Page 79 of I Will Ruin You

“What? Sorry, I was—it’s nothing. Go on.”

“The best person to talk to them, to explain why The Road, or any number of other books, might engage students, get them thinking, get them talking, would be you. But at the same time, you’ve been to hell and back and don’t need this. I can handle it if you want to be excused.”

In my head, I was screaming. But I managed to say, calmly, “No, it’s okay.”

Maybe, with any luck, I’d be arrested sometime today and would have a good excuse for not showing up.

“If you can handle it, great, but you should think about a leave of absence,” Trent said. “A week, a month, whatever you think you need. I know I can get it approved.”

Now Trent looked out the window. He’d spotted what had caught my eye a moment earlier out on the school’s field. Wandering it aimlessly was Ronny Grant, our former caretaker.

“Oh shit,” Trent said. “He won’t stay away.”

He looked woefully at me, as though expecting a question. “I didn’t have any choice. He’d been told about the door, that it wouldn’t latch. I had a list of things he was supposed to do and he hadn’t gotten to any of them. Even without the LeDrew incident, I’d been thinking I was going to have to do something about him. He’s been in to see me three times begging to get his job back. I’ve told him there’s nothing I can do. The board wanted his head on a platter. Now he’s moping about like Charlie Brown, making a nuisance of himself. The second time he came in to see me, he’d been drinking.”

I felt a certain kinship with Ronny in that moment. A twist of fate had left its mark on both of us. He’d fucked up and lost his job. I’d played the hero and drawn the attention of an extortionist. Neither of us could have predicted where our actions, or inactions, would lead.

“Maybe I should have a word with him,” I said. Sometimes I couldn’t stop being me. I just had to help.

“Hey, Ronny,” I said, crossing the field, hands in my pockets, like maybe I was out here for a stroll, too.

Ronny was a thin stick of a guy, slightly stooped over, his chest slightly caved in, all of which made him look shorter than his six feet. He was dressed in his work attire, olive-colored shirt and pants. He always had a day’s growth of whiskers, but now it looked like he hadn’t shaved in a week.

“Mr. Boyle,” he said. Ronny, like one of the students, always addressed staff members by their surnames. I’d told him more than once to call me Richard, but it wouldn’t take.

I offered a hand and he shook it. When I was that close to him, I could smell alcohol on his breath.

“I don’t think I ever properly thanked you,” he said. “I mean, if that LeDrew kid had got in and blown us all up, it all would have been on me. They’d have done more than fired me. The townspeople’d probably have got together and strung me up.”

He laughed weakly.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know that what happened to you is fair. You fighting it?”

Ronny shrugged. “They say I should. But I don’t know. If they transferred me to another school, that’d be okay.”

“You married, Ronny?” I asked. I realized that I knew very little about this man I’d seen every day in the hallways of the school.

He nodded. “Yup. Just me and Trace. When I’m not here—well, that would be all the time now—but when I wasn’t here, I’d be looking after her. Trace lost her sight about two years ago. First one eye, about five years back, and then the other one. She’s okay through the day, but I do most everything around the house. Laundry and cooking and cleaning. Sometimes I sneak out late when she’s asleep and go to Jim’s for a drink or two.”

“Kids?”

“Got a daughter comes to visit once in a while. She’s a dental assistant, lives and works in New Haven. Got a husband and two kids. She says I should get a lawyer.”

“Lot of that going around,” I said.

He looked at me through narrowed eyes. “Yeah, I heard something about them coming after you. The parents. Fuckers.”

I had no response for that. We stood there, not talking for a moment.

“You know I been here nineteen years?” Ronny said to me.

“I did not.”

“Lasted through five principals. Seen them come and go. I thought this latest one, I thought me and him had a good working relationship, you know. Just goes to show that things are never what they seem. I was going to fix the door that very day. I swear to you. It was the top of my list.” He shook his head regretfully. “Only one been here as long as me is Belinda.” He grinned. “She knows where the bodies are buried.”

Exactly the phrase that had occurred to me on several occasions.

Finally, Ronny said, “I miss the kids.”