know?
The only person other than Gary and Ivan I felt at all close to in the school was a guy who wasn’t even there. No, I’m not making a joke. You see, down this one hall that leads to the library, there was a picture and a plaque on the wall honoring this guy named Chester Arthur, although everyone used to call him Mr. Arthur. Well, at least the people who still talked about him anymore called him that. To be honest, I don’t think most students in the school called him anything because they never knew him in the first place. I hadn’t ever met him, but for some reason I felt like I knew him. Or at least understood him.
See, he was an English teacher at our junior high about five years ago and all the teachers and kids who used to go there said that he was a really nice guy. They also said that he was sort of an unhappy guy. Apparently he was always trying to write books and plays and become famous so that he could stop being an English teacher and start being a big-shot artist guy and move to New York or California.
But nobody ever published his books or bought any of his plays or anything else he wrote or painted or composed because, well, I guess the stuff he did wasn’t very good. I even heard that he made the drama club put on a musical he wrote that was so bad everybody left at intermission. But since he was such a nice guy, everybody told him the play was good and excused their having to leave by saying that the cookies the snack bar served at intermission gave them food poisoning, which didn’t make him feel any better since he was also the person who baked the cookies. So he was just this cool teacher that everybody liked who was really really unhappy being who he was and probably thought that nothing he did was right.
And that’s why I felt kinda close to the guy.
And it’s also why a lot of people think he died.
See, the plaque under his picture read, “In memory of Chester Arthur, taken from our world by accidental means, but always and forever in our hearts.” The part that says “accidental means” is where there seems to be a lot of disagreement. Because a ton of people said that his death wasn’t an accident at all; they say it was something he made happen himself. Because his house . . . well . . . exploded.
The gas company blamed it on the guy who built Mr. Arthur’s house and the guy who built Mr. Arthur’s house blamed it on the gas company. But a lot of people in the town blamed it on Mr. Arthur. They said that he just decided he didn’t want to be a teacher anymore and since he didn’t seem to be good at anything else, he decided that he didn’t want to be
anything
anymore. So they say one day he turned on all the gas in his house, and, you know . . .
BOOM!
Nothing left of the house, nothing left of Mr. Arthur. No body, no anything.
I never knew if I believed Mr. Arthur did this or not, simply because I could never imagine
anybody
doing it, no matter how bad they felt. I mean, I’ve been depressed before, like after the time I tried to put on a carnival in my backyard to raise money for muscular dystrophy and nobody showed up except Gary and Ivan, but I never even thought about blowing myself up. I just ate about a thousand Oreos and went to bed.
To me, the people the people who said he killed himself just sounded like they were spreading around one of those stupid rumors that people make up when they don’t have enough to think about in school, like the rumor that Mr. Calaphon, our janitor, tears the heads off of rats he finds in the boiler room and drinks their brains. I mean, Mr. Calaphon is sort of a weird guy, but there’s no way he’s rat-brain-drinking weird.
But whether Mr. Arthur really blew himself up on purpose or not, I still liked the guy, since even his face in the picture looked like he was sort of lost and trapped, which I could completely relate to. I guess he found a way to get out of coming to that stupid school every day. It just wasn’t a way I
The only person other than Gary and Ivan I felt at all close to in the school was a guy who wasn’t even there. No, I’m not making a joke. You see, down this one hall that leads to the library, there was a picture and a plaque on the wall honoring this guy named Chester Arthur, although everyone used to call him Mr. Arthur. Well, at least the people who still talked about him anymore called him that. To be honest, I don’t think most students in the school called him anything because they never knew him in the first place. I hadn’t ever met him, but for some reason I felt like I knew him. Or at least understood him.
See, he was an English teacher at our junior high about five years ago and all the teachers and kids who used to go there said that he was a really nice guy. They also said that he was sort of an unhappy guy. Apparently he was always trying to write books and plays and become famous so that he could stop being an English teacher and start being a big-shot artist guy and move to New York or California.
But nobody ever published his books or bought any of his plays or anything else he wrote or painted or composed because, well, I guess the stuff he did wasn’t very good. I even heard that he made the drama club put on a musical he wrote that was so bad everybody left at intermission. But since he was such a nice guy, everybody told him the play was good and excused their having to leave by saying that the cookies the snack bar served at intermission gave them food poisoning, which didn’t make him feel any better since he was also the person who baked the cookies. So he was just this cool teacher that everybody liked who was really really unhappy being who he was and probably thought that nothing he did was right.
And that’s why I felt kinda close to the guy.
And it’s also why a lot of people think he died.
See, the plaque under his picture read, “In memory of Chester Arthur, taken from our world by accidental means, but always and forever in our hearts.” The part that says “accidental means” is where there seems to be a lot of disagreement. Because a ton of people said that his death wasn’t an accident at all; they say it was something he made happen himself. Because his house . . . well . . . exploded.
The gas company blamed it on the guy who built Mr. Arthur’s house and the guy who built Mr. Arthur’s house blamed it on the gas company. But a lot of people in the town blamed it on Mr. Arthur. They said that he just decided he didn’t want to be a teacher anymore and since he didn’t seem to be good at anything else, he decided that he didn’t want to be
anything
anymore. So they say one day he turned on all the gas in his house, and, you know . . .
BOOM!
Nothing left of the house, nothing left of Mr. Arthur. No body, no anything.
I never knew if I believed Mr. Arthur did this or not, simply because I could never imagine
anybody
doing it, no matter how bad they felt. I mean, I’ve been depressed before, like after the time I tried to put on a carnival in my backyard to raise money for muscular dystrophy and nobody showed up except Gary and Ivan, but I never even thought about blowing myself up. I just ate about a thousand Oreos and went to bed.
To me, the people the people who said he killed himself just sounded like they were spreading around one of those stupid rumors that people make up when they don’t have enough to think about in school, like the rumor that Mr. Calaphon, our janitor, tears the heads off of rats he finds in the boiler room and drinks their brains. I mean, Mr. Calaphon is sort of a weird guy, but there’s no way he’s rat-brain-drinking weird.
But whether Mr. Arthur really blew himself up on purpose or not, I still liked the guy, since even his face in the picture looked like he was sort of lost and trapped, which I could completely relate to. I guess he found a way to get out of coming to that stupid school every day. It just wasn’t a way I
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