. “Then I guess it’s no college for you at all, hm?”
It was hateful, it was sadistic, and it was cruel, day after day. Yes, Jim complained, first to the counselors, who were all intimidated by Forheiser, and then to his mother, who’d marched into a school-board meeting prepared to use her teeth if necessary. “My boy is being treated unfairly,” the little woman, barely five feet tall, told the startled school-board.
At first they put her off and tried to diminish her claims, until she showed them an example. Her son, Jim, and his friend, Pete, were in Forheiser’s class together. They did their homework together and both handed in the same solutions to the challenging problems. Despite this, Pete routinely got A’s and Jim routinely got B’s and C’s — often for such nit-pickery as having “…possibly misspelt your name, is this an i? Is it dotted anywhere on this page?”
To this evidence the school board relented and asked what Jim’s mother would have them do. “I understand he needs this class for college. Is there another teacher for this class?”
There was not.
“How about summer school?”
They agreed that was feasible but, alas, Mr. Forheiser taught that, too.
“Then my boy will no longer go to class.”
They insisted he had to, that they could not take him out of Forheiser’s classroom without also taking him out of the Academic program and putting him into the Commercial track.
“Then he’ll just sit there and refuse to do any work.”
They shrugged and said he’d then earn his own Failure.
Jim’s mother went away frustrated and angry and without any help or hope to offer her son.
He never understood why Forheiser hated him so much until one day he found out that Forheiser had taken a huge shine to Brenda, Jim’s girlfriend, a beautiful girl with long light brown hair, vivacious dark brown eyes, and a bubbly, sunny personality.
Could Forheiser have trashed Jim’s chances of earning valedictorian and maybe even of earning enough scholarships out of jealousy? Covetousness? Envy? Lust for the girl Jim dated?
From that realization on, Jim’s bitterness grew acidic and concentrated.
#
A knock on the developing room door startled Jim. He heard a muffled voice ask, “Okay to come in?”
It was Mr. Riley, the gym and driver’s ed teacher who sponsored the Photo Club.
“Just a second.” Jim scrambled to gather the pictures he’d been developing. He plucked them from the drying line and hid them under the plastic bag in the trash can, then rolled the negatives and slipped them into his pocket.
One last scan of the room revealed nothing to be seen. He switched to white light, picked up the Rubbermaid trash can, and opened the door.
“Oh, you all done?”
“Uh, yeah, was just cleaning up some.”
“Time to go, anyway. It’s after six o’clock, Jim.”
“I lose track of time sometimes.”
“Whatcha workin’ on?”
Jim smiled. “Surprise project. Last hurrah sort of thing.”
“Ah, mysterious. Well, hey, see you tomorrow, huh? Here, let me take that downstairs for you.” Mr. Riley’s liver-spotted hands reached for the trash can.
Moving the trash can out of Riley’s reach, Jim shrugged. “I got it, Mister Riley. My mess, I’ll take it down.” As he said this he watched the expression on Mr. Riley’s saggy face and knew the older man was thinking, What a nice kid.
Worked every time.
In the basement he switched out the pictures, shoving them into his backpack and handing the custodian the trash can to clean and return. It was marked, in indelible marker, PHOTO LAB.
“Get me any pictures o’them cheerleaders yet?” the custodian, a grizzled smiling man with a paunch and a strut, asked. He joked about this often to Jim, who often brought down the trash from his after-school stints.
“Working on some hot ones for you, Mister DeBartolo.”
“Good, good. Gets awful lonesome sometimes when the school’s empty at night.”
Jim smiled and left, wondering if the creep lived there 24/7 and, if so, whether he went around pilfering teachers’ snack stashes to subsist on.
As he got into his battered, decrepit Chrysler station wagon to drive home, Jim sighed, imagining himself as a janitor someday, maybe someday soon. “Nose dive,” he said aloud as the engine coughed, sputtered, and started up with a deceptively throaty roar.
#
“The party’s at Ann’s house,” Jim told his mother as she hovered in the kitchen preparing a plastic cauldron of candy in case they got any trick-or-treaters.
“Her parents going to be there?”
Jim nodded. “You should see her Dad’s costume, he’s got this old tuxedo and cape and all, looks like Dracula for real.”
His mother came over, stood on tiptoes, and kissed the bottom of Jim’s chin because he didn’t much like bending down for her to buss his cheek anymore. “Just be sensible, I know you will.”
“Enjoy the little kids, Mom.”
She watched him go with a look of both pride and puzzlement. Pride that he’d grown so big, and puzzlement that he’d grown so big.
Jim could almost feel her wishing his father were alive to see him now and, secretly, was glad he was not.
#
He drove out of town and pulled over at a secluded spot sheltered by some trees near a farmer’s soybean field. Jim’s extreme and cool mask lay on the passenger seat.
Reaching around, he pulled a paper bag from behind the passenger seat. It was heavy due to the items on the bottom but on top of them lay the horror movie monster costume. The one every second or third trick-or-treater would be wearing.
He put that on, standing beside the car and pausing every time someone drove by. No one pulled behind the trees or gave any sign of noticing him.
His first stop was quick; he simply parked, got out of his car for a moment, and slipped a photo-album wrapped only in clear plastic — so the cops would see it was not a bomb — onto the steps leading in to the local police station. All three cops were on patrol duty that night, keeping the town safe from trick-or-treaters who might get out of hand, but they’d find it on their return, Jim knew.
Next he drove into an older neighborhood with ranch style houses, oaks shading front lawns, and driveways displaying the occasional hotrod or boat or trailer.
He parked and got out, grabbing a package the weight of a large hardcover book. It was wrapped in the skin of a dissected paper bag and bore no inscription.
Dressed in the cliché costume and cheap mask, Jim walked through the joyous chaos of Hallowe’en evening. Trick-or-treating ran from six to eight that night, and there were clumps of kids being led by parents, and roving packs of teenagers howling and laughing. No one paid Jim any attention.
He walked three blocks and found the house he wanted. Its porch light was on, which surprised him. He had expected this house’s occupants to be too miserly and sour to invite kids in costume to ransom their peace for candy.
Standing by a hedge, Jim watched a group of younger kids approach his target house and ring the doorbell. When the door was opened light from inside revealed the very person Jim had hoped to catch at home.
He waited until the little kids cleared and there was no other group approaching, then walked to the house, mounted the porch,and rang the bell.
The door opened. “Ah, a big one, huh?” Mr. Forheiser said, plunghing his hand into a metal mixing bowl and coming up with a handful of candy. “Here you go.” He reached out to drop the handful into what ever receptacle this cliché ghost might offer.
Jim slapped the candy out of the teacher’s hand and, before startlement could turn to anger or objection, held out the package. “For you,” he whispered.
“What is this? Who are you?”
“Take this and you’ll understand.”
As Forheiser took the package Jim turned to go and was surprised when the teacher grabbed his arm and hauled him into the house, slamming the door and standing with his back to it.
Jim felt caught and momentarily flustered, but then he remembered. “Go on, open it,” he whispered.
The man worked ineffectually at the twine for a moment, then tore the brown paper off as a woman’s voice called, “Who is it, dear?”
“I don’t know, Myra,” Forheiser said, “but he’s brought me a present it seems.” Stooping a little, he tried to peer at Jim’s eyes through the mask’s eye-holes. “You’re one of my students, I surmise. So what have you brought me, hm? Doesn’t feel like a box of chocolates.”
“Just some treats,” Jim whispered, amazed that he felt so calm and in control.
Forheiser’s wife, a plump woman in a stained apron wearing a dress, with gray hair and a cupid’s bow mouth, waddled up to them and gazed at the present.
Jim nearly started giggling as a surge of excitement ran through him.
Forheiser could see it was a photo album by now, and slipped a hand into his pocket to come up with a pocket knife. He cut the twine and opened the album.
At once his knees buckled and and slapped it shut. “How dare you. This is vile.” He lunged at Jim, grabbing at the mask.
Jim moved back and nearly tripped over Mrs. Forheiser, who asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Show her,” Jim whispered, enjoying this moment, watching the old man who’d ruined his future struggle to decide how to handle this viper he’d been handed.
Taking advantage of Forheiser having moved, Jim dodged by and grabbed the doorknob. Tugging the door open, he put himself into the door frame, then turned and paused.
Forheiser had gone numb, it looked like, and his wife had opened the album. “What are these?” she asked, peering more closely as if nearsighted. Then she registered an image and recoiled. “Oh my word,” she said, and then she must have noticed more precisely what the pictures showed because she looked up, appalled, into her husband’s face and said, “Is this really you?”
“No, my god Myra, of course not, these are lies. Sick, twisted lies.” He turned, staggering a little, to point at the costumed interloper. “You did this, you faked these, damn it how could you do such a thing.”
“I guess people do all sorts of things,” Jim whispered. “Like ruin other people’s lives for no better reason than the fact that they can.”
Forheiser frowned. “I know you, you’re one of my–”
“Doesn’t matter, does it? A copy of that album is at the police station right now.”
The older man dropped the album and stomped on it. “It’s lies, none of this is true, not one bit of it, I never touched a student in my life, this is disgusting, revolting, Myra I never laid so much as a finger on a student in all my years of teaching.”
He’d begun to cry and Jim felt only contempt. “True or not, they’ll investigate it. Thoroughly. Could take months, years. And the media will love it. And no one will ever know for sure what to think about you. You’re done teaching. You’re done lording it over helpless kids.”
Jim had spoken in an angry voice this time, having forgotten to whisper, but there was no flash of recognition on Forheiser’s face, only a crumbling of any outer bravado, only signs of inner destruction.
Without another word from any of them, Jim walked away. He blended into the crowd of other kids wearing the same costume and mask and, before going to Anne’s house for the party, burned it at the pull-off where he’d changed.
Three days later there was a ripple of media interest as a teacher at the high school was suspended pending an unspecified investigation rumored to be allegations of long-term sexual abuse of many, many children.
A day after that Jim turned 18, kissed his little mother good-bye, and, after a bite of cake, boarded a train that took him to San Antonio, Texas, for Air Force basic training.
The two people in that town who should never have run into each other flew apart again for good.
In later years he gained several Masters Degrees through military study programs but he never stopped being bitter about what he might have been had he not run into the buzz-saw of an unfair martinet teacher who’d taken sadistic pleasure in humiliating and humbling kids smarter than himself.
Jim never did hear what became of Forheiser. He never tried to find out, either. It didn’t matter to him. He’d delivered his package of hate and it was treat enough not to have to carry it anymore.
/// /// ///
