Requiem for Nick
The group I had in my last period class in the fall of 2008 was a little rough around the edges.
At a school in the heart of one of the most violent neighborhoods in the United States, student anger and apathy set the tenor for many different scenarios each day. But the small group of students who were placed in my strength and conditioning class were outliers: not a part of the big cliques, but off to the side with smaller subsets. They were all boys, and on the gangly side. But they were lovable.
Nick, a senior, was a Latino with a head full of course hair that sprung wild and nappy from the ponytail he tied it back in. He had a small neck tattoo and walked with a slight limp due to a previous injury, which had also broken his clavicle.
Most of the kids came every day, and I guided them through a workout which sometimes felt more like me pulling them along. But we enjoyed good camaraderie and developed good teacher-student bonds, which included plenty of jokes along the way.
Nick came to class two, three times a week, tops. He never dressed out, choosing to amble along in the polo-khaki combination that was our school uniform. I didn't really push him, due to his injuries. He was gentle and sweet, and didn't disrespect adults or other students, like many of his peers. As a result, he was loved by a small but devoted group of students, and by some of the staff - even though we all wished he would attend class more.
He had a thing for the ladies, and was always checking any out who happened to walk by. I mentioned it one day, with an eyebrow up, and he smiled and shrugged.
"Ms. Favor, you know I'm a pervert," he said in jest. I smiled.
Nick also had an affinity for getting caught up in trouble. He wasn't an instigator, but even on the edges, he would sometimes get swept in.
One early October afternoon his eye for women and his magnet for trouble collided when, right after our class, a fight erupted in the girl's locker room. I was scrambling to call security on the radio, and they eventually came. They picked up the kids who were hitting each other and they also led away Nick, who had climbed up onto the privacy barrier outside the locker room door to peer inside and view the altercation.
Standing next to another student, I shook my head watching Nick retreat, the security guard's hand on his back to push him along.
"Nick always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time," I said.
Fall semester continued, and I saw Nick when he decided to show up. He turned 17 years old on Sunday, Oct. 26, 2008. I found out the next day when he told me.
Friday was Halloween, and I took my strength and conditioning class into the weight room. I was walking around taking some time with various students, and when I looked over at the sled leg press, there was Nick. He was laying on the apparatus with his feet still up on the platform, and he had covered his head and chest entirely with a white jacket, which looked like a sheet from a distance. I walked over and gently pulled it down so I could see his eyes.
"Baby boy, what are you doing?" I asked. "You can't sleep in here."
He was sheepish, as he had actually been napping. Beside him on the floor was his notebook, and tucked into the clear cover on the front was a funeral program with a young black man's photo on the front. I asked Nick what that was about, and he said he'd gone to the service of a friend a few days before, who had been shot. That happened so often in the area, and to our students.
The previous spring, it was "Tank," a football player who had been in the middle of his junior year at our school. Six months before that, our principal decided to finally take a stand and punish him for his frequent transgressions, and he removed him from the football team. I was bringing my girls basketball squad to the football game one Friday night and Tank, who had been lingering at the front gate, approached me.
"Please, Ms. Favor, can you ask (the principal) to let me back on the team?" he pleaded.
Our leader wasn't known to cave on his decisions. I shook my head.
"I'll try, darlin, but you know how he is," I said.
It didn't work, and in January, Tank was shot in the neck in a gang dispute. For a while, it looked like he was a goner, as he had to breathe through a tube. But miraculously he survived, and he was out and about again by April.
At the end of the month Tank was at a party and was in a room talking to friends when suddenly, the lights went out. The gang members who had flipped the switch began shooting in the dark, and when it was all over, Tank was among the dead.
The day of his funeral, our football coach and the entire team solemnly filed out of school to head towards the service. I always wondered what the principal felt, but I didn't dare ask him.
I didn't know anything about Nick's friend who had died, whose picture I was looking at. He wasn't familiar, and I guessed the young man attended another school, or had dropped out.
The bell rang, I wished everyone a safe and happy Halloween, and they left the weight room.
On Monday, Nick didn't come to class. The morning of Tuesday, Nov. 4 dawned with great promise, as it looked like Barack Obama would be elected as President by day's end. But I had no sooner set my things down when the buzz was shattered, as one of the other students from the strength and conditioning class burst through my office door.
"Nick was shot! Nick was shot!" he shouted. "Nick was shot and killed!"
It felt like an anvil had hit my chest. Many of the moments from class flashed back at me, rapid-fire. I remembered myself saying "........wrong place at the wrong time," and seeing Nick covered in a white jacket on the leg press. I got a chill.
I stood there for what felt like the longest time, and finally managed to utter, "what?"
The assistant principal was suddenly in front of me, telling me I had to proctor the California High School Exit Exam in a few minutes. He returned shortly thereafter to say that I wouldn't be needed after all. When he appeared a third time, I was still standing there in disbelief. And when he said that yes, I would need to proctor after all, all my emotions exploded together, and I began to laugh. I couldn't stop. He became irritated, explaining later that I was being disrespectful.
A better word for it was devastated.
The story came out: Nick had seen his friend shot and killed. Then on that Monday night after Halloween, he was standing in front of a liquor store when a car pulled up and someone inside opened fire on him. Supposedly it was the same shooter, who wanted to make sure Nick didn't "snitch." It is one of the most common scenarios of inner-city life.
A few days later I found Nick's wallet in my office. It was bizarre, to say the least, because while kids popped in frequently, I didn't remember Nick being one of them over the last two weeks.
I called his mother to tell her I had it, and we ended up talking for a long time. She was barely getting by, and I began to tell her how much I had loved having her son in my class. I said I appreciated his goofiness, and I told her the "you know I'm a pervert" story and she laughed.
"If he said that to you, the you knew the real Nick," she said, with a tremor in her voice.
The funeral was scheduled for Friday, Nov. 14, at 11 a.m. I really wanted to go. So as much as I dreaded approaching our principal for anything, I had to try.
"Oh, you do, do you?" he said sarcastically, as I told him I wished to attend.
I kept talking, saying it would mean a lot to me, and he kept making dismissive noises. But then he took the paper out of my hand and signed the line authorizing me to leave work for a few hours for the service. He gruffly shoved it back at me.
"Thank you," I said to his retreating back. "Thank you."
Nick's friend Joaquim was in one of my earlier classes. They had asked him to be a pallbearer, and he was nervous because he'd never done that before. So I explained, in depth, what would be expected of him and how he could go about it for the best results. He ate up my words.
The day of the funeral was beautiful and bright. After teaching my first class, I made the drive to the small chapel at the cemetery in North Long Beach. Though there were a few other teachers there, we all sat by ourselves, for whatever reason. I was in a pew on the left side, about halfway back.
The pallbearers entered, carrying Nick's white casket, and Joaquin was at the rear on my side. He looked over at me for reassurance, and I smiled and nodded.
Nick's mother, stepfather and siblings sat behind the minister as he presided. Each of them looked numb and exhausted. It was Nick's girlfriend who suddenly broke down into loud sobs about halfway through the service, and had to be comforted before she began to quiet down.
Family members and friends took turns speaking, but honestly, I don't remember what they said. It is all a kind of pained blur.
Afterwards the casket was taken to the back of the chapel into a slight corner, so attendees could pass by and have a personal moment. Nick's grandmother sat in a chair about three feet away from her grandson's head. As I approached and stood over Nick, I noticed that she was rocking slightly, shaking her head.
Nick was pale, his face wider and his lips bigger than they had been in life. What hemorrhaging must have taken place, I thought. He didn't sit up and tell a joke; he just lied there, still. My lips had been pressed together, and then I took a breath.
"Bye, baby boy," I whispered.
Outside, I finally got to meet his mother. We hugged and I asked how how she was holding up.
"Vicodin," she said with a laugh. And she thanked me. I said she would be in my prayers.
I have kept my promise.
Ten years later, I still include "the parents of the children who have died" in my daily prayers, because of Nick and his mother. And as this sad decade anniversary has come, I wonder what kind of 27-year-old Nick would have been. What would he be doing? Where would he be working? What would he think of all this social media and Internet stuff?
I had been trying to get out of that high school for a long time, as it was just too much to bear. Ironically, I almost made it out the summer before Nick was killed. But I left the district entirely in 2009, and began teaching at another high school in a much less violent area. It wasn't until the following spring that I realized we had made it through the entire school year without any students being killed.
As it should be.
At a school in the heart of one of the most violent neighborhoods in the United States, student anger and apathy set the tenor for many different scenarios each day. But the small group of students who were placed in my strength and conditioning class were outliers: not a part of the big cliques, but off to the side with smaller subsets. They were all boys, and on the gangly side. But they were lovable.
Nick, a senior, was a Latino with a head full of course hair that sprung wild and nappy from the ponytail he tied it back in. He had a small neck tattoo and walked with a slight limp due to a previous injury, which had also broken his clavicle.
Most of the kids came every day, and I guided them through a workout which sometimes felt more like me pulling them along. But we enjoyed good camaraderie and developed good teacher-student bonds, which included plenty of jokes along the way.
Nick came to class two, three times a week, tops. He never dressed out, choosing to amble along in the polo-khaki combination that was our school uniform. I didn't really push him, due to his injuries. He was gentle and sweet, and didn't disrespect adults or other students, like many of his peers. As a result, he was loved by a small but devoted group of students, and by some of the staff - even though we all wished he would attend class more.
He had a thing for the ladies, and was always checking any out who happened to walk by. I mentioned it one day, with an eyebrow up, and he smiled and shrugged.
"Ms. Favor, you know I'm a pervert," he said in jest. I smiled.
Nick also had an affinity for getting caught up in trouble. He wasn't an instigator, but even on the edges, he would sometimes get swept in.
One early October afternoon his eye for women and his magnet for trouble collided when, right after our class, a fight erupted in the girl's locker room. I was scrambling to call security on the radio, and they eventually came. They picked up the kids who were hitting each other and they also led away Nick, who had climbed up onto the privacy barrier outside the locker room door to peer inside and view the altercation.
Standing next to another student, I shook my head watching Nick retreat, the security guard's hand on his back to push him along.
"Nick always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time," I said.
Fall semester continued, and I saw Nick when he decided to show up. He turned 17 years old on Sunday, Oct. 26, 2008. I found out the next day when he told me.
Friday was Halloween, and I took my strength and conditioning class into the weight room. I was walking around taking some time with various students, and when I looked over at the sled leg press, there was Nick. He was laying on the apparatus with his feet still up on the platform, and he had covered his head and chest entirely with a white jacket, which looked like a sheet from a distance. I walked over and gently pulled it down so I could see his eyes.
"Baby boy, what are you doing?" I asked. "You can't sleep in here."
He was sheepish, as he had actually been napping. Beside him on the floor was his notebook, and tucked into the clear cover on the front was a funeral program with a young black man's photo on the front. I asked Nick what that was about, and he said he'd gone to the service of a friend a few days before, who had been shot. That happened so often in the area, and to our students.
The previous spring, it was "Tank," a football player who had been in the middle of his junior year at our school. Six months before that, our principal decided to finally take a stand and punish him for his frequent transgressions, and he removed him from the football team. I was bringing my girls basketball squad to the football game one Friday night and Tank, who had been lingering at the front gate, approached me.
"Please, Ms. Favor, can you ask (the principal) to let me back on the team?" he pleaded.
Our leader wasn't known to cave on his decisions. I shook my head.
"I'll try, darlin, but you know how he is," I said.
It didn't work, and in January, Tank was shot in the neck in a gang dispute. For a while, it looked like he was a goner, as he had to breathe through a tube. But miraculously he survived, and he was out and about again by April.
At the end of the month Tank was at a party and was in a room talking to friends when suddenly, the lights went out. The gang members who had flipped the switch began shooting in the dark, and when it was all over, Tank was among the dead.
The day of his funeral, our football coach and the entire team solemnly filed out of school to head towards the service. I always wondered what the principal felt, but I didn't dare ask him.
I didn't know anything about Nick's friend who had died, whose picture I was looking at. He wasn't familiar, and I guessed the young man attended another school, or had dropped out.
The bell rang, I wished everyone a safe and happy Halloween, and they left the weight room.
On Monday, Nick didn't come to class. The morning of Tuesday, Nov. 4 dawned with great promise, as it looked like Barack Obama would be elected as President by day's end. But I had no sooner set my things down when the buzz was shattered, as one of the other students from the strength and conditioning class burst through my office door.
"Nick was shot! Nick was shot!" he shouted. "Nick was shot and killed!"
It felt like an anvil had hit my chest. Many of the moments from class flashed back at me, rapid-fire. I remembered myself saying "........wrong place at the wrong time," and seeing Nick covered in a white jacket on the leg press. I got a chill.
I stood there for what felt like the longest time, and finally managed to utter, "what?"
The assistant principal was suddenly in front of me, telling me I had to proctor the California High School Exit Exam in a few minutes. He returned shortly thereafter to say that I wouldn't be needed after all. When he appeared a third time, I was still standing there in disbelief. And when he said that yes, I would need to proctor after all, all my emotions exploded together, and I began to laugh. I couldn't stop. He became irritated, explaining later that I was being disrespectful.
A better word for it was devastated.
The story came out: Nick had seen his friend shot and killed. Then on that Monday night after Halloween, he was standing in front of a liquor store when a car pulled up and someone inside opened fire on him. Supposedly it was the same shooter, who wanted to make sure Nick didn't "snitch." It is one of the most common scenarios of inner-city life.
A few days later I found Nick's wallet in my office. It was bizarre, to say the least, because while kids popped in frequently, I didn't remember Nick being one of them over the last two weeks.
I called his mother to tell her I had it, and we ended up talking for a long time. She was barely getting by, and I began to tell her how much I had loved having her son in my class. I said I appreciated his goofiness, and I told her the "you know I'm a pervert" story and she laughed.
"If he said that to you, the you knew the real Nick," she said, with a tremor in her voice.
The funeral was scheduled for Friday, Nov. 14, at 11 a.m. I really wanted to go. So as much as I dreaded approaching our principal for anything, I had to try.
"Oh, you do, do you?" he said sarcastically, as I told him I wished to attend.
I kept talking, saying it would mean a lot to me, and he kept making dismissive noises. But then he took the paper out of my hand and signed the line authorizing me to leave work for a few hours for the service. He gruffly shoved it back at me.
"Thank you," I said to his retreating back. "Thank you."
Nick's friend Joaquim was in one of my earlier classes. They had asked him to be a pallbearer, and he was nervous because he'd never done that before. So I explained, in depth, what would be expected of him and how he could go about it for the best results. He ate up my words.
The day of the funeral was beautiful and bright. After teaching my first class, I made the drive to the small chapel at the cemetery in North Long Beach. Though there were a few other teachers there, we all sat by ourselves, for whatever reason. I was in a pew on the left side, about halfway back.
The pallbearers entered, carrying Nick's white casket, and Joaquin was at the rear on my side. He looked over at me for reassurance, and I smiled and nodded.
Nick's mother, stepfather and siblings sat behind the minister as he presided. Each of them looked numb and exhausted. It was Nick's girlfriend who suddenly broke down into loud sobs about halfway through the service, and had to be comforted before she began to quiet down.
Family members and friends took turns speaking, but honestly, I don't remember what they said. It is all a kind of pained blur.
Afterwards the casket was taken to the back of the chapel into a slight corner, so attendees could pass by and have a personal moment. Nick's grandmother sat in a chair about three feet away from her grandson's head. As I approached and stood over Nick, I noticed that she was rocking slightly, shaking her head.
Nick was pale, his face wider and his lips bigger than they had been in life. What hemorrhaging must have taken place, I thought. He didn't sit up and tell a joke; he just lied there, still. My lips had been pressed together, and then I took a breath.
"Bye, baby boy," I whispered.
Outside, I finally got to meet his mother. We hugged and I asked how how she was holding up.
"Vicodin," she said with a laugh. And she thanked me. I said she would be in my prayers.
I have kept my promise.
Ten years later, I still include "the parents of the children who have died" in my daily prayers, because of Nick and his mother. And as this sad decade anniversary has come, I wonder what kind of 27-year-old Nick would have been. What would he be doing? Where would he be working? What would he think of all this social media and Internet stuff?
I had been trying to get out of that high school for a long time, as it was just too much to bear. Ironically, I almost made it out the summer before Nick was killed. But I left the district entirely in 2009, and began teaching at another high school in a much less violent area. It wasn't until the following spring that I realized we had made it through the entire school year without any students being killed.
As it should be.
Wow this story gave me chills!!!!
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