“Mr. Hibma,” Toby said, not wanting to be loud but wanting to be heard.
Mr. Hibma’s head moved slightly and his cranking let up. He didn’t answer Toby, though. He began cranking faster, before stopping and sighing and holding the pencil in the air. The pencil was a nub, just the eraser and a point. Mr. Hibma dropped it in the trash.
“I’m supposed to be in lunch,” Toby offered.
Mr. Hibma looked at the clock without curiosity. “What can I do for you, Toby?”
Toby had never seen Mr. Hibma humorless. He was like a dying plant.
“I need to talk to you,” Toby said.
Toby had departed the lunchroom and had made his way to the liberal arts wing, had come into Mr. Hibma’s classroom and was now standing here staring at his geography teacher. His stomach was a stone. Mr. Hibma was the only adult who could help or hurt him. Toby cleared his throat.
“I’m not really the problem guy,” Mr. Hibma said.
“You are for me,” said Toby.
“I wanted to be the problem guy, but I can’t. At this point, I’m getting by hour by hour, class by class.”
“That’s how I get by,” Toby told him.
Mr. Hibma splayed his fingers on the desk. “You’ve still got a chance, but it’s too late for me.”
“I came here to say something,” Toby said. “Not to listen.”
“Do you think you’re my favorite or something? I gave you all those detentions because that’s what teachers do and I was trying to be a teacher. I don’t have a favorite. If you want to be somebody’s favorite, start kissing ass. Definitely don’t bother people during lunch.”
Toby used the sound of Mr. Hibma’s voice to brace himself. “You have to fix something for me,” he said. “I don’t want detention. I want to be in real trouble.”
“You’re not going to be young much longer.” Mr. Hibma did something drastic with his mouth, some kind of smile. “Don’t waste time trying to tell people about your problems. Do things that are youthful until you’re not allowed to do them anymore.”
The microwave beeped again. This time Mr. Hibma rose and pulled the burrito out with a paper towel and set it on a counter. He didn’t return to his chair.
“That girlfriend of yours, I’d concentrate on her and quit going around seeking advice. It doesn’t become you.”
“I’ve never asked advice. You’re thinking of someone else. Advice can’t help me.”
“You stole something or you broke something. That’s all any of you kids can do.”
“And what can you do?” said Toby. “I bet I can do worse things than you can.”
Mr. Hibma glowered at Toby. Whatever he was feeling toward Toby, it was pure. Toby was catching up with the moment. Mr. Hibma was blowing him off, and he was allowing Mr. Hibma to do so. “You’re not tough,” Toby said. “Whatever other problems you have, another is that you’re not a tough person.”
Mr. Hibma pressed his thumb into his jaw. “That hasn’t been decided yet,” he said.
Toby had gone against his own closely held wisdom, had gone and tried to bring something important to an adult, and he was getting what he deserved. He felt he could breathe again. Mr. Hibma didn’t seem to have anything else to say.
“I better go,” Toby said. “Before the pizza’s all gone.”
“None of this is personal,” Mr. Hibma told him. “Nothing, you’ll find, is personal.”
Mr. Hibma taxied past several pawnshops, a barber, a new chain restaurant that had decided to give Citrus County a whirl. He passed a sign warning drivers to watch for bears. stor. There it was, the mini-storage complex owned by Mrs. Conner and her husband. Mr. Hibma parked and went into the office, where he was greeted by a woman about his age who wore a ball cap. The Conners weren’t around, the woman told Mr. Hibma. “Just you and me,” she said. She smiled and jutted her hip. It seemed to Mr. Hibma that this woman liked him, and he combated this by acting businesslike. He asked for a price list and chose a 13 x 9 unit that went for $51 a month. Mr. Hibma picked out a heavy lock. He wrote the woman in the ball cap a check, waited for the code to the gate, then went into the storage area and drove around until he located C-63. It was cool, and taller than it was wide. Mr. Hibma fetched a lawn chair from his trunk, a pad and pen, and a tall can of iced tea. He pulled the door of his storage unit down, sequestering himself inside.
Renting this place was the next phase in Mr. Hibma’s campaign of friendliness toward Mrs. Conner. He’d begun bringing her coffee each morning, delivering it right to her classroom, and she was more or less eating out of his hand. When Mr. Hibma told Mrs. Conner about his acquisition of one of her storage units, he would gain her absolute trust. She would say nice things about him behind his back, stick up for him if other teachers gossiped about him.
Mr. Hibma had unfettered himself from the delusional project to mold himself into a standard-issue teacher, and he’d come to realize that all the energy he’d expended winning his victim over had not been in vain. It had been necessary. Everyone knew Mrs. Conner and Mr. Hibma were getting along now. When she turned up dead, Mr. Hibma could cry and express outrage like everyone else. He could say, “Why now, when I’d just realized what an inspirational, dynamic person she was?” He would mourn with the passion of the convert that everyone believed him to be. Everything was setting up for Mr. Hibma. He had to grit his teeth and weather the home stretch of the school year. It would take forever but it would also go by in a blink. If he couldn’t bring himself to do what needed to be done, it would be because of his weakness and nothing else. Mr. Hibma didn’t especially feel like a murderer, but maybe you didn’t until you murdered. He had never felt, particularly, like a non-murderer. Someone had to commit all these murders that were always being committed. Why not him? Why couldn’t his story be the story of a killer?
Mr. Hibma placed his lawn chair near the back wall and stayed quiet, the only noise the air conditioner, which was humping to keep the place at 78 degrees. He wondered what secrets were hidden in this place. What darkness had West Citrus U-Stor witnessed before Mr. Hibma happened along? What damning evidence was tucked away in these shadowy alcoves? None, maybe. Maybe it was all disassembled futons and china sets.
Mr. Hibma knew what the place smelled like. It smelled like his childhood attic — not a unique odor, just cardboard and mothballs. He wished he could remember more about his childhood, the period before adolescence, before his harrowing navigation of puberty. Those years when Mr. Hibma was a simple little fellow, wanting only to play and be fed and kept warm, looking up at the world without suspicion, were blurry. He recalled them in unsatisfying flashes.
He looked at the ceiling. He felt like he could hear his organs working, the muffled swishing of his heart. He felt the weight of his body pressing down on the chair. Mr. Hibma wondered what would have happened to him had he not been rescued from that nurse as an infant. She must’ve wanted a child badly, to give up her profession and commit a felony. Maybe she didn’t want just any child; maybe she’d fallen head-over-heels for Mr. Hibma, she who’d seen thousands of newborns. It was plausible that the love the nurse had for Mr. Hibma was the strongest anyone would ever have for him. On the other hand, maybe Mr. Hibma would’ve died had his parents not reclaimed him. On the other other hand, maybe he was supposed to have died. Maybe he was only supposed to have been in the world for several days, not several decades.
Mr. Hibma put his pen down. He opened his can of iced tea and drank from it. He’d figured out what to do about his lost grade book. He would institute an unfathomable system of extra credit. The system would be applied retroactively, muddying the waters of quiz averages and presentation scores to the point where even the most fastidious kiss-ass could not question her grade. Mr. Hibma’s new grade book would be a tornado of asterisks, checks, plus signs, plus signs within circles, smiley faces, and all in different colors, all blown about the columns at random. Under this system, the rich would get richer and the poor would also get some help.