“Happy bullshit?”
“Yeah. I stomached it for as long as I could, but I just can’t anymore. And I don’t think what you’re teaching is right. I mean, all of the teachers in this school are full of shit, but what you teach is dangerous.”
“Dangerous? How so?”
“I watched the rest of Dead Poets Society. The main character kills himself. Is that what you’re trying to do? Get us to kill ourselves too?”
I could see the madness in his eyes, and knew right then that any attempt at defending myself would be unsuccessful, because we were no longer having a rational conversation. But this wasn’t the first irrational conversation I had had with a teenager. So I swallowed my pride and said, “I’m not sure I understand—”
“You tell us that we should all be different, but if we were all different, we’d be the same. Can’t you see that? Not everyone can be different, or we’d lose the sense of the word—just like everyone can’t be extraordinary. You can’t tell average people to be extraordinary and get away with it forever. It’s a mindfuck. And it’s a lie. A pyramid scheme. At some point, someone is going to make you pay.”
“Pay? What are you trying to tell me here, Edmond? Because that sounds like a threat to me. Should I feel threatened here?”
“I knew you wouldn’t listen to me. No one listens to me.”
“I’m here, Edmond. And I’m all ears.”
He stood up and put on his backpack very slowly.
Then he looked at his sneakers and giggled like an elementary-school kid who had farted loudly in the middle of class. “I’m sorry, Mr. Vernon. I’m really sorry. I’m just messing with you. You’re the best. High five.”
He raised his hand in the air.
I did not raise mine.
“Are you okay, Edmond?”
“Aces, teach. No five? Okay. I’ll just go then. Off to be extraordinary. I won’t let you down.”
I let him go mostly because I was feeling exhausted that day, and then I forgot about Edmond Atherton as I taught the rest of my classes, went to meetings in the afternoon, and then helped settle a fight between the leads in the school play, who had apparently “hooked up,” which didn’t work out all that well, making their onstage chemistry dodgy at best—and there were tears, which took a lot of energy.
I thought about Edmond as I drove home that night and decided I would ask to speak with him again at the end of class the next day. Maybe he was looking for some extra attention and was attacking as a way to alert me to the fact that he had needs that weren’t being met. I had seen this approach before, and Edmond Atherton was not the first teen to challenge me.
When Edmond arrived in my classroom the next day, I asked if he would stay after class so we might talk, and he said, “Sure, sure, sure. Sure thing,” and then started giggling again.
“Something funny?” I asked.
“Nah,” he said and took his seat.
We were discussing Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, debating whether there really was a universal language, and whether each of us had a personal legend, when Edmond raised his hand again.
“What if the universe tells you to do something the rest of the world would condemn?”
“Many people have asked this question before. Think about our founding fathers writing the Declaration of Independence. England sure condemned that,” I said. “And that’s only one example.”
“And it’s good to do things that others don’t do, right?” he said. “That’s what you’re always going on and on about in here. The importance of being different?”
Before I could answer, he pulled an aluminum baseball bat from his backpack and charged me.
I remember hearing these awful noises like tree branches breaking and then high-pitched screaming.
He’d hit me half a dozen times before my mind even registered what was happening—elbows, kneecaps, shins, forearms—and all before I hit the floor and lost consciousness.
Later in court, a straight-faced and utterly remorseless Edmond Atherton said he never aimed for my head because he wanted me “to remember” that what he had done was the punishment for my being “wrong.”
They locked Edmond away in an institution for disturbed boys, covered my medical bills—which were astronomical—and gave me a settlement large enough to let me retire and move far away to the woods of Vermont, a place I had never been before in my life. After all the media coverage—not to mention all of the time spent in the hospital recovering from multiple surgeries and then the painful rehab, during which I couldn’t even walk, so I was an easy target for any reporter who was heartless enough to stick a microphone in my face as I wheeled, crutched, and then caned my way through parking lots—I just wanted to be alone, far, far away, where no one would know my name or face. Vermont sounded like such a place.
And that’s how I ended up in this two-story cabin in the middle of the woods, where I’ve rubbed my aching joints, downed Advil at an alarming rate, and served out my time in this ruined body where no one can see me.
“I never thanked the students who stopped Edmond before he killed me,” I say to my wineglass as I light up another cigarette. “Was it because I secretly wanted to die all along? Was it because Edmond was right? He may have been my most extraordinary student ever. That’s the truth, isn’t it? It’s almost funny, when you think about the word extraordinary and how many times I used it—like I was Robin Williams playing Mr. Keating.”