Quantum nightmares, p.19
Quantum Nightmares, page 19
He turned to Mrs. Glennon, the resident mental health and crisis counselor, and said, “What do high school students and birds have in common?” Mrs. Glennon, though usually chipper and amicable, was currently void of anything even remotely resembling a sense of humor. The nation was in mourning and the looming disaster was still on the wrong side of the hill, climbing, climbing, climbing to a dizzying precipice before a long, steep drop. The proverbial nuclear missile was still in the air and the hard part was still ahead of them.
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Glennon said, shrugging absently, trying to be polite. “What do high school students and birds have in common?” She was suddenly aware that she didn’t want to know the punchline, because knowing Johnson, the answer would be in bad taste at best and morbidly inappropriate at worst.
Johnson nodded at the bleachers, a mischievous grin tugging at the corners of his mouth, reaching his eyes, ironing out the wrinkles that usually settled there making him look twenty years younger. “Birds of a feather flock together,” he said, nodding, the smirk transforming into a Cheshire cat grin, ear to ear, teeth stained by tobacco smoke and coffee, wrinkles completely gone, hints of his good-looking, alpha male genes protruding from twenty years of living in a world that had broken his heart and lied to him with the constant reminder, You peaked in high school.
“You just watch and see,” he added.
God, I hope not, Mrs. Glennon thought. Her hands shaking, she glanced at her note cards which were filled with inadequate notes to handle the nation’s present crisis. Chase Young, lead administrator for FEMA, assembled the best crisis management team he could several hours prior when the disaster went public. He was the one who made the call for every school to initiate the blackout order, then, with what the news called the A-team (and later the L-team), they came up with the itinerary and guidelines that Mrs. Glennon currently fumbled nervously with. In her professional opinion, though, notes were not enough. When there was a nuclear missile already in the air, heading toward every home in America, notes just didn’t seem the answer.
Like most mental health and crisis counselors, she lobbied to quarantine all students in the gym, which could double as a bunker for the night, or even the next couple of nights. But Chase Young didn’t want to make a bad situation worse by overreacting.
A ringing cellphone disturbed the monotony like a boulder tossed into a still lake. Everyone fell silent. The kids all looked like dogs hearing a distant whistle, everyone stretching their necks to see whose phone it was. Who had service? Would they be allowed to use it? Could they share? Could they check their feeds? Their likes? Comments? Tags? Who is it? For the love of God, who has service?
Mrs. Robinson stood and answered her phone. It was bulky and had a long antenna protruding out of it—a blackout phone, the only capable means of communication within the beehives’ range. The silence rang with acute awareness, everyone holding their breath, straining their necks, listening.
“Uhuh. Uhuh,” she said, her turkey gobbler neck jiggling as she nodded. “Okay. Okay. Thank you.” She hung up the phone, pulled her lips in a strange way, and glanced nervously at Mrs. Glennon, giving her a thumbs-up that looked odd and misplaced given the morose look on her face. Mrs. Glennon returned the thumbs up. But panic set in as she realized that she wasn’t ready. She wasn’t ready because she suspected that Mr. Johnson was right—he was despicable and completely inappropriate—but he was right: birds of a feather do flock together. She was terrified of what that meant for her students, for the country, for the world.
A team of police officers filed into the gym from the outer entrance with a swarm of concerned parents on their heels. They walked single file and staggered in ranks behind the microphone so that the parents were standing, facing the student body. There were eighty-five parents altogether. Of the eighty-five, fifty of them were single parents. The Hipsters hive at Donald J. Trump High made for the highest percentage of any hive. These were their parents.
“Sorry to keep you all waiting for so long,” Mrs. Robinson said into the microphone. “Unfortunately, it was necessary.” She cleared her throat, took a sip from the glass of water perched at the end of the podium. “I’m sure most of you know Mrs. Glennon”—she waved Mrs. Glennon over, the flaps under her arms jiggling in concert with her neck— “but if not, she is the school’s mental health and crisis counselor. Please give her your undivided attention.”
As Mrs. Glennon walked to the microphone, she felt naked, exposed, and worst of all, egregiously unprepared. It wasn’t a big school. Most would even call it small. The graduating class was sitting at a meager fifty-three students—fifty-four if Casey Yates could close out the semester strong and string together two good quarters with at least a 3.75 GPA.
She observed the anxious faces staring back at her. Not for the first time, she was grateful that she didn’t accept the job offer at Joe R. Biden High in Minneapolis, which had more than 1,500 students.
They’re so young, she thought. So young and impressionable—
—Birds of a feather flock together.
She cleared her throat and spoke with a telling crack that shook her voice, inspiring confidence in no one. “My job is quite unique in that I both love and hate it in equal measures,” she said. “I love helping people. But I hate that for me even to have a job, something so terrible must happen, something so unthinkable …” Her voice tapered off as her mind followed the flow of thoughts, a catastrophizing wave that terrified her to her core. She glanced at the note cards and tapped them on the podium before pocketing them, deciding that no amount of preparation would be adequate, that this was a disaster that could potentially kill one thousand kids. At least those were the numbers that FEMA initially kicked out—the projected dead by the end of the week. But by the end of the year, that number would reach ten thousand—ten thousand, within a year.
“Which would be a win,” said Dr. Gliotone, lead consulting psychiatrist working with FEMA. At the globally televised event, he explained the projections on a bar graph. Using a laser pointer, he swooped the far-left side, circling the highly coveted but equally doubtful number: 1,000. And on the opposite end of the board—the board that they picked to show the world the dreadful projections—one of those playful vanity boards that had Britney’s bright smile staring back, in one of the greatest blunders in historical memory—the bar graph showed 10,000 in a year, 25,000 in 3 years, 50,000 in 5 years. The numbers went up exponentially every year.
“The over under is 10,000,” Dr. Gliotone had said with a hopeful grimace, as if he had a gun to his head, forced to decide which testicle he favored more to keep. Then, with a look of utter finality, and regret, he dubbed it, aptly, “The slow drip suicide.”
“There really is no easy way to say this …” Mrs. Glennon paused and looked at Mr. Johnson, who smirked and put his thumbs together, flapping them as if he were making shadow puppets of a flying bird. Mrs. Glennon scoffed in disgust then turned back to the kids. Looking into their faces, she struggled to say the words.
“Britney Sammons took her own life last night,” she finally blurted out.
Gasps from the front two rows.
Murmurs from the bleachers on the left.
Giggles from the bleachers on the right.
Cries of agony from the middle.
“You fuckin’ liar,” Sean screamed from the third row. The students all checked their phones in a hurried frenzy, an action they knew was utterly worthless. Sara Foxx shook her phone then threw it at the podium. Mrs. Glennon dodged the projectile and a team of cops mobilized to restrain Sara.
Mrs. Glennon turned to face the approaching cops. She took a step forward, pumping her hands. “Stand down,” she said, eyes bulging with fear, panic. The look in her eyes is what stopped the cops; the gut-wrenching look of disappointment; the scolding look that said, “Don’t you dare punish a suffering child.” She stared at the cops and nodded with unmistakable determination. All the adults had talked about this: emotions would be high, tempers flailing, children’s lives at stake. She’d already briefed everyone. Briefed them after she received her brief by FEMA. Briefed them while the kids sat in the blackout gym for four hours. Briefed them as the nation went to Defcon 1.
Britney Sammons was the female leader of the Hipsters. Her hive consisted of 35% of the school. Of the five hives, it was the biggest at a national level, sitting snug at 33%. Like every other high school mental health and crisis counselor in the nation, Mrs. Glennon made sure the adults understood the precarious circumstances that lay ahead in the next twenty-four hours (and beyond) for the highest demographic of children.
She pivoted to face the student body.
“I know this is hard to hear,” she said. “And I can only imagine what is going through your minds: to think that the leader of a hive would do something like this …” She paused, pulling her lips back, shaking her head. “But it’s true.”
“Prove it.” Sean rose from his seat, prompting the rest of his hive to follow.
“Yeah, prove it,” said Nick Learn, rising from his seat. Being the leader of the Brains garnered him a following of forty students. They all stood.
The embers of dissent had been stoked. Every student stood. They yelled and flailed their arms, the anger inside looking for an outlet, an escape.
Mrs. Glennon pumped her hands and spoke into the microphone: “We are going to turn off the beehive in just a few minutes. But not until we can ensure everyone’s safety. However you are feeling is perfectly normal, but if any of you are having thoughts of hurting yourselves …”
“Oh shit.” Sean jumped over the first two rows of the Brain hive. He tripped, veered, then sprinted toward the doors. He made it to half-court before a team of cops tackled him.
“Get off me,” he screamed and squirmed. “Get the heck off me.”
A middle-aged couple weaved their way around the cops and knelt before Sean. The woman was crying, clutching her purse, white knuckles accentuated on her red hand.
“It’s okay, Seany,” she said.
“You don’t get it, Ma,” Sean screamed. “It’s Pete.”
“What about him?” This from Sean’s father; a tall, stern-looking man with bushy eyebrows. He would not give up his battle with baldness and the long hairs from the back combed over the front. Usually, it wasn’t so obvious. But the flashing red and green lights bounced off his skull.
“He’s in the bathroom.” Sean’s voice was low. He stopped fighting. He closed his eyes and let out a noise that sounded like an alley cat quartet.
Hushed murmurs.
A concerned woman walked through the crowd, parting it with respect. It was Pete’s mother. She was alone. Like more than half of the kids in the nation and at the school, Pete was the product of a broken home. His mother was his everything, and he was hers. “So what if he is in the bathroom?” She couldn’t connect the dots. She couldn’t fathom why that would elicit such a response from Sean, whom she adored and who had been staying at her house for years. He was the captain of the football team and an all-state wrestler, which garnered him a full-ride scholarship to Minnesota—he was to be a Gopher next fall. A good-looking kid with a squared jaw and beautiful blue eyes, Sean was like a second son to Mrs. Sanchez. She knew him well. And she could tell when he was hiding something.
Sean opened his mouth to say something but hesitated, a terrified look permeating his eyes.
“What is it, Sean?” Pete’s mom said. “It’s okay, son. You can tell us.” Sean’s father took a step forward and made like he was going to kick his son.
“He’s got a phone,” Sean blurted out. His face contorted in a grotesque exhibition of pain, anguish, regret.
“Bullshit,” Mr. Johnson said. “I’ve got his phone right here.” He raised the phone over his head and pumped it victoriously as if it were the game ball from his championship win. He looked around for validation. Nobody cared.
Sean lay on his back, breathing deeply, staring at the blinking beehive. He lurched over and started to cry.
Pete’s mother bent over and shook him. “What aren’t you telling us?” Sean looked up but couldn’t maintain eye contact with Mrs. Sanchez. He lowered his eyes, then: “I gave him my phone.”
The gymnasium fell silent as everyone digested the inference. But the silence was misleading, for everyone felt a panic looming on the horizon, substantial, inevitable.
The adults had already been made privy to the mortal consequences of anyone in Britney’s hive receiving the news without proper grief counseling. It’s why they trapped the kids in the gymnasium like unwanted refugees, with no news of the outside world. The students were just then realizing the same thing that the adults feared: how dangerous this situation was for any member of Britney’s hive, but especially for a president.
The air charged with a heavy weight that was tangible, stifling, coursing through everyone, the prospect of death connecting them in their shared horror.
“Not my Petey,” his mother said shakily. She turned clumsily, tripping over her feet, looking for the entrance to the inner school. She stumbled like a drunken fawn, veering to the right, throwing her arms out for balance, then, with pronounced effort, she stood straight and took off in a dead sprint toward the doors. But she was an obese woman and she looked like she was swimming in a pool of Jell-O. She was already out of breath by the time she reached the door, hunched over, coughing, breathing laboriously.
The cops shot past her, teachers on the cops’ heels, and parents, too. With no one left to keep the kids in check, they followed the crowd, checking their social media feeds when they hit the hallway. There was a symphony of beeps and bells and chirps and whistles as their phones all connected at once.
“Oh my god,” Alex said. “They weren’t lying.” He laughed nervously then read aloud: “Britney Sammons, Queen of the Hipsters, posted a suicide note on her feed this morning. The government tracked her phone to her friend’s house. The friend said that she planned to swim out to sea and never come back, that she was inconsolable, battling anxiety, depression, and the crushing weight of expectation to be perfect, fueled by the recent smear campaign by the Hip-Hoppers’ hive leader, Jake Taint, who said, ‘She’s just a goody two shoes, mama’s girl. She’ll never be as cool as she thinks.’”
Pete’s mother was the last to reach the bathroom. She turned a corner, panting, gasping for air. There was a line of kids leading to the boys’ restroom. She pushed through the crowd, an odd mix of hopeful caution tugging at her heart. She turned the corner, sweat dripping down her body. Everyone’s faces sullen. No one looked her in the eye. She walked slowly, almost gliding. Later she wouldn’t be able to recall this part. She saw Sean, curled into a ball in the corner, crying. She closed her eyes, held her breath, stepped forward. She knew what she was going to see even before she opened her eyes—she could see it, see it seared on the canvas of her inner world, her lifeless son. With sheer will, she forced herself to open her eyes and saw her son lying on the ground, his skin already ash gray, his face up, eyes unblinking, with several welts and gashes on his forehead.
Mr. Johnson ran away from the scene, laughing hysterically.
The coroner’s report would later read rather poetically, “He hit his head on the porcelain lip no less than six times (nine is my estimation), then, just before he lost consciousness, he placed his head in the toilet and waited to join Britney.”
The Road to Recovery: Twenty Years Later A Documentary
Written/Produced/Directed
By Shane Best
University of Minnesota Film School Final Project
Excerpt Transcript
Derrick Johnson and Debby Glennon-Johnson Former Teachers at Donald J. Trump High Little Rock, Minnesota
DJ:
I did not run away laughing. I might’ve giggled a little. Then Mrs. Robinson shot daggers at me and pointed toward the door, essentially kicking me out. But I definitely didn’t run away laughing. And you guys couldn’t find someone better looking to play me in the reenactment? Yawl made me look like an asshole.
Best:
Could you please just answer the question?
DJ:
Sure, kid. Eh, what was the question again?
Best:
Were you surprised that Pete Sanchez killed himself?
DJ:
No. I wasn’t surprised. Not in the least bit. Do I feel bad the kid died by what essentially amounted to a self-imposed swirly? Sure. It was tragic. But back in the day when I won the 2030 Minnesota state championship—
DGJ:
Here we go.
DJ:
What? It’s a valid argument. I’m not just bringing it up just to “bring it up,” (air quotes) now. Anyways … shit. See. You made me lose my chain of thought. She always does that. Where was I, kid?
Best:
Back in the day …
DJ:
That’s right—back in the day, that kid would’ve gotten a swirly every day. I think this was the universe’s way of balancing out. Ya know? Resetting. Equilibrium. I realize that makes me sound insensitive, but it was unnatural for kids like that to be the leaders of anything besides a Dungeons and Dragons committee.
Best:
What about you, Mrs. Glennon-Johnson? You were there, too. What do you make of the whole thing? Did the reenactment meet your expectations?
DGJ:
Yes, it did. Yawl did a wonderful job. Just wonderful. Don-chu listen to Derrick, he’s just a miserable old man, always has been. Dunno why I put up with him all these years.
DJ:
I do. And it has something to do with you and me and a bottle of KY gel and—
DGJ:
You hush it now. Don-chu listen to him, sweetheart. Not ‘bout nothin’. You guys did a brilliant job don-chu-know.
