She clearly didn’t understand, but she tried to stay with me even as I bordered on fortune-telling. “I’m not asking you to be a hero. I’m asking you to just be you.”
“Really? Just be myself?” I had to hold my tongue from calling her a hypocrite. I didn’t need a “be myself” lecture from the woman who’d never come out of the closet, who’d given up on a personal life to please others, who’d send suitors running before they got a chance to see beneath her teacher persona. I stared into her blue eyes, seeing clearly her passion and her poise, but also her fear and her exhaustion. Everyone else, everything else blurred around us. I saw only her. “I know you’re tired.”
She took a sharp intake of breath, but I continued quietly. “You don’t have to be that person with me. You don’t have to use the façade or the polished veneer. I see you. I hear you.”
“Stevie…” She looked like she might run or cry.
“I’m fine. Take a minute to breathe. Don’t let me be one more burden on your back.”
She glanced around self-consciously. “Please stay after class.”
I shook my head sadly. She couldn’t see outside the job. She couldn’t see her life, her self, as a whole person. “Yes, ma’am.”
I remained in my desk while all the other students filed out of class. Kelsey stopped to wait for me at the door, but I nodded toward Jody, who’d taken a seat at her own desk and barely moved since our conversation.
Once everyone was gone, Jody finally made eye contact. “Do you want to explain yourself, Stevie?”
Not really. “I don’t know what there is to explain. I’m sorry if I said something you found rude.”
“It’s not that you’re rude. It’s the opposite. Most students seem barely aware I’m alive. Others actively work to undermine me. But you…” She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly through barely parted lips. “You don’t talk to me like a teacher. You don’t even talk to me like you talk to your friends. I’ve watched you interact with your classmates, and there’s nothing there.”
I tried to push my hands through my hair, only to have them stick in a tangle of too-long curls, another reminder of my helplessness in this situation. “You want me to find my voice. You try to push me into saying things I want to keep to myself, and when I give in to you, when I succumb to the impossible task you ask of me, all I get is reprimanded?”
“I asked for you to address the text,” she said weakly.
“No, you didn’t. You asked for me to find my voice, for myself, for the people around me, for my community. You didn’t say you got to decide when I should and shouldn’t use it.”
“Why me?”
“What?”
“Why me, Stevie?” Her impossibly blue eyes glistened with tears. “You have things to say on the books, on the plays, on your peers, and yet you unleash all your insights on me. Why?”
Because you unravel me. Because you affect me in ways no book ever has. Because you override my fear and compel me to speak truth through my pain and confusion.
I couldn’t say any of that, not without freaking her out more, not without revealing too much of myself. And she wasn’t asking for the truth anyway. She wanted comfort, logic, and all the things that currently eluded me. I rose from the desk and backed toward the door. I had to end this before one of us said or did something we couldn’t undo. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
She threw up her hands. “Is that your way of ending this conversation without giving me the answers I’m searching for?”
I gave a mirthless laugh. “Pretty much. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Fine.” She reverted back into her comfortable teacher skin. “Be ready to discuss the text in depth.”
*
Kelsey was waiting by my locker, but the hallway was otherwise empty. Most students didn’t stick around long after the last bell rang, and who could blame them?
“Did you figure out what you have to do to get out of here?” Kelsey asked hopefully.
“No.” I tossed some books into my locker. “I had other things on my mind last period.”
“I noticed,” she said, her mouth forming an expression that fell just shy of a smile. “You’ve got a thing for Miss Hadland, huh?”
I closed the locker and rested my head up against it. “I should’ve kissed her when I had the chance.”
Kelsey’s eyebrows shot up, and I realized I’d said that out loud.
“Shit, sorry. I gotta get out of here.”
“Wait, I thought we needed to talk.”
I probably did need to talk, but not here. “Do you want to come to my house?”
“What?” She looked surprisingly happy but guarded. I marveled at the way she could project such conflicting emotions.
“You don’t have to. I just need to get out of here.”
“Yeah, sure.” She actually smiled. Something childlike and innocent about the expression warmed me slightly after the chill I’d received from Jody.
She grew even more animated as we settled into my room. She looked at my laptop wide-eyed. “Is that a new Dell?”
“Well, it’s new by 2002 standards, but it feels frustratingly old to me.”
“Why?”
“It takes forever to open and may or may not connect to dial-up Internet.”
“I read about how Ethernet is a big thing in cities. Is that the wave of the future?”
“No, wireless is. I now have the Internet on my cell phone. It fits into my pocket. I can push a button to ask a question and it’ll show me the answer.”
“Any question?” Her already-big eyes rounded like I’d told her Santa Claus existed.
“Pretty much.”
“So is everyone a genius? Do they walk around asking their phones about quadratic equations?”
I laughed, a rolling laugh. “No, we mostly use them to post pictures of cats and argue with strangers about things they see on Fox News.”
Her shoulders sagged and her expression turned almost painfully disappointed. “Maybe you shouldn’t tell me too much about the future.”
“Why not? I thought you wanted to help me get back.”
“You can tell me about your future, but it might be dangerous for me to know too much more. I wouldn’t want to change anything.”
A sharp pain lanced through my chest. “Maybe we need to change a few things.”
“You can’t know that. If I’m going to help you, I need you to promise you won’t tell me anything about my life.”
“What if I can’t promise that? What if I shout out something right now about your future?”
She thought for a minute while I held my breath painfully in my chest. “If you told me something bad happens to me, I’d be honor-bound to make sure that came to fruition. If you told me I’d die in a fiery crash tomorrow, I’d still have to get in the car. It would become like my destiny.”
No, no, that wouldn’t work at all.
What an impossible position to put me in. I needed to tell her what happened to her, but I didn’t want to give her more inspiration to take those pills. How could I help her if she’d only insist on going through with the horrible fate I needed to save her from? “Do you really believe in destiny?”
“I don’t know for sure.” She sat down on my desk chair and laced her fingers together in a thoughtful pose. “But if you time-traveled to alter your life, that’s a pretty strong argument that right and wrong paths exist for each of us.”
I thought about how reasonable her argument sounded, and yet it wasn’t reasonable or logical. “But if I’ve got to change my path, who’s to say the people around me shouldn’t change theirs too? By your own logic we can make the wrong choices.”
“How about this?” She pinched the bridge of her nose as if thinking so hard gave her a headache. “Let’s use you as the test case and me as the control group. You’re the one who’s time-traveled, or dreaming, or crazy. Let’s see if we can alter your reality, and if you’re successful maybe we’ll talk
about altering mine.”
“What if I like jump back to my future before we get a chance to discuss yours?”
She shrugged. “Then we aren’t meant to address mine.”
“Will I remember this?” I couldn’t believe I’d actually begun to consider time travel a viable option, but the dream theory wasn’t working all that well.
“Who knows? Maybe it’ll seem like a dream, but you’ll have learned from it.”
“What about you? Will you remember this version of me or the original one?”
“I can’t say for sure, but maybe it’ll be like when you wake up and you can remember feelings or images rather than specific details. We won’t know until it happens.”
“If it happens. I may wake up any moment now.”
“It’s possible. We’re dealing with a lot of unknowns. Welcome to science.”
“Welcome to life in general,” I muttered, and flopped down on my bed.
“Can I ask a personal question?” Kelsey asked nervously.
“Really? More personal than asking if I’m gay and from the future? Sure, shoot.”
She grinned sheepishly. “Do you have a history, or I guess a future, with Miss Hadland?”
I sighed and stared at the ceiling. “Not really. The night right before I came back, we connected. I hadn’t seen her for years, but it felt like we’d always known each other. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. Everything’s complicated with her. I live in New York, she lives in Darlington. I’m out, she’s closeted. I need creative freedom, she’s tied down by her job. I could have kissed her, I was so close, but…that’s it!”
“What?” Kelsey asked.
“It’s Jody.”
“Who?”
“Miss Hadland.” I sat up. “She’s my missed opportunity. I should’ve kissed her.”
“I don’t think the universe bent time and space so you could get laid.” Kelsey laughed, but I was already up and moving.
“She’s more than that. She’s miserable here.”
“She seems to work hard, but I think she likes teaching.”
“She’s selling herself short. She put her own life on hold for everyone else. She made the wrong decision when she took the job. This wasn’t my defining moment. It was hers.”
Kelsey shook her head and tried to calm me. “You’re the one who got sent back.”
“You said yourself, no one really knows how this works, or why. All I know is I should have kissed her, I should have whisked her away, but I didn’t. I let her stay in a bad situation. She told me what an awful time student teaching was for her, how it set her on the path that’s still penning her in, and then I went back to that exact moment. Coincidence?”
Kelsey pinched her nose again. “So, what? You got sent back in time to make sure the best teacher we have doesn’t actually become a teacher? That’s what the universe wants?”
“Why does it always have to be about the universe, or the community, or some greater good? What about two people doing what’s best for them? There’ll always be other teachers. What if we only have one soul mate, and Jody and I missed each other?”
Kelsey looked like she wanted to disagree but couldn’t formulate an effective argument. I took her silence to mean I was right and immediately began formulating my plans. High school went from a massive waste of time to the most important thing I’d ever do twice, and for once I actually looked forward to doing my homework.
Chapter Six
I bypassed my locker completely, taking the stairs two at time all the way to Jody’s classroom. She wore a maroon pantsuit today. What was with the Republican wardrobe? She probably believed the clothes made her appear more serious, but this one was a little too big at her shoulders, making her look like she shopped in her older sister’s closet, which I actually found absurdly cute. I enjoyed the way her appearance melted my heart just a little.
“Good morning, Stevie,” Jody said with a halfhearted enthusiasm. Her eyes crinkled slightly but didn’t sparkle the way I knew they could. “Are you here for our daily dose of cryptic conversation followed by an abrupt emotional withdrawal?”
I laughed nervously. “I guess I deserve that. I meant what I said yesterday. I don’t want to be a burden to you, but I also thought about what you said about using my voice.”
“And what did you decide?” she asked with a wry smile. “Are you going to use it for good or evil?”
“I don’t know if I’m qualified to make value judgments, but I do want to use my voice for the truth, or at least my truth, so I’m going to say what I think you already know.”
She took a sharp intake of breath and seemed to hold it.
“I’m gay, and I know you are too.” The words poured out in a rush. “I think that’s what scared you in the locker room last week, and I understand why. I’ve been pretty scared this week too.”
She exhaled loudly. “You’re right. It’s scary to say, especially here, but I prefer having it out there, and I’m proud of you for having the courage to face it.”
“Me too,” I said honestly. I’d felt immeasurably better after opening up to Kelsey yesterday, and now I felt almost ecstatic to have Jody regard me with the admiration currently emanating from her. She walked around to the front of her desk, once again removing the physical manifestation of her professional barriers.
“Are you okay?” she asked kindly. “Do you need any resources?”
“No, I’m good.”
“So, this isn’t a new development?”
“No, I’ve known for years, or I mean like a long time.”
“What about your parents? Have you told them?”
“Not yet.” I brushed off the question. “There’s no need.”
“Are you afraid of their reactions? If you’re worried about safety—”
“No, not at all. They’ll be fine.”
She furrowed her brow. “Then why not tell them and let them help you?”
“I don’t need any help. Telling them now will only worry them. I want them to enjoy my last few months of living at home.”
“They’ll worry about you being out in Darlington?”
“Of course they would. Just look at your own reaction. You’re worried about me already. What if I slip up? What if I lose the pronoun game? What if someone else puts it together the way you did? There are very real consequences, but living in fear won’t solve any of them.”
“I’ll admit I do worry about gay and lesbian students here, but I have a hard time imagining you making a silly mistake. You’re too controlled.”
“I’ve made plenty of mistakes, but coming out won’t be one of them. I’ve got a plan. I’m headed to New York. I’ll find many more supportive communities there, especially at NYU—gay student groups and gay-and-lesbian-studies courses. I’ll study lesbian lit and political theater. I’ll come out on my own terms, in a place where I’ll get the best possible reactions.”
Jody still looked proud, but the now-familiar sadness returned to the corners of her mouth and eyes. “You’re very mature. You’re handling a lot for an eighteen-year-old, and yet you seem to have it all together.”
“Not everything,” I admitted, “but my sexual orientation isn’t a central conflict in my life right now, and I don’t want it to be one in yours either.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You have to worry about school and work and major life decisions. I don’t want you to expend another ounce of energy worrying about my well-being.”
“You’re extremely sensitive to other people’s plights. It’s very noble of you.”
“It’s not noble. It’s realistic. This isn’t a safe place for a gay teacher. I know this town. I know these people. I lived here for eighteen years.”
Her mouth curved up in amusement. “Your whole life?”
“No. I mean yes, eighteen years is my whole life. What I’m trying to say is I want to help you.”
/> “Stevie.” Her teacher tone returned. “I’m your teacher. I’m here to help you, not the other way around.”
“Well, excuse me. Are we working on the banking model of pedagogy?”
Her eyes narrowed “Have you taken a course in liberation pedagogy?”
“No.” Not yet. “I’m just saying yesterday, you asked me to use my voice to help the larger community, and I want to do that by helping you.”
She toyed with a strand of fair hair resting on her shoulder. “You have lots of ways to help your community—”
“But we both know why I don’t speak freely. I just thought if I could help you learn the system, the unwritten rules here, then you could help me give voice to my ideas. We could learn from each other.”
Jody looked past me to the classroom, from the desks to the whiteboard to the bookcases. Did she see her dreams spread out before her? Did she feel so close to everything she’d worked for? Or had she begun to see the minefield of traps and pitfalls laid for her here? “I can’t believe I’ve only been doing this for two months and I’m already overwhelmed.”
I wanted to pull her into my arms. I wanted to carry her away with me. I wanted to save her from years of feeling this way. Instead I just nodded for her to continue.
“Mr. Owens is a nice guy. He approved all my plans before I started, but now he’s checked out. He’s got three months until he retires, and I think he accepted a student teacher so he could get an early start. He’s supposed to supervise me, but I haven’t even seen him since last Wednesday.”
“Okay,” I said calmly. “First of all, you’re doing fine.”
“I don’t want to do fine. I want to do well. I want to make a difference, but I’ve got so much to learn, and I’m not sure I can do it alone.”
“Then let this be your first lesson. You’re already so much better than you know, and you’re not alone.”
She shook her head, but she looked like she wanted to smile. “I wanted that to be my line.”
“It is.” I grinned. “I stole it. It’s a major theater faux pas, I know. Next time I promise I’ll let you say it, okay?”
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