I walked into Mr. Kinney's classroom for his Creative Writing class the Monday after catching him in the backroom of Babylon. He normally stood outside to monitor the hallway before the bell rang, but he was not out there on that morning. I took my seat in the front row and tried to look invisible while waiting for him to walk into the room.

The bell rang, signaling the start of the class period, but Mr. Kinney still had not come in yet. About a minute later, an old lady with short, blonde hair and glasses that everyone called "Mrs. G" walked into the room.

I wasn't sure what the "G" stood for, but I knew that her last name was difficult to pronounce, which was why we all called her Mrs. G. She used to be a history teacher at the school until a decade or so before. She had retired as a full-time instructor, but often returned to the school as a substitute teacher. Mrs. G was a sweet old bird and we all loved her dearly.

"Good morning, everyone," Mrs. G called out.

"Good morning, Mrs. G," we all answered.

"Mr. Kinney will be out for the next couple of days so I'm going to be filling in for him," Mrs. G informed us.

"Why?" I asked in concern. I wasn't exactly looking forward to seeing Mr. Kinney that day after our confrontation at Babylon, but I could not recall any time before when he needed a sub for his classes. "Is he sick?"

"I read the email that Mr. Kinney sent to the office this morning, and he said that he needed to take some personal time off."

"But what about Drama Club after school today?" I asked. "I'm the stage manager for the play."

"I'm sorry, dear," she said. "Dr. Perkins is going to announce over the intercom later that the club meeting won't be held today."

"Do we still have to turn in our stories today?" a girl named Natalie asked from behind me.

Mrs. G shook her head. "Mr. Kinney will collect those on Wednesday when he comes back."

A few people whooped in happiness and I could have sworn I heard some of them slapping high-fives from the back of the room.

Mrs. G put the home video version of Cats into the VCR and turned down the lights. I had gone on vacation to Manhattan with my parents when I was fifteen and we saw the show live on Broadway. I had originally thought I'd be bored out of my mind but I ended up loving it.

I learned after coming home that the show was based T. S. Eliot's book of poetry called Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. I managed to find an original copy of the book, which was first published in 1939, in great condition on Ebay soon after and I read it a few times a year.

We watched the Jellicle Cats sing and dance around the stage until the bell rang. After that, I suffered through my Chemistry class wondering what could have happened to cause Mr. Kinney to stay home from work for two days.

Was he so mortified after seeing me at Babylon that he couldn't dare to show his face at school? I quickly shook that thought out of my head, since it was so ridiculous. If Icould gather the balls to go to school that day, Mr. Kinney certainly could have, too.

Shit, he certainly had the balls to fuck people in public... I saw them myself.

After Chemistry let out, I walked to the cafeteria for lunch. I got a piece of pepperoni pizza, some greasy, salty fries, a bowl of green jello, and some chocolate milk before sitting down at the usual table.

I half-listened to Daphne and our friend September gab about how cute one of the basketball players looked that day, although he looked the same as he did any other day in my opinion, while I picked at my food. I looked around the cafeteria at one point and saw Miss Peterson standing in her usual spot, without Mr. Kinney at her side, of course.

I remembered Mr. Kinney telling me at Babylon that he and Miss Peterson were friends outside of work. I was going to go out of my mind if I didn't find out why Mr. Kinney suddenly needed some time off, so I got up and walked over to Miss Peterson.

She looked at me as I approached her. I had never had a cause to speak to the woman before then and I was sure she didn't have the slightest clue who I was.

"Hello, Mr. Taylor," she said to me with a small smile.

I looked at her with a puzzled expression for a moment. "You know my name?"

"Yes. Brian... sorry, Mr. Kinney has told me about you," she said. "He said you're an extraordinary writer."

I felt myself blush. "Thanks," I said to her, although it wasn't like she was the one complimenting me. "Speaking of Mr. Kinney, I was wondering if you knew why he's not at school today."

She pressed her lips together for a moment before quietly saying, "Brian's father passed away Thursday evening, but I'm sure that he'd appreciate it not becoming public knowledge."

"Oh, I won't tell anyone," I said. Hell, I was already keeping one of his secrets... "I thought I noticed during lunch on Friday that the two of you looked kind of sad."

Miss Peterson nodded. "That's when he told me. Brian and I went to college together and I met his father a few times."

"I bet they were really close, huh?"

Although my dad and I hadn't spoken since he moved out of our house a couple of weeks before, I knew I'd be devastated if he died.

She looked down at the floor before glancing at her watch. "You should probably get back to your table and finish your lunch."

I stood in front of her for a few more moments. I took a breath to ask her if Mr. Kinney was taking his father's death okay, but decided not to press her further after she looked back up at me with her brown eyes filling with tears. Instead, I nodded and turned to go back to my table.

Daphne looked at me quizzically after I sat back down. "Since when do you talk to Miss Peterson? I thought you said she was the Devil in a skirt."

Daphne was of course well aware of my infatuation with Mr. Kinney and knew how jealous I was of Miss Peterson over her connection with him. "I just wanted to ask Miss Peterson if there was anything wrong with Mr. Kinney."

"Is there?" Daphne asked.

"No... he's fine. He just needed a couple of days off," I fibbed as I stabbed at my jello with a plastic fork.

Mrs. G had us quietly read the beginning of Shakespeare's Hamlet, which we were required to cover that semester during Mr. Kinney's English Literature class that afternoon. I had read the play on my own before and skimmed though a few pages as I continued to think about Mr. Kinney.

Although I didn't know him on a personal level, besides knowing that he was gay and that he had a big dick of course, I couldn't help but feel terrible for him after losing his father. It was almost like when John F. Kennedy, Jr. died the previous year; I had never personally met the man, but I was still sad that he was gone. John-John was a very sexy man and died tragically after crashing his private airplane. Mr. Kinney didn't die, obviously, but knowing that he had to be going through a hard time nearly broke my heart.

I had Economics and French at the end of the day, and I was only physically present for both. Like Mrs. G had said, Dr. Perkins announced that Drama Club was cancelled that day shortly before the final bell rang.

I rode home with Daphne and she could tell that I was out of sorts. We would normally spend our trip back home bitching about the homework we had to do that night or gossiping about our classmates, but she was doing all the talking that afternoon as I stared out the window.

We were about a block away from our houses when she blurted out, "Alright, already! Will you tell me what the fuck is wrong?"

"Huh?" I asked as I turned to look at her.

"You've been acting weird since we left Babylon the other night and I didn't even hear from you all weekend," she said as she pulled into her parent's driveway and cut the engine. "What the fuck happened when you left me to go to the restroom at the club? And don't tell me ‘nothing.'"

I sighed. "I sort of stumbled into a... uh, orgy room while I was trying to find the bathroom."

Her jaw dropped and the piece of watermelon Bubble Yum gum she had been chewing fell out. "What?!"

"Yeah. I walked down a dark hallway and there was this big room where a bunch of guys were fucking," I said as I mentally pictured Mr. Kinney's naked ass and manhood for the millionth time. "I swear it was like, straight out of a low-budget porno movie."

"Holy shit!" she said, ignoring the wad of gum now stuck to the right lapel of her school blazer.

I plucked the gum off of her blazer and held it in front of her face. She opened her mouth for me to deposit it back in.

Daph chewed for a few moments as the gears turned in her head. "So what, did you do anything while-"

"No!" I yelled. "As if."

She giggled. "Well, you were gone for like, ten or fifteen minutes; I didn't know what the fuck you were doing."

"You were too busy dancing with your girlfriend to miss me," I said to her with a smile, referring to the butch lesbian that Daph had caught the eye of.

"Oh, shut up!" she yelled, pushing me on my shoulder. "I told Sheila that I was straight and only there to offer you moral support."

"And I had to peel her off of you before we left," I reminded her.

I ribbed Daph over Sheila for a few more minutes before we got out of her car. She asked if I wanted to come in and watch some TV, but I said that I had too much homework to do.

In reality, I was eager to get home to look in the recent newspapers that were in a recycling bin we kept in the garage. I grabbed the ones from the last few days and took them up to my room. I figured that Mr. Kinney's father's obituary would have been published no earlier than Saturday, so I looked in that one first.

Sure enough, I found the obituary for a Jack Charles Kinney in Saturday's paper. The small black and white photo showed a man who looked a bit like Mr. Kinney. The obituary stated that Jack was only sixty years old and had died after a long battle with cancer. He had served five years in Vietnam with the Army. He was a former member of a local steelworker's union and of the Eastway Kings bowling team. Jack had bowled a perfect game in 1984, which led his team to win the local championship.

His surviving family members were listed as his wife of thirty-three years, Joan, their two children, Brian and Claire, and Claire's two sons, John and Peter, along with a brother, two sisters, and several nieces and nephews. His parents and another brother had preceded him in death.

There would be a visitation between six and eight that evening at a local funeral home, followed by the funeral service and burial the next day.

Molly always had dance class on Mondays until five o'clock and she and Mom came home around five-thirty afterwards. I met them in the foyer in the only suit I owned, which Dad had bought for me a couple months before, "Because every man needs at least one decent suit," he had said.

"Why are you all dressed up?" Mom asked me.

I had spent the time since getting home trying to come up with a good excuse as to why I would be going somewhere dressed like that and decided that the truth was the best option. Mom knew that Mr. Kinney had been my favorite teacher for the past three years and I hoped she wouldn't find it odd that I'd want to make an appearance at his father's visitation.

"Mr. Kinney's father died and I thought I'd stop by the funeral home this evening to pay my respects," I said.

She smiled and placed a hand on my cheek. "That is so sweet of you, honey."

I smiled back at her. "Is it okay if I borrow the car?"

"Sure," she said as she dug her keys back out of her purse and handed them to me.