Chapter Four
Gwendolyn
"I'm leaving everything, moving to Hawaii, and becoming a hula dancer."
I fought out of my jacket and threw it onto the chair in front of me. The Reverend stared at me as though he wasn't sure what to do. I glared at him as I reached down to pull off my boots. The slushy melted snow outside had managed to creep into the boots and my socks were wet and cold.
"Oh, don't look at me like that," I said to him. "I'm sure that I could find an equal-opportunity luau that would be willing to take on a slightly dancing challenged, culturally inaccurate dancer. Maybe I could learn to be one of those fire dancers. I would definitely stay warm then."
The Reverend continued to stare at me and then gave a big, dramatic yawn. His long pink tongue unfurled from his mouth and then his little head dropped forward to rest on his paw. I couldn't expect much more from him. After all, The Reverend Holy Frijole was just a cat. He couldn't really understand the intricacies of my deep-seated hatred for the first few weeks of the year. By this point, I was tired of the dropping temperatures, tired of the gross, partially melted snow, and tired of the overall malaise and funk that settled over after the holiday season came to an end. I once had really high hopes for this season. It had started with a particular pop after my one-night stand with the gorgeous stranger from the bar, but as high as that peak was, the rest of the season kind of tumbled. The sparkle and excitement from that encounter had faded and by the time the New Year rolled around, I was right back to where I was in January of every year. I never really understood why I felt this way at the beginning of each year. Even though I didn't have anyone to celebrate the holidays with other than my parents for the last few years, I really loved Christmas. It was my favorite time of the year just as it had been since I was a little girl, and I looked forward to it for months. While other people were still gorging on candy corn and seeing just how long the pumpkins would last sitting on their front porch, I was scoping out the first bottles of eggnog and unraveling strands of lights. Every year I was excited. Every year I looked forward to decorating and shopping and singing carols and all those other things that made November through December the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.
At the end of the day, however, it was all just another reminder of the fairly solitary life that I lived. I spent time with my parents. I went to parties and gatherings. I attended the abysmal mandatory staff parties with other teachers. When all of that was over, however, I was essentially just sitting around my house with The Reverend surrounded by a lot of fanciness. I somehow forgot how that felt every year. Some sort of Christmas magic would come over me and I would lose all memory of those long, lonely evenings. I would remind myself of all the reasons why I didn't want a relationship and tell myself that I could enjoy the holiday season just fine all by myself. And when that happened, the decorations would come out and it would all start again. I would have fun at the parties. I would be nostalgic with my parents. I would fill a tiny stocking with catnip and toys for The Reverend.
Then Christmas came and went.
As much time and effort that I put into decorating, I couldn't bring myself to let the decorations stay up for long after Christmas. Seeing all the decorations up around the house somehow made it even sadder that the season was over, as if they reminded me of the things that I didn't do that I had intended to, or all the ways that my Christmas season had lacked the resemblance to a Victorian Christmas card that I so hoped one day I would be able to achieve. At that point, my sense of control and organization would kick in and I would have the undeniable urge to take down every last remnant of the Christmas season before the new year came. It would take weeks for me to put up all the decorations, but by December 30th all visual representations of the holiday were totally removed from my home. That just left me with a cold, grey end of winter.
I was feeling particularly miserable at the beginning of that January. I had promised myself that I was going to be more social after the resounding success of my romp with the stranger and had even managed to make a date for New Year's Eve. That date, however, had been nothing short of an epic failure and hadn't even made it all the way to midnight. Instead, I had rung in the New Year in a pair of stretchy pants and a sweatshirt and kissed The Reverend when the ball dropped. Now, I love my cat and he had gotten me through some really tough times, but I wasn't convinced that a kiss from him was enough to really set me up for a good New Year. Now I was in the throes of the miserable weather and the downswing of the holiday season, I was just ready to put it all behind me. My temper tantrum in response to stepping into the half-frozen puddle in front of my house aside, I had committed myself to making the most of the year ahead of me. School was going to be starting up again the next day and I had a lot of ideas that I was excited about for my class. My first few months at the high school had been better than I had even hoped for, and I was looking forward to finishing up the year strong and getting ready for the next. I told myself that, soon enough, spring would return, and I would be able to shake myself out of this gloom.
I was peeling off my wet socks and heading for my bedroom to change into something dry and warm when I suddenly remembered that I would be getting a new student. I knew that it couldn't be easy to move in the middle of a school year, particularly for sophomores in high school. I hoped that my new student would fit in with the rest of the class and that I would be able to do something to make this difficult transition as easy for him as possible.
Dressed in my favorite sweat suit and slippers that closely resembled a pair of black boots with a neon geometric pattern, I shuffled my way back into the living room. I picked up the coat that I had thrown to the side and brought it over to the closet to hang up. Feeling like I had regained order in the house, I looked to The Reverend.
"So, what sounds good for supper?" I walked into the kitchen and opened the freezer. My eyes scanned the assortment of frozen meals that were stacked neatly along one side. "Turkey or macaroni and cheese?"
He turned his head away from me, which I took as an indication that I should celebrate my last evening of break before the school year started again with a container of gooey macaroni and cheese. Once the container came out of the microwave, I brought it into the living room and curled up in the middle of the couch to binge watch a show that I had probably seen ten times before. As the scene on my TV went from a fairly innocuous image of people dancing in a fantastically romanticized nightclub to strangers clawing each other’s clothes off, my mind wandered as it had many times before to the man I had met the week of Thanksgiving. I had gone to that bar with the full intention of picking somebody up or getting picked up. I had wanted the excitement. I had wanted the thrill.
Let's be real honest here, I had wanted the orgasm.
I never would have been able to concoct a man like Ethan, though. His body was like nothing I've ever seen and the hunger in his eyes was still burned into the back of my mind. When I close my eyes, I could still feel his fingertips on my skin and his lips pressed against mine. There had been many nights that I had spent fantasizing about him and wishing that I had lingered in the hotel room for just a couple of hours longer.
Just as I had hoped I went into school the next day with a renewed sense of optimism and hope. It was as though some of the fog had lifted and I could see the potential that was lying ahead. I was looking forward to my lessons for the day and to meeting the new student who would join my class. I reviewed the roster when I first got into the classroom and noticed that the student’s name was Jason Baxter. It didn't give me any more information about him, but as the teacher of what would be his first class in his new school, I felt a sense of responsibility toward him. I wanted him to feel welcome and to get him involved as quickly as I could. I knew that even though these students thought that they were all grown up and ready to take on the world, they were still so young and vulnerable. Something like having to move away from their school and their friends and starting again could be incredibly difficult for them. They may never admit it, but just feeling included and accepted would be extremely important to him.
I greeted my students as they began to stream into the classroom. They smiled and I saw all the different thoughts and emotions that they were experiencing. Some of them had the tired, drawing expressions of teenagers who had been pushed into adult lives way too soon and had spent their Christmas break working as hard as they could. Others looked tired but lacked the stress, telling me that instead of working, they had spent their break partying. Still, others met my eyes and smiled, their faces bright and cheerful, ready to get started. These were the overachievers. The ones who have been born for something so much more than the small town of Silver Lake could give them. They had been striving their entire lives for the success that seemed promised to them. What I didn't see was a new, unfamiliar face. I waited for the first bell of the school day that indicated that homeroom had begun. I waited a few minutes longer for the tardy bell to ring. Still no new student. I tried not to worry. He was new, which meant that he may not be familiar with the area and could have gotten lost on his way. He also could still be in the office trying to work through registration papers and other formalities before getting started. I had noticed that his name also showed up on a class roster for later in the day, so I expected that I would meet him then.
The homeroom was only the first twenty minutes of the day, and I spent all of it talking to my students about their time away from school. What had begun as a carefree conversation soon dissolved into a debate over who got better gifts and which parties were the most fun. Somewhere in the midst of it all, a girl named Brittany bemoaned the fact that her father had chosen the wrong new cell phone for her and a boy named Nathan recounted the dizzying amount of alcohol that he had consumed on New Year's Eve with seemingly no regard to the fact that he was sitting within five feet of his teacher. The bell rang, and I shouted over their voices to tell them that they were dismissed. Several of them said goodbye to me as they streamed out of the classroom and I couldn't help but feel a small sense of victory. I had come into the school brand new, only just having graduated from college two years before. Some of the students looked older than me and I had worried that I wouldn't be able to gain their tolerance, much less their respect. But here I was just a few months into the year and I not only felt as though they saw me as a teacher on par with the others but that they actually liked me. That was what I felt like all teachers hoped for at the beginning of their careers. It was aspirations of helping to mold young minds and craft successful futures that fueled people into careers in education. It certainly wasn't the paycheck.
There had been times since the first day of school that I had caught myself sitting behind my desk staring out at the faces of my students, wondering almost aimlessly about the futures of each of them. I wondered which were going to be the ones that would go off to college. Which would follow through with the plans that they had had since they were young children and find themselves in the careers that they had always planned? Which would change their minds completely when they got into college and embark on journeys that they never could have imagined? Which might not make it at all? It was that last thought that was always the hardest and the one that I tried to chase from my mind anytime that it appeared. I had seen destruction. I had seen the way that life could tear people down and leave them barely resembling who they had been. I didn't want to think that any of the children sitting in the classroom in front of me could fall victim to life the way that I had seen happen before. That thought always sent a chill down my spine. It reminded me of bright eyes and laughing smiles, a young ambitious man who thought he finally had the world at his feet, till the darkness and secrets that he held deep within him eventually came out to consume him.
I pushed the thought away and continued on with my day. Finally, it was time to teach the class that should have my new student in it. I watched as my usual class streamed into the room and took their places at their desks. I listened to the bells. It played out almost exactly like homeroom and again the new student didn't appear. I checked the roster again just to make sure that changes hadn't been made, but the name Jason Baxter was still there on my class list. My next period after that class was lunch and as soon as the bell rang to dismiss the class I made my way to the front office to talk to the principal.
"Hello, Gwendolyn," Mr. Jefferson said as I stepped into his office. "How is your first day back been?"
"It's been going pretty well," I said, feeling slightly uneasy. "Have you heard anything about the new student that I was supposed to have?"
The tall, almost skeletally thin principal looked up at me from the desk where he was sifting through papers. I would never understand how a man as seemingly flighty and disorganized as he was had risen through the ranks to become a principal of a high school. He was kind and compassionate, almost to a fault, but there was never a time when I saw him that he didn't seem at least slightly flustered, and as though his thoughts were a few steps behind or a few steps ahead what was actually happening in that moment.
"New student?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "Jason Baxter? He was supposed to be in my homeroom and in History. He hasn't been in either one of them today. I thought that he was supposed to start when the year started up again."
Mr. Jefferson looked at me as if he was trying to process what I was saying, then drew in a breath as though almost startled by remembering the new student.
"Oh, yes. Jason Baxter. We've been looking forward to welcoming him. He wasn't in either class?"
"No," I said, shaking my head. "Have you seen him in the office today?"
"No," Mr. Jefferson said. "I had intended to meet with him this morning, but time got away from me. I think that he and his father met with Mrs. Applegate, though. You should ask her."
I nodded.
"Thank you," I said.
I walked out of the principal's office and headed toward the office of the vice principal just down the hallway. She, too, was sitting behind her desk, which was not as chaotic as Mr. Jefferson's. Mrs. Applegate's desk was streamlined and calm. Not for the first time, I wondered why she was still in the vice principal position and he was the principal. I figured that it was because her role often entailed more actual interaction with the students and the parents which benefited from her organization and control, while he performed much like a figurehead of the school and charmed people with his charismatic and unassuming personality.
"Good afternoon, Gwendolyn," she said when she noticed me at her door.
"Hi," I said. "I just wanted to check in with you about the new student Jason Baxter."
"Yes," she said. "I had a brief meeting with him and his father this morning before classes started. Is there a problem?"
"I hope not," I said. "It's just that he is on the roster for two of my classes and I haven't seen him today. I just wanted to check to make sure that he hadn't been moved out of my classes."
The vice principal looked up at me with concern in her eyes.
"You haven't seen him?" she asked.
"No," I said, starting to feel frustrated having to repeat myself. "He was supposed to be in my homeroom and in my History class last period and he did not arrive for either one of them."
She stood and came around the desk.
"Have you talked to any of the other teachers?"
"No. When he was missing from homeroom this morning I assumed that it was because it was his first day and he was getting used to the school. I came here directly after the second class that he missed."
She nodded, looking toward the still-open door of her office.
"I'll page the teachers for his other classes and check to see if he was in either of them."
A few minutes later the other teachers had confirmed that Jason Baxter had not shown up for any of his classes that day. I was feeling myself slide between fear that something had happened to him and frustration at the thought that he was an angry teenager who might have tried to run back to his hometown. Mrs. Applegate told me that she would handle the situation and encouraged me to go use the last few remaining minutes of my lunch to get something to eat, but I couldn't think about anything other than this student being missing. I wandered the nearly empty hallways and thought that I had scoured the entire school when I noticed a door leading to the outside was being propped open by a rubber wedge. This school had not been overlooked by the nearly fanatical policy changes that have been put into place in response to the violence that had erupted in schools in recent years, as was evidenced by the sign on the door that declared it off limits during normal school hours and insisted the door always remain closed. I walked toward the door with the intention of removing the wedge when I noticed that someone was sitting just outside. I pulled my light blue sweater closer around myself in response to the cold air that was rushing in through the open door and peered out at the student.
The young man sat on the sidewalk with his back against the brick wall of the school and his knees pulled up to his chest. He was wearing black jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt that he had pulled down over his forehead, so I could barely see his face. His hands were clasped in front of him and I saw that he was wearing black fingerless gloves and the skin that was exposed looked dried as though chapped by the wind.
"Shouldn't you be in class?" I asked.
He didn't bother to look up at me, but I saw him shake his head slightly.
"Maybe," he said. "But not here."
"What do you mean?"
"I should be in class at my old school."
A realization suddenly hit me.
"Jason? Jason Baxter?"
He glanced up at me and I saw a distinct expression of disdain in his eyes.
"Who wants to know?" He asked.
People actually said that?
"I do," I said. "I'm Ms. Martin. I'm your homeroom teacher and your History teacher. You haven't been in either class today."
He scoffed and turned again to look back out over the parking lot.
"I know."
"Why haven't you?"
"Because I didn't want to."
"So, you decided instead that you were just going to come sit out here in the cold and stare out over a nearly empty parking lot?"
He shrugged.
"If you didn't want to be in class, why didn't you go somewhere? Why did you just sit here?"
Was I seriously asking him why he hadn't run away from school? I think that qualifies as contributing to the delinquency of a minor and am fairly certain that that's frowned upon in teachers.
"No car," he said. "Besides, I don't know where I am. I just moved here."
I nodded.
"I know. Come on, you need to come inside."
"Why?"
"Because it's still the middle of the school day and you're supposed to be in class."
"I told you, I don't want to."
"I don't really think that matters," I said. "Unless you've turned 18 recently, by law you have to be in school. You don't have the choice. And besides, three-quarters of the people in that building don't want to be here. If they have to be, you have to be. Come on."
I was genuinely surprised when he let out a labored sigh and climbed to his feet. I was fairly certain that most of his motivation to go inside balanced on the cold temperature and quickly worsening wind, but I decided to take a little credit for it anyway. Maybe later in the year we would look back at this as the defining moment of our mutually beneficial student-teacher relationship. Or I had just rewritten my life as an inspirational Women's Network movie.
As resistant as Jason had been when I found him outside, he became nothing short of defiant by the time we reached the office and I handed him over to Mr. Jefferson. I wasn't sure what the principal was going to do to handle the situation, but at this point, I was approximately thirty seconds away from the lunch bell ringing and I didn't want to risk my class sitting unsupervised in a classroom. I told Jason that I expected to see him the next day in homeroom and then hurried back to my classroom. The day had begun so optimistically, but now I felt suddenly drained and frustrated. My mood didn't improve through the afternoon and by the time the final bell rang, I was exhausted. I was walking down the main hallway toward the doors to the faculty parking lot when one of the other teachers scurried up to me.
"Hey, Gwendolyn," she said.
"Hi, Sarah," I said.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"Just a long day," I said. "I think that the break kind of got the best of me."
She nodded.
"I know how that feels. But this is just your first year. You'll get used to it."
"I hope so. I just want to go home, take off these shoes, and relax for a while."
"Well, don't relax for too long, you don't want to forget to make the trifle."
I looked at her strangely.
"Trifle?" I asked.
Sarah's eyes widened and I realized that I had forgotten something.
"You have to make the trifle! That's supposed to be the centerpiece of the dessert table."
Her near-panic told me that whatever it was that I had forgotten was important.
"I'm sorry," I said. "What dessert table?"
Her eyes widened even further, and I worried that they might pop out.
"For the welcome party tonight! How can you have forgotten? We've been planning this for weeks."
I suddenly remembered what she was talking about and I groaned.
"Oh, that. I'm sorry, Sarah. I remember now."
In all fairness, it had mostly been her that had been planning this party for the last several weeks. She had taken up the cause of welcoming the town's new fire chief and roped me into helping arrange for a celebration at the community center that evening. I had promised to make my signature trifle for the dessert table and should have started the day before. The fact that none of it was made yet meant that I was going to have no time to relax when I got home from work. Instead, I was going to have to head straight into the kitchen and hope that I could put it together fast enough.
"Don't be late," Sara warned. "I need your help finishing the decorations."
I nodded, wondering how I had gotten myself so involved in this. Then I remembered that it was part of my push for more socialization that had occurred right before my miserable New Year's Eve date. I chastised myself for my reaction as I walked out of the school and toward my car. I had been excited about the prospect of the party and looked forward to helping Sarah get ready for it when we first started talking about it. I knew that the way that I was acting right now was just a reaction to the rough start with my new student and feeling like my aspirations to be the best teacher that I could be were being threatened. Actually, the way I was acting right now was just plain obnoxious and if I wasn't me I probably wouldn't like myself very much. With that thought in mind, I got behind the wheel of my car, pulled down my rearview mirror, and stared at myself. I plastered on a smile and kept it there until I started to feel some of the funk lifting from me. It was definitely a fake-it-til-you-make-it-situation, but it was working, and I was going to go with it.
The Reverend was waiting for me when I got back to the house and I took a few moments to cuddle with him and feed him a bowl of his favorite food before I got started on the trifle. He took a few mouthfuls and looked at me like he was forgiving me for my snippy mood recently. While the cake was baking, and the cream was chilling, I took a shower and then stood in front of my closet contemplating what I should wear to the party. I knew that it was just a community center gathering, but at the same time, it was an exciting evening for Silver Lake. The good old boy system had been alive and well for a long time in the town which meant that the fire department seemed largely like a hereditary monarchy. Things have gotten shook up in recent years, however, and with the welcoming of this new fire chief, it seemed that there might be a refreshing change coming. Besides, any time that there was some fresh blood in such a small town it was an exciting prospect, if for nothing more than the novelty of it all.
I had managed to heed Sarah's warning, but only just barely, scooting into the community center with just minutes to spare before the time that I told her I would arrive. I was balancing the finished trifle in one hand and unbuttoning my jacket with the other when she rushed up to me.
"Thank goodness! You finally made it!"
"I'm not even late," I pointed out.
"Well, things are going downhill fast. The balloons are the wrong color. The crepe paper isn't twisting properly. And the jello mold didn't set enough so now it's leaking all over the platter."
I wasn't entirely sure what a tizzy was, but I felt fairly certain that if there was anyone who had ever had one, it was her. Sarah seemed absolutely at the edge and I reached out with my free hand to pat her on the shoulder.
"It's going to be alright," I told her. "What color are the balloons?"
"Powder blue," she said.
I looked at her strangely.
"I thought that you wanted blue," I said.
"Baby blue!" Sarah wailed.
I patted her shoulder again.
"I think it's going to be alright," I repeated. "As for the jello mold, didn't you say that you were making a fire truck?"
"Yes," she said.
"Then we'll just tell everybody that the hose is leaking."
She didn't look completely convinced, but I didn't give her a chance to respond. I skirted around her and headed toward the dessert table where I deposited the trifle in the center. Then I turned and surveyed the rest of the room, trying to identify where I could be most helpful running interference between Sarah and the other people who might not know the level of perfectionist party planner crazy that was about to hit them.