30th of Marts

A consistent ringing noise drags me out of sleep. I force my eyes open and my hand to find the intruding phone.

"Yeah?" my sleepy voice demands.

"Hey Nicaa, it's Phil. I need you to come in early today." I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and look at the clock.

"It's five in the morning Phil, school doesn't start for three hours."

"Emergency staff meeting at 6," he tells me. "Be there."

"Emergency..." I whisper partially to myself. With what's going on in our country, not to mention New York alone... "Did he..." He doesn't answer. "Who?" I demand.

"6 o'clock, be there," he says and hangs up. I get up and get in the shower, there's no point in trying anything else. The thing about showers is that you have plenty of time to think, and thoughts tend to come in multitudes when you don't want them. It seems the time has come when knowing someone who no longer knows someone is over for me.

I arrive a quarter of an hour early, but I'm not the first one to come. It seems I am not the only one afraid of what Phil will tell us. Phil, however, insists on waiting till everyone has arrived before he'll divulge what it is all about. When the clock finally hits five minutes past 6 and Peter walks in, Phil stands up at the end of the table.

"Most of you have already guessed at what this is about, and as much as I'd like to I deny it, most of you guessed right." He looks around the table at us all. "I got a call from Mr. Owen early this morning. They found Mark in his bed last night. They didn't give the specifics, but it does seem like the Monster got him. The students will have to be told. Grief counseling will be available to all who desire it, and students wishing to attend the memorial can do so as legal absence."

Almost two hours later a statement has been prepared for the students as well as a letter informing the parents of available counsel options. It is time to go to the classrooms and inform them that their friend is dead.

The class is slowly filling up when I get there. I throw my bag on the desk and take my seat. I watch the hands on my watch creep closer to the start of class. I look up each time someone enters, keeping a mental tally. By the time the bell rings only one seat is empty. I get to my feet and move to stand in front of the desk. The class slowly falls quiet.

"I have something I have to tell you," I start out, not sure exactly how to do it. I swallow to buy myself an extra second. "Mark Owen was found late last night." My voice echoes between the unusually quiet walls.

"No..." Elle whispers as her hand flies to her mouth. Several other hands repeat that same path.

"Counseling will be available to those of you who want that, simply let your teacher know where you'll be."

"Was it him?" Patrick demands. "Was it the Monster?"

"From what we know..." I start out. "It would seem that way, yes."

"How?" he demands again. "How did he go? What did he do to him?" There's anger in his voice, righteous anger, but useless anger.

"I don't know," I admit. "And that's not what matters now."

"How can you say that?" Amber calls in indignation. "How can it not matter how he went? Do you at least know if he was tortured like the others?" Few, very few, but still some, were merely killed, no torture.

"No, I don't."

"Then how can you..." she starts out, but helplessness steals her voice and tears start flowing down her cheeks.

"It's not what you need to be concerned about," I tell them, the words coming from somewhere other than my clogged up brian. "Let the FBI worry about the details, let the facts be their job. Your job is the memories, the relationships. Mark is no longer here to speak for himself, so those left behind have to. If you start worrying about how he died there's no one left to think about how he lived. If you do that your friend will be reduced to facts in a case file." It takes them a minute to swallow that. I keep my tongue, afraid if I keep speaking just to avoid the silence I will say something stupid to undo the effect of what I just said. Rebecca is the one to the silence.

"He always helped me if I didn't understand something," she mumbles. I have seen him often with a reassuring smile, sitting next to her and helping her before class.

"'Some people live more in twenty years than others do in eighty. It's not the time that matters, it's the person'," Steven quotes.

"'Life, if well lived, it long enough.'" Johnny adds. I hold out that maker to them.

Amber is the first to come up. "Abraham Lincoln said: 'And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.' Mark always knew how to live as well as study, and I envied him for that. He had life in his years, he didn't wait to live just because he was young."

Kevin takes her place. "The 5th Doctor told us 'For some people, small, beautiful events is what life is all about.' Mark had a gift for making every event, no matter how small, beautiful - he could turn physics homework into a party."

"'Life isn't a matter of milestones, but of moments', Rose Kennedy. It doesn't matter that he didn't even get to finish school, he had moments in plenitude."

"'The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.' Joseph Campbell."

Kate is the last to stand up. "Mark was... Mark was a lot of things. He was sweet, he was helpful, he was smart." A tear starts running down her cheek. "He was a lot of things to a lot of people." Another follows. "He was a really good friend." She wipes one away. "Lovable. I know I loved him." Her hand flows to her eye again. "No, I'm sorry, I can't."

She runs down to her seat again where Rebecca kneels down next to her and hugs her. I take my seat and wait for the last of them to take theirs too. And I say nothing, I just sit there. Some of them whisper among themselves, some of them just sit in silence, reading the whiteboard. The bell rings, signaling the end of homeroom. They look around at each other. The students who are usually out of their chairs the second the bell rings are now staying seated, none of them wanting to be the first one to get up. Patrick pointedly throws his feet on his table.

"You can't expect us to concentrate on algebra now."

"So you're just going to stay here?" I ask him, not for a second believing that he will. He looks around him at the others. Amber pointedly puts her bag on the floor.

"Maybe I can't expect you to concentrate, but I do expect you to go," I tell them kindly. "I can't keep you all here."

"Remembering him and all that is good, but it doesn't stop it from happening to someone else. We want to continue the lesson from yesterday," Amber says, looking from Patrick to Kevin to Kate. Between them, they have pretty much everyone following troop. I send a text to Phil, explaining what is going on.

"Let them be," he replies.

"Fine. Those of you who want to stay can stay, those who want to be elsewhere can go to your usual classes," I tell them and turn to the whiteboard. "Let's have it then."

"This is stupid," Jack says. I turn back around to face him. "Do you really think we stand a chance. If the FBI can't catch him, how can you possibly think we can?"

Of course, he's right - but this is more about letting out frustration over the unfairness than thinking we can do anything.

"'Is it nobler of the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them.'" I pick up the marker. "Yesterday we established that knowledge was power, did we not? Steven said it. So use that power. Use everything you know." I write UnSub across the blank space. "Unidentified Subject. Give me information."

Just like yesterday. Just like the day before. Teaching the class, making them work together, making them think. A few of them leave for a while, going to another class where they have different friends, some of them come back, some of them bring others back with them. Amber leaves for 10 minutes and comes back with a box full of black cloth. Soon every letterman jacket is spotting a black band around the arm, and slowly it spreads around the school. This time every single one of them is taking it personally.

"He travels," Kevin adds to our list of information.

"What does that mean?" When no answers I turn around. "Think CSI, think Criminal Minds, think Sherlock Holmes if that helps you!"

"Transportation. He has some form of transportation."

"Yes! What sort?"

"How should we know that?"

"Narrow it down. Were there roadblocks, extra security at the airports, people being more alert."

"Well, in the city an unfamiliar car wouldn't get noticed, every car is unfamiliar, but in the countryside, I mean, in those everyone-knows-everyone kinds of towns, they had to notice, didn't they?"

"Unless it was a service car - people never think twice about a strange car if it's marked somehow, like an electrician's truck."

"It doesn't stand out, good."

We cover victimology, motive, MO, weapon of choice. Basically, we end up with words all over the board, but nothing that makes sense - he is all over the place. Victims, methods, locations, no consistency what so ever - except getting away with it.

"The key is the numbers," Steven says out of the blue. "They never change, they are always the same."

I hold out the marker for him. He has never shown such confidence before. He wipes the whiteboard clean and writes 1,8,11 in the middle. Then he stops.

"Give him anything that has anything to do with numbers," I order the class.

"Distance," Rebeca says.

"Lucky numbers," Kevin adds.

"Digits - phones, social security numbers."

"Date."

"Bible verses."

"Code."

"Book code!"

"Maybe you should start eliminating now Steven," I suggest. "Are there any of these we can prove false?"

"We can check digits. Unless his job gives him some kind of special access we should be able to find anything he found."

"Do you think little Lucie had a phone?" I ask them.

Quiet. No one likes being reminded of Little Lucie.

"Social security numbers have one string of 3 single-digit numbers, the area code, one string of 2, the group number, and one string of 4, the serial number," I say instead. "Do we really think he can track down a specific number like that? And do we really think the FBI wouldn't have realized that by now?"

For hours we keep going, more people join us and others leave after a while. It becomes a steady flow of people wanting to feel like they're doing something. The darkness and sadness lift just a little bit - and then everything shatters like the ice Queen's mirror. Principle Lawrence comes in and informs us that there has been another murder.

"The school is closing down until the police have been here..." he starts, but Amber cuts him short:

"Why are they coming here? Did the murder happen at the school?"

"Who died?" Kate demands to know.

"I must ask you all to go home now, we will contact you all when we know more."

There's an uproar in the room, but it doesn't change anything. Phil looks at me.

"They haven't made a positive identification yet," he whispers.

I feel the air whiz out of me. Of course, I knew that most of the victims were tortured, but I have never thought... my students... my colleges...

"Everybody, please, listen up." What the heck am I going to say to them? "The best thing you can do now is to go home, let the police do their job, let the FBI help us. Go home, stick together, and take care of each other. That's the only way we are getting through this."

   "Call everyone," Amber orders instead, and in the blink of an eye, every one of them has their phone out, either texting or calling friends. I stand back and let them. Slowly, one by one, they rush off to meet up with other people.

I stand back and I watch. Heavy hearts, overflowing eyes, empty hands, broken minds, and lonely souls all rush away to find hope or courage with friends who are not yet dead.

I hardly notice how I get home, but somehow, I do. I knock on Zoe's door.

"Do you fancy some Chinese?"

It's all kind of a blur. I know we put on Criminal Minds again. I remember for the first time in my life feeling like an UnSub. All their questions, all their blame, it's no longer pointed at fictional villains - it's pointed at me. What could I have done differently? Could I have prevented it? Could I have insisted that the school close down for a day, to give everyone the chance to process the loss of last night? Could I have done something? Could I?