by Barry Lyga
Now something clicked: The coffee table, I realized, was covered with video-game magazines—Official Xbox, PSM, EGM...
"He's the luckiest man in the world," I said gravely, and meant every syllable of it. To play video games for a living and be married to Mrs. Sherman? How could one man be so fortunate?
She laughed. "If you say so. Do you want to play something? He won't mind. We've got ... I think we've got all the games. Sure seems that way, at least." She pointed to a closed cabinet door. "Help yourself."
I couldn't believe it! Mom and Dad wouldn't let me have a console in the house; they didn't even like to buy me games for the computer, though they'd usually relent for my birthday or something like that. I opened the cabinet door and beheld more video-game cases than I've ever seen before in my life. I usually played Xbox at Zik's house, but only when his dad and older brother weren't hogging it. Here was an Xbox and about a million games, and they were all mine!
Pretty soon I was sprawled out on the floor, frantically blasting zombies. The game was rated T—there were a bunch of M-rated games, too, but I didn't want to push it or get Mrs. Sherman angry at me.
Mrs. Sherman came up to me and I hit Pause so that I wouldn't get killed while she told me my mom had called and she was on her way. I was so absorbed in the game that I hadn't even heard the phone ring. I looked at the clock; hours had passed while I was submerged in the digital world.
"Keep playing. I'm going to start dinner. If your mom gets here first, fine. Otherwise, you can eat with us."
Us? That's right—her husband.
As if he heard my thoughts, he opened the door just then. "Fuck! It's crazy out there!" he shouted. He was tall and stoop-shouldered, his gut a little knot that protruded out from over his belt. He shook snow out of his sandy, unruly hair as he stripped off his coat.
"George! " Mrs. Sherman ran in from the kitchen.
"What? What did I do?"
She pointed to me. "Meet Josh, my student."
George's face fell when he saw me. "Whoops! Sorry about that, kid. Pardon my français"
"De nada," I said. It was the only foreign language I knew at all. They both laughed.
"Josh, this is my husband, George," Mrs. Sherman said, gesturing vaguely between the two of us. "Josh is using the Xbox."
"I don't have to—" I started.
"What are you playing?" He glanced at the screen. "Ah, cool. Want some help?"
"Sure."
He looked at Mrs. Sherman. "Honey, I'm gonna..."
"Go ahead," she said with the tone of someone who's used to it and returned to the kitchen.
"Let's kick some zombie butt," George said, dropping to the floor next to me and grabbing another controller.
We played Xbox for another hour or so, and just as Mrs. Sherman was ready to serve dinner, the doorbell rang and it was Mom, standing in a good six inches of snow that had blown onto the entrance balcony. I gathered up my stuff and put on my coat and went to stand with Mom.
"I hope he wasn't any trouble," Mom said.
"No, God, not at all," Mrs. Sherman said.
"Hey, Josh," George said, holding out his hand to me. "You can save the world from the undead with me any time you want." He grinned and winked at me as I shook his hand.
"Boys," Mom and Mrs. Sherman said at the same time, and laughed.
6
The snow didn't let up all night, and school ended up canceled for the rest of the week. Mom stayed home with me for two days since classes were canceled at LEC, too. That first night, though, I lay awake and listened through the vents as Mom and Dad argued. Dad was pissed and not afraid to say so. He had warned her about emergencies. He had pointed out that she would be far from me if there was a problem.
Mom told him that everything was fine, that I hadn't been in any danger. She found me playing video games and ready to eat dinner, for Christ's sake! "He was having the time of his life!" she said.
"I don't know about this job of yours," Dad said. He sounded like he was talking about a pet.
Friday, schools were still closed while Lowe County cleaned up the last of the snow. The roads were OK for most vehicles, but not school buses. Mom had to go back to work, but she arranged to drop me off at Zik's since his mother would be home. I usually avoided hanging out at Zik's house (so did Zik), but his dad wouldn't be home, so that was good. We stayed away from Mike and went outside instead. We played catch with snowballs, trying to throw them hard enough to make them explode against our palms when caught, scoring points for intact catches.
"What happened the other day, J? Why weren't you on the bus when we got out early?"
I gave him an edited version of the truth, one that involved me being in the bathroom when the bus was called so that I wouldn't have to admit that I was trying to calculate a better retroactive batting average for myself. When I told him that I'd gone to Mrs. Sherman's apartment, his jaw dropped and he didn't even try to catch the snowball I'd just thrown. It exploded against his shoulder.
"Holy fucking shit!" Zik's vocabulary at an early age was heavily influenced by his father and brother. Even his mother dropped the f-bomb on occasion. My mom hated me being around the Lorenzes, so I was always careful to watch my language; the last thing I needed to do was give her one more reason to try to keep me away from Zik.
"Goddamn!" he said, scooping up some snow and mashing it into a ball. "What was it like?"
"Her apartment?" I thought about the art on the walls. The video games. That picture..."Just an apartment. Jeez, man."
"What did she wear?"
"What are you talking about? She wore her clothes. Just like at school." I didn't tell him about seeing her naked feet, the little pink-tipped toes. That was mine.
He threw the snowball at me. I managed to catch it without it falling apart. Another point for me.
"Did you see her bedroom?"
"No, you doofus! Why would I see that?" But in the back of my mind, it danced there ... Do you want to take a nap? The bedroom's right down the hall.
"Man," Zik went on, "if it was me, I woulda seen the bedroom. I woulda gone there and snooped around, you know? See if she has any porn or lingerie."
"You're a perv," I told him, hurling the snowball back. It disintegrated in midair. I deducted a point for myself.
"I met her husband."
Zik clutched his chest. "That lucky fucker!" he moaned. "I don't even know him and I hate him."
"He was nice. He let me play Xbox."
"I hate him!" Zik ranted. "Hate him hate him hate him!" And on and on until I pelted him with snowballs, rapid-fire, and we dissolved into giggling grunting snowmen, hurling snow and kicking it up as we chased each other around the yard.
School reopened on Monday, and I guess I expected Mrs. Sherman to act different somehow, but she didn't. She was just my history teacher again (my hot history teacher). No more little giggles and little secrets. As I left class that day, I wanted to go up to her and tell her to thank her husband for letting me play with his Xbox, but she was talking to another teacher who had come in, so I left.
But a couple of days after that, Mrs. Sherman returned papers we'd turned in earlier in the year. Mine had no grade on it, just "See me after class" written in red.
My heart went into triple time, like that burst you get when you realize the ball is going over the heads of all the outfielders. What had I done wrong? The Streak was solid at this point—was I going to blow it here?
I flipped through the pages (there were only three of them—it was seventh grade, after all), but there was no indication as to why she wanted to see me. No grade. No notes. Nothing.
I actually started to sweat; it gathered at the nape of my neck and trickled down between my shoulder blades like when I stood out on the field and waited for a new pitcher to warm up. Only I didn't mind it then—I was playing baseball; I was supposed to sweat. But not here in school.
I had trouble paying attention that day; all I could think was, I'm going to get a
bad grade. I might not get straight A's this year. Over and over. I barely heard Mrs. Sherman speaking. I robotically copied what she wrote on the board and the overhead.
At the end of class, I pretended to be having trouble getting everything into my backpack. Once most of the kids had filtered out, I heaved the pack over my shoulder and walked up to Mrs. Sherman's desk, where she was busily writing something in her gradebook.
I waited for a minute. Nothing. Then, as the last kid filed out of the classroom, she looked up and smiled at me. Smiled that broad, half-dimpling smile, smiled so close to the smile from the wedding picture that I thought I might just lean forward...
No. No!
"What's up, Josh?"
I gaped for a second, but recovered. Didn't she remember? "Here." I thrust the paper at her. "You said to—"
"Oh, right! Right!" She sounded excited as she grabbed the paper. "I love this paper, Josh! Your insights on medieval Europe are ... I don't think you can understand how exceptional this is for someone your age."
What? I just kept staring while she chattered on happily.
"...so anyway," she went on, "I'm taking this grad class on cognitive development and adolescence and I thought that your paper would be a great topic for me to write about. So I was wondering if you would mind if I used your paper for my research topic."
I guess I was supposed to say something here, but I was busy staring in shock.
"Josh?" She waved a hand at me and the smile turned into concern. The dimple smoothed away.
"Josh, are you OK?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. I just didn't know—I thought I got a bad grade. I thought that's why you wanted to see me."
She blinked in genuine surprise. "A bad grade? This is better than some of the papers I saw teaching high school last year!" She held it out to me. "You should be very proud of yourself."
"But—"
"But what?"
I couldn't speak. I just pointed to the paper.
Her brow furrowed as she looked at it. "What do you—Oh! Oh, my God! I'm such an idiot!"
She barked out a huff of laughter, slammed the paper down on her desk, and scrawled something on it with a red pen. "Sorry about that." She slid the paper back to me, with a big, bright, red "A+" across the top.
That night, Mrs. Sherman called at home and talked to Mom to get permission to use my paper and me as the subject of her research paper. She also asked Mom if it would be OK for me to stay after school with her sometimes so that she could interview me and do questionnaires and stuff. She promised to bring me home at a reasonable time.
Mom was thrilled, I later learned through the vents. Ever since the snowstorm, Dad had been pressuring her about quitting her job—he called it "ending the experiment"—since I didn't have baseball practice to occupy me after school. But now that I would be with an adult, he didn't have a leg to stand on. Mom shut him down early in the evening; chilly silence mingled with heated air through the vent into my room.
So a couple of days later, after the last bell, I went to Mrs. Sherman's room. She gave me a test to fill out. "Remember, this isn't for a grade, Josh."
It wasn't a very difficult test; it had some vocabulary and some multiple-choice stuff. Nothing complicated. Mrs. Sherman sat at her desk and did stuff on the computer while I finished the test, but a couple of times I looked up and saw her watching me.
"Just take your time," she said. "There's no prize for finishing first." And then we laughed, since I was the only one taking the test—I would be first, last, and everything in between.
Even without trying to break any speed records, it didn't take very long to finish the test. Mrs. Sherman had me home with a good hour to spare before Mom got home from work.
The next day, she gave me another test—this one was written and might take a little longer, she said. I plunged into it. I wanted to impress her even more. I wanted to blow her mind.
By the time I was finished, it was almost time for Mom to be home from work. Mrs. Sherman drove me home and talked to Mom briefly. Mrs. Sherman was worried that the later test ing and interviewing would take longer. Would it bother Mom if she brought me home a little bit later?
Mom didn't mind, as long as I wasn't bothering Mrs. Sherman. Oh, no, Mrs. Sherman assured Mom: Josh was delightful. She was enjoying this project.
And Mom couldn't have been happier—there had been some opportunities to work a little later at work, but she'd always declined because she already felt guilty about getting home when she did. But if I was with Mrs. Sherman a little later, then she could stay at work a little later and get home closer to the time Dad got home.
I drifted off that night, thinking how this was working out for everyone—Mom got to keep her job and do it better, Mrs. Sherman got her help, Dad didn't have to worry, and me ... I got to spend more time with the most beautiful teacher on the planet.
That same night, I had the first dream.
I don't remember many of the details except that it started with Mom and Mrs. Sherman talking about something, talking very loudly, even though I was right there. I knew they were talking about me, but for some reason I couldn't understand them. It was like they were speaking a foreign language.
At some point, my dad called out to my mom and she left. Mrs. Sherman kept talking to thin air and then she started to get undressed, even though I was standing nearby. She kicked off her shoes first and I couldn't stop staring at her toes.
When I woke up, my pajamas were sticky and wet. At first I thought I'd wet the bed, but then I realized. I sneaked into the bathroom to clean up, then changed into fresh pajamas. I balled up the old ones and jammed them deep into the hamper, hoping that Mom wouldn't notice when she did the wash.
It was tough to focus in history that day—I felt like Mrs. Sherman could tell that I dreamed about her. I avoided eye contact with her, looking down at my desk. I did too good a job—as class ended, she asked if I was feeling OK and even put a cool palm against my forehead to see if I had a temperature. I think I blushed; at the very least my face felt so hot that I thought for sure she'd rush me to the nurse's office, but instead she just said, "You don't feel hot. Are you sure you're OK?" to which I said, "Yes," and shuffled off to science.
By the end of the school day, I'd gotten over the guilt and instead stole every glance I could, wondering how accurate my dream had been. I imagined Mrs. Sherman standing up at her desk while it was just the two of us in her classroom, unbuttoning her blouse, slowly, letting it slide down her shoulders and arms like water from a pool or a bath, then reaching around to unfasten her bra—
"Stop daydreaming, Josh," she teased from her desk. I jumped and banged my knee against the desk, but I didn't let it show. "You only have twenty minutes to finish this part of the test. You can think about your little girlfriends later."
God! If she knew what I was daydreaming about...! I turned my attention back to the test and finished it. I hated the way she'd said "little girlfriends."
I handed the test to her. She thanked me and looked at the clock. "It's still early, Josh. Your mom won't be home yet."
"I know."
"How about this—let's go back to my apartment and I'll get the next test. You can do it right away. We'll get ahead that way."
"Sure."
On the way to her apartment, I said, "I don't have any, you know. Girlfriends."
"What do you mean?"
"Before. During the test. You said about my 'little—'"
"Oh, Josh!" She laughed. "I was just teasing you. Don't take everything so seriously."
"But—"
"And besides, I can't believe you don't have a girlfriend. What about Michelle?"
"Michelle Jurgens? "
"Yes. She's cute, don't you think?"
"Michelle likes Zik."
"Oh. Well, who's that other girl I always see you hanging out with? Rachel?"
"Rachel's just my friend. And a really good baseball player."
"Good for her." She looked
over at me. "Don't worry, Josh—there'll be plenty of time for girls."
I wasn't worried. Not particularly.
"You're a good-looking kid. And you're very mature and respectful. Just wait until you get to high school—the girls are going to love you."
Well, that was nice to hear.
At her apartment, she rummaged through a stack of papers on the coffee table until she found the one she wanted. It was a really short, really easy questionnaire about my reading habits. I had done something like it on the first day for her, so I couldn't figure out why she wanted me to do it again. But she kicked off her shoes and went into the kitchen, returning with her glass of wine, so I didn't ask questions. She sat across from me in a chair, her legs tucked up under her, and leafed through a book while I answered the questions and sneaked the occasional glance at her exposed knees.
When I finished, she unfolded herself from the chair (giving me a quick and painful glimpse of the inside of one thigh, down low near the knee) and put the questionnaire on top of a stack of papers. It was still early.
"Do you want to play Xbox to kill time before I take you home?" she asked.
Duh! I scrambled for the controller while she went back into the kitchen.
There was already a game in the machine—I checked the empty box on top of the Xbox to see what it was. "Is it OK if I play the one that's already in here?"
She came back from the kitchen, her wineglass refreshed. "I don't see why not. Just don't save over George's game or he'll get all huffy."
Well, I could understand that! "But..." I showed her the box. I figured I should at least ask. The game was rated M.
She read it: "Blood and gore. Strong language. Violence." She sighed. "Probably nothing worse than you've seen on TV, right? Just don't tell your parents, OK? Our secret."
I mimed turning a key over my lips and then tossing it over my shoulder. She laughed and settled back and I switched on the Xbox.
7
That's how it went for a little while—I would stay after school and, if it was an early test day, Mrs. Sherman would drive me back to her apartment. I would switch on the Xbox and settle in to play while she sat nearby, shoeless, sometimes in a chair, sometimes on the sofa, grading papers and occasionally egging me on when I did something stupid that got my character killed on-screen. Her toenails went from pink to naked to a funky electric blue to red and then back to pink. She must have spent a ridiculous amount of time on them.