Page 3 of I Will Ruin You
His head bobbed up and down ever so slightly, like his brain was keeping time to some unseen rhythm.
“A list?”
“I know who I have to get.” He appeared to be thinking, strategizing. “Need to get them in one room together. I can only do this once.”
I understood. You didn’t get a second chance to lift your thumb off that button.
“Who do you have to get, Mark?”
“That wicked Willow, fat Sally, and the fucking lawnmower man most of all.”
I was guessing he meant Herb Willow and maybe Sally Berwick, a guidance counselor. The “lawnmower man” reference made no sense to me, other than being the title to a horror movie or two.
Herb was a longtime staff member. Taught, among other things, physics and computer science, oversaw the school’s chess club, which had been dead for years but came back to life after that Netflix series made chess cool again. I’d seen Herb in the staff room this morning, but tended not to engage. Any conversation with Herb meant listening to his latest list of grievances.
“Mark,” I said calmly, “you can’t come in here. You’re a threat to others, and especially to yourself. It’s against the rules.” Like you had to tell someone that strapping dynamite to your body was not allowed.
Mark slowly shook his head.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Mr. B., or anybody else, but I will if I have to. Maybe you can help. Get everyone together in one room. Then you can leave and evacuate the school. Might get messy.”
“What I’ll do is arrange a meeting,” I said, “but without that.” I nodded at his dynamite vest. “Don’t want anyone getting hurt, especially you, Mark. What you’ve got rigged up there, it’s kind of game over for everyone, yourself included.”
Was I getting through at all? He seemed to be looking right through me.
“We get that shit off you, then we’ll have a sit-down. I promise.”
It was not a promise I likely could keep. If Mark didn’t blow us up, didn’t kill Herb or me or any of the other staff or students, he’d be arrested faster than kids fleeing a classroom when the bell rang.
“But first we need to get the right people here, deactivate that.”
“They ruined my life,” he said. “Mr. Willow, the perv.”
Was that one person, or two? What I did know was, Herb Willow was my least favorite colleague. Grumpy, lazy, irritable. Griping endlessly about thick-as-a-brick students, clueless parents, and an out-of-touch administration. One time he wanted an inquiry into who wasn’t rinsing out the coffee cups. He should have walked away from the profession years ago but hung on, I believed, out of pure meanness. I could recall Trent, in brief moments of unprofessionalism, expressing a desire to be rid of him.
“Mark,” I said gently, “this button you’re holding. You let go of that, and the dynamite goes off, right?”
“You catch on fast.”
“Is there a delay? If you let go, do we have time to get the vest off you, throw it out into the yard?”
“A couple seconds maybe,” he said.
“Can you break the connection? You let go and nothing happens? Is there, like, a wire I can cut or anything?”
“Not really.”
I wondered whether I should just run. Try to make it around the corner, down another hall. Get some shielding from the blast.
“So just talk to me. Tell me why you want to do this.”
“Mr. Willow said I couldn’t find my ass in a dark room.”
“Mr. Willow doesn’t know shit,” I said.
I sensed something going on behind me but was afraid to look over my shoulder for fear Mark would notice. Maybe the cops were here, although I’d heard no sirens, no soft footsteps of a SWAT team coming from some other direction. If there was one, I hoped to God they’d see what we were up against before someone took a shot.
“I got to where I believed him,” Mark said. “I’ve been a fuckup since I left here. So I want to tell him he was right. That he called it. Made it happen. Said I had a head full of porridge. Said he had pieces of wood in his garage smarter than me.”