—2—
Mission: Remake Myself.
The movie cliché is to cut off my hair. Well, fuck that. Not too many Irish girls can boast about dark silky tresses.
I’m also not going to buy a whole new wardrobe (broke), get a pet (can’t support a dependent), a boyfriend (see previous), or a makeover (Mom’s whorepaint inspires me to stay au naturel).
What I am going to do:
Delete all the numbers in my phone. No more skeezy geezers, no more high school skanks who think talking to me means we’re friends, or that we are even in the same genus.
Apply for college. This has nothing to do with Evan asking me about it.
Face my fears, at least one per month. I’ve already done my duty for August. In September, I’ll tell Mom she has a drug problem. If I make it to October, clowns.
Get a job. Don’t expect Mom to give a flying fuck that I want to go to college, or to have any idea what I’ll need.
Stop using men. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop.
Maybe see that psychologist again. Or one who doesn’t have such a bunny fetish.
Live, instead of numbing myself to life, like Mom.
Stop thinking about Evan.
#
They made me register for classes late because O’Malley technically starts with an O, not an M. Which meant everything I wanted to take was gone by the time I sat down with the registrar.
“I’m sorry, Maisie,” the woman droned. She looked half-asleep in the swampy AC. “It’s full.”
“Maise,” I corrected. “Short for Maisie, which is a name for a little girl. And you don’t understand, I reserved Film Studies last year.”
I caught a reflection of her laptop screen in her bifocals. She was playing Angry Birds.
“I’m going to film school,” I explained. “I need this class.”
“You’re going to be an actress?” she said, tepidly interested.
“No, I’m going to make movies.”
“You’re pretty. You could be an actress.”
I started to say, It takes more than that, but depressingly, she was right. “Can’t you just look up the reservations?”
“Class is full.”
A red bird went rocketing across her glasses.
“How about Drama 102?”
“I don’t want to fucking act,” I muttered.
“Excuse me?”
“Look, one of those seats was reserved for me. Maybe someone bribed you. I’m not judging. I’m sure they don’t pay you enough to put up with this shit.” I leaned across her desk. “But this is all I’m passionate about. If I don’t get this class, the only way I’ll get into film school is by sleeping with the Dean of Admissions. He’ll probably make me blow him in his Porsche. Him and all his douchey adjunct friends. That’s the future you’re deciding right now. Think about it.”
Mrs. Bird stared with her round, rheumy eyes.
I raised an eyebrow.
Click, click. The laser printer whirred. “Seems I was mistaken. A seat just opened up.”
Mrs. Bird handed the paper over, peering at me above her glasses.
“You should seriously consider acting.”
“Thank you, ma’am. I will.”
I beamed as I walked out to my bike, imprinting the schedule like a proverb on my heart.
FILM STUDIES. M-TH-F 10:15-11:45. E WILKE. RM 209.
I was so absorbed in it I didn’t notice the maroon Monte Carlo with the sad-eyed pony sitting on the dashboard, its coat shining sleekly in the sun.
#
If you’re a film buff, right now you’re probably thinking, She wants to go to film school and doesn’t even know Kubrick?
First: that’s why I wanted to get into Film Studies, duh. I admit, my tastes skew modern. I’m more into Lars von Trier, Terrence Malick, and the anime films of Miyazaki than the stuff you’re supposed to say you like—Kubrick, Hitchcock, the good ol’ boys. I’m no hipster, though. I love Peter Jackson and JJ Abrams just as much as the arthouse darlings.
So yeah, epic fail on my part when I didn’t recognize one of Kubrick’s most iconic works, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
You think my Film Studies teacher would let me forget it, either?
#
I see the lights every night, he’d said.
I couldn’t get those words out of my head. He lived or worked somewhere near. In this flyover, flyaway town that barely topped five figures, one of them was a man with an angel’s face, a man who’d asked me my name before he fucked me in his car on a fearless August night.
I couldn’t get him out of my head.
I biked up to the water tower on the hill overlooking the prairie. Climbed the rust-eaten struts up to a crow’s nest some stoners had hammered together out of Mississippi driftwood. It wasn’t as hot tonight, and a restless wind raked through the grass, smelling of loam and barley. From here the carnival lights looked like fireflies swirling madly in place, trapped under an invisible jar. Just like me.
So, I thought. Am I feeling good after sleeping with a nice guy and leaving? Is that hitting the spot? Or am I feeling more alone than ever?
Answer: obviously.
Maybe it was time to admit that being wanted intensely for a few minutes wasn’t enough. It got me through a few hours, a few days here and there, but when the emptiness returned it felt bigger, hungrier. I kept thinking it was the guy—once I found a nice guy, it would be different. Fulfilling. But I left the nice guy like I’d left all the others, and I was still empty. And I covered it up with cockiness and bravado and kept telling myself that this was life, this was how things really were. Nobody was happy. Nobody was fulfilled.
Evan thought there was some secret to happiness, but he was wrong. The secret was to harden yourself. Not care. Not let the emptiness get inside you.
But I was failing pretty spectacularly at that.
Rustling in the grass below. A sharp crack.
I jumped up, wishing for a knife. Some tweaked-out psycho rapist?
“Who’s there?” a boy called.
Shit. He was standing right next to my bike.
“Go away,” I said menacingly.
Silence, then a low laugh. “It’s okay. I won’t hurt you.”
“Don’t touch my bike,” I said. “And go away.”
A cigarette cherry glowed in the darkness, an angry orange eye. “Rude.”
The longer I stayed up there, the more scared he’d think me. I climbed down smoothly, jumping the last six feet and landing on nimble sneakers. The boy was a good head and shoulders taller than me, but scarecrow-skinny. I couldn’t see much of him except a huge Adam’s apple when the cherry flared.
I knew most kids my age, and I’d seen this boy around school. A loner type, sorta weird.
“Hi,” he said.
I picked up my bike.
“You’re just going to leave without saying hi?”
“Hi,” I said. “Bye.”
He laughed again.
I swung my leg over and bit into the dirt with my tire.
“I’m Wesley,” he said.
“I’m not looking for new friends.”
“That’s a weird name.”
I laughed, despite myself. Dammit. The ground was all rutted and lumpy. Would’ve been faster to walk my bike out.
“I’ve seen you here before,” Wesley said, following me with a cloud of herbal smoke. Clove cigarettes.
“Great,” I said, “so you’re a stalker.”
“It’s not stalking if I was here first.”
I stopped, my shoes slapping into the dirt. “Look. Whoever you are, it’s nice to meet you, but this isn’t going to work out. I don’t want a friend, boyfriend, groupie, or big brother. Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not going to happen.”
The cherry arced off into the darkness. “You’re M. O’Malley, aren’t you?”
Ice in my heart. “What?”
Crinkling. He opened something white and fluttery in front of my face. Moonlight turned it bluish. I could just make out laser print.
“They dropped me from film class. Someone took my seat. The lady in the office said it was a girl who looked like Snow White. She went on and on about how ‘talented’ you are.”
“Shit,” I breathed.
“I’m not mad,” Wesley said. “But the least you could do is tell me why you need that class so bad.”
I didn’t even know about E. Wilke yet. How it would feel to need someone. Right then, I just wanted something of my own. Something I’d made. Something no one could take away from me.
I stuck out my hand.
Wesley frowned at it, then shook. His skin was dry and rough, like a corn husk.
“Maise,” I said.
“Huh?”
“That’s my name.”
I gave it easily, freely, no strings.
You remember these things later, when they matter.
“And the reason I need that class,” I said, “is so I can get the fuck out of this town.”
He smiled, a big, crooked grin. “Good. That’s a worthy reason to fuck me over.”
#
Wesley walked me home. Not intentionally, but the conversation just kept going. Turns out he’s into movies, too, but more the technical side: cameras, cinematography, video editing. I respect people who get nerdy as fuck about something they love. He spent most of the walk explaining the difference between 24, 30, and 48 frames per second, and how human eyes work. How our brains fill in the gap between frames. How when we’re watching a movie, half of what we “see” isn’t even real—we’re making it up in our heads.
I thought about seeing Mom at one frame per day. The way I blurred her life into something to fill the gaps.
I wondered if Evan was doing the same to me in his head.
When we got to my house, Wesley pulled out his phone. “Want to trade numbers?”
I didn’t want to say yes too easily. High school boys are so presumptuous. “Are you going to guilt trip me about that class?”
He shrugged. “If I miss anything life-changing, you can tell me.”
We traded numbers.
“You lied,” Wesley said, grinning.
“About what?”
“Not wanting new friends.”
“We’re not friends,” I said coolly, walking toward the porch.
Mistake. I thought I was being flippant, not coy. This isn’t fourth grade. We’re not going to instantly become BFFs because we have the same cartoon character on our backpacks.
But what Wesley heard was, I have not ruled out the possibility of fucking you.
You’re never saying what you think you’re saying.
#
First day of school.
It felt like life was beginning all over again. That September sun, still a smoldering summer ember but starting to fail, to slant a little more heavily. The shadows of leaves flickering like pixels on the sidewalks. All the voices were relaxed, happy to shake off the terrible freedom of summer and slip back into comfortable straitjackets, schedules and routines. Everything had a golden powdercoat, the autumn decay setting in slowly, breaking the world into molecules of sun and dust.
7:55. First bell, bright and comforting. My insides arranged themselves obediently, preparing for the role we were going to play for the next ten months. I waded through suntanned bodies, the ocean mist of gel and perfume. Everyone’s face was jammed against a phone, getting in their last few precious minutes of airtime before they severed all contact with the outside world. I tossed mine casually into my locker. Wesley had texted me: Lunch 4th period? And I said, See you there.
So began the first day of my “new job,” as I’d told Evan. I wondered where he was, if he’d started his yet.
In retrospect you want to scream at yourself: don’t you feel it? Don’t you feel that strange edginess in your blood, the way it vibrates, as if some nearby force is disturbing it? Don’t you notice the disturbance, Luke?
I slammed my locker closed.
A Mean Girl stalked past, lip curled. Her eyes slid down my body like a viper’s tongue.
Okay, I hadn’t totally remade myself. I wasn’t Mother freaking Teresa. I wore shorts a hair’s width within dress code regs, and a button-up boy’s shirt that I hadn’t buttoned very diligently. The funny thing was, even in my hillbilly attire and zero makeup, I looked a hundred times better than this girl who’d spent all morning tweezing and abrading just to end up resembling a chihuahua. I smiled at her sweetly, and her sneer deepened. You could almost see the circuits sparking behind her eyeballs as she scanned me: Target acquired. Terminate.
8:00-9:05, Calculus. Save the worst for first, as Mom says. I was alert, assiduous. I took old-school paper and pencil notes. Some kids tapped at laptops and tablets. This is a dual lesson in class stratification, I thought.
9:10-10:10, World History. This involved numbers, too, but not enough. My mind wandered. Here’s a history of the world: Girl meets boy. Girl fucks boy. Girl gets scared and skips out on boy. Boy builds civilization to lure girl back.
After class, I made a beeline for my locker to text Wesley, but froze up. What’s the polite way to say, I need comfort but am unwilling to reciprocate or share any titillating details? Whatever. We didn’t even know each other. Who was getting presumptuous now?
Chin up, sport, I told myself. Next class was Film Studies. My first taste of the future. And then I’d have an excuse to text Wesley and gloat about what he’d missed.
As I swam upstairs through the crush of bodies, I thought about what Evan had said. It’s a classic. Well, mister, if it’s such a classic I’m sure we’ll study it.
Like watching a lamb prance cluelessly toward the knife.
Room 209 was at the end of a hall, a huge window beside it like a portal straight to the sun. I spent a second soaking in the light, photons beaming through my eyelids. When I walked into the room my vision danced with microscopic explosions of blood vessels, a hazy red sparkle.
I saw him first.
I didn’t blink. Everything inside me came to a full stop. He wore pressed slacks and a collared shirt, clean-shaven, hair combed neatly, a silver watch gleaming on his wrist, but it was undeniably him. I knew those hands. I knew that mouth. I’d pictured that face, grizzly with stubble, his eyes half-shut, nuzzling at my neck as I lay in bed and got myself off.
I knew instantly, unequivocally. Evan Wilke. Starting his new job as a teacher at Riverland High.
My teacher.
10:15-11:45, Intro to the End of the World.
He raised his head and swept a generic, acknowledging smile over the room, starting with the far side. It took all of two seconds to reach me but I felt it coming like thunder, sensing my imminent doom and yet paralyzed, unable to run.
He reached me and paused. His face fell. Not into dismay—all expression went out of it. Shock.
A kid nudged me aside and walked in. I stood stupidly in the doorway. It felt like a series of small eternities, but it was only seconds.
Evan stared at me dazedly. I think he was confused. I don’t think he realized I was a student yet. I made myself step in and took the seat nearest the door.
His mouth opened slightly.
What did we do wrong, Your Honor?
I was eighteen. He wasn’t my teacher yet.
I drank. Everyone drinks.
He purchased alcohol for me. I lied about my age. Not his fault.
I rest my case.
My eyes were open, but I wasn’t conscious of having seen anything for a minute. A gray-out, Mom called it. You didn’t pass out but you just…weren’t there for a while.
The room was starting to fill up.
Evan shuffled papers around his desk. Then he stood there, staring at the surface, only his eyes moving, a rapid back-and-forth like REM.
Was this a dream? It felt distinctly nightmarish.
He straightened and walked toward the door, pausing beside me.
“Can I see you outside?”
Soft, discreet. No hint of emotion.
I stood without looking at him. I hadn’t brought anything to this class. I thought I had everything I needed in my head.
He waited in the sun. Kids streamed past in and out of a bathroom. All their noise seemed fuzzy and far away, behind glass.
I’d imagined what I’d do if I ever saw him again. Rush into his arms. Apologize for skipping out. Touch his face. Kiss him, kiss him.
Instead we stood with two feet of solid sunlight between us.
“Maise,” he said.
My head rose as if his voice had lifted it.
“Is that your real name?”
“Yes.”
“I am so sorry.”
I wasn’t prepared for this. I’d expected anger. You lied to me. You ran off. “Why?” I said.
He only shook his head.
“I’m eighteen,” I said quickly. Darted a glance at the kids around us. No one seemed to see anything out of the ordinary—just a teacher talking to a student. “I was eighteen then, too. So—don’t, you know. Be sorry.”
“Are you okay?”
I think I’m starting to be. “Yeah.”
He rocked on his toes. It made him seem young. God, how old was he, anyway? I figured past his twenties, but I had no real fucking idea. Two feet of sunlight wasn’t enough to block out that suede smell, tame and subtle now, but unmistakable.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “You tell me what you want. You can transfer to another class. Or I can—I can submit my resignation, right now. I’ll do it. Just give the word.”
He was talking crazy, and it made my heart expand like a balloon. You’re guilty. Flustered. You know this will be a disaster if we pretend like nothing happened. Because you still feel something.
The warning bell rang. One minute.
Evan didn’t move. His gaze focused unerringly on me.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I whispered, conscious of the emptying hall. “And I don’t want to transfer to another class.”
“Maise,” he said. Just my name.
“And I’m the one who’s sorry. I shouldn’t have left like that.”
Thirty seconds. Lockers slammed. Footsteps hurried.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” he said.
“It’ll be fine.” I swallowed every bit of spit in my mouth to add, “Mr. Wilke.”
We were staring at each other when the final bell rang. Together, we walked back into class.
#
It was both the longest and shortest hour and a half of my life, and at the end of it all I remembered was him saying, “See you Thursday,” and eyeing me a heartbeat longer than anyone else.
#
Wesley gaped at me. “Holy shit.”
I guess he was staring at my boobs. I’d totally forgotten them. I’d forgotten my entire body. It was just this cloud of blood floating beneath me, an occasional warmth.
“I see what that lady meant now,” Wesley said. “You’re very talented.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I said lazily. I could not stop grinning.
“What are you so happy about?”
I pushed my gigantic smile at him, knowing how my face looked: rapturous, flushed, the sort of pupil-dilating ecstasy that makes guys lose it. I didn’t care if it was teasing. I gave zero fucks. “Life,” I said. “Being alive.”
“Creepy.”
I laughed, and spun my lunch tray on the slide counter. A tater tot went sailing into oblivion.
Mr. fucking Wilke.
At the beginning, you’re happy to simply be near them. To look. To bask. It’s a gift fallen from heaven, accidentally nudged off a golden table, still glimmering with stardust.
I didn’t have insane ideas about janitor closets and locked doors yet.
I was just happy.
Wesley took out his phone while we ate and started filming. It’s expensive, records in HD. I was so high on myself I let him. I leaned against the cafeteria window, squinting, looking for Mr. Wilke’s car. It gave me an obscene thrill. My sweat was in that car. I’d come in that car. It was there somewhere, in the middle of all this wholesome kiddie shit.
My skin seemed to inflate with blood. I felt everything pressing against me: air, voices, eyes. Like being on X. I wanted to touch everything, be touched everywhere. I wanted everyone to know how alive I was.
Wesley watched me through his phone camera.
“What are you looking at?” I said.
“Escaped mental patient.”
I loomed close to the lens. He tried to edge away. “Joke’s on you,” I said. “I never escaped. This is the asylum.”
“You’re fucking crazy,” he said admiringly.
“Just you wait.”
#
On my way home I saw Mr. Wilke’s car in the lot, from a distance. I stood in the gravel, eyes out of focus, remembering how the leather stuck to my bare skin, until someone honked. I don’t remember biking home. I don’t remember anything. Was it even a day, or merely an interval of sunlight and bells and doors until I was alone, Mom out on a sale, the house blissfully quiet and dark? I took a bath for the first time in forever. Pinned my hair up, found an old bottle of orange oil. We always have candles. Count on a drug house for candles. I lit a few and slipped into water so hot it could strip me to the bone. Dragged a loofah along my shins, my upper arms, slow as sin. My skin needed stimulation.
My everything needed stimulation.
When I get myself off, it’s usually a utilitarian thing. Sex logic. The shortest path to what I want.
Not tonight.
I parted my knees, let a hand trail along my thigh and settle where gravity decided. My eyes closed. The memories came flooding back. The gritty, scratchy feel of his face against my breasts. That soft hot mouth pulling at my nipples. I sank lower in the tub, letting the weight of the water cover me, crush me, like his body had. Ran a finger over my lips beneath the water. It wasn’t the same. I craved the hardness of him, that smoky leathery smell, that overwhelming sense of masculinity all around me, forcing its way inside of me. Candlelight flickered at my eyelids. I touched myself the same way, lightly, flickeringly, warm water swirling around my fingertip. It could almost have been a tongue. I remembered him teasing me with the head of his dick, making me tell him my name first. I breathed faster. Bit my lip. Slipped my finger inside. Water lapped at the porcelain, a wet smack like skin. God, if only he was the one fucking me right now. This was his finger, I thought. Not mine. This was him, shoving me against the classroom wall, his hand inside my underwear, his finger snaking inside me, fucking me as I grew tighter around him. His thumb circling my clit without touching the tip. His finger sliding in to the knuckle, stiff and quick, that I took as deeply as I could, that made me ache in a place tucked so far inside it didn’t seem real, the root of me. His finger fucking me and filling my belly with heat that built higher and higher until I couldn’t contain it anymore and it spilled over in a white-hot rush. His hand making me come, making my thighs tighten and my voice cry out and my honey spread all over him, giving myself up to the water, to this man in my head.
#
Tuesday.
Carrot sticks and cream cheese.
Me spending way too much fucking time checking my hair between periods in case of an Evan sighting.
My P.E. teacher: “Yes, I’m a lesbian. No, that is not a job requirement.”
Wesley filming a fight in the hall. Blood gushing from a guy’s nose, a long red creature that kept crawling and crawling out, endless.
A sudden, cold rain drenching me on the way home. My invincible skin not even feeling it.
Wednesday.
The familiar smell of clove cigarettes.
A girl in history asking if I wanted to work on a report together.
Lingering storm clouds, turning the world below into zinc and aluminum.
Wesley showing me a video of a homeless guy downtown who kept crossing the same intersection, back and forth, back and forth.
Thursday.
#
He looked up when I walked in. I waited and let a few other kids go in first, so I could walk in alone. So he could look up nervously and see me and break into a smile, that smile I remembered from the car, the small, private one. He looked down quickly at his desk, but his lips were still curved.
“Maise.”
What the fuck was Wesley doing in my class?
“What the hell?” I said.
He pouted. “Nice to see you too.”
I sat down next to him and shot anxious looks between him and Mr. Wilke. Could he know? Was it some kind of intervention?
“What are you doing here?”
“I was on the waiting list. Someone dropped.”
“Oh.”
The disappointment in my voice didn’t go unnoticed. Wesley kicked the desk in front of him. I tested the edge of a fingernail with my teeth, a bad habit.
Worlds colliding. This never ended well on sitcoms.
“I just wasn’t expecting to see you here,” I said.
“Clearly.”
He didn’t look at me. I looked at my desk. Someone had carved RIHANNA = SLUT. I thought about adding CHRIS BROWN = DOMESTIC ABUSER, but Mr. Wilke probably would’ve caught me before I finished.
I was not going to entertain the insane detention fantasy that instantly popped into my mind.
All my stoked-up happiness had evaporated. I wasn’t the self-made teacher-seducing minx who’d walked in. I was a banal teenage girl with depressingly typical problems.
I glanced up at Mr. Wilke. It was like he had Maise radar: his eyes rose to mine immediately. Or maybe he’d been looking at me more often than I realized. I remembered the bathtub and blushed, but didn’t look away. I can do this, I thought. I can’t touch you but I can eye-fuck you. He wore his collar open today, his hair a little mussed, and I wondered if it was for me. I let my eyes move over him, shoulders to waist, then a slow return. His stayed steady on mine.
Movement in my peripheral vision. Wesley, training a video camera on me.
“Jesus,” I snapped, whirling away. “Will you fucking ask me first?”
“I was capturing a moment.”
My heart throbbed in my throat. “What moment?”
“Homicidal rage.”
Despite myself, I laughed, relieved. Wesley was not a bad guy. Socially awkward, probably a virgin, possibly latching on to me in an unhealthy way. But right then, that sort of teenage boy angst was comforting. Familiar. A simple toy I could pick up and understand, instantly. Ballast against Mr. Wilke and whatever was happening between us.
The final bell rang.
My teacher stood up, smiling. An open, ordinary smile. He spoke to us, asked questions, spent more time listening to our answers than he lectured. Showed us film clips on YouTube, tropes that popped up time and time again. Grinned and nodded enthusiastically when we began to recognize them for ourselves. Asked about our favorite directors, actors, composers. I managed to answer like a normal human being. I got into a debate with a guy about whether Alien was a feminist movie. Wesley pointed out that Ripley was originally written as a man, and someone called him Wesleypedia (brilliant), and Mr. Wilke let me go on a five-minute rant about Hollywood infantilizing women and not giving us a female-helmed Die Hard. He listened to us earnestly, his face filled with curiosity, amusement, respect. He was smarter than us but not smug. He shared his intelligence like a secret, making us conspirators in it. I could feel the whole class falling in love with him.
And every time his eyes touched me, the air jolted.
Heat lightning.
#
I’d started to follow Wesley out of class when Mr. Wilke called my name.
Wesley raised his eyebrows. I shrugged, pretending to have no idea what it was about. “I’ll catch up. Buy me a taco.”
“You’ve got five minutes until I eat it.”
“Pig.”
I was dragging it out. I was nervous. This could be something amazing, or this could be the turning-in-my-resignation/you’ll-be-better-off speech.
And this would absolutely be the first time I’d been alone with him since the night we met.
I turned around. He stood behind his desk, a solid obstacle preventing untoward contact between teacher and student.
“Close the door.”
My heart did a kickflip.
I closed it, lingered over the lock, left it open. Walked slowly toward his desk, wondering where I should stop. My knees hit cool steel.
“Hi,” he said.
We hadn’t talked until now. All that stuff in class had been between other selves.
“Hi.”
He seemed about to say something rehearsed, eyebrows up, mouth ajar, but he just looked at me and it melted away. And he kept looking.
“Is this weird for you?” he said finally.
“Yes. Is it weird for you?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. My stomach mimicked it. My center of gravity grew wings and took off.
“I keep hoping this is some elaborate practical joke,” he said.
I swallowed. “Life is an elaborate practical joke.”
“How do we make this work?”
My eyes widened.
“Shit,” he said, laughing. “I didn’t—I mean, how do we have a class together without it being weird?”
“I don’t think that’s possible.”
“If it ever gets too weird for you, tell me. Anything you need, I’ll do it. No questions asked.”
I hated that he was treating me like a victim. Someone he needed to make reparations to.
“What about you?” I said, propping my hip against the desk, folding my arms. “What happens if it gets too weird for you? You just get to pack up and leave?”
“It’s not like that.”
“What is it like?”
“And it’s already too weird for me,” he said, ignoring my question. “I have no memory of this week. There was the moment you walked into my class, and there’s now. Nothing else.”
My mouth opened, an involuntary breath coming free.
“But I don’t want to impose that shit on you. It’s not your problem.”
“Impose,” I said.
He winced. Put a hand on his desk, leaned into it. The space between us was finding ways to close, even with solid objects intervening.
“I don’t want to screw your life up, Maise.”
“Do you have a class fourth period?”
“No.”
I unfolded my arms and before he could do anything, I took that open collar in my hands, lifted on my toes, and kissed him across the aircraft carrier he called a desk. He didn’t fight. He kissed me back, oh so lightly, lips barely parting. Careful. He tasted like mint creme, kind of like Bailey’s. His face felt somehow rougher without stubble.
“This is dangerous,” he said against my mouth.
“I know,” I said.
He pulled me onto his desk and I swung my legs across to his side. We never stopped kissing. One hand at the back of my neck, the other gliding between my thighs. My legs tightened but my mouth opened in response, as if my wires had crossed. I thrust my hands into that hair I’d wanted to mess up so badly. I was short of breath but kept kissing him anyway, not getting enough of that creamy mint, those lips that were somehow firm and yielding at the same time, opening me, parting me. Giddily I thought, have you been eating mints on the off chance this would happen? Have you been obsessing about this as much as I have?
A knock at the door.
Hands instantly demagnetized. I hopped off his desk, smoothed my shorts. He dropped into his chair and crossed his legs. “Yes?” he called, deep and steady.
I stepped back to an appropriate distance, but our eyes never left each other.
Thank fucking god, it was just some random kid. “You got the projector in here?”
“No,” Mr. Wilke said. “It’s in 208.”
“Sorry.” The door closed.
We both breathed audibly.
“We can’t do this here,” he said.
“Where can we do it?”
He laughed. “Nowhere,” he said, but his words were at odds with his eyes.
“Don’t give me the fake Boy Scout routine,” I said. “You’re sitting there with a hard-on.”
My bravado was slightly spoiled by my breathless delivery. The way he looked at me from under his eyebrows, slightly sheepish, slightly intense, turned every girl part in me to jelly. I clenched my hands to keep them from idle evil.
“What happens now?” I said.
“I don’t know, Maise.”
Say my name. God, keep saying it.
“You won’t break me,” I said, my voice low. “I’m not a doll. I’m not fragile. And you can’t possibly screw my life up any more than it is.”
That furrowed look, the mournful angel observing human tragedy. “It’s not just about damage control. It should be more than that.”
“Then give me more,” I said.
The fourth period bell rang.
I walked out, but my heart stayed right there where I’d planted it, a tender little seed waiting for sun.
#
Friday looked like rain. That sneaky summer rain that waits for a still moment and sucks the air out of the world Backdraft-style and explodes the sky into water. For the first time in eons, Mom drove me to school. We sat in the van like strangers on a plane, making awkward small talk.
“You still talk to Melissa?”
“Who?”
“That Melissa girl you went around with. The blonde.”
“I haven’t talked to her since freshman year.”
“Oh.”
Traffic light. Yellow. Red.
“Got lunch money?”
“Yeah.”
“Where you get it?”
“Turned a trick.”
“Watch your fuckin’ mouth.”
Green.
“Can you get out here? I got a pickup.”
I opened the door wordlessly.
“Babe.”
I looked at my mother. She had my face, under crayon makeup. She had the hick accent I’d ironed out of my voice. She had the dead-end future I would never, ever have.
“Let’s go out this weekend. You and me.”
Drop dead.
“I’m going to be late,” I said.
“Love you.”
I slammed the door. Pictured it closing on her face. The clown stamp she’d leave on the glass.
You wondered why I lied to you, Mr. Wilke? Because I’m never going to be her.
#
“We’re going to do things differently in this class,” he said.
I sat next to Wesley, my attention drifting outside. A big old granddaddy black oak shivered in a sudden breeze, a thousand leaves clicking dryly, like castanets. The smell of gunsmoke drifted through the open windows. The world was tense and desaturated, waiting for the catharsis of rain. I knew exactly how it felt.
Wesley filmed Mr. Wilke. Mr. Wilke said it was okay, as long as he had the subject’s permission. Permission was very important.
Remember that.
“I’m not a believer in tests or quizzes or any of that bullshit,” our teacher said. Bullshit got my attention. I turned to him. Casual today, jeans and a plaid tee. He wore glasses sometimes, simple plastic frames, the narrow lenses emphasizing that crinkling thing his eyes did.
I was not the only girl in class who noticed this. Hiyam, a girl with skin the color of butterscotch toffee and hair like liquid midnight, kept crossing her legs this way, then that.
Wesley held the camera on Mr. Wilke, but he was looking at Hiyam now.
I rolled my eyes.
“I’m only giving you one assignment this semester,” Mr. Wilke continued. “You’re going to make a short film. Any genre, any style, any subject. It can be a documentary about your three-legged cat. It can be a classic sci-fi genre film.” His eyes touched me, and I blushed. “Whatever. It’s up to you. Minimum three minutes long, max ten. You can group up or tackle it solo. I strongly encourage you to group—that’s how most films get made.”
He leaned against his desk. I thought about that body laying atop mine on the long front seat of his car. Hiyam yawned, stretching her arms above her head. Cleavage shot.
Wesley dropped his camera.
“I’m so not working with you,” I murmured.
“However,” Mr. Wilke said, looking straight at me, raising all the blood to my skin, “if you’re some kind of mad genius auteur, you can go it alone. It’s all up to you.”
Hiyam narrowed her eyes at me, like a cat.
“This project is due by winter break. We’ll watch and grade them together. You may not ask me any questions about it. I’ve told you all you need to know. If you weren’t paying attention, I’ll post a copy to our class folder online.”
“Hear that, butterfingers?” I told Wesley.
He grinned. “Wanna be partners?”
“No.”
“I’ve already got an idea for ours. It’ll be sick.”
This boy, I swear.
I dallied when the bell rang, hoping Wesley would leave without me, but he waited, faithful, puppyish. On the way out the door I glanced back. Mr. Wilke watched me, his face angled partially away, shadowed. Our gazes struck like flint and steel. And I realized that gunsmoke smell wasn’t ozone. It was us. We burned.
#
Wesley ate my chicken nuggets as I stared into the parking lot, moon-eyed. Here and there a dash of rain shot down, a meteor streak of water. The sky clenched, desperately holding itself in. There’s something so terrible about wanting something you’ve already had. You know exactly what you’re missing. Your body knows precisely how to shape itself around the ache, the hollowness that wants to be filled.
Jesus Christ, this was only the end of the first week of school. No fucking way would I make it to winter break, let alone June.
“Hey Maise.”
I glanced at Wesley miserably.
You know, he wasn’t terrible-looking. He had character. Deep-set eyes, bruise blue, intense. Shaggy dark hair that always looked windblown. Big Adam’s apple, big mouth that flexed easily into a lupine grin. If he ever gained any weight or body hair, I might’ve—no, I still wouldn’t. But other girls would.
“What?” I said.
“You’ve got a crush on that teacher.”
My belly tightened. Crush was understatement of the year. But it might be good to know how it looked to an outsider. “Why do you think that?”
“Cuz you’ve been walking around with that I-want-to-be-fucked face all day.”
I laughed, and sat across from him, plucking a nugget from his tray. It looked vaguely like a deformed rooster. “Hiyam likes him too.”
Wesley made a disgusted sound.
I dipped into the honey mustard. “You don’t think he’s hot?”
“He’s a million years old.”
“You are so childish.”
“Would you seriously fuck a guy that old?”
Decision time. Do I let Wesley know the real me, or do I make up a persona for him, a suit of armor I can take on and off? As if there was a choice. As if I wasn’t burning up inside with this. Every time I opened my mouth, flame licked up my throat. I could have razed villages, kidnapped princesses.
“Yeah,” I said. “I would.”
His eyebrows went up. He leaned forward. “Have you? With a guy that old.”
I smiled enigmatically and ate my nugget.
“Holy shit.”
“You don’t even know what old is,” I said. “Mr. Wilke is probably like, thirty. That’s nothing.”
“He was in high school before we were born.”
My heart paused. Little factoids like that cut right to the bone of reality. “So?”
“So, he was probably fucking high school girls when we were little kids.”
“Why do you have to be gross?” I said, and shoved his tray at him. “You are such a boy.”
Wesley blinked at me. I think he understood what I actually meant. Not, You are so male. Rather, You are so young. He was still seventeen, a December birthday, but the gulf between us was more than five months. It was generations.
“What makes you such an authority?” he said.
I shook my head and stood up, the armor going on. But I didn’t want it to end like this. “I’ll be your partner,” I said. “If you still want me to.”
Wesley shrugged, eyes on the tray. “Yeah.”
“Good.”
We needed something, I thought. A thing we could do to show we hadn’t meant to hurt each other. On impulse, I flicked his earlobe. He jumped so hard the table rattled, and I laughed.
“By the way,” I said, “we’re officially friends now.”
#
I was waiting at his car when he came out. Most teachers stay late on Friday, catching up on papers, making plans to hit the bars together. Mr. Wilke headed for his car exactly fifteen minutes after the last bell.
I could tell when he saw me, the hitch in his step, the quick, guilty scan for witnesses. In the student lot kids yelled and honked as they took off for the weekend, but the faculty lot was quiet. I sat on the hood of his car, one foot propped on the fender beside it. A tiny, distorted version of myself swirled in the hubcap chrome: a Southern Snow White, all skim milk legs below my cutoffs, red toenails and sandals. The silver sky wrinkled with storm clouds.
He stopped in front of the hood. His hand tightened on the strap of his messenger bag, his knuckles white spurs.
“Do you need to talk?” he said in a muted voice.
I shook my head, slowly.
His chest rose and fell with a deep breath. He went to the driver side, unlocked it. Stood there unmoving.
“We can’t do this,” he said, but it sounded like he was talking to himself.
I hopped off the hood and he got in the car. But he just sat there, keys glinting in a limp hand. Then he turned and looked at me through the passenger window.
My eyes skipped to the dashboard. Somehow, in my daze, I hadn’t noticed it. The stupid velvet pony with its too-human eyes. I looked back at Mr. Wilke.
There was something very boyish about him at that moment, despite the five o’clock shadow, the blue rivers of veins mapping the back of his hand, the entire adult world he was part of. He looked lost. Maybe it was hypocritical, but the boyishness I barely tolerated in guys my age was exactly what drew me to him. He was like me: not fully part of the adult or child world. An exile, watching wistfully from the outside.
Something sharp and cold struck my shoulder.
A car drove past, a face turning to us.
We were utterly still.
Another icy dagger, this time hitting the crown of my head.
Then it all came at once, the sky exploding into water.
Thank you Jesus.
Mr. Wilke sat there watching me. He didn’t take his eyes off mine for a second, even when my hair plastered itself to my face and my shirt turned to cling film, and I stood motionless, expressionless, knowing I was going to win.
He leaned over and opened the door.
I got in.
Rain drummed on metal, a hundred wild heartbeats surrounding us. Mist came off my skin as if I was some ethereal creature. Our bodies faced forward, our faces angled toward each other.
“You kept it,” I said.
A long pause before he said, “It smelled like you.”
Everything solid in me evaporated, leaving only breath. I weighed nothing.
He started the car. I felt the engine rumble in my belly. I was a very thin, transparent piece of skin, everything going right through me. A sheet of nerve endings. I pressed my palms to the seat and drank in the smell: the old leather of the seats, the new leather of his skin, and, startlingly, me. My presence suffused his car. Rain and orange oil, the creamy body lotion that was coming off on the seat. I wiped wet hair out of my face and Mr. Wilke caught my hand.
I waited, wide-eyed, ready for anything.
His fingers curled around mine, painfully. His whole arm was rigid. Tension corded up into his neck, his jaw.
No words. Just that crushing grip.
He let go.
“Where do you live?”
It rained ruthlessly. I had no sense of time passing, of moving through space, only the zircon curtain clattering against the windows and the heat of his body so close to mine. I knew he was barely paying attention either because he almost ran a red. He slammed the brakes so hard the tires screeched and I caught myself on the dashboard, his arm tangling with mine.
“Killing us both is one way to solve it,” I said.
He drove more carefully, his hands strangling the wheel.
The closer we got to my street, the faster something accelerated inside of me, a terrifying urgency. How could I stall? How could I wring more out of this moment before it was over?
He parked several houses down from mine. I didn’t tell him to, and there was room in front of my house. My heart stuttered.
Car interior. Afternoon, heavy rain. Two people turn to each other. Raindrops crawl over the windows and paint shadows across their faces.
Action.
“Evan,” I said.
It was the first time I’d said his name since that night. It hit him like an electric shock, opening his eyes wider, stiffening his muscles. There was power in it and I wanted to play with that power. But not yet.
“I’m sorry I left that night,” I said.
Him and the pony looked at me sadly. I felt a childish urge to hug it.
“Why did you go?” he said.
There was no choice here of putting on the armor. This man had already seen the real me.
“Because I was scared,” I said. “Because you made me feel like being myself wasn’t such a bad thing. Like it might even be special. I didn’t know how to deal with it, and I panicked.”
I grimaced, hearing my words.
“This sounds stupid.”
My left hand lay on the seat. He covered it with his.
“No, it doesn’t. You’re being honest, so I’ll be honest, too.” His fingers contracted. “This feels wrong, Maise. I’m your teacher. It’s not just about getting caught. It’s how our lives will get screwed up even if no one finds out. Sneaking around, secrecy, paranoia—”
“You’re seriously underestimating how much I like espionage. And it’s just until school ends.”
“Is that how you want to spend your senior year?”
“I don’t want to spend it wondering what could have been.”
His expression turned morose, inward-looking.
“Evan,” I said again, and he focused on me. “If I hadn’t left that night, if this kept going…would you still think we should stop now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you really want to stop?”
“No,” he said softly.
There was no desperate collision of bodies this time. We moved in small increments, my fingers lacing through his, my neck craning toward him. My gaze fixed itself on his jaw, the place just under his lower lip where sandy stubble graded into smooth skin. His free hand came up and touched my mouth, traced it, fingertips pushing in, against my teeth. Again I grimaced. I saw him through my wet eyelashes, blurrily. Unbearable. All this restraint, everything furled and reined in, while the rain came down with pure wrath.
A car roared past, throwing up a tsunami against his door.
We both started. It must have broken the trance, because then his arms were around me and I was on my knees, kissing him, pressing his back to the window. I tasted glassy rain and my own wet hair tangling across my face. He didn’t stop me to fix the shot. He wanted me as I was, raw, unedited. His hand ran up the back of my bare leg, his fingers stroking the inside of my thigh. I gasped against his mouth. Lost a sandal. Rubbed my face against his jaw, hard, feeling the grit. Mark me, I thought. Give me something to take away with me. Something I can touch when I’m alone, remembering this.
When we stopped to breathe he took my face between his hands. “You don’t know what you do to me. I can’t look at you in that classroom.”
“You look at me all the time.”
“And do horrible things to you in my head.”
My blood was wildfire. I felt my swollen mouth, my sharp teeth digging into my lip, my dreamy half-shut eyes, and knew what I looked like to him. “Do them to me,” I said. “Take me somewhere.”
He gave a long, long sigh. His lips were bright red from my attentions. “I want to. You have no idea how much I want to.” Two fingers on my chin, pinching gently. “This is moving very fast. We should think it through. Think about how to be less conspicuous.”
My face lit up with dark glee. “I can be discreet. I can be Harriet the fucking Spy.”
His hands moved to my ribs. Palms cupping my breasts, rubbing my wet shirt into my skin. It chafed, but I didn’t want him to stop. I wanted this. Imprint yourself on me, I thought. It felt like he held all of me, gathered there next to my heart, small enough to fit in his hands.
“I wish I could take you away,” he said in a rough, eerie whisper.
I shivered. “How am I supposed to make it through the weekend?”
“I was wondering the same thing.”
We kissed for a while, soft, sweet goodbye kisses. We traded numbers. We touched each other’s faces, hands. The glass had gone opaque, glowing with fuzzy spots of color, the way a camera blurs background lights. We kissed again. I tried to think of another excuse to stay in his car, and he smiled, reading my thoughts.
“I don’t know what I’m doing with you,” he said.
“That’s okay,” I said. “Just don’t stop.”
I stood in the rain, watching his car go. A string tied to it looped around my heart and pulled tighter and tighter until it sheared clean through.