I Quit Teaching Because Of This Terrifying Incident. I’ve Never Told Anyone About It Until Now.

I didn’t want to call her by name and risk having her know that our staff had held a meeting about her at the beginning of the year. So instead, I just called out, “Excuse me!” I thought I could engage her in conversation or something, maybe help comfort her against the gossip.

She turned from me and walked away down the adjacent hall leading to the west wing.

The next morning, I reported the incident to the principal. She closed her eyes and nodded her head, pained for the little girl. “If I were her, I wouldn’t want to go home either,” she said.

At the end of the day, I had two of my eleventh graders in for extra work. They knew they were at risk of failing and pleaded for a side project they could do just to get them past parent-teacher night. An hour into it, I could hear the familiar sound of sweeping in the hall.

I walked out of my class and was surprised by another face. It wasn’t Manny. Apparently, he had taken ill and this man was his temporary replacement. The man explained that the office got a last minute call saying Manny would be unavailable for work for a week. I was about to walk back to my class when the man inquired about our school’s recent discovery.

“I heard you found a box of evil,” he said. He stated it with just enough mischievousness to annoy me. The thought of Amy wandering the halls alone, burdened with the grief and gossip from her family’s loss filled me with a righteous anger at that moment.

“You know this is not a joke, right?” I said. “A person, a child, might have been hurt in this very school.”

He was taken aback by my tone.

“Oh, I know it’s serious. I wasn’t joking.”

Then, he looked down the hall to make sure we were alone and then motioned me to come closer.

Then, quietly, he explained himself. And to this day, these words still burn in my ear.