The letter from Hormell High arrived on a Tuesday. By Monday morning, I'd be dead, killed by an overhead projector I'd vandalized three decades ago. But Tuesday morning, drinking coffee and sorting mail, I had no idea that responding to my old principal's invitation would be the last mistake I'd ever make.
Saturday was the big day. Six hundred alumni swarmed through the building like scavengers, hunting for pieces of their past—yearbooks, trophy cases, anything that might make them seventeen again. I still can’t tell you what it was about the closet in classroom 225, but it just kept calling my name. My head and ears would burn every time I walked by the classroom. I felt a sense of dread when I my hand turned the handle. There I was, thirty years later, with my hand turning the knob just like I was dared to by Jack all those years ago.
“Come on, El, just carve anything in it. Mrs. Thompson is so stupid, she wouldn’t even notice it.” Jack’s taunts rang in my head like they were coming out his mouth today. I flashed back to that day, Mrs. Thompson was ill, so I wouldn’t have to worry about being caught vandalizing her beloved projector. I slowly took out my pocket knife as Jack and the other boys kept a lookout for anyone who might be roaming the halls. I was precise, like a surgeon with a scalpel, carving the word “FUCK MRS. THOMPSON” in the brown outer casing of the projector.
The memories stopped when I banged into a cart.
“Fuck me.” I whispered. The projector sitting in the closet, a few webs of dust had formed on the neglected machine. I checked the side, it was still there. Did the old hag never see it? God, she was a bitch. She was the one who tried to get me kicked out of school. I had to have it, my final trophy over her. That precious projector. Mrs. Thompson died fifteen years ago, but my memories of her never will. I wiped the dust and the dead bugs off the cart and projector, then rolled it to my car. Jack, now the principal of the school, saw what I was taking.
“It was still there?” Jack was just as shocked, “I mean, she actually kept it?”
"Remember how pissed off she got that whole week?" Jack grinned. "Never did figure out what was eating at her." We both laughed like the stupid teenagers we used to be.
I put both the cart and the projector in my trunk, and headed home unaware this would be the last time I’d ever leave my house. I got it home, and took it to my basement. I had to see if it still worked, so I took a white sheet from my linen closet, and thumb-tacked it to the wall. I set the projector correctly, and plugged it in.
The machine came to life, the bulb even looked brand new. At first, I just made funny shadow puppets. Then, curiosity got the better of me. There was a brown box in the bottom part of the cart that I hadn’t noticed before. I open it up, and put the first transparency on the projector. It was math problems from our textbooks when I was in school.
I placed the second one on the base, and it knocked me back, it was a negative of me carving the words on the projector. I started fumbling through the rest of the transparencies. They were every single embarrassing moment in my life. There was even the mugshot of when I got a DUI. When I placed it on the light, writing began, I knew you’d end up like this, Elliot. I sat down for a second to catch my breath.
Then, the last one. Mrs. Thompson. This one looked recent, maybe the last year of her life, but she’s scowling. The light bulb blew out, but her picture remained. Blood started seeping out of the obscenity.
The door to the basement locked. All weekend, she wore me down: lectures from my mother, lectures from her, every failure in my life flashing before me all weekend. Forty-eight hours of reminding me how much I was a failure in my life, and how much I hurt others, even to this day. Mrs. Thompson was right. I was a complete loser. Pictures of the people who I hurt would pop up every once in a while. I can’t deal with it anymore. I know I’ve hurt people, and now I have to pay for it.
Sparks flew from the outlet. An electrical fire, and I’m trapped in the basement. I don’t have much time left, but I just want the world to know, I’m sorry.