by Linnea May
In front of her eyes.
I slowly turn around, holding back tears as I search for her beautiful face.
Aileen is standing exactly where she was standing when I lost sight of her. She is holding a bunch of books in her arms, pressed against her chest as if she was trying to protect herself from the gruesome sight in front of her.
Kendrick turns to her.
“Don’t you wanna help your loser boyfriend?” He asks, pointing down at me.
Aileen huffs and shakes her head.
“He’s not my boyfriend!” She protests.
She lays her eyes on me. I reciprocate her gaze, silently pleading for forgiveness.
And then I see it. Aileen’s face has lost all its beauty, her eyes narrowed to slits, her eyebrows furled and her mouth distorted with disgust. Her expression reflects the same condemnation I’ve seen on so many faces before.
“I don’t even know him!” She spits out, her words firing at me like hot daggers. I’ve never been so hurt in my life before. “He just wanted to copy my homework, because he can’t do it himself.”
Her hurtful lie is more than I can bear. Tears of anger and deprivation are threatening to roll down my face.
I can’t let that happen. I can’t cry in front of them. The humiliation would be too devastating.
I hurry to get up from the ground and run away, the students who have gathered to witness my degradation are parting to the side, letting me pass without another comment as I flee to the next boy’s restroom.
There, fate is on my side for the first time that day, as I find the restroom completely deserted. I haste over to the sink and turn on the water, leaning over to wash my face. I’m weeping uncontrollably, trying to hide the massive shedding of tears with warm water, in case anyone should walk in and see me.
I’ve lost her.
I’ve lost Aileen - or rather the idea I had of her. I never really knew who she was until she saw herself and her reputation threatened and acted just as mean as all the kids who’ve made my life hell until now. She was afraid to be linked to me in any way, to be degraded from her position of irrelevancy to that of an outcast who gets actively dissed by the cool kids.
No one wants to be at my level, but the way Aileen distanced herself from me, that ugly face of disgust on her. There are no words to describe how disappointed and disillusioned I felt.
The most fucked up thing is: I still want to be close to her. I still want to glimpse behind that stiff and controlled exterior of her and see what lies behind. I want to see her lose control, let go of her tense demeanor and lose herself because of something I’m doing to her.
But I don’t want this loss of control to be a laughing fit.
I want to expose her, humiliate her, drive her mad, make her dependent on me for pleasure.
This is the first day I imagine a woman crawling on all fours in front of me. A woman like Aileen Watson.
This is also the day I understand that I cannot stay the person I am if I ever want something like that to happen. Women like Aileen don’t get broken by a fat kid who lets himself be dragged down by bad grades and a hostile environment.
I have to change.
And I will, because I have a goal now.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
JACKSON
I can’t see her anywhere. This is the second time I can’t find Lana in her regular seat when class begins. It has become my ritual to spot her, acknowledge her presence and nod toward her, sitting in the third row, straight and attentive, her blue eyes glued to me and her shoulders tense.
Today, this ritual is disrupted by her absence, and I find myself scanning the auditorium. The last time this happened, she just showed up late for class, which was strange enough for someone like her. Today, it seems, she didn’t show up at all.
I start my lecture, checking the rows again and again to make sure that I didn’t miss her. Even fifteen minutes into my class, the doors in the back spill open to let in another student who couldn’t manage to get out of bed on time on a Monday morning.
But none of them are her.
Lana has been avoiding me ever since our little session in my office. I don’t know where she lives and have nothing but an e-mail address for her, because those were listed on the attendance sheet I received for my class at the beginning of this semester. It has been a full week and I’ve not seen nor heard anything of her, which would not have been unusual before, as we never interacted outside of class, but it is now.
I expected her to come to me again, or at least show her face in my proximity, so I could come to her. She knows where I am. I’m not on campus every day, because it’s neither necessary nor possible, but I have to be there for consultation hours and faculty meetings that have relevance to me.
Lana knows that. She knows when I’ll be around and she knows where to find me. Yet, she keeps her distance, after leaving my office with teary eyes and that hauntingly beautiful look of humiliation.
It’s exactly what I wanted to see. Her, wax in my hands and hazy with lust, just to let her go without that release she so desperately craved.
It wasn’t easy for me either. I wanted her to come, I wanted to see her explode on my desk, to lose her inhibitions completely even if it was just for a few seconds. The beauty of it is unimaginable as long as I haven’t seen it.
I thought she was just being careful and smart about this. To be seen with me outside of class could still pose a risk, even if we were just talking to each other. Gossip is strong and uncontrollable, and it would be all the more notable because I’m never seen with anyone else.
I’m aware of all the eyes that are constantly on me when I walk across campus. While the initial excitement among the swooning crowd of ludicrous admirers has subsided, there are still plenty who take note of me.
Enough time has passed for me to become accustomed to their attention. While I still carry that young boy with the broken heart inside of me, he had to make way for the person I have become today a long time ago. The boy who fell to the ground, accompanied by laughter and disgust, is long gone. He passed that very moment when my gaze locked onto Aileen Watson and her ugly grimace.
Nonetheless, it still aches. The pain of losing something that beautiful - my innocent infatuation with a girl who was nothing but an idea of something - will never leave me completely.
However, breaking the Aileen Watson’s of this world helps a lot in dealing with that pain.
In a way, she made me the man I am today, and I never thanked her for that.
It started with a physical change to my exterior. There was no Jackson Fatson left by the time I entered my senior year of high school. In that regard, I had turned into the exact opposite.
It took me years and it was as hard as they say, especially for someone with as little money as I had and a mother who couldn’t care less about her own, let alone her son’s, nutrition. I ran in secret and I ate less of what was provided at home, but learned to fill my stomach with less harmful fuel. I added push ups and crunches on my runs, but I couldn’t afford to join a gym until after financial success became a part of my life.
Once that crippling exterior was left behind, I had to get past my inability to follow a regime that wasn’t for me. The way they teach you at school is not the way I learn and thrive, but I had to meet the right teacher at said school to be made aware of what could be my way.
I was hoping to become that teacher for some of these kids here, but so far Lana appears to be the only one who wants to listen. What attracted me about her was her resemblance to Aileen and my strong urge to break women like her, but what keeps me hooked on her now is so much more.
I wonder if Lana would have reacted the same way Aileen did back then? I want to believe that she would not have. I really want to believe that.
I dismiss the students a few minutes earlier, too distressed about Lana’s absence to conclude class the way I had planned. Of course, they don’t care. They flee out of the auditorium without any furthe
r questions, except for the usual group who tends to hang around and pester me with small talk before I’m allowed to leave.
Just like every Monday after class, I check my phone for any urgent messages that might demand my immediate attention. My affiliates know that I’d be less present for the duration of this semester, but I couldn’t assign all of my responsibilities to my co-founders and Mondays are still the worst days when it comes to catastrophes and developments that call for me.
However, not today.
I browse through the few e-mails I received and decide that none of them ask for an instant reply or even another thought.
Good. I have other things to take care of right now.
I head for the faculty lounge, because I need to drop off some papers. My plan is to get in and out as quickly as possible, but when I walk in and find Lilia Esquin sitting in one of the lounge chairs, casting me a bright smile as I walk through the door, I’m surprised with by idea, a plan of action that could help me solve the Lana-dilemma sooner than later.
“Hello,” Miss Esquin sing-songs in my direction as I walk past her to the shelf that awaits my papers. I drop them off in the assigned box and turn to her.
“Hello, there,” I say, applying the nicest voice possible. “Miss Esquin, if I remember correctly?”
She nods excitedly, sitting erect within a second as she beams at me.
“Yes, exactly,” she says. “I’m surprised you remember…”
“From the sociology department, right?” I add, smiling at her as I approach. “May I sit with you for a moment?”
She nods, slightly confused but seemingly happy as I take a seat next to her.
I have a goal, information that I want to try to retrieve from her, but as is always the case in these situations, I won’t be able to get to my goal without a little chit chat first.
So, I engage her in a little small talk about the school, about how long she has been working here, how she ended up here, how she decided on teaching sociology and so on. Like most people, Lilia Esquin is more than happy to talk about herself and flattered by my sudden interest in her and her life. She talks without interruption, and makes it easy for me to lead the conversation to where I want it to be: her students.
I test the water by trying to educe as much as possible using her talkativeness in regard to her students to my benefit. Soon, I find her dropping names left and right, about kids who annoy her, kids who impressed her, kids who surprised her.
To my disappointment, Lana Harlington isn’t one of them. It would’ve been so much easier to talk about her without having to bring her name up myself. I don’t want to raise suspicion in any way, but I want to know if there’s anything Miss Esquin can tell me about Lana’s whereabouts. It’s a slim chance, because I don’t even know if Lana is among her students at all, but I’m willing to take the risk of wasting a few minutes of my time with her in the faculty lounge if it could help me to locate Lana. I’d hate to wait another week for a chance to see her, and I’d hate it even more if she decided not to show up for class again. If she misses another one, she’s jeopardizing her chance of passing the class at all, due to the standard attendance rule that - ironically - she caused me to introduce.
The longer Lilia talks, the more I find myself zoning out, but just as I’m beginning to lose hope on retrieving anything helpful from her, I’m drawn back by her mentioning a party that left most of her students hungover in her classes the following day.
“Those sociology majors sure know how to make the best of their dorms for throwing the best parties,” she says, giggling as if she was a freshman attending said party. “Well, I should know. I still remember when-”
“It was a dorm party?” I interrupt.
Miss Esquin looks at me, a hint of surprise on her undoubtedly pretty face. I’m sure she’s never run short of admirers, which only proves how very little she’s my type.
“Yes,” she says. “Most of the Sociology majors live in Cleveland hall. They try to keep students with the same major close to each when they assign housing and-”
“Is it just the undergraduates?” I want to know. “Or the graduates as well?”
“Oh, graduates are more scattered around other houses, or live off campus, but-”
“But some of them live in Cleveland hall?” I follow up.
She nods. “Yes, sure. Some, if not most.”
“I see,” I murmur.
Some, if not most. That’s not a definite answer, but it’s a start. Together with what Lana told me about her Monday schedule, I now have two pieces of information that could possibly lead me to her.
I endure a few more minutes of small talk with Miss Esquin, quickly diverting the topic away from her students and their living arrangements. She was casting me weird looks for asking in the first place and I certainly don’t want to give any impression that I’m showing a little too much interest in that regard.
When I manage to excuse myself, leaving behind a visibly disappointed Lilia Esquin, I decide that I’ll pay a quick visit to Cleveland hall this evening. I’ll be sure to be there, shortly after six, which is when Lana’s last class of the day ends.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
LANA
“You don’t look too good,” my sister comments, throwing me a skeptical look over the rim of her glasses. “Are these final classes draining you?”
I shake my head, unenthusiastically playing with the food in front of me. Why do I keep ordering pasta in this place? It has proven to be a bad idea so many times before, especially when cheese was involved, but I keep falling for the simple but promising taste of Fettuccine Alfredo, one of my favorite dishes when I was a child.
“No,” I say, staring down at my plate full of regret. “I just haven’t been sleeping well lately. Don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s the moon.”
“The moon?” Harriet exclaims, incredulous. “You know there’s like a billion studies that have proven that the whole moon and sleeping disorder stuff is utter bullshit and that-”
“Yeah, yeah. I know,” I say, looking up from my plate and meeting my sister’s strict eyes. She’s looking more and more like our mother with every day she gets older. The same sharp and kinda big nose, the same hazel eyes, framed by thick and surprisingly dark eyebrows and the same mouse like expression. Except for the brown hair, I have very little in common with the two of them, which I’m grateful for. They look exactly like the people they are - strict and one-sided scholars, who could also pass as librarians. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time until my sister starts wearing her hair in a tight bun like my mother does.
“I wasn’t being serious when I said that,” I try to explain. Jokes, just like sarcasm are beyond my sister’s comprehension.
“Oh, I see,” she says, nodding with relief. “Well, if it doesn’t get better, you should see someone about it. You’ll need to prepare for finals soon.”
“I know.”
If it weren’t for Mr. Portland and the confusion he brought into my life, I’d most likely be preparing the materials to study for my finals already, even though there’s still plenty of time for that. Just like the route I walk to class, I always liked to include some extra time for my study period.
“Have you spoken to Professor Warwick yet?” Harriet asks, still looking at me over her glasses.
I look at her quizzically. “About what?”
She rolls her eyes. “About being your doctoral adviser? I thought he was your first choice?”
I freeze and stare at my sister, tasting her words. Why is it that they make me so… unhappy? Harriet talking about me pursuing a PhD as if it were already a done deal makes me feel like a steel clamp just slammed shut around my heart.
I was so set on following this path just a few month ago. I knew nothing else and had she said the exact same words to me back then, I would have felt nothing but the urge to follow through with them.
But now I find myself in a place where I’d forgotten about all of it. About Profe
ssor Warwick, about my potential PhD, about having to make the necessary preparations so I could start the next level right after obtaining my master’s degree. It was all gone, replaced by an alternative plan posed by Mr. Portland.
Mr. Portland, who, just a week ago, buried his face between my legs, licking and fingering me until I was close to orgasm, spanking me so hard my ass was still red when I got home - and who then sent me away unfinished. Leaving me hungry and utterly embarrassed.
My cheeks are burning. Fuck, I can’t think of him now, not with my sister in front of me.
“No, I haven’t,” I say, finally replying to her question. “I’m… still thinking about it.”
“About what?” She asks, while scraping the remains of her food onto her fork. “You think you might want to go with someone else after all?”
“About the PhD,” I reveal, gathering all my courage. “I’m not sure if I want to do it at all.”
Harriet freezes mid-chewing and looks up at me, her eyes wide in shock.
“What?” She utters. “What do you mean?”
She contorts her face in sheer disbelief, looking at me as if I’d lost my mind. Maybe I have. Maybe I’m talking crazy, dazed by a forbiddingly handsome man who not only seduced me with his sexual appeal, but also with his maverick ideas.
“I don’t know,” I murmur. “I’ve just been thinking. Maybe a doctoral degree is not the right thing for me.”
“But how are you supposed to become a professor if you stop now?” Harriet asks, bewildered.
I raise my left eyebrow and look at her with a similar look as the one that I so often see on Mr. Portland’s face.
“I wouldn’t be a professor, if I decided to not continue on to get my PhD.” I say. “There are other things I could do, Harriet.”
“Like what?” She asks, letting her fork fall onto her plate with an loud clank. “Did you tell mom and dad?”
“Many things!” I declare, painfully aware how immature I must sound. “And no, I didn’t. There’s nothing to tell them, because I haven’t decided.”