The Most Dangerous Place on Earth

by Lindsey Lee Johnson

  After a moment’s hesitation—was there something in her contract about this?—she accepted Amelia’s request.

  —

  Driving home one stormy Friday afternoon, Molly noticed the lanky figure of Nick Brickston under a redwood tree in the 7-Eleven parking lot. There was an elegant slump to his shoulders, a large black backpack at his feet.

  She rolled down her window and shouted to him through the rain.

  He acknowledged her with a quick but perceptible lift of his chin, which she took as a welcoming sign. She waved until he slung his backpack on one shoulder and came to her passenger window. His face was glistening. His skin looked slightly bluish in the rain. Water was dripping off his San Francisco Giants cap and drenching his hoodie and backpack. She worried, briefly, about the well-being of his books.

  “What are you doing out here?” she said. “Let me give you a ride.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “You can’t stay out in this. I couldn’t live with myself.” She reached across and unlocked the passenger door. “Come on, I’ll take you home.”

  Nick opened the door. “You sure?” he asked, glancing with uncharacteristic anxiousness over his shoulder.

  She felt a flicker of paranoia—was someone watching them?—but covered it with a smile. “Get in.”

  Nick shrugged off his backpack and folded into the car. The pack was a brick at his feet, his knees high. He must have been over six feet. He didn’t seem this tall in her classroom—but then, he was usually confined to a wrap-around desk, she on her feet at an appropriate distance.

  “Do you want to toss that in back?” Molly asked, pointing to the backpack. She glanced in the rearview and immediately regretted the offer—evidence of her humanity was strewn with embarrassing abandon over the backseat: a Target circular with cut-out coupons, a potato chip bag spilling crumbs, a sports bra.

  “It’s all good,” he said.

  “So, where are we going?”

  “Into the labyrinth,” he said, and pointed her into Sycamore Park.

  The maze of narrow streets was drenched and gray, the sidewalks bare except for a smattering of mothers who were bundling their children into European SUVs. The rain drummed the roof of Molly’s Honda and shuddered down the windows. The heater whooshed hot air at their feet, intensifying the smells of his soaked cotton hoodie and cigarettes and her damp hair, her too-sweet shampoo, candy-apple, bought on sale.

  Nick stared out the passenger window. Teenagers never felt the social burden of small talk; that was one thing Molly had come to like about them. But his silence was excruciating; she was compelled to fill it.

  “So, how are you liking the class so far?”

  He shrugged. “It’s cool.”

  After a moment she offered, “Your Salesman essay was very insightful. I was impressed.”

  He nodded. “Yeah.” Spectacular, the confidence of teenage boys! They took compliments like points they were owed—unlike the girls, who were surprised, or eager to say she was wrong.

  “I think the other students would really benefit from your ideas. It would be nice to hear more from you in class.”

  “No doubt,” he said, smirking, then pointed left. “Turn here.”

  Molly turned in to Tamalpais Park, dismayed by how easily she had reverted to talking about school, because at the age of twenty-three she still had absolutely no clue what boys wanted her to say to them. Behind the silvery wash of the rain, she made out tasteful Craftsman and ranch houses, picket fences slick and white. Giant redwoods, oaks, and sycamores. Along the narrow streets she saw nothing garish or overlarge, nothing ugly or out of place. In some ways it was absolutely ordinary. It was disconcerting, and somewhat depressing, to know that no matter how successful a teacher she was, she could never afford to live on these streets, in this neighborhood Nick Brickston knew as home.

  Then, without warning, he spoke. “You know who you remind me of?”

  “Who?”

  “I’m tryna figure it out. I know. That girl from that book.”

  “Which? Gatsby?” She thought foolishly, Let it be Daisy.

  “Naw, the one from last year. About the governess and that crazy bitch in the attic.”

  “Oh. You mean Jane Eyre.” She must have frowned, because he seemed to make a calculation, then said,

  “Yeah, like Jane. But also, that girl who was in Titanic. Rose whatever. Kind of like Jane Eyre and the girl from Titanic had a baby.”

  “Kate Winslet?”

  “That’s it.”

  The water streamed steadily around them. She was aware of Nick’s body in the close space. Without wanting to, she thought of Doug Ellison, the hotel room, the girl. Was this how it started? As easily as pulling over in a rainstorm, unlocking a passenger door?

  She cleared her throat. “So you do read the books. I was beginning to wonder if anyone did.”

  “When I feel like it.”

  “And you read on your own as well? You must.”

  Nick shrugged. Now he seemed embarrassed—he jutted his chin and she noticed his skinny, razor-burned neck, and the blackheads that muddled the grooves of his nose. She saw that she had pushed into a tender place, to witness something he spent most of his waking hours ensuring no one got to see.

  “Stop here,” he said.

  She pulled in front of a two-story yellow Craftsman with a BMW in the driveway and a basketball hoop over the garage. It had a wide white porch and a front door flanked by outsized windows. The blinds were open, and through the rain Molly made out the form of a little girl, nine or ten, who was staring at them through the window, pressing her palm to the glass. What was she looking for?

  “Is that your sister?” Molly asked Nick.

  “That’s just Nell,” he said.

  “Lovely home.”

  He looked at it like he’d never thought of it that way, or any way at all. “I guess,” he said. “Hey, thanks for the ride, Miss Nicoll.”

  “Call me Molly,” she said automatically, and they both were startled.

  “Okay?”

  She couldn’t take it back, somehow. “See you in class.”

  Nick stepped out into the rain and slammed the car door behind him. She waited until he’d loped up the slate walkway and knocked at the front door. When at last the door opened, Ryan Harbinger was on the other side. The boys knocked fists, then turned to squint at her car through the rain. She sat there in confusion. This was Ryan’s house? Why had Nick brought her here? Why hadn’t he told her this was where he wanted to go? Was there any limit to the list of things she didn’t know? Both boys waved and she pulled her car into gear; she had forgotten, briefly, that she was visible.

  —

  That night, there was a friend request from Nick Brickston waiting for her on Facebook. She hesitated for only a moment before accepting. She liked Nick, and anyway she’d already said yes to Amelia Frye.

  Molly sat on the love seat in her little apartment and looked into Nick Brickston’s world. She saw him bleary-eyed at parties, cheery with his mother, brooding at the mountain’s edge, and shirtless (pale and skinny) at the beach. She read what he wrote on his friends’ pages (much of it nonsense, none of it about her) and what they wrote to him. She saw him playing video games in Damon Flintov’s bedroom and smoking a cigarette at Ryan Harbinger’s baseball game. She read his friends’ complaints about all their other teachers and all their other work, and was quietly thrilled to be the one they liked, the one who understood them and didn’t assign work over holiday weekends, or when there were tests in other classes, who in fact hardly assigned work at all.

  —

  Jane Frank’s curriculum called for The Scarlet Letter, but Molly chose A Clockwork Orange instead. She knew her kids: Hawthorne would not stand a chance. But the boys in her class would be braced by Clockwork’s violence, while girls like Calista might find the poetry inside.

  On a foggy Monday morning, Molly greeted her class and handed out the paperbacks, then sat atop
an empty desk, resting her feet on a chair and her book on her knees. The kids settled back in their seats. On the couch at the back of the room, Ryan Harbinger sprawled with his head thrown back on the cushion, Samantha Aster tucked under his arm. Jonas Everett sat wide-kneed on the other end, and Steph Malcolm-Swann and Amelia Frye spooned on the center cushion; Steph was French-braiding Amelia’s hair. Molly began to read aloud. As soon as she started, five or six kids rested their heads on their desks, a few closed their eyes. She didn’t mind. She knew that they were listening, like little children. She believed that, despite all the optimistic theory she’d been taught, in the end this was the best she could do for them: to let them hear the language.

  After several minutes she was interrupted by the squeaking open of the classroom door. Katie Norton peered into the room. Her eyes traveled with evident concern over the circles of desks, the couch crammed with kids in the back, the collage of posters, and the mess of the teacher’s desk, and landed on Molly.

  “Good morning, Miss Nicoll. Sorry to interrupt. I have someone here who’s very eager to join you.” The principal turned and whispered urgently to a figure in the hall, then turned back and pulled the person in. In the principal’s grip, bare-headed and flush-faced, was Damon Flintov.

  On seeing him, the class erupted in hoots and cheers. Ryan Harbinger jumped up from the couch to pump his fist and shout, “Yo, yo, yo! Flint in the motherfuckin’ building!”

  “Free at last!” yelled Nick Brickston.

  “Fuck yeah, bitches!” Damon hollered back.

  “Hey!” Katie Norton snapped. “Is that the kind of language we use in here?”

  “Of course not,” Molly said. “Come on, guys. We’re all just excited to see Damon.” Damon was grinning with his ruddy, chubby cheeks, the silver stud glinting over each eyebrow. But his blue eyes were luminous and clear, and a little uncertain. He was only a kid, after all. One of hers. Why had she been so afraid of him?

  “We’re glad to have you back, Damon,” she said now. “We missed you.” As she said it, she realized she meant it. In a rush of good feeling, she stepped forward and embraced him. He smelled powerfully of boy: cigarettes and menthol deodorant and undertones of sour laundry. His chest was broad and fleshy and shielded by a T-shirt and she felt the queasy sensation of her breasts pressed against him, a fact of a hug that she remembered too late. His arms hung at his sides as she squeezed him. She heard him breathing. She felt him hesitate. She patted his shoulder blades and let him go.

  Pulling away, Molly realized Katie Norton was watching them, arms crossed over her chest, on her face a contemplative frown. Months ago Molly might have rushed to Doug Ellison to debate what this meant. Now she knew better. She was trusting her instincts. She was doing her job.

  THE DIME

  Elisabeth Avarine ate lunch alone, on a low stone bench among orange trees, in a sun-baked courtyard. Her companion, in that little-populated corner of the school, was the small stone statue of a girl who sat atop the fountain in the center, gazing mutely with her head inclined. Perhaps it was the statue that drew Elisabeth here, day after day, or perhaps it was the faint citrus fragrance in the air, or the clock tower above, its arched windows revealing occasional flickers of light and ghosts. Perhaps it was that she simply found it easier to spend her lunches here, away from the groups on the front lawn and the smoking circles in the back parking lot and the crowds at the shopping center across the street. She had no obvious place in this complex social matrix nor the drive to insert herself within it. She preferred to be here—to tuck herself into this secluded, sunny courtyard, communing with a sixty-year-old statue, her small, contemplative face of stone, safely out of sight.

  Nick Brickston, a person to whom she had never really spoken, stood before her, extending a wad of twenty-dollar bills and telling her he owed her. Telling her to take the money and spend it on, of all things, a party.

  Elisabeth took a moment to process this. Squinting up at him, she saw a boy who was tall and thin with a sharp, narrow face, a boy who associated with slackers and tried to pass as one himself but whose eyes betrayed him, quick, intelligent, and dark. In response to these eyes Elisabeth’s mind went blank, as often happened when she was given the imperative to speak, converse, parlay, be normal—in short, she was afraid.

  Finally she said, “I can’t take this.”

  “Sure you can. You did your part. Our secret, right?”

  Our secret. The phrase sent a rare thrill through her body: she felt as if a gate were cracking open, she was being led inside. At the SAT, the registrar had asked her about Nick and she’d denied knowing him, not out of any sense of loyalty but because it was her nature to say nothing, to remain safely uninvolved. Now she saw that her decision to keep quiet meant, potentially, much more. She told Nick, “With or without the money. I wouldn’t tell.”

  He sat down next to her. Casual, close. He smelled like cigarettes. He sat the way boys did, legs spread wide so his knee nudged her thigh. Warm, assured, he pressed the wad of bills into her palm. “Look,” he said, “it’s cool. I want you to have it.”

  “I can’t have a party,” she said.

  “Of course you can.”

  “What I mean is, I don’t—” she began, then stopped herself. Dipped her gaze to her lap, where her hands were clenched and knuckles white. How could she explain to someone like Nick Brickston, a boy who felt entitled to be everywhere, with anyone, I don’t have any friends? To know this fact was one thing; to say it, impossible.

  Nick was watching her closely—she felt his gaze on her neck. But it wasn’t the kind of gaze she was used to. He was seeking something deeper. She didn’t know what he hoped to find. She was desperate for him to leave and desperate for him not to. She could not think of a thing to say, and her silence stretched, terrible, between them.

  Finally he saved her. “You know what? I’m gonna help you out. I’ve got some fuckin’, what, expertise in this area. You got a house in the canyon, right? Your mom ever go out of town?”

  All the time. Napa, Tahoe, Santa Barbara, Vail, depending on the guy. “In a few weeks, maybe? I’m not sure.” Her voice sounded small to her ears, unsteady.

  “That works,” Nick said. “I’ll put the word out.” He pocketed the money. As he took out his phone and began to text, over Elisabeth’s body rolled a sickly wave, as if she were boarding a puke-inducing roller coaster advertised as fun.

  A clatter of metal turned Elisabeth’s head—a small crowd was pushing through the doors, tumbling into the sun. They were Bo-Stin beach kids: Alessandra Ryding, Jess Steinberg, Kai Alder-Judge, and Cally Broderick. They had hair that waved to their waists or shaggy mops or dreads, cutoff shorts or ripped flared jeans and thrift-store tank tops or thin-strapped cotton dresses without bras. They went sockless in men’s oxfords or flip-flops or no shoes at all.

  Elisabeth could not help staring at Cally Broderick, who danced into the sun in a gauzy white sundress and bare feet. Her caramel hair tangled and waved to her waist and she squinted and laughed on the sun-bleached stones and she carried no bookbag, no books, just a small woven purse that could not have held more than a pencil. Cally—or Calista, as she called herself now—wasn’t a real beach kid. She lived in a Mill Valley condo, as boring as the rest of them. In fact, she used to be joined at the hip with Abigail Cress. But after eighth grade, Cally had made a miracle happen. To Elisabeth it was almost unbelievable. She had wanted to become a different person, and then she did.

  Before Elisabeth could talk herself out of it, she turned back to Nick Brickston and agreed to go along with whatever scheme he wanted, poured her faith into his hands.

  —

  Elisabeth lived in the hundred-year-old house her mom had won in the divorce.

  Her parents’ serious fighting began when she was eight. They fought and broke up and made up and broke up and made up until Elisabeth turned fifteen and her mom told her dad it was finally over. He moved to San Francisco. She said it would be easier for
everyone. Elisabeth didn’t get a say; she was only a kid. In the fifteen months since, he’d been traveling around or staying at their Hamptons house; she’d seen him only a handful of times. He’d sent her weekly emails and monthly checks addressed in this oddly formal way—To Miss Elisabeth Madison Avarine. On her sixteenth birthday, a new white Audi appeared in the driveway with keys in the console and a card on the dashboard. Happy Birthday to My Special Girl, the card said, but her dad wasn’t there. Now he was like a ghost, haunting the big house in the canyon where their family used to live.

  The house was gorgeous and huge, perched on an acre of steep, wooded hillside in the canyon behind Old Mill Park. It was worth at least three million dollars. But lately it had begun to reveal its frailties: hairline leaks in the sloped and shingled roof, strange clogs and clangings in the pipes, wood rot at the edges of the deck. Slowly but steadily, Elisabeth believed, the house was crumbling to pieces. Eventually it would surrender, retract its claws from the hillside, and slide into the dark.

  Elisabeth’s mom didn’t fix things; she redecorated. After Elisabeth’s dad moved out, each room was given a makeover, a color, and a name. Elisabeth’s was the Purple Room: lilac walls, amethyst curtains, a lavender bedspread with heliotrope pillows. Her mom had the Blue Room, periwinkle with accents of cerulean and steel. There was the Red Room, where, when it was still white, her dad once retreated to manage the money—now it was a guest suite with rose-petal walls and ruby pillows, although no one ever came to stay.