er thoughts periodically turned to suicide because she could barely breathe under the weight of her own mediocrity. Upon reaching this conclusion, however, she thought it such a clever turn of words, that life once again seemed worth living, and she forged on in begrudgingly average style. Generally, these incidents of pensive morbidity occurred on the drive home, when traffic was thick enough to bore you, but not quite thick enough to get out a book and give up paying attention altogether.

 

he hated books on tape. The radio was switched to NPR (classical music hour) because that’s what intellectual adults listened to—which she was, though I had recently come along to challenge her position as such.

“I hate classical music.”

“Why?”

“The same reason you hate books on tape: Principle.”

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to be rude?”

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to give students a ride home from school when you feel sorry for them because they missed the bus?”

“No. Why?”

“I couldn’t imagine.”

I liked NPR for the same reason she did, but I certainly wouldn’t admit it. She, however, was so steeped in stereotype that her eyes were like droopy, wet tea bags. She’d been upset that day about her hair being cut too short. I couldn’t blame her because it didn’t help the case for her not being a lesbian, which everyone thought she was. I knew she wasn’t because I got such a rise out of her. It wasn’t by any means of attraction, just the general maleness of me.

“What do you listen to then?”

“Oh, mostly political rock.” I hated political rock.

“Figures.”

I had to admire her. She didn’t act like this was terribly interesting, or that she couldn’t quite identify with my hopes and dreams, but was willing to put up with listening to them. No, she very outwardly assumed that I was an irreparable little turd. And of course I was, because sophomore year in high school makes every one completely and legitimately vile—even a charming young man like myself, for I had then assumed that a certain potential for amicability lie dormant somewhere deep within, to be awakened when least expected or desired.

“Why do you have a razor on the floor of your car?” There were many other things in addition to the cheap, pink Bic, but mostly papers, water bottles and dirt.

“In case I want to commit suicide on the way home.” And I laughed at that because it was funny.

“Right, but that’d be such a shame when you’re probably due pretty soon for that huge retirement check.” She glared at me, which was really the point anyway. Then she realized it and smiled.

“Yeah, and then I’m moving to Acapulco to live it up.”

“Gambling, tequila and a different piece of ass every night, I’d assume.”

“Pretty much.”

It was good because she knew how to play the game, and all the more enjoyable because she knew that it was, in fact, a game: nothing more or less. She was aware, which is generally something I admire in females and she probably knew that too.

“So do you have some Latin lover stashed off somewhere?”

“Yeah, a few. What about you?”

“No, I’m just sort of hanging out with this Mindy chick. She’s okay.”

“The one with braces?” The words were cleverly shadowed in insult, like an artist would sketch them under a premeditated notion of afternoon light. In her defense, I had rectified a falsehood she was teaching the class earlier that day and could understand her need for personal vindication.

“Yeah, why?”

She inhaled sharply through closed teeth, making a wet, hissing noise of anticipated chagrin.

“No reason.”

I left it at that and we drove along in silence past the Wendy’s and the Taco Bell; and then the Chapter 11 where I assumed she spent a lot of her time. That made me depressed—thinking of her alone in a discount bookstore, probably passing by the children’s section—so I decided to talk again.

“So why history?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. Why’d you want to study history?”

“Well, I didn’t. I was a ballet major.”

“No shit?”

“No shit at all.”

“Great public education system we’ve got going here.”

“That’s funny.” She paused, probably to take a mental drag of the cigarette she should have been smoking, because that’s what I would have done in her place. Maybe for her though it was different. Maybe her entire life was flashing before her eyes in that second and I would never know because I was sitting two feet away from her brain instead of inside it like I wanted to be.

Imaginary smoke trailed out of her mouth.

“No, I was a ballet major for three years and then I broke my knee.”

“Yeah, I guess that was back before they knew how to fix them.”

“Shut up.” The interjection was more mannerly than angry. Like saying You’re welcome. “I damaged it beyond repair and I wanted to do costume design, but my parents were footing the bill for college and they said Do something useful. So we compromised on history.” She had finished, though I assumed the story hadn’t.

“But you didn’t answer my question: Why history?”

“Well, I guess I didn’t want to be repeating other people’s mistakes.”

“And have you?”

I could feel the air move away from me with the deep breath she drew and I thought about possible asphyxiation, but recognizing this as an impossibility, I kept silent.

“It turns out that what you know has absolutely no influence over the person you turn out to be. Or the life you live.”

“Deep.”

“Yeah, thanks. Where am I going anyway?”

“Oh, it was two lefts back.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“Not supposed to talk while the teacher’s talking. Guess I should have raised my hand.”

 

car horn reverberated through my head, and I was pretty happy to still be alive when she turned right, back out onto the street.

“You’re a pretty awful driver.”

“I guess so. It’s never really bothered me.”

One time Dad and I were getting burgers for dinner when Mom was gone and it was just us. We always eat take-out anyway, but I don’t know why except that my folks really hate doing dishes and can’t convince me to like them either. He ran into a friend of his and they’re exchanging greetings and my mind is totally focused on this month’s kid’s meal toy like any normal, blue-blooded American child, so I’m not paying much attention. Dad says to him, “Really, man, how’ve you been?” and I can tell they haven’t seen each other in a fair amount of time. The guy, who must have been about ten years younger than my father, says, “Oh, you know, man; just drivin’ around with my seat-belt off, prayin’ I’ll get in a wreck.” But I didn’t understand why now, every moment that she and I weren’t speaking, I saw the man’s long, blonde ponytail dangling from the back of her head where I normally should see a short, gray bob, just where the neck rises up to meet the skull and you can almost see the bones inside as they lock in a kiss.

“So what is the deal with the Mindy girl?” We were safe on the road and she made a right onto Briarcliff, which wasn’t the right street, but I could probably figure some way to work it.

“Well, reckon every stud’s gotta have a nice little mare to call his own, huh?” I nudged the air next to her upper arm. My imitation of the prototypical backwoods Southern gentleman was thankfully not lost on her, but I didn’t catch what she said next because I kept thinking about men like that driving around in perfectly nice pick-up trucks without seat-belts. It was distracting. I knew she was jealous of Mindy, but it was complicated and I hadn’t quite figured out why. Like a child looking at clouds, I just understood that it was there, tangible and real. I then contemplated the possibility of life as a series of deceptively solid clouds that you misinterpret completely until that fateful day someone comes along to tell you, They’re just condensation, old chap; and they dissipate slowly, forever leaving you in a harsh sunny day. It was pretty profound, and I silently congratulated myself because it was profound observations such as these which kept me ensconced in the somewhat trendy role of tragically bright but completely unmotivated youth. It was a fairly simple role to play, and so accurate that I almost became certain of its truth.

“Oh! Make a right here.”

“Yeah, sure.” She swung a sharp right, even though she had enough time to slow down and do it properly.

“You’re trying to impress me with your horrible driving.” My tone was a desert, dry and flat—something I’d perfected out of sheer necessity over the years.

“No, I’m not.” And with the sand of my desert, her words burned a brilliant piece of smooth, calm glass. I thought her tone could shatter and break us both, but I must have been right, because she was blushing.

“Yeah, you are because you think I’m this young punk who’s gonna hate you if you don’t drive like an ass-hole.”

“That’s completely untrue.” However, it was apparently not false, which was troubling.

I could swear she was taking a drag of that invisible cigarette now, and there really should be something you can do with your hands besides put them on the ten-o’clock-two-o’clock when you’re trying to prove to someone that you really do drive like a reckless teenager. She must have thought the same thing because she rolled down the window and propped up her elbow. Even though it’s a million degrees in Georgia by the middle of May.

I was mentally undressing her with a sort of perverse sense of duty, because it was not a pleasant task. However, it was simply and unfortunately inescapable. I had entered into a contract long ago with my hormones, clearly (though inexplicitly) stating that I would do what they absolutely demanded—which included suffering the ghastly and inexplicable thoughts of adolescence—as long as they didn’t needlessly embarrass me. It was working so far.

“What’s my next turn?” She smiled unexpectedly, and the creases framing her eyes burst forth like rays of the early evening sun. When I looked at her they were spreading brightly out over the hills and valleys of her sagging breast and pale tummy, all the way down to the cliffs of her elephant knees which explained why she self-consciously wore long pants. In my bedeviled mind, her forearms and right thigh displayed spotty discoloration, looking as though she’d spilled the morning’s cup of creamy, sweet coffee on her skin. I found myself strangely wanting to take a thick, pink artist’s eraser and rub out her mistakes. She was trim though, in a way that I guessed ex-almost professional dancers are.

“Up here make a left on Cliffpine.”

She turned in a more normal fashion.

“It’s the blue one up there with the stupid cow on the mailbox.” I hated the cheerful, dancing vision of bovinity with its chuckling snout and grotesque udders. Mom probably picked it up at a recent yard sale, thinking it would amuse the mailman, whom I know she considered to have a dreadfully menial job. How kind of her.

She pulled into the driveway.

“So when you said that about not repeating mistakes…don’t you think you’ve done pretty well? I mean, by history’s standards anyway.”

“Why don’t you ask all the single childless women in history.” I was silent for a moment—struck somewhere in the pulmonary region by a realization which had been expertly creeping in to steal the words away from us both: that truth requires no verbal affirmation.

I recovered rather quickly, however.

“Could I interest you in some pot?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You know: Mary Jane, dope, reefer—I think that’s what they called it back in your day.”

“Would I be completely out of line in calling that a bad idea?”

“Oh no, not at all. It’s pretty much the worst idea ever. I just thought I’d be hospitable; I’m really grateful for the ride.”

“Don’t you have parents?”

“Well yeah, but they’re out of town right now. It’s their twentieth and they went scuba diving in Tahiti.”

“I’m assuming that this marijuana is less fictional.”

“Oh yeah, it’s totally legit. Birthday present.” I deftly opened a complicated system of zippers in my backpack and pulled out a short, thin stick of wrinkled white paper, as well as a lighter. Holding it to my mouth and breathing in the soothing, fiery smoke, I held it out to her and awaited the puff which she was inevitably dying for.

She shook her head with a look of apology, cloudy gray spreading over her entire person, and I climbed out of the car with all the confidence I could muster, which amounted to very little considering that I had just offered a blunt to my American History teacher. I grabbed my belongings and said my thanks while slamming the car door. I thought I saw her smile though, through the obscurity that afternoon light creates on a windshield.

 

he only made it to the end of the driveway and then pulled back up. The window opened cautiously, like a castle drawbridge being lowered to the ambassadors of the enemy.

“And you’re sure you’re not expecting them until later?”

“Much later, actually.” I lied, because it was really more like a couple of hours. No reason to worry her.

“Ah screw it, get it.”

 

ost teachers and their pet students experience a camaraderie which is subject to superficial cheerfulness and a certain amount of appropriate distance. Our relationship was different, because we shared an outspoken closeness and binding mutual respect, but it was respectably encased in a superficial hatred. She knew I didn’t give a damn about her class, and for some reason—which I then attributed to my unsurpassed, however unappreciated, genius—she truly seemed to enjoy talking with me. Out conversations were largely composed of offensive material. I bluntly criticized her teaching, which she knew promoted a menial and uniform way of thinking, and it response, she informed me that I would never succeed in this world because I couldn’t get off my self-appointed pedestal for one minute to concentrate on anything even minutely constructive. Homework, for instance. Neither could deny the accuracy of such shrewd judgments, and the truth of our insults made them acceptable and almost masochisadistically welcome, thought often secretly (very secretly) painful. Not a word was breathed in self-defense.

In the course of our first student-teacher conference, I claimed that she was taking out her anger on my grade because she was dissatisfied with being an unmarried, underpaid, almost above-average public school teacher. She told me that I was acting out in class because my parents were too involved in their nearly perfect lives to give their only offspring (who was, ahem, so obviously a mistake) any worthwhile attention. We forged an unspoken agreement that she would recognize my intellect and support it—though not publicly—if I would, at the very least, make an effort to pass the class, thereby freeing her from any consequential embarrassment among the administrative bodies. First period American History was a daily stand-up routine, the entire class witnessing out astonishingly candid remarks and we two enjoying the slightly uncomfortable feeling which permeated the stale, windowless classroom and colored the whitewashed world of rich, white, suburban public school.

 

o really, I used to smoke up all the time.” I relished her need to express the utter coolness of her former life.

“Why’d you quit?”

“Woke up in the wrong bed one morning.”

It was meant to be a profound and shocking confession; meant to establish a deep and forbidden bond of friendship between us. It was a carefully placed offering upon the altar of dignity which would allow us transcendence beyond these earthly titles. To recognize once and for all that we were cut from the same cloth, she and I. However, it was more than that: she wanted me to hold her hand.

“Just from smoking pot?” I replied, not bothering to disguise the incredulity in my voice, because I had been trained that holding a lady’s hand is rude unless she holds yours first.

“No.” There was much more though. It was like a cat pawing at her insides, whining for attention and release; to roam in the yard. But like the well-trained owner of a well-trained pet, she couldn’t quite open the door and discharge it into the uncertainty of a world beyond the back door.

She hadn’t yet recognized the origin of my flamboyant arrogance—none other than a particular deep-seeded and very secluded insecurity; and if she couldn’t even bother about understanding this simple and unavoidable truth, I was certainly not going to let her unleash all of her own upon me. It was less likely still that she would guess—even in the very back of her mind—the root of this insecurity and why I needed so desperately to disguise it. Therefore, she would not begin to assume that I was dying for someone to figure it out.

I took a long and disappointed drag, and we continued in silence.

 

ammit!” I had burned myself. (How could I have enjoyed the foresight to procure a roach clip for this particular occasion? Remembering an article I had perused once in my mother’s Southern Living, I made a mental note to “Always be prepared with the proper service and accoutrements; the least expected guests are sometimes the most welcome.” Thank you Miss Manners.)

I felt the lines of my thumbprint become lost in a painful welt, and just when my untrustworthy body began pumping one of its many treacherous liquids up to my eyes, I felt a cold, wet cloth pressing against my skin, care of a stray water bottle and napkin.

“Here,” she said, enveloping my injured hand with her own. It must have been the only word necessary, or she would have said more: yes, it was Here. The Here mattered and was real. Here on my thumb. Here in this car. Here in Cobb County, Georgia, where we teach a disclaimer-stamped breed of evolution in sophomore Biology. And Here we both were, somehow charged with the responsibility of surviving it all and not hoping for too much more, but maybe just enough to get by.

I wanted to jerk my hand away from her—wasn’t this far too close a proximity? But oddly, I couldn’t stop it, because the human reaction to pain is not an action at all, but simply letting yourself sink into the comfort and care of another. To sit silently, allowing your body to be mended, even in enemy hands. I was an injured POW, a man from foreign soil allowing some suspiciously friendly American doctor to slice a long, sharp knife into the infected appendage, because otherwise I could lose the entire arm. Except she wasn’t the enemy—it was actually that minutest of spaces between her hand and my own. That particle-sized void from whence the irrational fear sprang—the irrational fear which is the source of all enemy status.

She continued to press the cloth assertively against my thumb, and from her pale neck (where the skin was just beginning to sag like my mother’s before they fixed it), I heard a noise. It was a note, rather than the expected grumble of human conversation, slowly crescendoing from silence and then sustaining itself delicately in her throat. Removing the napkin from my hand (I saw now that it was tattooed in red: “Bruster’s Ice Cream”), the vibrato shifted higher, then lower. I searched for it, expecting perhaps some bluish tint to the surrounding air; but finding nothing which would verify without a doubt this somewhat ethereal semblance of music, I continued to concentrate on her forehead—hard as I must have been starring, she had still not met my gaze, focusing intently upon that injured appendage, which was now glowing pink.

Her fingers had contorted my hand into the thumbs up position and she gently lifted it toward her. She leaned forward. Oh, God, to escape the prisoner camp right now! To flee into unholy land with my glorious, inexorable damage; never to mend, never to find home, but just to escape the unmanageable gentility of one’s enemy!

My eyes met her own, which were full of an unquantifiable depth instead of the sheepishness I expected—throwing me off completely, because what could I count on if not her insecurity? Cool, dry lips pressed against the pad of my thumb, one sign of affirmation meeting another. She held my hand just a second longer. Just long enough for me to wish she wouldn’t stop; just long enough for me to remember my mother in a time when I still desired her to occupy that position.

 

am four years old, and it is newly spring. To honor it—along with my recent ascent out of toddlerism—my father has purchased, for everyone’s enjoyment (though I’m sure I thought it mine exclusively) none other than a bright red tricycle(!). The air has just turned from cold to fresh, and the sky is so blue; my entire world teems with a verdure of the imagined Wordsworthian youth. I am speeding down my favorite hill—preferred for what else but its abrupt gradient—toward the cul-de-sac, where I will promptly find a collection of other not-quite-school-age playmates, and undertake the construction of a world which is our own and separate from our parents(‘)—such play being the budding interest among our peer group. My folks stand, smiling, at the end of the driveway, watching my descent into the world of proper socialization. (Welcome to Suburban Childhood. Next stop: Little League Tryouts.)

There I am, tearing down the hill with all of Life inside me (which should have, even then, been a caveat as to the type of person I might become.) I believe she yells “Oh, do be careful Jace!” (she didn’t somehow bother about obtaining a helmet for my quickly—though not as quickly as before—developing head.)

The inevitable happens, as it always, faithfully does, and soon I am sprawled out, howling in the middle of the street. I hear, through my own insistent noise, the assuring footsteps of John and Rachel Walker hurrying toward me. Here they come, ready to take little Jace (“Jace the Ace!”) into their arms, and carry me home to the couch where I will burrow between both of them, petted and protected.

They stand over me for the longest of seconds (though I’m sure that it was actually quite short) and above my ferocious sobs, I hear the voice of my mother: “Oh, John, darling could you get him? My nails aren’t dry yet!” I feel myself awkwardly rise from the ground, supported by his bony, strong hands; I am gripped tightly against his body. His main concentration lies in not dropping me, heavy as I am, much too old now to be carried. Back inside, I am quickly bandaged by my father, who does it with an embarrassing lack of finesse. Struggling to find the bandages, smearing too much Neosporin, and not warning me before flooding the cuts with hydrogen peroxide so that it stings fiercely and I cry out. Between these childish shrieks, I meet his serious, brown eyes. They are not happy.

When the whole ordeal is over, I find myself watching TV with a popsicle in my hand—cherry, I believe, which I have never liked for as long as I can remember. (Though could I, at some point, have enjoyed it? Perhaps it had been my favorite.) Mother and Father are in the next room. This fact does not strike me as odd at all, but I am somehow too old not to notice. I have always been too old not to notice.

 

hat’s when she told me about suicide because I can barely breathe under the weight of my own mediocrity.

“You know, that’s really clever. You should write.”

“I do write.” Her voice made clear that this was not, however, the point. “I just told you I think about suicide!”

“Yeah, and…?”

“Well…isn’t that supposed to mean something?”

“Yeah, it is. It means you’re human. Of course you think about suicide. You, Wall Street Bankers, heroine addicts, and every fourteen-year-old in history—à la Romeo and Juliet.”

At this point, I assumed she would cry, throwing her full, weeping force upon me—a particular breed of power women possess. I could feel the shadow of a puddle on my shoulder, where her tears would spread, burning my skin, which felt a little singed already in anticipation, the way passing your hand over a candle makes you flinch just so slightly. But she was not crying. Not even a little. The ghost of tears were pouring down her cheeks, and it left me in a state of confusion, because my seeing them quite clearly did not indicate their reality. And there I was, burning to bits, with no source of water to rescue me.

It was not very good pot, and my high had worn off already, which was disappointing, but expected, like most disappointing things. She, however, was giggling now—practically cackling!—and this should have been better. But it was much worse. Dry laughs, like feverish heaves, came pouring out of her throat, the source from which, just a little earlier, she had dared three notes in my presence. It was louder, and painful, and now like dry wind provoking the fire which spread throughout my insides and continued to blaze. And how much longer could this go on? Until I leapt out of the car?—which could never really happen, because I was still in that hospital bed, doped up on drugs and shell-shocked, waiting for either side to win—not that it mattered who.

Somehow it all piled together: the laughter and the lines in her face that I hated so dearly, and the ashy gray hair that I would have given anything to make long and shiny brown like I knew she must have wanted. And surrounding it all was the bitter glow of age and too much time passing. It became stronger and now she was practically howling away, the way I might have as a child, had I ever played fearlessly enough outside to induce any more serious injury. Her voice was pulsing through the car to what felt like the rhythm of blood in my veins, and I had to stop it. I didn’t know how. I cared very little for the means, it simply had to quiet down. I was on fire with all the hot tears she wouldn’t cry and there must be some way to get them out!

I remember now the firm feeling of her jaw bone against the palm of my right hand, her skin smoother than I would have expected. Her lips were warm and dry, like ceramic, and now they were closed, and the laughing had stopped. For the smallest second—exactly the time it took to close my eyes—the world was calm once again. I was awash in the cool, gray color of tranquility, breathing it in with the remnants of smoke and feeling an utter gratitude that finally, the laughing had subsided. The tension was suspended. Then the world was turned upside down once again.

 

he had called out my name one day in class.

“What?” I said, my voice soaked in sour annoyance.

“You’re going to teach the class today.”

“That’s okay; think I’ll just let you take it from here.” It was about halfway through the first semester when this happened. Enough time for the class to establish a past and personality, but still within the appropriate chronology of surprise.

“No, I’m actually kind of tired; I’m going to let you go ahead and do it.” I wasn’t about to get up there and say nothing, and I knew that she wouldn’t let me out of it. I also understood her strategy of putting me in a position of authority to render participation unavoidable. Though sadly relying on the oldest trick in the book, I found her a worthy adversary. My body was a battleship, standing tall and facing a navy of peers. Call to arms! my brain cried out, and soon every ingenious mechanism of defense I had devised over the years to disguise myself and conform to social regularity was in full function. Prepare for attack! Torpedo in three, two, one”

“Well Ms. Grady, I guess you’ve been pretty spoiled by the nursing home, so I’ll go ahead and take care of things today.”

Direct hit.

I don’t remember what I talked about exactly, although I believe it started with the French Revolution and devolved into some inane and opinionated chit-chat concerning the evolution and final, inevitable extinction of boy bands—I opened here for class discussion. (I felt pretty good about this too, because I’m told that young people need a comfortable medium to express themselves in times of grief.) It was a big ice cream sundae, sprinkled with delicious sarcasm and they ate it right down of course. More importantly, they were completely silent while I spoke; their mouths too full to comment.

She told me later that I had the makings of a leader, which I expected and already knew.

“So, do you think I can get into college?”

“Not really.” Ouch. “But maybe junior college for a couple of years and then you can move on to the real thing. If you want to do well, you will. There’s no reason not to.” The sweet, lemony taste of aspiration hit my tongue, making my eyes water.

“Maybe I can go to an all-girls college like you did,” I said, cutting the acidity with a well-practiced bitterness because I had to dry my eyes. She caught the suggestion.

“I’m not a lesbian, Mr. Walker. Just an unsuccessful heterosexual, as I’m sure you’d likely point out.” Dark clouds closed it, covering her face. “Now, get out of my office.”

“Gladly Ms. G.”

 

am mortified.”

She said it like telling someone you made chicken and broccoli for dinner last night. Her voice lacked the shrill rise and fall of embarrassment—the cliff of emotion and its subsequent descent: intellectualization of fault.

“Well, if that’s the way you want to go about it.”

We starred straight ahead, catching stray glimpses of each other reflected in the windshield. Taking turns. We were facing the overgrown magnolia which resides in my front lawn—a last remnant of the world before my time, (which must have been more real, because anything must have been more real back then. Even if I could only find it in a single, unmartyred tree.) Her eyes shone out from the dark leaves and the gray waves of hair looked like smoke, streaming from white blooms. There she was in the tree, and peering carefully enough at the reflection, I saw both pairs of our eyes in its. Shining out from the darkness, but trying, in all our human caution, not to notice this shared attempt at Life.

We shared a moment of “silent reflection.”

“What other way is there to go about it, would you say?” she asked (though of course it was not a question).

“Oh, I don’t know. You could let it go. What do you care anyway?” She was quiet for a second, the car reverberating with her noisy thoughts like the thumping bass of other, more unfortunate vehicles subject to the local breed of punk. That same pulsing intensity, even in silence.

“What could you possibly think of me!” she said finally. What would other people think about me!”

“Are you planning on telling them? No one has to know. And I mean, Jesus, I don’t plan on this becoming a regular thing.”

“But you kissed me.”

“Yeah, I know! Exactly! And what are you going to DO about it?!”

“What am I going to do about anything?” She flung her arms up in exasperation—not a creative gesture of course, but she did it with a certain, almost admirable, classicism.

Looking at me for a moment, carefully considering—which was indeed expected, but still left me feeling a bit queasy—she then proceeded to throw her face against mine, as if I had possibly wanted her to. I was obviously in no situation to repel such an action, considering the challenge I had just presented her with, and so I took it. And took it. And when she was quite finished with that business, she looked at me straight on, eyebrows folded neatly downward.

“That was awful.” Yes, indeed. “You kiss like an adolescent boy.”

“I would expect as much.”

“Yeah, me too.” And that got me.

“Well Christ, lady! It wasn’t exactly a treat for me either!” I slumped in the cranky silence of adolescent embarrassment, an action I had foreseen from the moment I took her face in my hands. I knew that it wouldn’t turn out well, that it would only create awkwardness and tension, as well as likely destroying the relationship that we had not worked so hard to build, but fell rather gracefully into—but what else was to be done! It didn’t particularly matter, especially not to the Grand Scheme of Things.

She sighed.

“Anyway, that’s out of the way. I’m officially a criminal.”

“Well, not technically anyway.” I added a whisper of “Thank God” for posterity.

Then she giggled softly, like the first raindrop of a summer afternoon’s downpour that cools the air and brings you, gently drenched, back to sanity. Sitting there, in her ugly, run-down, and now hot-boxed car, a clinically depressed supposed lesbian and a closeted All-American boy laughed uncontrollably.

“And here I am, a suicidal old hag and you didn’t even know it.”

 

rincipal Riley entered solemnly, silencing an entire classroom of teenagers. This was pretty impressive considering his appearance, which bespoke a certain gluttony for public ridicule.

He straightened his red clip-on.

“Ms. Grady will no longer be teaching this class. She took a leave of absence for mental health.” A steam of abnormalcy penetrated the room and the air went damp, condensing into our unspoken questions.

“I think she’s been on a mental leave of absence for quite some time,” I mumbled, for old times’ sake. The kid sitting behind me laughed, and I figured he would tell his buddies later. Slap them on the shoulder as they gave a retrogressive guffaw at my wit and say, “I mean they hated each other! I bet he’s really glad to get rid of ‘er.” Then they would laugh some more and he’d say, “Yeah, I bet she used to be pretty cute about a million years ago, but you know she’s, uh…” and then they’d nod in vague comprehension.

 

o, can I call you Deb?” I was exiting her car, for the final time now.

“Once you outgrow smoking and sarcasm.” Fair enough.

“Then I’ll see you on Monday, Ms. Grady.”

“Yeah, sure.” The creases now shone faintly red, sun setting from her eyes.

I returned the smile as she drove off, leaving a trail of smoke and bizarre circumstance behind.

 

r. Walker.” The principal greeted me later just outside the classroom, though I didn’t think he would have known me by sight. “There’s a note for you in the office.”

Walking through the hall, I felt a shiver run the length of my body, which was acting a warm conductor to the chill from an unforgivingly slick tile floor. It cornered the painted, white brick walls and the grew frighteningly close together with each step, caving in on me.

“I’m Jason Walker,” I said, upon reaching the drab office, which contained sparse hints of false happiness. A decorative rag doll here, a jar of candy there. They belonged in the same dark cupboard as that offensive laughing cow.

“Who?”

“Jason Walker. I have a note.”

“Oh yeah. Charlene, where’s that note Deb left earlier?” Her voice was sticky, and I knew that if I had to wade in it much longer, I would never leave.

“Oh. You mean the note.” Her tone was of respectful gravity. “It’s in the top drawer on your right.”

“Thanks hon.” She turned to me. “Here ya go, darlin’.” Her painted eyes traced my frame in concealed inquiry.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

I told my heart to stop because it would never survive such a beating. My breath was dangerously short as I opened the envelope addressed simply to “J. Walker. 1st period.” Unfolding the scrap of notebook paper, I saw where her thin, coffee-stained hand had written just one word in the large, familiar scrawl.

Acapulco.

 

[END]

© 2006 Bronwyn Averett - Contributor's Bio

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