I PUSH MY WAY THROUGH THE BUZZING MOB AND FREEZE, HEART-struck, dizzy. It takes me a minute to really get what I’m looking at.
Notes. At least a hundred of them. Pressed all over the freshly painted locker.
Some clump together, overlapping like roof shingles. Others orbit like satellites, reaching up toward the wall. They vary in color—pale blue, fluorescent pink, lime green—but most of them are yellow, like dandelions before they fluff white and wither away.
I stand motionless and read a few of them, softly enough so only I can hear. They are just words and they are not just words. I think about everything that’s happened. About Bench and Deedee and Rose. And Wolf. About all the terrible things that were said. About the things that should have been said and weren’t.
There was a war. This was where it ended.
I can’t tell you exactly when it changed, when it spiraled out of control like a kite twisting in the wind. When it stopped being something funny and clever and became something else. Maybe there was no single moment. Maybe underneath all the squares plastered on the walls and the notebooks and the windows there was the same message over and over—we just ignored it because it was easier to stomach. And now I’m standing here, dumbstruck, wondering if this changes everything.
I know what you are going to say: sticks, stones, and broken bones, but words can kick you in the gut. They wriggle underneath your skin and start to itch. They set their hooks into you and pull. Words accumulate like a cancer, and then they eat away at you until there is nothing left. And once they are let loose there really is no taking them back.
Truth is, I can’t tell you exactly when it changed. I can tell you how it started, though. And I can tell you how it ended. I will do my best to line up the dots in between.
I’ll leave it to you to draw the line.