The Big Cheese

 Reading the first part of the chapter "Spooks" had me flashing back to high school. When Jason steps up to tie the cotton thread to the door knocker, I couldn't help but think back to math class and my time in the "spotlight".

Like Jason, I was pretty low on the social hierarchy.  I was squarely above the "picked-on" cadre of students - I sought refuge in the Who? island of anonymity. I hate coconuts. We were in Mr. Mozzarella's (we pronounced it incorrectly, like the cheese) mathematics class when he stepped out of the room for a minute. He told us to finish working on whatever "fun" math problems we had in front of us. Dutifully, we began to work as most honors students would.

How we pronounced the teacher's name...mozzarella!

Suddenly, a kid had the brilliant idea of locking out the teacher. I watched halfheartedly as a few resident "geniuses" tried to tie string around the knob and knot it so the knob wouldn't budge. Fail. Next, they tried to stack some chairs by the door. Okay - I had seen plenty of movies (mostly on TV - thanks WPIX Saturday Afternoon Matinee - as my parents rarely took me or let me go to the movie theater) where the hero has to keep the villain from getting into a room with only a chair as an option.

I couldn't watch the incompetent display of this simple maneuver reign any longer. Without saying anything, I got out of my seat and stacked two chairs together. I leaned the chairs towards the door so the back would fit comfortably under the knob.   Was I doing this for social acceptance? Was I doing it because 80s movie icons had taught me more about life than any of my teachers? Still couldn't tell you.

Jam the chair under the knob and presto! The person is locked out!

Whatever the case, when Mr. Mozz returned and was stymied by the unyielding doorknob, his face erupted into what can only be compared to cosmic explosions, possibly something akin to the Big Bang.  Sorry, Denzel, but King Kong had nothing on him. The door may have prevented his physical body from entering, but his world-class obscenities infiltrated our student-commandeered fiefdom.

Despite our innocent ears being shocked with R-rated bombast, we were a collective herd of deer, caught in a Hummer's blinding headlights.  Water bottles had long since passed the small tremors of a T-rex approaching, and were vibrating off several desks, landing like mortar shells on Normandy. Some students who fancied another day of life on this earth, ran to the door and let in the "Irate Cheese" as it came to be known.

All I could think about was if one of the other students would lift a finger and point in my direction (since my name probably escaped their collective memories). As the "Irate Cheese" surveyed the petrified class, my heart raced into mach 1. The class should have had an advisory sign before entering Mr. Mozzarella's classroom:

For safety and comfort, you should be in good health and free from heart, back, or neck problems, motion sickness, or other conditions that could be aggravated by math. Expectant mothers and the lactose intolerant should not enter!

Since other students were doing it, I glanced around to see who would be the beneficiary of this social blame game.

No one said anything. No points. No eye-gestures or head nods in my direction. Somehow I escaped justice. Was I finally accepted? Or had no one actually seen me do the deed? Did not matter. I felt awful and, like Jason, could not envision the easy-to-forecast response from the person being pranked.  We both didn't have the intention to prank someone, yet that's what we both did. Prank + Ignorance = Regret.  Maybe Mr. Mozz did teach me something in math after all.  This was so not ace.

The Faithless Preserve

Growing up in the town of Bellmore, students would often speak of Cedar Swamp Creek as if it was not just a source of water, but of the connective strain of disappearances over the years. It hides behind a fence just behind the high school I attended and cuts through a barbwire fenced off a government preserve called Faith Laursen Preserve (formerly Meroke Preserve), which lays a few miles south. No trespassing signs were always more in abundance than people in this area.

Legend has it that in the early 90s, a couple of girls from a cross country team took a route along the creek, finding a hole in the fence to get there. They followed the creek south, past the Newbridge pond, and down to the Laursen preserve. 

The Cedar Swamp Creek that runs through the preserve

 

Some say the girls found out what the Laursen family was doing to "protect nature" as they were known famously around the Bellmore-Merrick towns for doing. However, in her elder age, Faith Laursen grew more and more paranoid of teenagers taking the preserve for granted, which once was used during the Revolutionary War by the British to ambush the Colonials. 

Faith Laursen, a former girl scout, originally intended for the preserve to be about educating the youth about the importance of nature. Yet, as years passed by, she began to lose hope with teenagers who would rather come into the preserve to drink, smoke, and have sex. So it is said, one of the girls tripped alongside the creek, and as they brushed away the leaves, found a decomposing arm. Faith would give trespassing teenagers "back to nature" by burying them alive. And so...presumably, Faith Laursen, to protect her secret, had the two girls meet the same fate of being buried alive. 

Faith Laursen (left) and the Laursen family who established the preserve as "forever wild" in 1993

The girls' photos made it onto milk cartons and into the local papers, but no one ever found them. Having worked for local papers in Merrick and Baldwin such as the locally famous Bellmore and Merrick Life, no one ever questioned the Laursen family about the disappearance. They held too much clout. Even the parents of the two missing girls couldn't ring themselves to confront the Laursens - fearing what lengths they would go to hide their secrets. However, as adults never wanted to challenge the Laursen's popularity, teenagers would take it upon themselves to "investigate." 

The "creeky" bridge where it is rumored the Laursens have under 24-hour human surveillance.

To this today, teenagers dare each other to slip past the fences and follow the creek into the preserve (never using the main gate to avoid being spotted). While no deaths have been reported, several missing persons cases remain unsolved - high schoolers who were rumored to have been dared to spend the night down by Laursen Preserve. Faith Laursen has since passed, but her family has carried the torch of her sinister legacy: eliminating any source of disruption to their preserve. 

Teenagers who look to "disrupt" the purity of the preserve's nature are seldom heard from again. Their bodies most likely, decomposing in the deepest recesses of the preserve.

Just like Dean finding out about what Kit Harris did to the student who took a dump on his car, this "urban legend" was told to me through many older people - primarily other students. The people actual exist and their personalities seem to fit the stories told about them. Kit Harris comes across as an angry and odd man, so his rumored actions make a lot of sense. Faith Laursen, with her love of nature, seems like she would do anything to protect it.