No Room In This World

2,991 words

No Room In This World

The early afternoon in December was cold and gray, depressing with the dreary dampness of a typical winter day; the only green left in the world was supplied by the ubiquitous pine trees, and even that was dulled by the constant, drizzling rain. The older children were out on the playground for the lunch recess, listless, sullen, uninterested in the usual games of chase or kickball. The girls sat on the play equipment talking quietly among themselves, and the boys leaned against the brick wall in the undercover area, their hands in their pockets and their eyes on the constant flow of traffic surrounding the school. A younger boy, a recent graduate of the behavior program, was at the other end of the playground with his 1:1 aide. He kicked, pounded, and spat at his classroom door, screaming to be let in. His aide did nothing to stop him, but stood, silent, arms folded across her chest, staring disinterestedly into the distance.

Amy, the younger of the two recess teachers, took a deep breath, trying to ease the anxiety she had felt since entering the building that morning. She was somewhere in her late twenties, small and compact, with dark, intelligent eyes that just now looked worried. The last few weeks had brought a change in the atmosphere around her; she felt she was being watched, discussed, evaluated, though she couldn’t pinpoint exactly who was involved. She knew it must mean she was getting close, that after nearly two years, she had finally managed to get herself noticed and considered. She should be feeling encouraged, excited, and more determined than ever, but most of what she felt was dread. She had the urge to run away, to go back to her old life and forget all about the horror she suspected. Instead, she thought of her nephew, Brandon, and took another deep breath. There would be no running away.

The older recess teacher, Kim, a short, overweight woman with dyed blonde hair caught up in a high ponytail, muttered something under her breath. She glared at the screaming boy.

“Just look at that kid,” she said. “Our hard-earned tax dollars at work, right there.” She snorted. “What a joke.”

Amy, who had long ago identified Kim as the weakest link, was quick to agree. “You’ve got that right.”

Three years ago, the district had made a push for full inclusion and closed all self-contained classrooms. All special education students, no matter their disability, were to be blended with general education students at their home schools. Tension had quickly mounted throughout the district when the fallout from this decision became clear. Schools were not prepared to handle the needs of these students. Disrupted classrooms became the norm, and classroom teachers, along with parents, grew increasingly frustrated and angry. There was never enough trained staff, and never enough funding to hire trained staff. Kim railed against the cost of the aides, constantly harping on the waste of her tax dollars, but like most things when it came to Kim, her thinking wasn’t entirely correct. Amy knew it was far cheaper for the district to pay for 1:1 aides than to staff entire classrooms with much higher paid teachers.

“Used to be only normal kids were allowed to go to school,” Kim said. “Now these other kids are all over the place causing more trouble than they’re worth and all because they have rights. Never mind they keep everyone else from learning. It’s gotten absolutely ridiculous. Have you looked at Instagram lately? All these parents posting about how proud they are of their retarded kids, how wonderful it all is, how blessed they are to have a Downs kid. Makes me sick. They’re actually celebrating their retarded kids! Oops,” she slapped a playful hand over her mouth. “I’m not being politically correct. We don’t use that word anymore, do we?”

No, we don’t, Amy thought grimly, use that word anymore, but she forced herself to nod and smile. “Preaching to the choir, Kim. You should know that by now.”

Kim looked at her from the corners of her eyes. Her voice turned sly. “Have you ever thought of doing something about it?”

Amy’s stomach turned over. Here it was, at last, the invitation she’d been waiting for. She shrugged, trying to hide her eagerness. “Not much we can do about it, is there? It’s a sign of the times and I don’t see that changing any time soon.”

“Oh, we’re not the only ones who are fed up. There’s a group of us that - “

There was a sudden shout from the other end of the playground. The screaming boy had taken off running, his aide following languidly behind. Amy saw with alarm that the gate to the playground was ajar, and the boy was headed straight for it and the swiftly moving traffic beyond. She opened her mouth to scream a warning to the aide when a man stepped in front of the child and caught him around the waist. Amy recognized the stocky, broad shouldered figure of the school custodian, and realized he was the one who had shouted.

“Well, that was lucky,” Sue said flatly, staring at the man and boy. “He could have been killed.”

The custodian silently carried the boy past them and into the building. Amy wondered at the rage in his eyes.

The school buzzed with gossip and conjecture for the rest of the day. The big question, of course, was who had been negligent enough to leave the playground gate open? Suspicion fell squarely on the custodian, Juan Flores, a man in his fifties who had been at the school for several years. He kept mostly to himself, so no one knew him well, but they did know it was his job to secure all school gates. The question of his immigration status was also openly discussed.

Amy thought there would be no difficulty at all in making him the scapegoat.

It was late in the afternoon when she was sent by a teacher to hang student artwork in the hallway leading to the principal’s office. She was aware of voices coming from behind the office door, but at first she paid little attention. Her mind was too preoccupied with the incident on the playground. Then one of the voices became heated and she recognized it as Juan’s. She crept as close to the door as she dared.

“This is not my fault,” she heard Juan say. “I lock the gate every morning, I do not forget. Never do I forget. Somebody unlocked it. Three times this week I find the gate unlocked. You will not blame me for this.”

Megan murmured something Amy couldn’t quite catch, but the tone of her voice was not conciliatory. She had no difficulty picturing the woman’s pinched mouth and cold blue eyes and she felt a strong pang of sympathy for Juan, but when he next spoke, his voice was full of menace. “Sometimes I can’t sleep; late at night I go to my office. I get ready for the next day. Many times I do this. Many times I hear voices in the basement. Why are there voices in the basement at midnight? One night I go listen at the top of basement stairs. And I hear the ungodly plans.”

A shiver ran down Amy’s back, but she had no time to think. She barely had time to move a few feet away from the door before Juan came through it. He seemed not to notice her as he almost ran away down the hall. In his haste, he had left the office door partly open behind him and Megan’s voice came through loud and clear. “Get immigration on the phone for me, will you, Ronnie?”

It was dark when Amy left the building late that afternoon, but her walk home was short. She shared a house with her sister that was well within the attendance area of the school. Three years ago, when six-year-old Brandon died, Sarah’s husband, Michael, had walked out. Sarah fell apart and Amy moved in. It didn’t take long for Sarah to convince her there was something terribly wrong about Brandon’s death. Amy left her lucrative office job to substitute as a para in the school district. Six months later, a position opened up at Riverside Elementary and at that point her reputation was good enough to get her hired. No one knew of her relationship to Sarah; their last names were different and there was not much resemblance between them. Sarah worked from home and rarely left it, so it was easy to never be seen together. The sisters weren’t overly concerned about being discovered.

The house smelled like Sarah’s stew and Amy smiled with relief. Sarah must have had one of her good days and should be better able to handle what her sister had to tell her.

“Dumplings?” She asked as she walked from the entryway into the kitchen. She hung her bag from a hook on the wall by the back door.

Sarah turned from the stove with the bright smile that never

failed to wring her heart. Sarah alway tried, she didn’t always make it, but she always tried. She had been pretty once, and Amy thought she would be again, once they were able to put all this behind them.

“Of course,” Sarah said. “What’s stew without dumplings?”

By the time they finished their meal, Amy had relayed the events of her day. Sarah regarded her in horror.

“You can’t possibly think they were actually trying to kill that little boy?”

“That’s exactly what I think. Juan said it wasn’t the first time the gate was left open, in which case it was only a matter of time before one of the behavior kids ran through it. You know what the traffic’s like around the school. There was every chance a kid would be killed.”

“But it’s so different from the other deaths,” Sarah argued. “They weren’t violent.”

“I think they’re getting bolder. No one but us has ever questioned the deaths and we haven’t exactly spread it around.”

Sarah brought a hand to her mouth. “I’m scared, Amy. Maybe it’s time to go to the police.”

“And tell them what? We don't have any proof.”

“Okay, so what about at least going to Megan? As a first step? She might be able to help.”

“After what happened today, I think she’s involved. In fact, I’m sure of it. She called immigration on Juan because he knows too much.”

Sarah shook her head in disbelief. “Megan? No, how can she be? She had a special needs child herself, you know. She was the first parent to push for inclusion and she got it by threatening to sue. Her child was put in a general education classroom almost fifteen years ago, well before anyone else.”

“Her child is also dead,” Amy said. “And I overheard her telling the PTA president that the blending wasn’t a success, that the whole class treated her kid like the classroom pet. She said there was just no room in this world for her child. She sounded pretty bitter about it. I think she expected a miracle that just didn’t happen and it pissed her off.”

Sarah didn’t look convinced. “Her little girl had Down’s. I think it was as severe as Brandon’s, and you know we’re talking about a high risk population. Kids do die, Amy. I’m pretty sure she died in her sleep at home.”

“Yet another death then. There’s just been too many of them to be a coincidence,” Amy said stubbornly. “For all we know Megan smothered her own child and that was the start of all this.”

“Maybe,” Sarah said reluctantly. “But why didn’t Juan just go to the police with what he heard?”

“Because he’s here illegally and he was afraid to.”

Sarah put her head in her hands. “Sometimes I think we must be crazy and Brandon’s and those other kids' deaths were accidents and nothing more.”

“Three deaths in three years and all of them died of some form of choking - and they all went to Riverside. I get what you’re saying, Sarah, I really do. The kids who died were all fragile and high risk, but it’s simply too much of a coincidence. Think about it.”

They both thought about it. One student choked on food at school. Two others, one of them Brandon, choked on water and died of aspiration pneumonia at home. Since Brandon had never choked on water when he was with his mother, they were convinced he had been deliberately given too much water too quickly at school on a consistent basis.. His disability meant he had great difficulty swallowing. There was a deadly buildup of fluid in his lungs and he died. A third child dying in the exact same way as Brandon only served to confirm their suspicions.

Sarah started to cry.

“Just say the word and we’ll stop all this,” Amy said quietly. “None of it will bring Brandon back.”

“No.” Sarah took a deep breath and wiped her eyes. “No. There’s something going on in that school, something evil. We can’t stop. Look at what almost happened to that poor little boy today. I think you’re close to finding the proof we need to go to the police. But, Amy, you’ve got to be careful. I can’t bear the thought of anything happening to you. Please promise me you won’t put yourself in danger .”

Amy did her best to reassure her sister and thought she had mostly succeeded by the time they went to bed. But Amy couldn’t sleep. Her mind kept returning to what Juan had said. Secret meetings at the school at midnight. Ungodly plans. She needed to talk to him, but how? She had no idea how to reach him, and Megan had called immigration. It was only a matter of time, and in the current political climate that time would be very short, before he was arrested and deported back to Mexico. At least she now knew there were meetings and she knew where the meetings were held. She just didn’t know when. Did they meet regularly? Maybe they only met if there was an emergency - like when a child was proving to be just too much of a problem. Amy shuddered. Could anyone really be that cold blooded? She thought she knew the answer to that question. After today, she didn’t have any doubts left at all.

So maybe they did both, she thought suddenly. Meet regularly as well as when there was an emergency. Amy’s heart began to race and she sat up in bed. There had been an emergency today. Surely there would be a meeting tonight? She thought there was a damn good chance anyway. She looked at the clock. It was only a little past midnight. There was still time.

She dressed quickly, pulling on the clothes she’d earlier discarded. She used the light on her phone to make her way to the kitchen so as not to wake Sarah. She grabbed her bag, checking that her keys to the school were in the front pocket. She let herself quietly out the back door. She paused a moment to wonder if she should leave Sarah a note, but decided against taking the time. She would tell her all about it in the morning.

Budget cuts meant there was only one outside light left on at the school at night and she was easily able to avoid it. She counted at least five cars in the parking lot, and her heart raced again. None of the cars should have been parked there. She went to the lit keypad and saw with relief that the alarm was not armed. She had been worried about setting it off. But the relief was short-lived. Excitement laced with real fear seized her. The alarm should have been set at this time of night. No one was supposed to be in the building; someone with the code must have disarmed it.

She again used the light from her phone to make her way silently through the dark building. She came to the door leading to the basement, shut off her phone and shoved it back in her bag before opening the door. A dim light mounted high on the wall made it possible for her to see a short landing leading to a tall flight of stairs. She stood absolutely still and listened. She heard voices and this time her heart started to pound. She thought for a moment she might vomit, but willed the nausea away. She wasn’t going to turn back now. And really, what could they do to her? They couldn’t deport her, they certainly couldn’t kill her. She wasn’t a helpless child. She recognized one of the voices as belonging to the president of the PTA, for god’s sake. When she tried to picture that round, matronly woman with the tightly permed hair coming at her with a butcher knife, she almost giggled.

She began to creep down the stairs, and was rewarded with another voice she recognized. .

“It’s still a good plan,” Kim said. “We can try again. Especially now that Megan has got rid of Juan.”

Amy was allowed one moment of triumph before the door opened behind her. She spun around and looked into the ice cold eyes of the school principal.

Megan smiled at her and then pushed her down the stairs.

It was nearly three in the morning when the police arrived at Sarah’s door. She stared at them uncomprehendingly. They were saying something about Amy.

“I’m afraid there’s been an accident,” one of the cops said gently. “ A hit and run. Your sister died at the scene. I’m very sorry.”

Sarah began to scream.