“You saw that he was kind back in the summer,” she said to her reflection. “He took you home to make sure you were safe, and jerks don’t do that. Plus, remember when he showed you his student’s app, and he was so proud of the kid? There has to be a way to find that goodness in him again.”
She paced back and forth and thought. Her father was a pacer, and she’d picked up the habit from him, although she really preferred to regard it as walking meditation.
She looked at the clock. It was eleven p.m. Lights out had happened an hour prior, and she was supposed to be on duty from ten until two while Brian slept. Then she’d sleep for four hours, and Brian would be on duty from two to six. Then they’d wake all the kids for breakfast and head to the Smithsonian museums.
That was the plan, anyway.
At only eleven p.m., Brian probably wasn’t actually asleep yet, right? So it wouldn’t matter if she went and knocked on his door and had a little chat. She wouldn’t have to actually go in his room. She could just stand there at the door and say, “Hey, I just wanted to say, I think there was some tension between us today, and I want you to know that I’m sorry for my part in it and I wanted to reiterate that I really respect you as a teacher and as a colleague. Tomorrow is a fresh start.”
She practiced the little speech in front of the mirror, and it sounded perfectly fine and inoffensive. So she smoothed her hair and wondered briefly if she should put on makeup. She hardly ever wore makeup, preferring the natural look, but she had thought to bring some makeup with her that her older sister had given her at Christmas. (“It’s Chanel,” her sister had said. “Not that you care, but it’s expensive. These are investment items. You should learn to use them.” Alicia had thanked her nicely and then tossed them, unopened, in the back of her closet in Flemington.)
“Makeup is silly,” she said firmly to her reflection. “You are beautiful just the way you are.” She mostly believed it, in a spiritual sense, at least.
Alicia strode confidently out the door, still wearing her T-shirt and long skirt and Birkenstocks, and went down the long hallway to Brian’s room. She paused a few times along the way, cocking her head to listen for unusual sounds. But everything sounded just fine, and so she made her way to her destination. She raised her fist to knock on the door, took a deep breath, took her hand back down, turned around, and walked a few feet down the hall. Then she whipped back around and marched herself back to the door, where she knocked firmly. She heard the sounds of rustling inside and Brian’s sleepy voice called, “Just a sec!” And then he opened the door, and Alicia had to restrain a gasp.
Apparently Brian had, in fact, decided to go to sleep. And apparently Brian Kenner slept in his boxers, because while he’d thrown on the robe he was still hastily tying, he hadn’t quite wrapped it tight around himself. Part of it was open, and Alicia’s eyes fell not just on his amazing abs but on his underwear, a pair of black boxers emblazoned with the logo for Star Trek.
“Whoa,” Alicia murmured. “Original series.”
“What’d you say?” he asked, confused. She snapped out of her reverie.
“Nothing!” she said quickly. “I just, um, I wanted to say, um—” She didn’t exactly remember her speech.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “Are the kids okay?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, as if she’d forgotten the kids even existed (which she had, to be honest). “I just, um, wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Come in,” he said, and she followed him into his room. She noticed that all his things were very neatly laid out for the next day: boxers, undershirt, button-down shirt, slacks, shoes, socks.
“Uh—sit down?” he said uncertainly, gesturing to the desk chair. She sat down gingerly on the very edge of the chair and crossed her ankles, sitting up ramrod straight, just as she strived to do during meditation. Brian sat on the edge of one of the double beds and looked at her expectantly.
“I just—um,” she said. “I just feel like maybe we didn’t get along so great today, and I wanted to say that I still think you’re really good at teaching and I hope we can be friends even though I know it’s weird and I threw up on your dick that one time.”
Okay, that wasn’t exactly what she’d meant to say.
Brian looked at her for a moment and then laughed.
“Sorry,” Alicia said. “That was weird.”
“It was totally weird,” he said, cracking up. “You woke me up to tell me that?”
“Sort of,” she said.
He smiled. “Well, I mean—Alicia, it’s just—let’s just—let’s just not even worry about the thing from the summer. That was just—it was whatever. It happened. It’s over. I don’t think about it ever.”
“Me neither,” Alicia said quickly. “Except for just now.”
“Me too,” Brian said.
“Cool,” Alicia said.
“I was kind of an asshole to you today,” Brian said, and she looked at him in surprise.
“I know how I can be,” he said. “I just think you and I have different teaching philosophies, but that doesn’t mean we have to disagree. I think we can figure out how to work together so our styles are complementary.”
“Wow,” Alicia said. “You’re a lot—I don’t know—easier to talk to than I thought.”
“Yeah, that’s what my fiancée said about me after our first date,” he said, and then he seemed embarrassed.
“You have a fiancée?” Alicia asked carefully, even though she basically wanted to throw herself out a window.
“Had,” he said. “Years ago.”
“What happened?” Alicia asked, then clapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh my God, I’m sorry. That was like totally inappropriate of me. You don’t have to tell me anything.”
“I know,” Brian said. “But it’s okay.”
“I’m just kind of a TMI person,” Alicia said. “My mother says it’s generational. My sister is ten years older and she says I just talk and talk and talk and it’s like really unattractive.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Brian said, looking directly at her. “I wouldn’t say that at all.”
It is weird to suddenly go from wanting to die to wanting to sprout wings and do loop-de-loops in the sky, but that’s how Alicia felt. Was he calling her attractive? Or at least not unattractive?
“I wish I were as social as you are,” Brian said. “I see you in the teachers’ lounge with all those friends. You’ve been here less than a year and everybody likes you. I’m just not that good at making friends. My best friends are still my fraternity brothers from MIT.”
“You were in a fraternity?” Alicia asked dubiously.
“Yeah, but we were all nerds,” he said. “I mean, it was MIT.”
“We didn’t have frats or sororities at Hampshire,” she said.
“You don’t say.” He smiled at her, and she laughed a little. It came out kind of high-pitched, and she immediately turned red.
“So were you engaged at school?” Alicia asked.
“You’re really direct, you know that?” he said.
“I just don’t have a filter,” she said. “My mother always said it was my blessing and my curse. It’s how I make friends, but also sometimes I think I sound like a dork.”
“Well, in answer to your question: yes. I was engaged my senior year of undergrad. She went to MIT too. Then we lived together for a year in Somerville while I was doing my masters at MIT and she was doing her masters at Harvard.”
“And then?”
“And then she left me for the professor she was TAing for, and now they live together in our old apartment with a baby they adopted from Korea,” Brian said matter-of-factly.
“No way!” Alicia said. “She left you?”
“For a women’s studies professor,” Brian said.
“A male women’s studies professor?” Alicia said, flabbergasted. “I don’t know if that’s progressive or offensive. I just can’t picture a guy mansplaining Audre Lorde to me.”
> “Oh, no, it was a woman,” Brian said. “Still is, if reports are correct. Anyway, they’re happy or they probably are. I wouldn’t know. I don’t talk to them anymore. But yeah, that was my last girlfriend.”
“You haven’t had a girlfriend since then?”
“No. I’ve gone on dates here and there, but I was kind of burned out on dating for a few years after that.”
“Jeez,” Alicia said. “I can understand.”
“Anyway,” Brian said. “That’s boring stuff. What about you? Well, you don’t need a boyfriend. You’re super-young.”
“Twenty-three isn’t super-young,” she said.
“It is when you’re twenty-nine,” he said.
And suddenly, just like that, they were having a nice conversation. It was normal and natural and it felt really good. Alicia hoped it would go on for hours and hours.
“Tell me why you decided to be a teacher,” she said, and his face lit up.
“Well,” he said. “It actually started at my first Comic Con.”
“This just feels like a bad idea,” Gertie whispered. She and Sivan and Rachel were creeping down the hall as quietly as possible. Rachel had thrown on one of her secret outfits, purchased with babysitting money: a tiny little black tank top with spaghetti straps, a short denim skirt and a pair of platform wedges. Her hair was up in a high ponytail and the tail arched down her back like the spray from a dolphin. She wore dangly earrings and gold and silver bangle bracelets up and down one arm. For someone who was usually only allowed to wear mascara and lip gloss, she’d done an impressive job of making up her eyes in a manner that might have inspired her mother to pass out, or at least to accuse her of wanting to look like “a street corner hooker.” She looked a little like a young Madonna, which is to say she appeared beautiful, confident, a little reckless, and very determined.
“Stop worrying,” Rachel hissed. “Just walk like you know exactly where you’re going.” Man, the hallway was long.
Gertie was wearing exactly what she’d worn earlier in the day: a T-shirt and shorts. But Rachel insisted on doing Gertie’s makeup, so she ended up looking like exactly what she was: a regular sixteen-year-old playing dress-up. Sivan had slicked her short hair back with some of Rachel’s hair goop and put on a fresh T-shirt bearing an image of Che Guevara. Rachel and Gertie both smelled like Rachel’s perfume, a knockoff brand she’d bought at Rite Aid. It was powdery and sweet. Sivan smelled like Old Spice deodorant because Sivan loved Old Spice deodorant.
Rachel was almost completely sure they were going to pull this off. Sivan was less certain, but was enjoying the rare feeling of doing something mildly dangerous. Besides, she knew her parents would almost be disappointed if she didn’t do something a little bit rebellious on the trip. At moments, she was almost too square for their tastes. Also, they used the word “square,” which was ridiculous. They were in their sixties and total ex-hippies, but still. “Square?” No thank you.
Gertie quaked with nervousness. She didn’t see how she could have a good time, even if they did end up making it out of the place and back in one piece. She didn’t want to drink or smoke pot or make out with a random hot boy or do anything that Rachel might want to do. She didn’t much like dancing, so a club would be boring. Why were they even doing this, really? Just to say they’d done it? Just because Rachel wanted to be bad?
They reached the elevator, and Rachel pressed the down button. The elevator doors opened up almost instantaneously, and soon they were riding down to the lobby.
“See?” Rachel said simply, checking her lipstick in the elevator mirror. “Easy.”
“Don’t jinx it,” Gertie said darkly.
“We’re sixteen fucking years old,” Rachel said. “They can’t stop us.”
“Um, they definitely can,” Gertie said. “Need I remind you? They can put us in summer school. And put it on our permanent record.”
“Okay, but besides that we’re golden,” Rachel said. “Stop worrying.”
The elevator doors opened then, and Rachel immediately walked off through the small lobby in the direction of the entrance. Sivan and Gertie had to rush to keep up with her long-legged strides. She was walking like a runway model or something. She completely ignored the front desk staff, and they completely ignored her. There were a couple of security guards in the lobby, and they seemed similarly uninterested. The three girls glided through the entrance and out to the sidewalk like nothing was amiss, even though they were three high school students out and about at eleven thirty p.m. on a weeknight.
“See?” Rachel said brightly. “That was easy.”
“I don’t think we should do this,” Gertie said, a little louder than she’d intended. Sivan and Rachel shushed her.
“It’ll be fine,” Rachel said. “We’ll just figure out where we are—we can ask at the Rite Aid, it’s twenty-four hours. Maybe they’ve got a map.”
“I don’t even know how to read a normal map,” Gertie said.
“Didn’t they teach you at camp?” Sivan asked. “They taught us at my camp. Orienteering. Basic survival.”
“Your camp is different,” Rachel said. “She went to, like, Wet Hot American Summer camp. Except not funny. It sounds kind of boring, actually. Except for the Danny Bryan part.”
“Don’t mention his name!” Gertie said. “It makes me feel like an idiot for not saying hi to him today.”
“I still think we should go to his hotel!” Rachel said. “Let’s do it. Let’s go find him!”
“Go find who?” a stern voice said, and they all looked up to see a tall, muscular middle-aged man in a suit towering over them. He didn’t look pleased. He wore a hotel name tag that read BOB REINA, CHIEF OF SECURITY.
“Oh, fuck,” Gertie said.
“We’re just going out to meet our sorority sisters at a club,” Rachel said airily. “You have a good night, sir.”
Bob Reina, Chief of Security, was unamused.
“Aren’t you with the high school class from New Jersey?” he said, knitting his brows together and staring at each of them in turn.
Gertie felt like her heart was turning to ice. Or maybe it was her stomach. All she felt was fear, cold and biting, inside her body.
Rachel smiled gamely.
“You know what,” she said. “Maybe we won’t go out after all. Maybe we’ll just get some sleep before, um, our sorority meeting tomorrow at our college that we go to.”
“I think you’d better follow me inside, girls,” Bob Reina said with a frown. “I’m going to need to call your chaperones.”
“Please don’t,” Gertie begged. “Please, sir. Please don’t tell them.”
“Just doing my job, miss,” Bob Reina said. “Now let’s not make this a bigger deal than it needs to be.”
Sivan sighed heavily. Oh, well. At least they’d tried.
The girls followed him inside and watched miserably as he murmured a few words to a woman at the front desk. She looked up, raised her eyebrow, appeared to stifle a laugh, and then got on the phone.
“This is the worst,” Gertie moaned. “My parents will kill me.”
“No they won’t, Gertles,” Rachel said soothingly, using an old nickname from nursery school. “They’ll just say something about how it’s developmentally appropriate for you to do something like this at this stage. Then they’ll maybe make you take the bus to school for a week instead of driving you. It’s no big deal.”
“You don’t know,” Gertie said glumly. “You don’t know. I bet it’ll be bad.”
“Maybe they won’t even tell our parents,” Sivan said hopefully. “I mean, mine won’t really care that much. But Rachel’s will be pissed.”
“Not if I tell them it really helped me reflect on the sinful nature of our nation’s capital and the temptations that I face as a teenager,” Rachel said. “It’ll be a learning experience. They might not let me wear lip gloss for a couple months.”
“I’ll be super grounded,” Gertie said.
“To be hone
st, I probably will be too,” Rachel admitted.
And then they waited.
Brian was in the middle of explaining his theory regarding the vital importance of cosplay at comic book conventions. Alicia was just listening, not because she didn’t have a lot to say, but because she wasn’t sure she was ready to say it. It was very interesting, but it was bringing up a lot of memories for her. Memories that were surprisingly still a little bit tender. She wondered if she could share them with him. She wasn’t sure it was the right moment. But maybe it was.
“I think steampunk cosplay is particularly cool,” Brian said. “Especially the stuff people make themselves. It’s really impressive. Last year at Dragon Con down in Atlanta, there was this woman who had made a huge headdress out of antique typewriter keys, vintage ostrich feathers, and—”
The phone rang.
“Shit,” Brian and Alicia said at the same time, looking at each other. Just like that, their little moment of bonding was over. It was back to teacher mode.
Brian grabbed the phone.
“This is Brian Kenner,” he said anxiously. “Yes. Yes. What? Oh, Jesus.”
“What is it?” Alicia whispered.
“Okay,” Brian said into the phone. “We’ll be right down. We’re so sorry.” He hung up the phone and looked at Alicia seriously.
“Sivan Finkelstein, Gertie Santanello-Smith, and Rachel Miller just got caught trying to sneak out of the hotel,” he said.
“Sivan, Gertie, and Rachel?” she said in disbelief. “Brock Chuddford I could see. Peighton, Kaylee, and Brooklynn I could see. But those three? Really?”
“Yes, really,” Brian said, irritated. “And if you’d been at your post, maybe you would’ve heard something.”
Alicia felt stung. So that’s how it was going to be? Just one little bump in the road, and boom! He was right back to throwing attitude at her?
Well, okay then.
“Let’s just go downstairs,” she said with a sigh. “Who caught them?”
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