Death and Other Interruptions

Chapter Four

Day five. I woke up at noon, and looked at my phone for the first time in days. I was surprised the battery had lasted this long until I realized that Mom and Amy had, predictably, thought to plug it in to charge at some point. Texts and emails had poured in at first, vague messages that avoided all use of Al's name or any variation of the word "death," but when I hadn't responded they stopped. I skimmed them all, condolence after condolence, only stopping to read them when they came from people I actually liked, a number that had gotten even smaller since the lackluster funeral. A few of them were personal messages, memories of Al, and those I truly appreciated. But most of them seemed to be copied from the same how-to manual of texting mourners. I didn't bother to respond. I was the mourner. If they didn't understand, they could shove it. One day they'll be in their own Greek tragedy and they will understand; with that thought an unattractive evil pleasure inside me thrilled. I quashed it. The least I could do was be a better person, for Al's sake.

My finger hovered over the Internet app. It's time, I thought, you need to stop hiding, although I wasn't sure what, precisely, determined when it "was time." I opened a Google search page. I clicked in Al's name, and thousands of articles appeared immediately, along with a row of pictures that I recognized as his yearbook photos throughout his years teaching. One of them, I noticed bitterly, was from when he'd won Teacher of the Year award. I bet his school regretted that now.

The headlines ranged from the completely sensational—"Muslim terrorist slaughters innocent schoolchildren"—to the more tempered titles from highbrow papers with more to lose: "Teacher's family questioned in aftermath of school bombing." I clicked on that one, unable to stomach any of the other headlines, curious who the paper decided was Al's "family."

My eyes jumped over the paragraphs until I saw what I was looking for. Of course. Sue was the only person who could lose her son one day and clamor for media attention the next. The woman was a monster, and a narcissistic one at that. I scrolled back up and read it through more closely.

'"My son was always the sweetest boy, and he grew up to be a gentle man," says Susan Stefford from her home in Bethany, CT. "He's Iranian on his father's side, of course. I raised him to be a good Christian boy, and he was the perfect angel any mother could ask for."

'From what New Hampshire police are saying, however, Stefford seems as far from an angel as they come. The gruesome images of children's body parts have already splashed across social media, and if Mrs. Stefford's son was indeed behind this attack, she will have to come to terms with a new version of her "good Christian boy."

'Nevertheless, by all accounts, Stefford did indeed live the life of a man who fit his mother's descriptions. In interviews with his landlord and coworkers, a picture came to form of a man who lived a clean life, taught children because he genuinely loved them, and was engaged to be married to his college girlfriend. His fiancée was unreachable for comment.

'Which begs the question, why has Stefford been fingered as the leading suspect in what is now being labeled as "domestic terrorism"? According to official statements from the police, he was seen on the school's security camera entering the room the bomb was placed in prior to the explosion, and he was the only adult at the scene of the explosion who didn't run away from the blast. Others speculate that his Iranian descent has more bearing on police suspicion than they will admit to; one coworker, a librarian in Parkville Elementary who was known to be close with Stefford, told a CNN reporter: "Knowing Ali, seeing him work with his students, the only reason he didn't run from the blast is because he was trying to help his students. That's the kind of man that he was."'

I knew there was a reason I didn't read the news. It was a crock of shit, written by even shittier people frantic for a story, and the latest rumors, no matter how untrue, were their daily bread.