Todd Strasser - Wish You Were Dead

It was interesting to me how certain people revealed things about themselves. You could tell that there was something personal about Tyler’s statement. I was willing to bet that something had happened in his life to provoke it. Once again I found myself feeling disconcertingly attracted to him. Was it his intensity? His looks? Or maybe it was that he seemed to think and care about something other than what kind of car he owned and where he was going to college?

At the same time I felt the urge to disagree with what he’d said. I raised my hand, intending to say that if you decide to put someone to death, you’re no better than they are, but Mr. Osmond looked past me. “Adam?”

Heads turned, perhaps because this was the first time since Lucy disappeared that anyone had heard Adam contribute in class. I glanced out of the corner of my eye at Courtney, but she stared forward, almost as if she’d expected me to look at her.

“People who kill themselves choose to do it,” Adam said, looking straight at Tyler. “Nobody makes them.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Tyler shot back. “I bet you’ve never been teased or bullied. In fact, if anything, you hang around with the exact sort of mental morons who do most of the bullying in this school. So what would you know?”

The class went silent. It wasn’t only the venom in Tyler’s words that caught everyone by surprise. It was the way he spoke to Adam. Not just because I couldn’t recall anyone ever speaking to Adam like that, but because, as far as I knew, Tyler didn’t know Adam at all.

“Let’s try not to let this get personal,” Mr. Osmond cautioned. “We’re having a philosophical debate, okay?”

“Just a minute.” Adam stared at Tyler. “I don’t know you, and you sure as hell don’t know me, but it strikes me that you’d be precisely the kind of person who’d be against stereotyping people. So I would strongly suggest that you reconsider your statement.”

Rarely had I heard such calm words delivered with more threateningly ominous portent. It was so unlike Adam.

“Or what?” Tyler asked, staring straight back at him. “I mean, talk about bullying. What are you threatening to do if I don’t reconsider? You gonna wait for me out in the hall?”

“He won’t, but maybe I will,” Jake Barron growled.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Mr. Osmond said, trying to sound lighthearted and amused. “I’m delighted you both feel so passionately, but if we can’t keep this discussion on a cerebral level, I’ll have to shut it down, and I really don’t want to, so”—he twisted his head around—“how about someone we haven’t heard from on this issue? Maura?”

“Oh, come on!” Adam suddenly blurted out.

Once again, the class went silent. A startled scowl crossed Mr. Osmond’s face. Everyone knew why Adam had reacted the way he had. Maura was certain to side with Tyler on the bullying issue. Still, it was an incredibly uncharacteristic and embarrassing thing for Adam to do. In the back of the class, Maura stared down at her lap, but she couldn’t hide a face that turned bright red. Adam crossed his arms and slid down in his seat, staring at his desk top.

“Maura, what would you say?” Mr. Osmond asked.

Eyes cast downward, Maura stammered. “I—I’d say you could tease someone until they killed themselves. And so it would be your fault. It’s happened on the Internet.”

Across the room, Tyler nodded as if she’s proved him right.

“But,” Maura went on, “stereotyping is just as bad.”

The class turned to see how Adam would react, but his eyes remained glued to his desk, his face stony.

The bell rang and kids began to get up. “Good discussion today.” Mr. Osmond straightened some papers on his desk. “Tyler, would you wait a moment after class?”

As I crossed the classroom, Tyler and I locked eyes. He nodded slightly, as if saying “good fight.” I watched as Courtney joined Jen Waits leaving the room, and wondered when, or even if, we’d speak to each other again. Adam left with his friends, his eyes downcast. Out in the hall, I stopped and glanced back into the classroom, where Mr. Osmond was talking to Tyler.

I was still there when Tyler came out. He didn’t look surprised to see me. We fell into step together down the hall.

“So I’m curious,” I said. “What did Mr. Osmond want?”

“He likes my willingness to contribute in class but asked that I try to be less confrontational,” Tyler explained.

We walked for a few moments without speaking. Usually I would feel the need to fill the awkward silence with some sort of chat, but today I restrained myself.

“So, how’re you doing?” Tyler finally asked.

“In regard to what?”

“I don’t know. Everything that’s going on, I guess. You said you and Lucy used to be best friends.”

“Like everyone else, I’m totally freaked,” I said.

Tyler hung his head. “You know, I uh … I meant to tell you I’m sorry about what happened at the Safe Rides meeting the other day. I should have accepted some of the blame.”

I was surprised, and glad, to hear him apologize. “I appreciate that. I’m just curious why you didn’t?”

“I don’t know. I guess … ’cause I’m new here, you know? I’m not sure I want everyone’s first impression of me to be, ‘Oh, he’s a screwup.’ And I got the feeling people wouldn’t think that of you.”

“Well, thanks for saying that. I have to admit it did bother me.”

We reached the end of the hall and stopped. “I’m going this way.” He tilted his head to the left.

I pointed a finger in the other direction, wishing we didn’t have to part. We smiled at each other and I felt those goose bumps again.

“So, uh, you doing Safe Rides this weekend?” he said.

“Yes, I’m on the dispatching desk Saturday night.”

“Oh, yeah?” Tyler’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Me, too. We’ll be on the desk together.”

I felt my smile grow into a grin. “Great. See you then.”

We parted and went off in opposite directions. What Tyler couldn’t see was that the grin was still on my face all the way down the hall, and into my next class.

There was a message from PBleeker waiting for me at home that afternoon:

I was surprised you didn’t point out that Hitler didn’t act alone. He needed a lot of help to kill six million Jews. I wonder if Adolf Hitler ever actually killed anyone himself. The weird thing is, you can almost imagine the Nazis were like the most popular high-school clique, lording it over everyone. Then you’ve got the regular high-school kids, who would be the equivalent of the rest the German population. And then you’d have the outsiders, people like Maura, oppressed and ridiculed like the Jews were, to the point where even the regular kids are afraid to associate with them. Anyone who does is scorned as a sympathizer, just like some Germans were labeled Jewish sympathizers. If you look at it that way, Madison, you’re a Nazi. And I have to believe that’s not the way you want to be.

Not true , I told myself. It’s just one person’s distorted view. Someone who doesn’t know what it’s like. Someone who only imagines they know . But it was also creepy, because now I knew that PBleeker was in Mr. Osmond’s class.

Str-S-d #9

I wish Adam Pinter would die, because he embarrassed me in class today. It would set a good example. It would be justice. And Courtney Rajwar, too. Because she can’t be bothered to be nice to me, while you can see how incredibly important it is for her to be part of the in-crowd, and how hard she works at it. It’s just gross the way she sucks up to the popular kids and totally ignores people like me. Like we don’t even exist.