“Can I leave this for him?” he asked, pulling an envelope from his pocket.
“Yeah, sure,” I said, taking a step away from the door.
The boy wedged the envelope in the crack between the door and the frame, poking it a few times to make sure it wouldn’t fall.
“Thanks,” he said, turning back one more time to look at me before taking off down the hall.
Once the boy was out of sight, I gave into my nosier instincts and grabbed the envelope out of the door. Written in pencil on the front was:
Ryland
I printed you a better one.
- Con
I opened the – thankfully unsealed – envelope, and pulled out a photograph of Ryland standing arm-in-arm with three other boys about his age. One of them I recognized from my visit to his room yesterday morning, the other two I’d never seen, but it didn’t matter as none of them were the person I was focused on. My eyes were glued to the little redhead in the center, who had the biggest smile I’d ever seen on his freckled face. A smile that went all the way to his eyes, lighting him up from the inside out. I stood there for a long moment, feeling all my anger and pent-up aggression trickle out of me as I stared down at the photo – its message ringing in my head, loud and clear.
Ryland was happy here. For the first time in his life, he was happy.
With something between a sigh and a huff, I slowly walked back toward the front doors of the dorm, not realizing I still held the picture until I stepped outside and felt the first drops of the coming storm on my face. Not thinking to return it, I slid the photo into my pocket to keep it safe, and sauntered back across campus, barely noticing the rain. By the time I climbed the steps to Lorcan, hair stuck to my face and wet strands dripping down my back, I felt more like a zombie than a person. All I wanted was to crawl into bed and never get out, yet as I stepped up to the door of the hall I couldn’t bring myself to go in. I followed the covered porch around the side of the building, and found a stone bench against the far-east wall.
I sat, looking out over the dark and wet landscape, deeply resenting the fact that my anger had dissipated. Anger was good. It was familiar. I knew what to do with it. Moreover, I knew how to make it work to my advantage. Screaming, shouting, fuming – that was what I knew. But now that my anger had dissolved like sidewalk chalk would in the current downpour, the only feelings I was left with were hurt and confusion – two things that I’d never done well with.
I pulled the picture back out of my pocket, looking again at Ryland’s smiling face. What the hell was I supposed to do now? How could I take Ryland away from the first place he’d ever enjoyed being in? How could I let him stay knowing there was a crazy Holder out there just waiting for the chance to kill him? If I took him away, he’d hate me, but wasn’t hating me and being alive better than loving me and being dead? I rubbed my hands up and down my arms with a shiver, more torn than I’d ever been, and hating it.
I’m not sure how long I sat there looking blankly into the rain, but it felt like a while. It was long enough for the two o’clock bells to chime from across campus, and long enough for my soaked hair and shirt to dry of their own volition.
I had no idea where she’d come from or how long she’d been watching me, but suddenly Min’s voice asked me softly from a few feet away, “May I sit?”
“Shouldn’t you be teaching somewhere?” I said weakly.
“I have only two classes this semester, both are held on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” she informed me. “May I sit?”
I nodded and she sat, folding her hands in her lap. After a quiet moment she looked down at the bench where I had set the picture of Ryland and his friends and slid it over to face her.
“Do you know the other boys?” she asked.
“No,” I answered, glancing down at the picture again.
“Brian and Connor Jones,” she said, pointing to the