Mason’s Head

by Liza Corr

He sat on the carpet. When people called it the floor or the ground, he hated it. He sat on the carpet not alone but with four packages in two neat stacks in front of him. They had been sent from Amazon and he knew exactly what they were. They were the markers that signified the end of indirection and the lazy days of summer and the start of the structure and stability of school. He didn’t like opening them exactly. He wasn't at all one of those kids who loved most to rip and tear at the wrapping. No, for Mason, the process was too messy. He liked knowing what he was getting and with as few obstacles as possible. Each year, before school started Mason ordered his science and math textbooks online. Of course, Warren High would provide them but those textbooks were worn, some pages were missing (sometimes whole chapters), and students from previous years had doodled and written in the margins. He hated that too. He loved the clean and crisp concepts of math and science to be presented to him in a similarly clean and crisp fashion; he liked the book to smell like ink when he opened it and the pages to be stiff when he turned them.

With his books freed from their cardboard cages, he carefully opened his textbook for Discrete Mathematics. “Remedial!” he snorted as he flipped the pages. With such a reaction, it must be clear that his mind functioned differently than most. Math and science came easily to him. He loved their numbers and their concepts. English, on the other hand, was not his forte and as you might have guessed, he hated it. He hated that there could be an infinite number of interpretations for any given paragraph or book. He hated that there was no ‘right answer’ and that authors never just say what they mean but only ever imply or insinuate or allude to what they mean. As if that wasn’t enough, literature also deals with emotions. He didn’t understand emotions, their nuances and complexities were beyond him- their power over him, flummoxing. He hated that all of a sudden he could be overcome by rage or frustration. He hated how they could stop his superior thoughts in their tracks. He hated that he couldn’t understand why tears came out of his father’s eyes or what exactly it meant when Ms. Sheila smiled at him. He hated them.

A month and a half later with his textbooks read and his hair combed, Mason sat stiffly in his father’s old pickup. Before moving to open the door, Mason leaned over and touched his father’s hand as he always did, softly and slowly. His father’s hands were rough and callused and their familiar feel was comforting. He got out and climbed the steep white steps to Warren High School.

Warren High was one big building- it was an enlarged version of your picture perfect schoolhouse. There was a clock tower in the middle, 9^th and 10^th grade classes were held to the left of it and 11^th and 12^th grade classes were held to the right. Ms Sheila’s office was on the first floor and just three green doors to the left. Mason always went there first. He liked her. She stuck with him. She taught him about people. She showed him faces and made him tell her what emotion it was. She helped him with English and even when he got angry, she persisted.

For weeks school went on normally. Homework assignments were completed and tests were taken diligently. Until one morning the when silent diligence was broken by a piercing scream. The students looked up at their teacher and then rushed to the window. Sprawled on the pavement lay Ms. Shelia in her signature lime green heels. The air in the room was tight, the breaths of 26 students drawn. Mr. Peterson remained at his desk. His eyes fell on Mason prompting other 26 pairs to follow. For the first time, Mason knew what they were thinking. Mason had been hard for her with his backslides and his temper. They thought he pushed her over the edge… in this case, both literally and figuratively. Whispered rumors were passed from student to student, from teacher to teacher, and later that night form nosey mother to nosey mother.

“Who was that difficult boy she counseled, Mason was it?” That administrator with the platinum blonde bob cut asked the boy sitting by the door.

“She jumped off the top of the clock tower?! How did she even get all the way up there? It’s a little dramatic don’t ya think? So much like a woman- always gotta be the center of attention.” The man in the blue jumper laughed softly. “…Women…” he repeated.

“What a shame… and she was so cute. Was she dating anyone? She must have been lonely.” A mother wondered to her husband as she unpacked what was left of her daughter’s lunch.

Each voice trailed off and each voice wished it’s listener a goodnight or a good day or some quick words of departure before being left alone. ‘Suicide? What would it take to commit suicide?...’

Mason was crushed. Like always, his thoughts were different than most. “Why would she leave me? Was I that bad?” He shivered. “Is it true what they are saying?” It was those damn emotions again. They stole his appetite and began to eat away at him. He wouldn’t believe it. He couldn’t. If he loved anyone in this world it was his father and Ms. Sheila. She knew that. He was difficult, yes, but he was rewarding. Ms. Sheila didn’t jump because of him. Maybe, Ms. Sheila didn’t jump at all. He’d been with her earlier that morning and she seemed well… normal. He couldn’t say how she felt. He was a bad judge of that. But people don’t kill themselves when they’re feeling normal, do they? Or...was it just the opposite and when your feeling too normal suicide becomes….normal? Understanding people really wasn’t his thing. They confused him. But he knew that and he used that. See, that was part of Mason’s genius. He knew what he didn’t know whereas most people go on pretending they know everything they don’t. No, Mason knew the answer was in those damned nuances and subtleties of human emotions.

So, he took the process step by step. She was smiling that day. That was the little picture of the face with the right side up U on it. That meant happy. What else? He felt like a detective in one of those books he never liked to read. It was definitely more fun in real life. He thought about that day. Something had been off. Something bothered him. Though he had been stopping himself from noticing that one little thing. That one little thing happened to be an accusation of a man he respected and an accusation he couldn’t prove. When there was that awful thud followed by that scream, his science teacher, Mr. Peterson didn’t budge. He didn’t budge and he looked straight at Mason. He was the first to look. Mason was sure of it. He must have already known who lay there on the concrete. He must have known that those green shoes had turned into a Christmas-colored pair of tie-dyed shoes. He must have known. He must have.

Unfortunately, our Mason is not stupid. It makes our story so much less fun. He did not attempt to solve the mystery on his own by breaking into school grounds late at night or by looking up old records at the local library. He was no Nancy Drew and he knew it. Mason was way to practical for games. He told the police what he thought. He was sure they didn’t believe him. He was right but nonetheless they were forced to look into it. They were happy they did.

Weeks later the story was printed in the local paper but no one had to read it, they knew what had happened. Mr. Peterson was having an affair with Ms. Sheila. It’s ALWAYS an affair. Ms. Sheila threatened to tell Ms. Peterson and blah blah blah. It’s the story that’s been told a million times. But what hooked me was how he did it. It was genius. Mr. Peterson lured Ms. Sheila to the clock room. It is there that he hit her. He hit her once and hard enough to leave her unconscious. The psycho then, get a load a this, opened the trap door they use to adjust the needle of the clock and lay her body on the minute hand. It was 7:05 when he lay her there. It was 7:35 when the angle of the clock hand was steep enough and gravity was strong enough to pull her down. She fell. She did so with Mr. Peterson sitting a couple yards away in his science classroom in front of 27 witnesses. It was the almost perfect alibi. I wonder what it would have been like to see her up there, to see her limp body fall from a ticking clock. But alas, nobody looks around anymore. Mr. Peterson must have known that, in fact, he counted on it.