“Are you sure about that?”
“He resents me. Sometimes I think it’s because I have the opportunity to become what he couldn’t. I don’t know. The crazy thing is, he didn’t want to be a doctor any more than I do. But in the Westfall family, if you’re not a doctor, you’re nothing. They blame my mom for getting pregnant, which is just stupid. She quit school—another Westfall sin—got a job, and supported us while dad played at being a student. The seizures started during his final year of med school, and he just never finished. He’s never even held a job. But do you know that his sisters still tell people he’s a doctor when they talk about him or introduce him. That status is everything to them; it’s everything to him. And I’m . . . nothing.”
He retrieves his hand and props his chin on his fist again and studies me. My hand feels naked, and an ache blossoms in my chest. A silence grows between us, like he’s working out some problem in his head, and I’m waiting for the answer. Then he asks, “Do you know what chaos theory is?”
“Yeah. The butterfly effect.”
“The math of messes,” he says. “Tiny differences in starting conditions—the beat of a butterfly’s wings, a temperature differential of half a degree, a bottle withheld a few beats too long, an ear infection that went undetected for a day or more—any little difference can lead to a totally different outcome later on. The entire Back to the Future movie trilogy was based on that very concept.” He shrugs. “Who knows what little things made your dad the way he is. Maybe what he took from his experiences left him insecure and unable to develop into an independent, fully functioning adult and a loving father. I don’t know.
“But the point is, you don’t know either. And you probably never will. Don’t beat yourself up for feelings you can’t help because of the dad he couldn’t be.”
He offers to follow me home a little while later, with a very teacher-like admonishment: “No texting on the road, okay?”
But I’m not really thinking of him as a teacher anymore. I’m thinking of him as a friend.
Andrew
Tell a stranger that they’re beautiful.
Stop listening to Adam Lambert, my friend, or you will go blind.
Ha, ha. Good catch. Hey, Andrew, thanks. For meeting me today, for listening.
It was my pleasure.
I feel a warmth inside as I push Send. There is a great deal of satisfaction in knowing that you’ve taught your students well, that they’ve mastered the objectives set forth in the state standards, but that’s not what keeps teachers coming back to the classroom.
The pull is something a little less quantitative and a little more qualitative. It’s the knowledge that you’ve really touched someone, the knowledge that you’ve made a difference. It makes all that other stuff worth it—the grading on weekends when you’d rather be hanging out with your family, the pay that (on average) falls some twenty-five thousand dollars short of the income needed to meet basic middle-class needs.
I picture Robert looking into the fountain, making a confession no kid should have to make. I’ve seen that kind of raw honesty only once before. It was when Maya told me she couldn’t go on pretending to be husband and wife anymore. When she told me what it did to her every night when I retired to my room and closed the door. We thought we could make it work, for the sake of Kiki. But we couldn’t. And I’d had no idea what it was doing to my best friend and the mother of my little girl. I moved out the next day and she started trying to build a life without me.
I don’t know if all my talk about chaos theory really made a difference with Robert. It seemed intuitive at the time; now, I’m not so sure. Maybe he just needed me to be there, to allow him to get what he needed to off his chest, to let him know he didn’t have to carry that burden around all by himself.
MAC-Donald’s. Big MAC.
Don’t rub it in, smartass.
Ouch! Your language, my eyes!
I don’t give a damn what you think.
Nice. Eminem, right?
Chapter 8
Andrew
“Damn. You look great.”
It’s Monday, a week after we returned from break. I look up and see Robert standing in my doorway and screw up my face. “This old thing?” I say, tugging at the lapel on my jacket. “I feel like I’m trapped in a scene from Wall Street.”
Robert’s holding a tray from the cafeteria with two slices of pizza and a Powerade balanced on top.
“Come on in. Not eating in the cafeteria today?” I loosen the knot on my tie a bit.
“Can I have lunch with you?”
“Sure.” I clear off a space on the corner of my desk, and he sets his tray there.
“Don’t you teacher types have a lounge or somewhere to eat lunch?”
I smile in response. I’m actually glad Robert has stopped by. It’s hard to really gauge how he’s doing in class. And in his texts, even when he’s being funny, I sometimes sense a subtext there, something darker. But he looks good today, relaxed.
“So, what’s with the suit?”
“I’m applying to the administrator training program. I had an interview with the superintendent’s council this morning.”
“Aah. That explains why you weren’t here when I stopped by earlier. So, what’s for lunch?”
He stopped by earlier? I process that as I tear off a corner of my sandwich and hand it to him.
“Wow, PBJ. I thought you were just kidding.” He looks at it with mock disgust, then pops it into his mouth. “Do you always eat at your desk?” he asks as he cracks open the Powerade.
“It’s half an hour of grading that I don’t have to do at home.”
“How did I do on Friday’s review quiz?” he asks, stretching across my desk to get a look at my computer screen.
“Uh, uh, uh,” I say, swiveling the screen away from him. “You’ll just have to wait until sixth period like all the rest of the goons.”
He pulls an ankle across his knee and I notice he’s wearing black athletic shoes with black no-show socks. The black contrasts nicely with his bare ankles.
“I saw your boyfriend a few minutes ago.”
“Nic?”
“Whore-Hay.”
“Aaaah.” He laughs. “You know about that too.”
“This place is like a petri dish of gossip, my friend. Keep that in mind. So how long have you two been dating?”
It’s clear Robert doesn’t want to talk about Nic when he skips backward over that question to the other comment. “Do teachers really gossip?”
I just avoid squirting water out of my nose. Do teachers gossip? That’s the understatement of the year.
“Sorry about hitting you with that AfterElton thing. I just thought you should know. And just so you don’t get the wrong idea,” he continues quickly, “you’ve kind of been trending since one of the girls found you on Twitter.”
Trending. Great. “So, what you’re telling me is you’re not some kind of crazed stalker kid?”
He laughs. “Me? No.”
I fight to keep the disappointment from my face.
“Anyway,” he goes on, “I guess everybody kind of knows which department you shop in.”
That stops me. “Not everybody,” I say, not entirely certain that this is true.
At least, I hope it’s not true. Not that it’s a big deal, but my personal life is mine. I prefer to keep it that way. Over-sharing is a definite negative for teachers. We’ve already gotten the spiel this year on social networking and being above reproach. I’m very careful that my Facebook and Twitter posts are as bland as a butter sandwich.
It hadn’t occurred to me, though, that who or what I follow might rip open my little bag of secrets and spill the contents for all to gawk at.
I vow to do a little editing on my accounts tonight.
“It’s no big deal,” Robert says. He sets his half-eaten slice of pizza on his tray and wipes his hands on his jeans. “But I have to warn you.” He flicks his eyebrows. “Some of the girls are convi
nced they can change you if they can just get you in a backseat somewhere for twenty minutes.”
I feel a little sick. “Will you do me a favor? When you hear that stuff, you think you could redirect the conversation? You know, without mentioning . . .” Shit. The last thing I need is some rumor that I’m a teenage girl fantasy. “I just don’t want anyone thinking about me in that context.”
I can see he gets it when his eyes meet mine. “Sure. And just so you know, I haven’t told anyone that I . . . that we . . . well, I just haven’t. And I won’t.”
I study him for a moment and think that we are the very definition of complicity. No, that is not true, I chide myself. Complicity suggests that what we are doing is wrong. That’s ridiculous. He looks to me for support. And I’m doing what we teachers do—I’m meeting one of my students where he is. That’s all.
“So, back to Nic. Are you two, uh . . . ?”
“Are we having sex?” he finishes for me.
I was going to say exclusive. But I don’t correct him.
“It’s okay, Mr. Mick. You can say the word.”
I smile at his use of Mick. I noticed that he didn’t call me Andrew. It’s school. He’s a smart kid. I’m glad I don’t have to insist on that distinction.
“No. Definitely, emphatically, unequivocally no,” he says, lobbing my words back at me. “He’s not really my type, you know.”
In fact, I do know.
“I’ve been thinking,” he continues. “Maybe it’s time we break up.”
“Do me another favor,” I say before I can stop myself. “Don’t break up.”
He doesn’t seem surprised that I asked.
We finish lunch on safer topics—music mostly, the college application process, the new stereo he installed in his car over Christmas break, the admin training program. He doesn’t mention his dad, and I don’t ask. I know he’ll talk when he needs to.
I’m disappointed when the bell rings.
“I’ll see you sixth,” Robert says as he heads for the door.
“Oh, by the way,” I say, “ninety-eight.”
He turns back. “Ninety-eight?”
“Your quiz. You made a ninety-eight. You missed a sign.” I wink and he flashes me a smile, then tosses his tray in the trashcan at the door. He starts out, then stops and turns back.
“I just want to say thank you again for meeting me in Huntsville. It meant a lot to me to have someone to talk to. Someone who wouldn’t judge me.”
“You can talk to me anytime, Robert.”
Chapter 9
Robert
The speakers crackle a little when I crank up the volume, and I know I’ve got a bad connection somewhere. It seems I have a lot of bad connections lately.
Nic, for one. I think about what Mr. Mac (Andrew—the name still feels a little odd on my tongue) said. Don’t break up. What he’s asking is tough, though I understand why he asked, I think.
The thought of breaking up with Nic is not a new thought. I’ve just been too lazy to do it. Actually, now that I think about it, that’s not true either. A boyfriend gives me a reason to get out of the house. It gives me someone to meet for a movie or a burger, if said boyfriend isn’t already booked up with his girls. It means someone to hang out at the pool with during the summer and a date to the homecoming dance in the fall.
I don’t know why I didn’t break up with him that day after Christmas. He’d been such a jerk. I think about calling Luke when I get home. It’s been almost a year since we “dated,” and I miss having someone like that to unload on. But it’s not really Luke that I want to talk to.
Do you think I’m fat?
LOL. Who told you that?
Nic. He also says I look like a marshmallow.
I love marshmallows! Especially sandwiched between two graham crackers with a bit of chocolate. Yum.
I’m still trying to think how to respond to that text when a second one comes in: Um, strike that last text. You are not fat.
I smile down at my phone. I do believe that Andrew has embarrassed himself. I like that about him. In fact, there’s not much about Andrew McNelis that I don’t like. No, that’s not quite right. There is nothing about Andrew McNelis that I don’t like. Nothing at all.
Andrew
I’d like to break that little cheerleader’s neck. It wouldn’t take much force either; he’s a scrawny, sassy little twerp. And the nerve. Robert’s worth ten of that pompous little queen.
Maybe I shouldn’t have asked Robert to keep dating him, but I can’t help being a little nervous that there’s too much of me out there. And from the way Robert’s talked, their dating can hardly be described as dating, so maybe that’s not so bad.
I reply to his text, and even as my thumb is hitting Send, I see the innuendo in my words and fire off a follow-up. I can feel the heat in my face. You, teacher. You, adult, I remind myself.
Yum? God.
I set my phone on the table next to me and start with my Twitter account since that seems to be ground zero. I’m not worried about my tweets, but I scan over a few pages just to be sure. Most of them are links to news articles and opinion pieces I’ve read in the Huffington Post or the Daily Beast. I can’t help being a little political, but the links indicate a liberal bent that’s not that unusual among younger teachers, even in this area. I scan through my list of followers and those I follow and block and unfollow anyone or any organization that might suggest to anyone that I’m a pervert in any way. I’m not.
When I’m confident that I am above reproach, I turn to my Facebook page.
BTW, you owe me 2 points.
???
My quiz. The sign. Not wrong. A sliver of wood fiber in the paper made the–look like a +. Can bring back tomorrow for you to check.
No need. Won’t be the first time a piece of wood—
Check that. Damn, why does everything read like a sex joke now? I backspace over the last sentence and write: The 2 pts are yours, plus 2 more for my sloppy grading. I consider tossing in an extra two points for my Freudian-like slips.
Facebook. I don’t post much, but I do find it a convenient way to share photos of Kiki with my mom and dad and to keep up with Kiki when she’s with Maya.
Originally my friends consisted of old college buddies and my family, but in a moment or two of weakness, or perhaps guilt, I’ve accepted friend requests from colleagues. It’s kind of awkward to see those friend requests just sitting there. You know the person on the other end is wondering why you haven’t accepted. So over the year and a half I’ve been teaching, plenty of non-friends have made their way onto my Friends list.
I’m regretting that right now, although I have nothing whatsoever to hide. Still, I’d just prefer not to be on anyone’s radar. I scan through the list. Among my old college friends is Jeremy. I notice he has a new profile picture up. He’s got his arm casually slung over his partner’s shoulder. Cute couple.
The way I see it, I have two choices—unfriend my colleagues or unfriend my friends. I choose to avoid the awkward questions in the teachers’ lounge when someone discovers I’m no longer on their Friends list. My old college friends will understand. Actually, I doubt they’ll even notice. We don’t really keep up with each other. I hit the Unfriend button a few times and vow to start sharing photos with Maya and my parents via e-mail.
On a whim, I search Robert’s name on Facebook. I find quite a few Robert Westfalls, but none who are high school students or who live in this area. Good for you, Robert. And then just for the heck of it I click on the Pages tab.
Well, well, well. A Robert Westfall fan page. I click on the link and have a look. A quick scan of the posts—the most recent just two days ago—tells me this is a fan club of three, all boys. Their profile photos scream freshmen; their comments scream band kids. I hit the Older Posts button and start at the beginning.
Erick Wasserman OMG! Did you see that flip?
I almost peed my uniform.
Caleb Smith Me too. Damn he’s hot.
Zach Townley He can run that sword thru me anytime.
Caleb Smith Ha, ha. Me too. He sat in front of me on the bus last night. I almost licked his neck.
Erick Wasserman Down, gurl. I got dibs on him.
I pick up my phone.
Are you aware you have a Facebook fan page?
No, I don’t.
Yeah. You do. I’m looking at it right now.
Hold on.
You’ll need to sign up for an account, then search your name and click on the Pages tab at left.
Too late, I realize I just showed him my hand. Maybe he won’t notice.
While I wait for Robert to join the twenty-first century, I have a peek at the photos. Most look like they were taken at football games. And they’re professionally done. The little stalkers must have bought them from one of those photography companies that photograph school events, then post the photos online for parents to purchase. Robert is in every one of these—a few in his band uniform, but most in costume. I can’t tell what role he played this year, but the photos depict him all in black, his face painted in stripes and swirls. In a couple of photos he’s carrying a sword.
Ah, and there’s the flip. It’s a still shot, caught mid–back handspring from a black podium on the field.
There’s also a video. I click that too. He and another kid are standing on a gazebo stage that looks very much like the one at Northshore Park. They’re doing some kind of impromptu rap, it seems. A rap of insults. A contest, maybe, the way they alternate back and forth and the way the kids below the stage groan and laugh at the end of some lines. I can’t make out all the words. But I can hear the boy holding the camera loud and clear: “Come on, baby. Give it to us!”
Where You Are Page 8