Free Citrus County by John Brandon

lives without anything really good or really bad happening to them. They’ll see some funny movies and wait in some lines and maybe get their phones cut off or develop diabetes.”
    Shelby nodded. Mr. Hibma might have been frightening her.
    “I went to one of the fanciest high schools in the country my junior year. That’s the root of most of my problems. That and receiving an inheritance.”
    “Was it a whole school of gifted kids?” Shelby said.
    “Gifted.” Mr. Hibma shuddered. “Gifted is for chimps. They’ll probably ask you to be in that program soon and I hope you’ll turn them down. It’s a mark of mediocrity, gifted. You’ll have a hard enough time without those weirdos.”
    “Why’d you only go to that school for a year?” Shelby asked.
    “Why I got kicked out isn’t the important part,” Mr. Hibma said. “For seven months I enjoyed an environment of reflection, courtesy, fertilization of any intellectual whim. We had fireplaces to read near. They played Handel during the passing period.”
    Shelby handled the Bellow novels, reading the spines. The breeze blew something against the window.
    “Sometimes good things mess a person up,” Mr. Hibma said. He wondered if anything that happened was really good . He still hadn’t decided, after all these years, what he thought of the fact that he’d been a stolen baby. It had to mean something. It had to have shaped Mr. Hibma. “I’m not making sense,” he told Shelby. “I’m lousy at this.”
    “You’re doing fine,” she said. “It’s not you. I don’t want to be comforted. I’m not receptive to wisdom or perspective.”
    “But I’m supposed to be able to break down your walls.”
    “A fool’s errand,” Shelby said. “You break down my walls, you’re not going to find anything you want to find.”
    Mr. Hibma was stumped. He wanted to let Shelby know that she was special, that she couldn’t let herself be lost to the world because the world needed her. His voice had gone dumb. He’d given Shelby detention in part to test himself, to see if he could get her to confide in him, and he’d failed. Failed to try, really. He stood at the front of the room, lining the erasers up tight and orderly in the tray. He was angry at the world, that it gave the worthwhile people such a hard time. It was difficult for him to even look at Shelby. He dismissed her with a nod, letting himself off the hook.
    He sat for a time, part and parcel of the imperfect quiet of the world, and then, when he could, he began drawing up a class rules sheet. He wrote numbers, 1 to 10, and next to each scribbled see surrounding classrooms. He taped the sheet to the wall.
    Earlier that day, just after school had let out, Mrs. Conner had confronted him in the hall and informed him that it was her duty, as wing chairperson, to enforce the guidelines the liberal arts department had agreed upon. It was mandatory that each teacher post class rules.
    “But every teacher has the same ones,” Mr. Hibma had said. “And those rules are identical to the school rules.”
    “Exactly,” said Mrs. Conner. “A unified front.”
    “I hate unified fronts.”
    Mr. Hibma had never been to Mrs. Conner’s home, but he could see it. He saw a screened porch atop a wooden deck. He saw a shed, trimmed hedges. He knew now that he would not kill the husband. He would learn the couple’s routine and go visit Mrs. Conner when her husband was off playing golf or shooting woodland creatures or whatever activity he used as an excuse to get the hell away from his wife. Mr. Hibma had already scratched knives or guns, and had considered and thought better of poison. Poisoners always got caught. Mr. Hibma watched the TV shows. Whenever someone bought poison it turned out they’d been videotaped or had left the receipt in their floorboard or the clerk or another customer remembered them. Then the cops went and looked at your computer or library records and saw that you’d researched some topic