to mr. harrison

people can't resist talking about you. usually they talk about you. they talk about you when they're sipping margaritas after the show. they're dipping chips in salsa and talking about you, how you had your hand on that kid's ribcage, sitting too close, or how you ran the department like a cult. with fascinated energy in their eyes, people wonder about the workings of your brain. they say, "i can't believe i'm talking about him!" then they keep talking about you. they say, "he made us feel like we were part of something special," and then they keep talking about you and how your tactics were exclusionary and abusive. but they keep talking. "what was he thinking?" they ask aloud. 

after you left i tried to be you, in my mind, for a few months, comparing my every action and activity to how you would do it, measuring myself up against the example i had of you in my mind. i tried to engage the students as you did, to intimidate them, to idolize them, to set them hard against each other like books between bookends on shelves. then one day when i walked into the office i collapsed from the load. i was being pressed down from above and i was being pulled down from below. when i finally sucked myself up from the floor, fighting gravity like those girls in wicked, i looked to my right and saw the bank of file cabinets, full of all your documents, and had a bright, if still heavy, idea. 

i emptied out your file cabinets into trash bags and i had students throw the bags into the dumpster at the edge of the teacher's parking lot. i got rid of all those manuals, lists, contacts, monologues, directions, instructions, recipes, secrets, plays, procedures, spells. i threw them all away, and the next time i walked into the office, there was a breeze passing through, and roger said he'd take that carpet out and put in some nice tile.

i liked roger a lot.