I got to work early the next day, allowing myself ample time to rehearse my presentation again. Once Tori arrived, I would run through it a second time with her, and then I would be fully prepared for the meeting at 10:00. I was being given a rare second chance. It wouldn’t be good enough for me to not blow it this time; it had to be flawless.
No one else was there. I turned on all the overhead lights until every early morning shadow was chased away. I left my office door open, humming quietly to myself. I jerked at every distant noise.
As Jenna had kissed me goodbye that morning, she wished me luck and handed me a brown bag. “Breakfast for the all-star,” she had said with a smile.
I booted up my computer and dumped the contents of the bag on my desk. A red apple threatened to roll off the desk. I caught it and set it upright. There was also a bottle of water and something wrapped in foil, a bagel with cream cheese from the shape of it. I sat down and unwrapped it without looking, my eyes fixed on my computer screen.
I picked up the bagel and brought it up to my mouth, my eyes scanning the text of an e-mail. The smell hit me just before the bread touched my lips, and I stood up quickly, tossing the bagel to my desk. The backs of my knees struck my chair and it rolled away. There, between the two halves of the bagel and two thick layers of cream cheese, was a dead frog, reeking of formaldehyde. Its back feet protruded from one end, its arms from the sides, and most of its head from the other end, like it was wearing a bagel costume.
I stared at it, my stomach lurching.
There was a soft knock at my office door and I started. It was Tori. She stared at me silently, her look pitying. She didn’t look at my desk, didn’t see the dead frog masquerading as a bagel that had nearly been my breakfast.
“You’re in early,” I said to her, attempting to compose myself.
“Have you checked your e-mail yet?” she asked, eyebrows screwed up in concern.
“I was just getting ready to,” I said. I grabbed the paper bag, slapped it over the frog bagel, picked it up, and threw everything in the trash. “Why?”
“There’s an e-mail from Walt. Mr. Forrester has cancelled the meeting. He said they want to take things in a different direction.”
I was in the office bathroom, alone, pacing. I was furious. I was disappointed. I was frustrated. And I felt undermined. I ran my fingers through my hair. I put my hands on both sides of a sink and looked into the mirror, studying my pathetic reflection. I wallowed in self-pity, and for a moment I felt like I was going to cry, actually burst into tears, and I shook my head rapidly, denying myself the emotion.
I jerked away from the sink and paced toward an open stall, not intending to enter it, just moving around, trying to shed the negative energy and anger that was coursing through my body. My shoes clicked loudly on the tile with each step.
I stopped in front of the stall door and sighed, my shoulders and head dropping, defeated.
From behind me, a whisper:
“Naaaaaancy….” Softly spoken, almost sung, and carried on a breeze of quiet laughter.
I spun around, furious, and for the briefest of moments I saw its face, that very pale and jeering face, but then my stomach caved in painfully as I was kicked hard in the gut. The force of the blow was strong enough to send me tumbling backwards. My back slammed against the stall door, which smacked against the side wall, and I fell, my upper back colliding painfully with the edge of the toilet. My teeth clacked together and I bit my lip.
I slid to the floor, eyes shut with pain. I turned to put my palms on the linoleum, but before I could push myself up, a cold hand gripped the back of my head and slammed my forehead against the rim of the toilet. Bright lights flashed in my vision.
Then I felt myself being lifted. Impossibly strong hands had gripped me by the back of my shirt and I was being lifted until my face hovered above the bowl. I smelled the chemicals in the water and muttered a feeble, “No.”
The hand returned to the back of my head. I could feel its coldness through my hair. Fingers gripped my hair, pulling it into a fist, and then my head was shoved down, splashing into the water. My chest was pressed hard into the rim of the bowl and I was forced to exhale, bubbles sliding past my submerged cheeks and ears.
I reflexively inhaled and water filled my lungs, burning them. I choked and convulsed against the hands that held me there. A knee pressed into my spine. I opened my eyes and saw nothing but blurred white porcelain, the periphery of my vision turning black as my thoughts began to swim.
I struggled, my energy waning, feeling consciousness fade even as my panic dully increased. Every fiber in my being wanted to cough, wanted to expel the water that was invading my lungs, but I forced myself to deny the reflex.
The hands that held me down were incredibly strong. Inescapable. I am going to drown, I thought with a sudden and eerie calmness. I am going to die in a toilet.
And then, suddenly, the weight on my back eased. Not completely, but a little, and there was a loud roar all around me, vaguely familiar. I recognized it: the toilet was being flushed.
As the bowl emptied, I gasped in air, hungry for it, and coughed violently. No longer held down, I placed my hands on the rim of the bowl and pushed myself out. I turned and sat on the floor, letting my back rest against the toilet, coughing repeatedly and then spitting on the floor. Both it and my clothes were wet. My hair clung to my face and dripped.
I sat there, panting, all energy drained from my body, and looked through the stall door. No one was there.
The next day was Saturday. I woke up on my own from a dreamless sleep. My cell phone read 7:30. Jenna slept on beside me.
I needed to clear my head. Be alone with my thoughts. Consider how best to deal with this person… this ghost… this poltergeist… this whatever it was that had made the previous week a living hell for me.
I slipped on a pair of shorts, a t-shirt, and my running shoes, and drove to a park only two miles away from the house. There, a running trail surrounded a small playground, and the entire park was framed by overhanging trees that provided a pleasant shade. This early on a Saturday morning, it was deserted.
I began to run.
Where do I start? With Jenna? Tell her everything that has happened? She knows that this week has been a bad one, but I have spared her most of the details, especially the ones that are too fantastical to explain. It would feel good to tell someone, especially someone who loves me and is concerned about me. But she won’t know any better than I do how to deal with it. Assuming, of course, that she believes me.
Who then? The police? No. A priest? Maybe. But would anyone actually believe me? Does this sort of thing actually happen to people? Do I believe it myself?
I had made two laps around the park. A light sweat coated my skin, and the morning air was cold against it. One lap was half a mile; on a good day I could make ten laps. But today, my chest was burning. I stopped to cough, my lungs rattling with water, the remnants of yesterday’s bathroom incident.
I bent over and placed my hands on my knees, continuing to cough. Each cough prompted another, more painful one. Birds flew out of nearby trees, scolding me for the noise I was making. There was no other sound to be heard except for the very quiet rustling of leaves.
My cellphone buzzed in my pocket. I stood up, making every effort to stifle any further coughing, my lungs fiery. I fished the phone out of a deep pocket of my baggy running shorts and began to walk slowly as I turned it on. I had a new text message from Jenna.
It read, “Who is Nancy?”
I stopped walking and stared silently at the screen.
And then, as if on cue, a voice from behind me: “Naaaaaaaancy…”
I spun around, seeing nothing but empty trail, a line of tall trees to the right, freshly cut grass and a playground to the left.
“Naaaaaaaancy…”
I began slowly walking backwards, in the direction of the park entrance. My eyes scanned left to right. Where was the voice coming from? There was no one—
But then, I saw it. The figure, half-hidden behind the trunk of a tree about twenty feet away. Jet black hair. White face. Icy blue eyes, staring into my own. Wide, sneering grin. One white hand with black nails gripped the bark.
“Naaaaaaaancy…”
I turned and ran. Hopelessness gripped me as I remembered that I was already winded. I could barely run. My lungs buzzed with pain as I gulped for breath. And as I ran, I could hear a second set of footsteps running behind me, scuffing the fine gravel of the trail, getting rapidly closer. I glanced backward and saw that face, grinning madly as it threatened to overtake me. A lightning bolt of terror traveled down my spine. If I could just get to the car…
I was shoved sideways so forcefully that my feet left the ground, and I fell. There was no stopping the momentum. I collapsed to the side of the trail, and my cheek met the protruding root of a branch, splitting the skin there, a stinging sensation surging into my left eye, blackening my vision, pain traveling to the top of my head like the worst migraine I’d ever had.
I tried to get up, but I was pushed down again, a cold hand pressing against the side of my head. My head was pulled up, turned so that I was facing the ground, then shoved down again violently, and as my mouth hit the tree root, I tasted blood and felt my front teeth break. The pain was everything.
A knee was placed on my back, right in the center of my spine, and while it was placed gently, the weight of it kept me pinned in place. I spat out blood and struggled to breathe as my face was pressed down into dirt.
Then, I felt breath, frigid against my ear. I shivered and began to cry.
“Don’t kill me,” I begged, sobbing.
“You told,” the voice spoke into my ear. It was whispering, but full of anger. “You told. But they can’t help you here.”
Jenna took me to the hospital after I dragged my broken body back to the car and drove myself home. Three stitches above my eyebrow. Four on my cheek. Two on my upper lip. An ER dentist was called into extract what was left of my front teeth and stitch up my gums. I would need implants or a bridge, but I my mouth would have to heal first. For now, I would have to live with a broken smile. If I ever smiled again.
I told the police I had been mugged. No, I didn’t get a look at my assailant. No, I have no idea why he didn’t take anything.
Jenna and I walked into the house silently. I had an ice pack pressed up against my mouth. Sometimes I placed it on my eye, sometimes my cheek.
She walked ahead of me into the kitchen and dropped her keys on the table, right beside a copy of one of my high school yearbooks. 2002, my senior year.
“What’s that?” I said. Except because of my swollen lips and missing teeth, it came out, “Whuthz tha?”
“It was here on the table when I got up this morning,” she said. “I assumed you put it there?” Her last statement was a question, full of concern.
I shook my head feebly.
“Ryan, what’s going on? I feel like you’re not telling me something.” She chuckled morosely. “I feel like you’re not telling me anything.”
I looked at her, then dropped my gaze. I didn’t know where to start.
“And who is Nancy?” she asked. Before I could respond, she reached and flipped open the the yearbook. It landed on a random page. There, scrawled in the margins, filling every available white space in red ink was the name: NANCY.
I stepped toward the book and flipped through it. Every page: NANCY. NANCY. NANCY. NANCY. It was even written across my forehead in my senior picture.
I pulled out a chair and slumped down. I looked up at Jenna, defeated. She sat down softly beside me.
“What is it?”
Ice pack pressed against my lips, I turned a few pages until I found the freshman class. I scanned the rows of juvenile faces until I found him. I pointed with one dirty fingernail at a boy: a boy with white skin and jet black hair. Even though the picture was black and white, his eyes still looked crystal blue and were framed by dark eye makeup. As a freshman, he would’ve been around fourteen or fifteen years old, but he looked much younger. Eleven or twelve, maybe.
“Evan Michaels,” Jenna read, a question in her voice.
I nodded.
“Who is he?” she asked.
And even though it was very painful to talk — for more reasons than one, I realized — I told her everything.
Evan Michaels was a freshman when I was a senior. He was one of those kids who just randomly showed up one day, appearing as if out of thin air, probably on the first day of the school year, but who really knows or cares. All that mattered was that he immediately became the target of ridicule.
Even by freshman standards, he was small. Puny. His voice was still as high and flute-like as a prepubescent boy, an androgynous trill that was rarely heard but always mocked. He had dyed his hair black. He frequently wore mascara and painted his nails a glossy black.
He was a loner. He barely spoke to anyone. When he walked down the hallway between classes, he folded his shoulders inward in an effort to shrink, and kept his head down low, hair hanging over his eyes. He concentrated all of his efforts into being invisible, and so of course we singled him out.
Actually, I singled him out. My friends just followed my lead.
It started with name-calling. He was small. Frail. Bad a sports. Not very masculine. So we’d hang out by the lockers and wait for him to walk by, and we’d call out a name.
Nancy.
He wouldn’t react, but I knew he heard. After a while, that got boring. So we… I… would walk up behind him at the lockers and whisper in his ear to see if I could make him jump. Then we started doing physical things. Poking him. Tripping him. Nothing too painful or damaging. Not at first.
There was an art teacher, Mrs. Jones, who took him under her wing. He was a gifted artist. Even then I knew it. He could draw in ink like nothing I had ever seen before. And he was really good at photography. Mrs. Jones recognized this and put him on the yearbook staff.
“Most of these pictures,” I said, flipping through the yearbook, “were taken by him.”
He had his own camera that he’d brought from home. An expensive one with a powerful lens that allowed him to capture an image without having to get close to it. Once he was on yearbook staff he wore it around his neck every day like a medal. I could see that it gave him more confidence, as well as something new he could hide behind. As he walked around the hallways or hovered around the perimeter at ballgames, he seemed more self-assured.
So one day I brought one of my dad’s chipping hammers to school and kept it in my pocket until I saw Evan set his camera down for a moment. One of the guys distracted him, and I casually walked over and punched a hole in the lens with the hammer and put it back down. We stood by and watched him pick it up, laughing when he went to take a picture and saw the damage. He could hear us. He looked heartbroken.
“Oh Ryan,” Jenna sighed.
We looked over his shoulder covertly until we figured out his locker combinations. His school locker and his gym locker. One time we took out one of his report folders and replaced all the pages with papers that just said “Nancy” all over them. He turned it in without looking and the teacher was not amused. I wasn’t there to see it, but the other freshmen said Evan turned beet red but refused to give an explanation.
Then one time three of us went into the locker room after freshman gym class. Evan took longer showers than the other boys. It was just one of his quirks. I don’t think he liked to be dirty. We made the other freshmen leave, and then we took Evan’s clothes out of his locker and removed all the towels while he was still showering. We shut off the lights and ran. He screamed from the doorway of the locker room until a janitor heard him.
“And then there was the time I stole a frog from the science lab…”
“Ryan, stop,” Jenna said. She had tears in her eyes. She shook her head. “Why did he take it? Why didn’t he tell? Why didn’t one of the other students tell?”
I explained to her the strange dynamic in our school. Jocks, like me, especially senior jocks, were idolized. By both the other students and the teachers. Our school had a reputation for athletic achievement going back for generations. That reputation was sacred. The athletes were almost untouchable. Some of the teachers knew what we were doing to Evan. Some of it, anyway. Not all of it. And they chose to look the other way. They didn’t like him much either. They probably thought the experience would man him up.
And we easily indoctrinated the other students. Anyone who told on us would be labelled a tattletale, a squeal. No one likes a tattletale. And the underlying message was that anyone who tattled would become the next object of our attention.
Evan, though, was a bit of a mystery. He didn’t tell anyone what was happening. And the longer he stayed quiet, the more I wanted to push him. I wanted to find the line where he couldn’t take it anymore. And one day I found that line.
The night before we had lost a game. A big game. I had blown it. So the next morning I found myself full of rage, the kind of inexplicable and all-consuming anger only known by teenage boys. I was six feet of muscle and fury in search of an outlet.
I walked out of class that morning without even bothering to ask for a pass. When I went into the bathroom, Evan was there. It was like fate. He looked horrified when he saw me. But I just smiled. I had found my outlet.
I kicked him into one of the stalls and shoved his face into the toilet. I held him there. It was like I could feel all my rage coursing down the arm that was holding his head under the water. The release was sweet.
He struggled at first, but he couldn’t move me. I don’t know how long I might have held him there, if one of my buddies hadn’t walked in. He grabbed me by the collar and pulled me off. Told me to stop. Considered me with a look of shock and disbelief.
“What?” I demanded, straightening my collar.
“You could’ve killed him, man,” he responded.
“I wasn’t going to kill him,” I scoffed, but I could tell from my friend’s face the he didn’t believe me. That was okay. I didn’t really believe myself at that moment.
This time, Evan told. It might have come down to a matter of his word against mine, but my buddy ended up corroborating Evan’s story. I’m not sure why. Maybe because he felt guilty for the part he had played in torturing Evan all year. Or maybe because he was truly horrified by what he had seen me doing.
Once the bathroom incident was revealed, the entire litany of what I had done to Evan was shared as well. It was only one week before graduation. The principal was as lenient as he could be. I wasn’t expelled, but instead suspended for the remainder of the school year.
“It’s the same thing!” I had bellowed at him.
He remained calm and unwavering. I would receive my diploma, but I wouldn’t be allowed to walk with my classmates. And I was under no circumstances to ever talk to or approach Evan Michaels again.
But I knew. School grounds was one thing. But the principal had no authority outside of that building. And so one day the following week, I followed Evan home from school.
When I was finished talking, Jenna looked at me with sadness. She shook her head. The look she gave me was one I had never seen before. It was as if her perception of me was, if not completely shattered, fractured in several places. There was still love there, but also deep disappointment.
“Oh, Ryan,” she said, reaching across the table to take my hand, but then withdrawing it. “You were… a bully.”
“It was twenty years ago,” I argued weakly. “I was just a kid. I mostly thought it was funny. And I guess in some strange way I thought that he deserved it.”
“No kid deserves what you did,” she countered.
“I know,” I said, pressing the ice pack against my throbbing cheek. “I know that now.”
He was easy enough to find.
First I looked for him on Facebook. He had a barely-used profile page. It consisted only of a single picture, but it wasn’t of him. It was a black-and-white photograph of a landscape, stunning and beautiful. Artistic. Mesmerizing.
I found him in the White Pages. He was still local. I was surprised that in twenty years we hadn’t ever crossed paths. At least, not as far as I knew.
The neighborhood was quiet. His house was small but well kept, the tiny lawn a lush green. I parked the car by the curb. Jenna had come with me, but opted to wait in the passenger seat with the window down.
As I walked toward the door, I spied a pink tricycle alongside a child’s bike, cherry red, lying on its side in the grass.
I hesitated, then knocked softly. My heart was pounding. The door opened, and I looked up. There he was.
He was taller than me by a couple of inches. Dressed in a light gray sweater and dark denim jeans, his frame was slender but fit. He was four years younger than me but could easily pass for late 20s. His dark hair was long and wavy, falling casually over his forehead and framing his face. I was struck dumb by the man he had become. I might not have recognized him except for those icy blue eyes that looked back at me, eyes that had momentarily looked welcoming but then fell into cold recognition.
“Evan,” I stammered. “You might not remember me…”
“I remember you,” he interrupted. His voice was deep and smooth.
I paused. For a moment we silently stared at each other. I realized I was fiddling nervously with my fingers and forced myself to stop. I dropped my gaze and stared at my feet.
“I came here to…” I began. I cleared my throat. “I wanted to apologize to you.”
I hesitantly looked at him. Up at him. His expression didn’t change. It was emotionless. I couldn’t tell if he was angry or simply indifferent.
“For… for everything.” Suddenly I couldn’t find any more words. I considered listing off every offense that I had come to regret, but there was no point. We both already knew them perfectly well.
After a moment, Evan let out a quiet, bitter chuckle and smiled. The smile was broad but didn’t reach his eyes. It occurred to me that I had never seen him smile before. Not once. And even though the smile was one of incredulity, it made him even more handsome. His teeth were white and perfect. Teeth, I remembered, that were not all natural.
I suddenly felt incredibly self-conscious of my own appearance. My swollen, stitched up face colored by bruises and abrasions, small Band-Aids failing to fully cover the worst of it. My puffy lips and missing teeth. The way my words were lisped and slurred when I spoke.
“What is this?” Evan asked. “Are you having some sort of get right with God moment, Ryan?” He didn’t just say my name. He stabbed me with it. “After twenty years, you want to just show up at my house, say ‘sorry,’ and make nice? Is that what you think is going to happen?”
I turned and looked back at Jenna, still seated in the passenger seat of the car. She was watching us, but too far away to hear.
“It’s just that…” I mumbled. “Something happened. Has been happening…”
“I see that,” he said, his eyes wandering over my face. “I looks like someone decided to give you a taste of your own medicine.”
I met his eyes. “Do you know anything about…?” I started to ask. But his expression remained set, calm. There was no spark of recognition there, nothing that said Evan had anything at all to do with the events of the past week.
“Never mind,” I said. “I just wanted to apologize. What I did to you back then was terrible. Inexcusable. And I am truly, deeply sorry. Please… forgive me.”
Evan regarded me for a moment. Took in a deep, steady breath. His features softened ever so slightly. I looked up at him, eyes pleading, feeling like a helpless beggar.
He pursed his lips and looked skyward, thinking. And then quietly he said, “No.”
My mouth fell open slowly. A coldness washed over me.
“No, Ryan,” he said, “I do not forgive you. And do you know why? Because twenty years ago I had to endure almost daily torture from you. Abuse, both physical and verbal. And the constant fear of what might be coming next. The embarrassment of being harassed in front of other kids. The loneliness of having no one come to my defense. And feeling so ashamed of being so incredibly disliked that I felt like I had to hide everything from my parents and acted like everything was just fine.
“And it doesn’t end there,” he continued. “You left me with the memories. I can’t say I think of you every day, Ryan, but I think about you often enough. Most of the scars might be invisible, but they’re still there. And there’s nothing you can do or say to take them away. I’ve carried them for twenty years. And I’ll continue to carry them for the rest of my life.
“So… no.” He shook his head. “I won’t forgive you. But I am ever so glad you came by today. Because whatever it is that’s finally pricking your conscience, whatever it is that’s now haunting you…”
My heart skipped a beat.
“…I’m glad,” he said. “I hope you carry that for the rest of your life.”
A little girl appeared behind Evan, wrapping her arms around his left leg. “Daddy,” she said. She looked up at me and her eyes widened. “Daddy, who’s that?” she asked.
Evan casually stroked her dark hair which looked as smooth as silk.
“He’s nobody,” he answered, his eyes never leaving mine.
I turned away from him and shambled down the sidewalk, head down. I fought back tears. The effort made my eyes and cheek throb.
I was halfway down the walk when Evan called out to me, startling me. I stopped moving but didn’t turn to look at him. “Even if I did forgive you, Ryan,” he said. “You wouldn’t be done. I wasn’t the only one, remember.”
I heard his front door close.
Looking up, my gaze crossed the distance between me, standing on Evan’s sidewalk, and the car, parked by the curb. There, Jenna waited for me, the look on her face one of tired hope. And in the back seat I saw three children, faces pale, eyes glaring at me with anger, lips curled up in malevolent smiles. They were pointing at me and laughing.
I shuffled to the car. Got in. Started the engine. Sighed.
“How did it go?” Jenna asked.
We drove home.