Touched By Angels (30 page)

Michelle answered on the second ring, and her gaze swiveled automatically toward Jenny. She placed her hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s for you.”

“Me?” Jenny asked.

“It’s Irene.”

Jenny leapt off the sofa and hurried to the phone. “Irene,” she said eagerly, unable to hide her delight. When her agent phoned it was generally with good news.

“Jenny.” Irene sounded excited. “I just got off the phone with John Peterman. He’s wants you for the second lead in his new play. This is it, kiddo. All your hard work has finally paid off. We couldn’t ask for better money or better terms. You’re on your way now.”

Dumbstruck, Jenny listened while Irene relayed the details of her contract. When her agent had finished, Jenny replaced the receiver and turned to Michelle, who stood beside her expectantly.

“I got the second lead,” she whispered, her voice revealing the extent of her shock. “John Peterman wants me.”

Michelle let out a wild scream and hugged her enthusiastically. Then the two of them did a dance about the room, laughing, crying, their joy spilling over like champagne poured too fast from the bottle.

A good five minutes passed before Jenny remembered Trey, and then she couldn’t find him.

“Where’d he go?” Jenny asked her roommate.

Michelle gave her a blank look. “I don’t know. He must have left.”

The minute Brynn walked into the school she knew something was very wrong. One of the secretaries sat at her desk, weeping silently. A handful of teachers stood in the corner of the office, talking in whispers. The tension in the room was thick enough to slice and butter.

Not knowing what was wrong, Brynn walked over to her cubicle and cleared out the space. As she suspected, there were a number of printed sheets detailing information about the winter break. The teachers’ Christmas party was scheduled for that evening. Since her surname began with a C, she was responsible for supplying a main dish. Another paper detailed the period schedule for the last day.

Brynn slipped the papers into her bag. A white envelope fluttered from her space and landed on the floor. It was addressed to her personally, and she wondered who had put it there. On closer inspection, she realized the handwriting was familiar. It took a moment to recognize it was from Mike Glasser.

“Did you hear?” Doug Keast asked as he reached for his own papers.

“Hear about what?” Brynn had never been particularly fond of Doug. Not since the day he’d been so eager to have Emilio hauled off to the office. She had no problem with the school’s policy regarding fighting, but she questioned the other teacher’s attitude. It seemed Doug had welcomed the opportunity to see Emilio expelled.

“Mike Glasser.”

“What about him?” she asked.

“He blew his brains out.” Doug pointed his finger to his temple and pulled an imaginary trigger. “His mother found him late yesterday afternoon.” Doug hesitated. “Say, isn’t he one of the kids in your program?”

Mike, dead? A suicide? It was as if Doug had pulled the floor out from under her. The information came at her like a fist in the dark.

Brynn gasped and slumped against the wall. It demanded every ounce of strength she possessed to remain upright. Involuntarily she started to hyperventilate, and she reached out and grabbed hold of the back of a chair.

“Brynn?” Doug’s arm came around her. “Here, sit down. Do you need something?”

“Water. Could you please get me a glass of water?” A shocking, total numbness shrouded her.

“Of course. Listen, I’m sorry.” Doug steered her to a table and sat her down. “I guess I shouldn’t have told you like that.” His voice was full of apology.

Brynn was too numb to respond.

Dead. Mike, the young man she’d tried so hard to reach, was dead. There would be no more tomorrows. No dreams for Mike. No future.

The letter. Mike had written her a letter. A suicide note. No. No, please, please no. Had he written it to her as a desperate cry for help? Dear God, please no. She hadn’t collected her messages in two days.

Her hands shook so badly that Brynn was barely able to retrieve the long white envelope from inside her bag. She ripped it open and pulled out a single sheet.

Miss Cassidy,

By the time you read this, I’ll be dead. I’m not going to go into the reasons why I’m doing this because that wouldn’t solve anything. For me death is the only solution. This is what I want. Life is simply too fucking painful.

I imagine you’re wondering why I’m writing you.

There’s someone I care about, and she’s going to take this hard. I don’t know anyone who can help Suzie through this, except maybe you.

Suzie’s the best thing that ever happened to me, and I love her. She tried to help me, but she couldn’t. No one could.

My dad killed himself when I was a kid. I used to get upset about it, but now I understand why he did it. Dying is easier than living.

Unable to continue because her eyes had blurred with tears, Brynn paused long enough to search for a tissue, then returned to Mike’s letter.

You don’t owe me any favors, but I know you like Suzie.

Talk to her for me, would you? Tell her I’m sorry. Tell her . . . Shit, you’ll know what to say. It isn’t her fault. It’s no one’s fault. Not Suzie’s. Not yours. Not mine. It’s better this way for everyone.

I know I don’t have any right to lay this on you, but there’s no one else I trust. If you would, I’d appreciate it if you said something to my mother, too. You’re good with words and you’ll know what to tell her.

Since this is the last thing I’ll ever write, there’s something I’d like to know. I wish I could have traded places with Anne Frank. She wanted to live, when all I could think about was dying. You’re a good teacher, Miss Cassidy. You made me care.

Mike

Doug Keast returned with a paper cup filled with water. Brynn thanked him with a brisk nod as she folded the letter and placed it back inside the envelope.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked.

Brynn nodded. She wanted nothing more to do with Doug Keast and was grateful when the first bell rang.

“Brynn,” her fellow teacher pressed, “do you want me to call someone? You don’t look so good.”

“I’ll be fine.” But she wouldn’t be. It would be a long while before she would feel right again. Brynn couldn’t keep from thinking that she should have known something was wrong. She should have been able to reach Mike. Should have realized the depth of his despair.

And Suzie. Poor Suzie. Brynn was certain the teenager had never told Mike she was pregnant. Suzie had loved him and tried to protect him. Mike had loved her enough to ask Brynn to help her through her grief. Brynn didn’t know what she could possibly say that would comfort Suzie and Mike’s mother.

By some miracle, she made it through the morning, teaching by rote. Not everyone had heard about Mike’s death, but then only a handful of her morning students knew him.

At lunchtime, still numb, still in shock, Brynn returned to the office to ask about Suzie Chang. As she suspected, Suzie was absent. She wrote down Suzie’s home address, tucked it inside her pocket, and returned to her classroom.

Her heart ached. Her body ached, and she wondered if she would emotionally survive this day. The burden of explaining and comforting seemed beyond her.

When it was time for her afternoon class, Brynn sat at her desk. One by one, her students paraded single file past her. Mike’s desk in the center of the room sat empty. Brynn found she couldn’t look at it without experiencing a tremendous sense of loss.

Everyone appeared to be watching her, waiting for her to say something. Brynn walked to the front of the room. The silence was deafening.

“By now I’m sure you’ve all heard about Mike,” she said, and was shocked at how thin her voice had become. She struggled with her composure. “Talking about it might do us all some good. Perhaps you can help me understand why Mike would take his own life?”

“It’s stupid,” Pearl Washington said.

“But Mike wasn’t stupid,” Brynn insisted. “When I could get him to express his feelings, I found his essays to be full of insight.” She realized as she spoke how dark his writing was, how bleakly he saw the world. Then and now. Guilt swamped her senses. She should have seen it coming, should have realized how much pain he was in.

“He should have told someone,” Emilio suggested.

“Who?” Brynn asked. “Told them what?”

“We weren’t exactly his friends,” Yolanda reminded everyone sadly.

“He didn’t want no friends,” Denzil insisted.

“Okay, so he wasn’t Mr. Personality, but he wasn’t so bad, you know.”

“Are you sorry he’s dead?” Brynn asked.

A chorus of regrets chimed back, and Brynn knew that the class was suffering just as she was. Mike had asked her to talk to Suzie, to help Suzie. What he hadn’t realized was that they were all going to need help dealing with his death.

“He never let on, you know?” someone complained.

“I don’t think he knew how to share his pain,” Brynn suggested.

Yolanda started to cry. “It makes me mad.”

“What does?” Brynn questioned, struggling not to weep herself.

“That he didn’t give any of us a chance to tell him goodbye. When Modesto was shot it was bad, but this is worse because I feel like there was something I should have done, something I should have said. Maybe if I’d been friendlier, it would have helped.”

“I don’t think any of us had a clue how much emotional pain Mike was in,” Brynn told them solemnly. “Death was obviously something Mike had been entertaining for a long time. It was wrong, and now each one of us is left with recriminations.”

Brynn paused at the sharp pain in her chest. “I can’t blame Mike, but I wish I’d known how much he was hurting. I might have been able to help him. Like Yolanda said, we never got a chance to say good-bye.”

“I want to get in his face and make him listen to reason,” one of the girls shouted. “He’s hurt so many people.”

“He was in pain himself.”

“I wish I could talk to him.”

“You can,” Brynn whispered.

“But how?” Denzil asked. “It isn’t like we can write him a letter.”

“Why can’t we?” Brynn asked, remembering how much writing had helped her deal with the death of her beloved grandmother five years earlier. “It’s true Mike won’t be reading it, but writing Mike might help each of us deal with the shock of what he did.”

“Miss Cassidy’s right.”

Binders opened and spiral notebooks appeared as her students automatically reached for a fresh piece of paper. They did this without Brynn so much as asking.

The remainder of the time was spent writing Mike. Brynn wrote her own letter and found herself struggling to hold in the emotion as she placed feelings of doubt on the page. When she glanced up, she found several of her students were weeping.

Afterward, those who were willing read their letters aloud.

Emilio volunteered first. Looking shaken but determined, he faced the class. “Mike, don’t do it, man. Don’t do it.” Then he slid back onto his seat.

Pearl stood beside her desk. “Why do I hurt so bad? I barely knew you, and yet I feel some responsibility for your death. You sat three desks away from me. Three desks and you couldn’t reach that far? Three desks and I couldn’t see your pain? I’m sorry, Mike. Forgive me.”

Yolanda, tears streaming down her face, volunteered next. “Thank you, Mike, for what you taught me. I wasn’t your friend, but I wish I had been. I never took the time to talk to you. But you touched my life. Never again will I sit in a classroom and not look around me. I wish I’d known how much pain you were in. I’d like to think you would have told me had I asked. Only I never asked. Next time will be different. Next time I’m going to look.”

When the bell rang her class filed out of the room with little of the enthusiasm they generally showed at the end of a day.

“Will you find out about Mike’s funeral?” Emilio asked.

The other kids stopped and waited for Brynn to respond.

“We want to know,” Yolanda said.

“I think it would help if we went.”

There was a chorus of agreement.

“You were the only friends Mike had,” Brynn said.

“It’s too bad we didn’t do a better job of it,” Yolanda said just loudly enough for Brynn to hear.

Brynn left the school as soon as she could. She had Suzie’s address with her and walked over to the teenager’s apartment. The girl’s mother greeted her at the door and was painfully polite as she ushered Brynn into the living room.

“Is Suzie home?” Brynn asked.

“No. She with Mike’s mother.”

Brynn studied the delicate Chinese woman who struggled with English. “My daughter has torn heart.”

Brynn placed her hand over her own heart. It did indeed feel as if it had been torn. “Please tell Suzie that I’m looking for her.”

“Yes. Thank you very much to coming.” Her English was heavily accented and barely understandable.

Before she left, Brynn placed her hand on the other woman’s shoulder. “Suzie is a wonderful girl. I feel honored to have been the teacher of such a fine student.”

The delicate woman’s eyes avoided Brynn’s, but she thought she might have detected a smile.

When Brynn arrived at Mike’s, his mother was at the funeral home, making the arrangements for her son’s burial. Brynn left feeling as if she’d failed everyone. Mike. Suzie. His mother. Her students. Herself.

Her apartment was cold and bleak. She walked inside and stood in the dark, feeling as though she carried the burden of the world on her shoulders. With a heavy heart, she turned on the light switch and walked over to her desk.

It might have helped her had she been able to cry, but there were no tears left inside her. With a steady, sure hand, she wrote out her letter of resignation to give to Mr. Whalen in the morning. When school resumed after the first of the year, she wouldn’t be there.

Roberto was right, and had been from the first, she realized. She didn’t belong here. She’d failed Mike, but most of all she’d failed herself.