by Leah Raeder
“No one,” I said.
“Britt saw us at the party.”
“She saw you taking a drunk student home.”
“Wesley knows about ‘E.’”
“Wesley can barely focus on anything but my tits. And he’s my friend. He won’t say anything.”
Evan rocked on his toes, not looking at me. “Hiyam saw. She was taunting us.”
I stood and moved toward him. “Hiyam’s had a crush on you since the first day of school. She told me at homecoming. Besides, she has a filthy mind.” I touched his forearm, ran my fingers over the soft gold hair. “Even if we weren’t sleeping together, she’d think we were.”
It was terrible, but now that the immediate danger had passed, the idea of people knowing excited me. Without proof, they couldn’t do shit. It was right there under their noses and they couldn’t pin anything to us.
He never touched me, Principal Boyle. That’s a filthy lie.
No, Principal Boyle, I never had sex in school with a teacher.
Mr. Wilke is a great teacher, Principal Boyle. He’s taught me so much about cinema, and life, and myself. About my body. About how fucking amazing he can make it feel.
Of course, if I seriously thought we might be exposed, I’d have cooled everything off. I never wanted Evan to lose his job and get branded with the student-seducer stigma. But Hiyam was all talk. She still thought she could use me for a drug connection. She wouldn’t out us.
Evan wasn’t convinced.
“What are we doing?” he whispered, looking at me with a worryingly tragic face.
“No one’s going to say anything. We just have to be a little more careful.”
“Maybe we should wait, Maise. Until you’re out of school.”
He had never, ever said this before. The idea cut through me like a guillotine blade, splitting everything into cold halves.
“You cannot be serious,” I said.
That pained look deepened.
I stepped closer, my body hovering against his, not quite making contact. “If you think you can stand looking and not touching for eight more months, you’re welcome to try.”
“‘Try’ being the operative word,” he said, sighing. “No, I can’t. And I don’t want to try.”
“But you’ve thought of stopping this? Of waiting?”
He sat in a chair near the lamp, his shoulders bowed. “What if I lost my job? What kind of life could I offer you?”
“Your part-time job teaching an art class? You didn’t even want it. You can do better, Evan. You could be an actor.”
“That’s a pipe dream.”
“Every dream is a pipe dream before someone achieves it.” I leaned beside the blinds, looking up at the ceiling. “What if we went to LA?” I glanced at him without turning my head. “Together?”
He didn’t answer, but his posture became alert, attentive.
“I know it’s expensive as hell. But Wesley’s sister lives out there, and he wants to go, too, after graduation.” I bit my lip. “We could all rent a house together. Me and Wesley will get jobs and go to college. You could teach. Or you could audition for roles. Or—god, you’re fucking gorgeous, maybe you could model. I’m sure some catalog needs hot guys to stand around in V-necks.”
He laughed, softly.
“And if it doesn’t work, if we run out of money and suck at everything, then we can always come back. Or go somewhere else. Or never see each other again.”
“Come here,” he said.
I went to him. I sat in his lap, straddling his legs, his arms around my waist. His hair had a reddish-bronze gleam in the lamplight. Those boyish features looked delicate sitting inside the hard, square lines of his jaw.
“How long have we known each other?” he said.
“About two months.”
Sixty-eight days. Sixteen hundred-odd hours. My entire life.
“It feels like a lot longer,” he said.
“We did more with our time than most people do.”
That Polaroid smile. “I’m crazy about you, Maise O’Malley.”
Another rift of light chiseled into the blood-red gem in my chest.
“Why do I think you’re about to say something I won’t like?” I said.
His smile turned tender, suspiciously regretful. “I want this to work. But we can’t do it like this.”
“What?”
“We have to stop seeing each other in school.”
My throat tightened. “I can’t. I have a class with you.”
“That can change.”
Was it just me, or did time stop for everybody?
“You want me to drop your class?” I said in a small voice.
“You can switch to another elective—”
“I can’t, Evan. I need that class on my transcript.”
“You don’t need it. You can get in without it.”
“To a state school, maybe,” I muttered. Something sharp and thin curled in my chest, like peeled metal. It felt horrible. I could not believe he was saying this.
He made me look at him. “I can write you a letter of recommendation. I am your teacher.”
Uncomfortable pause. It had never felt so awkward before.
I twisted away, swallowing the prickly burr in my throat. “I feel like you’re punishing me for something we both did.”
“It’s not punishment. If I had my way, I’d lock us in that classroom and throw away the fucking key. You’re right, Maise. I can’t look without touching.” He stroked my face. “If they found out they’d call you a victim and they’d call me a predator and those labels would stick. And I hate the thought of people pitying you and telling you how to feel. They don’t know you like I do. They don’t know what you’ve been through, how strong you are. I won’t let them reduce all of that to some checkbox on a police report.” He breathed in, held it, breathed out slowly. “If it makes it easier for you, I’ll resign. You have to be in that school. I don’t.”
My eyes were full of water. It took superhuman willpower to keep from letting it go. “How would that make it easier? I’d just miss you and feel like shit all the time. And it’s not even about the credit, Evan. I like your class. I’m actually fucking learning.”
We stared at each other for a moment, wearing our absurdly pained tragedy masks. Then I started to laugh and cry at the same goddamn time.
Evan touched my face again, kissing away my tears, laughing in a gentle, commiserating way. And once he started kissing me he couldn’t stop. He kissed my cheeks, my mouth, tilting my head, opening my jaw with his hand. I tasted hot saline, the salt of my own tears. All of my tension unraveled into beautiful chaos, a mess of sorrow and hurt and desire and tenderness, completely mixed up and completely mixing me up. His tongue curled around mine and he kissed me like he wanted to draw out something deep, the breath from the bottom of my lungs, the blood from the innermost crypts of my heart, the essence of me. When I pulled away, his arms tightened relentlessly around my back.
“Why do I need you like this?” he said, his voice rasping.
I looked at his glassy, mercurial eyes, the haggard lines of want etched into his face, and said, “Because you’re addicted.”
#
In the tranquil moments after sex, I hatched my plan.
“Let me finish the semester with you,” I said.
I was sitting on the edge of the bed, naked, while Evan lay tangled in the sheets.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s only fair. I need to finish my film so I can put it on college apps. You would never jeopardize my future.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re trying to manipulate me.”
“‘Try’ being the operative word,” I said, and he grabbed me around the waist and pulled me down while I squawked, indignant. I failed to free myself and gave in, letting him pin my arms to the bed, and then his humor faded. His expression became pensive.
“Maise,” he said. “I’m worried about the kind of relationship we’re developing.�
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“What do you mean?”
“I don’t want to be your teacher if it’s all that’s driving this.”
“It’s not,” I said immediately, but his hands tightened on my wrists.
“It is, to some degree. Be honest.”
“Don’t act like it’s all me. You liked telling me what to do when you were fucking me in class.”
He breathed deeply. Lamplight ran up one side of his body, gilding the rungs of muscle over his ribs, his roped arms. “I did. And that scares me a little. We had something real before we became teacher and student.”
“This isn’t real?” I said.
“It is. Of course it is.” He squeezed my hand, pressing the ring. “But even if everything goes perfectly, it won’t last forever. It’s over in June, one way or another. And I don’t want it to end. I want to keep you. I want to hold on and never let you go.”
No one in my life had ever said anything like this to me. I felt disembodied again, but this time because my body was too full to contain me, too crowded with light and stars and shimmering galaxies like pinwheels studded with diamonds, spinning their brilliance into the void without caring whether it would ever be seen, just needing to shine. The bed beneath me was cloud, my skin a sheet of moonlight lying atop it. And this man, this amazing, impossible man, was the sun.
“You can’t, though,” I said, trying to defuse the intensity. “Remember? You can’t hold on to a shooting star.”
He smiled, looked away. Released me.
“Besides,” I said in as light a voice as I could manage, “you can’t dump me as your student yet. You still haven’t shown me Casablanca.”
“Promise not to mock me if I cry?”
“Nope.”
“Heartless.”
I blew on my nails and rubbed them on the sheet.
Evan laughed, and tackled me, and wrestled me still and kissed me and started the entire cycle all over again, my numb and tired body somehow rekindling, quickening, giving itself up to him.
And the whole time I wondered, If you weren’t my teacher, who would you be?
#
In his class on Halloween that Thursday, I felt hot, feverish. Not in a good way, but with a curl of nausea in my stomach, a feeling like my body was moving too fast, about to slam into something. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t look at the whiteboard where he’d held me and put his fingers inside of me. I couldn’t look at Hiyam, her smug eyes glazed with knowing. So I spent the period staring out the windows. Everything was flame shades of tangerine and pomegranate, ripeness on the brink of decay, and when the wind rippled the leaves they looked like a mosaic of fire, like the walls of the Cathedral Basilica. The bell rang and I sighed in relief, following Wesley out.
“You’re actually coming to lunch?” he said.
Cortana and Master Chief walked past, stopping for a group pic with Spock and Kirk. We were allowed to wear costumes as long as they weren’t “disruptive.”
I held Wesley’s gaze. For a moment I could imagine not being in Evan’s class anymore as a good thing. As freedom. “What are you doing tonight?” I said.
He shrugged. “There’s a party I’m thinking of hitting up.”
“Where?”
He glanced at me briefly, then away.
“Hiyam’s?” I said, my voice rising.
“So?” He looked so ridiculous when he was embarrassed. Too much landmass to be self-effacing. “She invited me.”
“She invited you,” I repeated. “She didn’t invite me.”
“I guess you pissed her off.”
“Well, have fun,” I said, turning away.
He followed me down the hall. “Maise, come on. I just thought, since you’re always busy at night…”
He trailed off. Neither of us looked at each other.
“What are you doing tonight?” he said.
“I don’t know.”
“This is the last night of the fair. Want to go?”
My turn to shrug.
“You should,” he said. “And I’ll show up and accidentally run into you. We can do a meet-cute.”
I glanced at him, amused, and also feeling a cold frisson of unease. Paranoia. Secrecy. It was bleeding into every part of my life, staining everything.
“You’d ditch the Princess of Persia for me?” I said.
He grinned his friendly wolf grin, and I thought, You are a better friend than I am.
#
It was cold that night, the sky layered with clouds, sheets of cirrus shifting and moving in parallax and occasionally opening like a lens to expose the stars. Siobhan drove us and I insisted she come with, which almost killed Wesley. The truth was that seeing the carnival up close again set off demolition charges in my chest, and I needed all the distraction I could get from the crumbling, collapsing feeling inside me.
It should have been us coming back here. Me and Evan.
In the autumn chill, there was less drunken glee. The laughter that rang around us was crisp and dry. I wore skinny jeans and a hoodie, and whether I was too covered up or because they thought Siobhan was my mom, no man tried to eye-fuck me. I felt very young. We rode the merry-go-round together, and I half-heartedly played tag with Wesley while Siobhan sat on a white tiger, laughing her chiming, melodious laugh. I could see a glimpse of the girl she’d been, savvy and self-possessed, full of mysterious humor. She caught me staring at her and smiled.
“Let’s ride the rollercoaster,” Wesley said as he leapt off the platform.
I froze in my tracks. “No way.”
“Why not?” Then he saw my face. “Is the fearless Maise O’Malley actually scared?”
I’m not scared, I thought. It’s sacred.
“Bullying is grounds for disinheritance,” Siobhan said.
“Mom, this is not bullying. It’s friendly concern.”
“I’m afraid of heights,” I lied. It was the easiest way to shut him up.
But he gave me a funny look, and I thought of swinging out from the crow’s nest. Shit.
Siobhan came to my rescue. “I feel a strong desire to be used as a human canvas. You’re welcome to join me.”
We all sat down, mercifully spared from talking as the face painters worked on us. Wesley got snake fangs at the corners of his mouth, and a freckling of scales. I got a feline rim of kohl around my eyes and abstract whiskery scrolls on my cheeks. But Siobhan went full-out: a feathered mask across the bridge of her nose, complete with stick-on rhinestones and black lipstick. Wesley shook his head, embarrassed, but I beamed at her.
“You’re beautiful,” I said sincerely.
Her fingers grazed my ear. “Sweet child.”
As we walked through the game stalls, Wesley leaned close and whispered, “Do you have a crush on my mom?”
I elbowed him in the ribs, hard. But after a moment I whispered back, “Platonically. You’re so lucky, and you don’t even appreciate it.”
He scowled and walked ahead. But he knew I was right.
The distraction didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. In the funhouse, my reflection stretched out like taffy, a pale girl with haunted black-rimmed eyes and long empty hands. I thought about how I was pulled between two selves: the normal one who went to school and hung out with her friend and his mom, and the secret one who conspired with drug dealers and slept with her teacher. I found a broken mirror that split my face into Picasso shards and lingered there, unable to look away. He’d warned me. He’d said it would be hard to deal with the secrecy. And it wasn’t the secrecy itself that was difficult—it was that not talking about it made me question whether it was even real. I was still a teenager, and part of being a teenager was constantly checking your answers against everyone else’s. What did you get for number four? Is falling in love with someone twice your age gross, weird, amazing, or all of the above? The secrecy insulated me in a vacuum-sealed bubble. I could only ask myself, How does this feel? Is this good? Is this right? And the only answer I ever got was my own echo.
Sometimes when I couldn’t sleep, I’d Google things. Is it wrong to have sex with your teacher? The answers were useless to me. I wasn’t a minor. I wasn’t being abused. It had started before we ever set foot in school together, and it was technically legal. What I really wanted was to read other people’s stories. Other girls and boys who’d fallen for a teacher, and how it ended. Depressingly common tropes: power imbalance, surrogate parent figure, midlife crisis. Worse were the ones that ended when the parties realized taboo was all that held them together. That was what we’d finally been forced to confront: if our relationship was based on forbiddenness, what would happen when it was no longer forbidden?
Wesley and Siobhan bought hot dogs loaded with ketchup and onions and relish, and I told them I had to hit the restroom. Really what I needed was a moment alone. I wandered toward Deathsnake, leaning on the railing and watching the cars click-clack up the track, hair whipping off the sides, voices carrying on the wind. I hadn’t felt this lonely since the night I first met him.
“Maise,” a warm voice said.
At first I thought I was hallucinating. How the hell could he be here? But he walked up to me, squinting, smiling in surprise, a beautiful thing emerging from the blur of neon and smoke. He wore a sweater with the sleeves rolled up, his hair raking messily above his forehead.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
“What are you doing here?”
We stared at each other. His surprise was brightening into happiness.
“It’s the last night,” he said. “I had to come.”
“Me too.”
We couldn’t have shown up together, but here we were anyway. It was in the script.
Evan peered at me strangely. “What is on your face? Are those whiskers?”
“I’m a lion.”
He laughed. “You are, aren’t you? My little lioness.”
All the loneliness and confusion I’d felt minutes ago evaporated. “Well, I am a Leo.”
“You’re adorable.” He put a hand against my neck, slid it through my hair. His voice dropped. “I missed you so much today.”