The Sorrow King Read Free Page B

timewasting nonsense that filled the corner loudspeakers in each room.
    Steven didn’t know what to think about the announcement.
    McFee didn’t say the boy committed suicide but Steven felt that had to be the case. There was a moment, hearing Jeremy’s name, when his heart leapt up into his throat. He found something intrinsically terrifying about writing this boy’s name in his notebook before knowing he was dead, lumping him in with the others who were known to be dead. Yet, there was something about it that was not shocking at all. Steven would have been more shocked if it had been someone else’s name. Somewhere inside, he had known what writing that name meant.
    Surrounded by stony silence, he sat in Ms. Hennessy’s first period English class. Jeremy had been in middle school and this was a senior class so it wasn’t like anyone there actually knew Jeremy. Still . . . there was plenty about it to make them collectively uneasy. The fourth suicide of the school year.
    Steven wondered how many thirteen-year-olds committed suicide. If a boy that age had that many problems, weren’t those problems usually obliterated by youthful naïveté?
    The predominate feeling in the small class of twenty was that of being hunted . Steven could sense a tangible shift.
    If something could cause a thirteen-year-old boy to kill himself, then how safe were any of them?
    The question did not seem to be, “Would one of them be next?” No, the question on the students’ minds was, “ Which one of them would be next?”
    So many questions were raised by that fourth suicide. Actually, they weren’t so much raised as strengthened, given a new voice.
    Could suicide be some kind of epidemic?
    Was it possible to catch the desire to kill yourself?
    Who was to blame?
    Who was the enemy and who was the victim?
    What did it feel like?
    Would you get sick ?
    Would you know you were going to kill yourself?
    Ms. Hennessy cleared her throat, bringing the class out of its grim mass reflection.
    Steven guessed Ms. Hennessy to be in her mid-thirties. She was attractive in a dark older woman sort of way. While he could imagine many of the teachers as half-witted, giggling cheerleaders in high school, Ms. Hennessy seemed fiercely intelligent. As far as he knew she had never been married. She dressed more fashionably than was usually seen in Gethsemane—especially amongst the faculty. She wore her long dark hair pulled back from her forehead, clipped with a large wooden clasp. Her dark brown eyes made her look perpetually sad. Normally, a bit of shadow beneath them made him imagine she had been awake all night, reading or brooding. This morning, he thought it looked like she had been crying all night. Yes, there was the usual smudgy shadow beneath the eyes but her lids were rimmed with red, too.
    She came around to the front of her desk, holding her black coffee mug in her bony right hand, the knuckles red and chapped-looking, her left arm crossed under her small breasts, the hand buried beneath the other arm. The desk dug in just below her buttocks as she leaned against it.
    “ I think we need to talk about something other than Shakespeare today.”
    She sat the mug down on the desk with a dull clunk that resonated amidst the heavy silence of the room. Lowering her head, she raised a hand to wipe away a tear. She sniffed, making a snotty sound. Steven half-expected her to leave the room.
    “ Is something going on that I don’t know about?”
    No one answered her.
    “ That’s four . . . Four suicides this year in a very small town.” She took a shaky breath. “Let’s start with an easier question. Do these suicides seem odd to anyone else?”
    Many students nodded, their eyes open wide. There was a bracing air of hesitation, like they might have to think instead of taking their turn in the game of education. The morning had suddenly turned spooky.
    “ And when odd things happen, one cannot help but think maybe there’s a reason.