~~This Time It's Different by Evans Blue~~

Language Barriers?

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

~~The Dark-Haired Angels~~


That’s what we called ourselves.
But, to be honest, I don’t think we deserved the latter part of that title anymore.
Dan, his finger twitching at the trigger of the hunting rifle, looks into the eyes of the English teacher. She was the one he was starting with.
After the events of last week, I couldn’t blame him.
None of us could. Alice, Miguel, Jace, and I had all seen what had happened.
And not one of us could pretend we didn’t want to be holding that gun.
She had meant to do what she did.
Dan had written, in his Alphabet Autobiography, some of the secrets of his internment at the mental ward of the local hospital shortly after his brother’s death, and she had told the police, and in doing so, freed up his past for the local gossip. He had lost his job, most of his friends, and earlier today I had overheard some of the teachers talking about expelling him for ‘safety reasons.’ They just didn’t want to deal with him.
I know that type: The goodie-two-shoes, the teachers that pretend to care about students, but whenever there’s a so-called ‘teacher’s pet’ around, they leave the really difficult kids to be dealt with by them, and expect that kid to deal with them on their own. Dan had had the worst of it, and I couldn’t blame him for doing this.
In fact, it was my dad’s gun he was using.
This had been Jace’s idea. I didn’t think he actually meant it to happen, but because of his treatment at the dance last week, I knew he had wanted it to. He had been attacked by the cheerleaders, all dressed in clothes that hookers would have been ashamed to wear, and taunted in front of the whole school about his inability to want any of them. He’d brushed back his long, pink, green, blue, red, and orange hair and walked out of the gym, but I’d seen his eyes, and I just knew that he meant trouble if anyone followed him.
Alice had crept up beside me, and hid her face in my hair. She was a lesbian, and she’d been my friend for my entire life, so I knew how scared she must be, knowing her turn was coming. I slipped in front of her. No one was getting by me.
Alice had always been the baby of the group. She was shy, prone to long periods of meditation, and was so kitten-like you were hard pressed to find anything wrong with her. But, when a member of the school newspaper found her blog, they found out a lot of things. Including how she was in love with me.
She’d told me last year. She’d hinted, at first, and as I’d always known she was a lesbian, I finally asked, and I guess I wasn’t surprised to find out. Of course she knew I would never love her back, and I’d gone on to make it up to her by helping her raise some of her grades by helping out the teachers and principal. You’d be surprised at how high a good kid’s grades can get by cleaning up after an art class where some kid had cut himself on one of the tools.
Miguel pulled out a sword from the sheath at his hip. He’d always had a weakness for things like that. He walks towards—who else?—a girl he’d had a crush on for years. Her name was Miranda, and she was the most beautiful girl in school. She’d found out about his feelings for her when she came upon a love letter he’d written to her in the trash, and read it out loud to her boyfriend the quarterback and the entire football team. She’d broken his heart, and now it was time to return the favor.
Dan held out a hand to stop him, his eyes never leaving the English teacher’s. “Not yet.”
Miguel stopped. We’d always followed Dan, and we would follow him to the end.
Alice trembled by my side, her hold on the trigger of the homemade bomb an uneasy one. I took it from her, and placed my brow against hers and looked into her eyes. She was my friend, and if she died without knowing I would have died to save her if I could, then there would be no hope of Heaven for me.
We watch as Dan advances on his chosen target. Jace stands at the door of the gym, his eyes narrowed, his own gun tracing a line through the air, focusing and refocusing on dozens of targets. I knew that he loved Dan, loved him to the depths of his soul, and he would have suffered millions more humiliations like the one he had at the dance in order to get one approving smile from Dan.
And my story? I was Dan’s. He had asked me out last year when I managed to get a member of the football team—why is it that they are so prone to cruelty?—suspended for spreading rumors about Dan’s trips to the school library where he goes to a back room that is kept reserved for him. He goes there to study old books and develop essays for a magazine in New York called Word-Weary. They said he was a part of a) a child porn ring with the librarian Mr. Munch, b) a ring of drug smugglers, and c) a ring of forgers (no one could agree on exactly what kind of forgers). I had trashed my good-kid rep, but by the middle of summer vacation, I’d regained it and was back on the Angel standard of good behavior.
I’d follow Dan to hell and back, if he asked. I had never met a better man.
And all of us: Darling Alice, loving and tough Miguel, creative Jace; we were all going to die for him.
Because it was right.

Author’s Note
I meant this story to tell a tale that no one really notices anymore. The Dark-Haired Angels are all real, and the fact that we don’t see them is the reason I wrote this story. There’s an entire world that very, very few people ever see, and I have to say that it’s one people need to see. The event that occurred at Columbine was, by no means, an event all of its own. School shootings done by students are more common than people think, and because of some of my own personal experiences I think it right that you should hear it from the eyes and soul of one who participated in one, and their reasons.
Teachers, I have to apologize. You get a rather bad rap in this story, I’m afraid, but it’s you who have most of the impact on a student’s life. A good one can make a great human being who will do great things and change the world for the better, but a bad one will do the very opposite. The viewpoints you express and the words and deeds you make have a very distinct impression, and if a student comes to you for help, you listen. The chaperones at the dance mentioned in the story could have stopped the shooting, but as these were the Dark-Haired Angels who were legendary for kindness, strength, and basic goodness they had figured they could deal with it on their own. A student, no matter what age, is still a child and in your care. It is your duty to give them the very best you can give them, for any less will leave the student alone.
Children, even the teenagers shown in the story, are our future, and we need to protect them. They are the most precious resource this world has, and if you blame an event like Columbine on the wrong people, then you are simply refusing to see your part in it. Students flooded message boards and the like after Columbine with enraged, and sometimes even frightened, tales of what can only be classified as witch hunts. Witch hunts for the next kid who plans to kill. There was once a program where students were encouraged to rat out on other students—putting a loaded gun in the hands of a serial killer and aiming him at a well-populated mall.
It is our duty to keep our children safe, and always remember that it is the good ones, the ones who are quiet, well behaved, and intelligent who are the ones on their own.
The Dark-Haired Angels may one day live and breathe, and if they do, I hope to God that someone will be there to take the guns and the bombs out of their hands and show them that they are not alone. The other members of the group are their whole worlds, their families, and Dan was the one that lead them. All their lives they had been a group, and if one of the people at their school had done something right, then the shooting may not have happened.
Be careful of what you say and do. People’s minds are better explosives than gunpowder, and they explode for much longer. If they are written, they can explode for centuries. I myself own a book that is 109 years old, and its power hasn’t yet faded. But, when people’s minds are not confined to printer’s ink, it is then that they are most powerful. And, when their minds are not yet governed by experience, the explosions are not well aimed.
If you light the fuse, you are very likely to become a part of the collateral damages.
May the Dark-Haired Angels never come to pass. May one person step in and take away the guns and bombs and hold the children while they cry. That’s all the Dark-Haired Angels ever needed: To know someone cared about them.

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