This is, by far, the strangest email I have written, Mr.Cleriot. I am a teacher at Buchner Collegiate, and Roy Vine is one of my students. I have just violated his confidentiality by telling you and the internet this, and I will lose my job if my identity is discovered by the administration.
However, I am risking my career tonight, and more, the 22nd of December, because I too am at a loss for solutions after reading the previous (Part I) two posts (Part II) regarding this boy. I only saw them yesterday, and while I hesitated, I knew I must write to you about it.
The first day, he came in precisely after the bell had ceased to ring. The other students had all arrived, and we were chatting happily until he showed up.
I am not a new teacher. Yet, this boy came with a presence I had never experienced before. Everyone stopped talking. The kids looked away from him, and I thought I saw pain in their expressions. I write pain because it seemed more than just discomfort.
“Hello,” I said after he’d sat down.
He raised his head and stared at me so severely I was caught off guard. It was like I’d disturbed him, and there could be no greater crime. But then he smiled like he’d turned on his humanity.
“Hello,” he said pleasantly. “I’m looking forward to your class. I’ve heard good things. All the students at Buchner like you.”
The torrent of compliments caught me off guard. I was used to students being nice and some that were ass kissers. Roy’s introduction, however, was neither.
It was an attempt at blatant manipulation mixed with contempt. I could play along. Or not. He didn’t care because whatever choice I made would be wrong, and I would lose either way. Of course, I didn’t have the situation broken down immediately into this simple dichotomy.
But I knew something was off. The others around him just knew it first.
“May I borrow your pencil?” he said cheerfully to the boy next to him.
A shiver ran across my skin. I couldn’t tell you why, except maybe his smile is the triumphant kind worn by a conqueror or a predator.
That other boy is larger than Roy, a member of the football and wrestling teams. Yet, he gave the pencil - the one he was using - without hesitation or protest.
He nodded as if a fact of life had been reconfirmed. Rain made you wet. And Roy Vine got whatever he asked for. That was the reality from the very first day of school in September.
It should be noted that there’s nothing physically imposing about Roy. Actually, he’s a little small for his age and a bit ugly too. His front teeth are crooked, and his dark hair needs a wash, cut, and comb. His hygiene, unfortunately, is not unusual for a high school boy.
The behaviour of the other students is what intrigued me to go looking into his file immediately after our first meeting. From the moment you step into elementary school, assessments and tests and incident records and psychological reports, if any were done by the board or some third party, are kept there.
It’s a legal requirement of the public and Catholic system in Ontario, and they’re kept under lock and key. The files also can not physically leave a location unless they’re being brought to another school.
And therein lies the opportunity for cleansing. What qualifies as a school used to be very clear. Not so much these days. A person can set up a home school rather easily and receive personal files, which they must, legally, maintain. However, there’s little oversight.
Roy’s file was and is empty. It happens. Parents do have access and will “cleanse” the record if what they see is not to their liking. Often, they hide evidence of their own crappy parenting and abuse.
I suspected as much in Roy’s case because his behaviour had all the markings of a psychopath. He put on false smiles, and love bombed me with compliments. Yet, he was not above bullying tactics and seemed to think I didn’t know what was happening in the hallways when he had a classmate cornered and there were harsh whispers.
His annoyance when I intervened could not be hidden so easily. I didn’t care. I’m not a teacher for the approval of teens. Education is my task, though, I admit, I do not believe all students deserve my attention.
Knowledge is power. The last thing I want is to give more tools to a psychopath like Roy.
Nevertheless, the semester rolled on. For a good month, I never saw Roy do any actual work. I’m not sure what he did with that borrowed pencil the first day. His mark remained a zero until the first progress reports were due, and I had no choice but to ask him if he’d done anything.
“Oh, this?” he replied, presenting a folder full of completed assignments, and all of them were perfect. Roy never left with anything. I don’t assign homework; there’s enough time in class.
Someone had been bullied into doing it. I watched the students closely upon dismissal afterward. No one took anything with them as I had instructed. Roy’s work had been left on the desk, untouched, and never started. I left it.
When I returned the next day, all of it had somehow been completed. There weren’t any students in the building between my departure the previous night and the hour prior to the morning bell. Someone else had done it.
I took it to the principal and stopped just shy of accusing a custodian.
“Someone has gone in and done his work,” I told him. He gave me a weird look but agreed to review security footage together.
Sure enough, custodians went in and out, and only one stayed long enough, on four occasions at that point, to have possibly done Roy’s assignments.
“It must be her,” I said, but my principal was already shaking his head.
“It’s not her,” he said. “It can’t be.”
“Why?”
He was reluctant to say why until I made it clear I wasn’t leaving without an answer. “This stays here,” he said. “She can’t read or write well at all. She was open about it during her interview. Never graduated high school. This school, in fact.”
“You knew her before?”
He winced. “I was her English teacher. She’s a nice kid. But I had to fail her. She dropped out soon after.”
“But it must be her,” I said. We argued a little, but I could not deny that he had better reasons on his side. This woman - Charlotte, as the previous writer named her - can not read or write to the level on Roy’s assignments. Also, why would she? Why just that one student’s work and not anyone else’s? The meeting concluded with a suggestion.
“Collect everyone’s work at the end of the period,” he said.
The following day, Roy came in early, before the other kids. “You’re wondering how I do it,” he said directly. He grinned, and it was difficult to not feel diminished.
“Excuse me?”
He held up his progress report. I had left a comment about him using his class time better.
“Well,” I said, “I never see you writing.”
“And yet,” he said, “it is done.”
Other kids came in, and the bell sounded. I was annoyed and hadn’t planned on being one of those teachers who complained about a few students to all of them. But that’s what I did.
“The class average is the lowest I’ve ever had,” I said. I don’t know if that was true.
My negativity caught Roy’s attention. “There are some dull ones among us,” he said. He winked. “We’ll take care of it.”
Before I could respond, the fire alarm went off. The kids rose from their desks, and all of us filed out into the hallway and eventually to the sidewalk of a busy street.
There were so many students crowding together, clumps of teenage socializing. Lena and Mack and Cal, from my class, held up their sweaters to block the drizzle. They sat near one another. Their academic struggles were notable and the same, and they’d bonded. Of course, they were friends. Of course, the boys were beginning to crush on Lena and jostled to get closest to her.
The firetruck raced along the curb. I saw them fall in front of its racing path. I thought I saw a pair of arms in the crowd shove them. There was no time for the driver to stop. Then the kids were screaming, and teachers were scrambling to establish order while the firefighters leaped from the truck to provide first aid.
I wasn’t one of the teachers who moved to help. I froze. I thought of Roy and looked for him in the crowd on the sidewalk and the street, but he wasn’t there.
My classroom window is small, but it faces the street. I swear I felt his eyes staring down at me before I noticed him. Roy had never left the class. He smiled and gave a double thumbs up before gesturing to me to come up.
I felt sick. Roy hadn’t been on the sidewalk. He couldn’t have pushed anyone. So why was I so certain he was responsible?
He was leaning his back against the window with his arms crossed when I entered. “Well?” he asked.
“You stayed inside,” I said. “Why?”
“I think you can guess,” he said.
To avoid accusations. How did I know?
“Who did it, Roy? Who did you get to push those kids?”
He laughed. “That’s the funny part. It could be any one of them, couldn’t it? They’re all a bunch of little scared bitches.”
They were all so afraid of him. “Why? What did you do to them?”
Roy’s smile faltered and he ignored the question. “The average just went up. You should be happy.”
“I’m not. Those kids might be dead. They could be dead, Roy.” I felt tired and sad.
He shrugged and turned back to the window.
The other kids started to slowly trickle into the room.
“Just remember,” Roy said, “any one of them might be the one who did it. And they could do it again. Maybe to another. Maybe to you. Or someone you love.”
Something really bizarre occurred then. He opened his mouth and it was like another voice was speaking on an older telephone with poor reception. Amidst the static there were many voices vying to be heard, begging to be saved or put out of their misery.
The clearest voice broke through and said my daughter’s name. She’s five. I didn’t know what it meant but hearing that struck such a fear in my heart that I could feel myself submitting to the boy’s will.
He closed his mouth and the strange ventriloquism ceased.
“If you do anything…” I wanted to say I would kill him and that I might do it right now and that I was going to the principal because he was in a lot of trouble. But I didn’t. My daughter’s life depended on submitting to him.
None of the other kids looked particularly guilty. They just looked as sad and detached as before. I imagine I looked about the same. It was the borrowed pencil again, a fact of life. Rain made you wet, and also diluted blood in a gutter apparently, and Roy Vine got whatever he wanted.
We went into lockdown until Lena, Mack, and Cal were brought to the hospital. They did not die but they would never return to my class that semester and likely will never come back to Buchner. Their injuries were awful and their lives are forever changed.
As is mine.
When I read the other emails to you, Mr. Cleriot, I panicked. I hadn’t called the phone number mentioned, but what I’d heard from Roy’s mouth certainly sounded like it came from a phone. It was my daughter’s name, and she did have a strange accident afterward.
She’d been playing on the cinder blocks retaining a school garden bed at her elementary school. I had just arrived to pick her up. The soil within surged outward, a tiny landslide that slammed her to the earth.
Her back struck the edge of a cinder block and she cried and screamed. There was some blood and I was scared enough to take her to the hospital where we sat for most of the night waiting for a doctor.
When we were finally brought into examination, I recoiled and shrieked. Roy was outside the window.
“Is everything alright?” the doctor asked.
Roy wasn’t there. I was tired. It’d been a mistake. That’s what I told myself. My daughter’s injuries weren’t severe. We could go home.
The next day he was there, ready to learn. And I taught. He did nothing. He does nothing, but I go on.
I can’t go on.
I need help.
Can you help me?