Sophomore Slump

by Alan Lee

“Played in college.”

  “For real?”

  “We’ll talk after class, little man.”

  Laughter. The rest of the class was easy. The alpha had been dealt with. He tested me and deemed me worthy. The paths were a little straighter now and time passed quickly.

  The bell rang after an hour. Jeriah stayed.

  “Mr. August, you looking at the the starting running back on varsity.”

  “As a sophomore? Thought you looked quick.”

  “Damn right. Gotta come watch a game sometime.”

  “Guaranteed,” I said.

  “Aight. Catch you tomorrow.” He strutted away.

  I repeated the same drill twice more that day. After carefully scrutinizing all my students, I concluded the gang general was not one of them. No violence. No outbursts. Just reading and writing, which I enjoyed. Before leaving, I texted Ronnie.

  You have the wrong number. No cowards or blind people here. Just us handsome douchebags.

  Her reply was quick.

  >> I like big sweaty guys…

  >> AND handsome douchebags. ;)

  >> And I haven’t been out in a long time.

  I’ve decided to ask you out. For the free booze.

  And your hair. I liked your hair.

  >> Anything else you liked?

  I plead the Fifth.

  >> When and where?

  I’ll let you know.

  >> I wait. Breathlessly.

  She sent a selfie. Winking and smiling.

  My heart nearly stopped. Hard to look that good. She wore a trim navy blue jacket. Dainty gold necklace. And sex appeal.

  On the way out, I stuck my head in Ms. Bennett’s room.

  “How’d it go?” I asked.

  She sat at her desk, staring out the window.

  “I’m still here. I guess.”

  “Good. Tomorrow, someone steps out of line, make an example of him. Kick him out immediately.”

  She nodded vacantly.

  Reginald Willis’s voice was caroming from a distant hallway. “We have overcome! We shall prevail. This is only the first trial of many, my brethren.”

  I was almost to the back door when Nate Silva walked in. The Nate Silva from our fight. He wore brilliant white Nikes, baggy Levis, and a tight black T-shirt. Head shaved recently, narrowed eyes, serpentine in appearance. Two kids followed him. His hands balled into fists.

  “You.”

  “Silva. What a delightful surprise,” I said. He blocked the door. I stepped aside to wait.

  “Teacher?” he scoffed.

  “That’s right, Nate the Ain’t. You got whooped by a teacher. How embarrassing.”

  “In a real fight, there are no rules. No judges.” He was close to my face, hissing. He smelled of powerful cologne. “And you’d lose.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Because I’d beat your ass.”

  “Oh gosh.”

  “You get that?”

  “Oh jeez. That sounds terrible. But our faces are a little too close. Right? Because I’m thinking of licking you.”

  “Won’t fight you here, funny man.”

  He’s right — I’m funny.

  “Master Silva?” one of the students asked. “What should we do?”

  Silva glared at me another moment. I tried to look scared. Then the storm passed. “Some other time, teacher.”

  “Bye, Master Nate,” I said. He went deeper into the school. I got to my car, thankful Ms. Deere hadn’t seen the interaction. She’d skin me.

  Question was, why did Silva have students following him around and calling him Master?

  Chapter Eight

  The week passed in a flash. I phoned parents twice for behavior problems, and got voice mail both times. Out of a deep sense of tradition, I visited the school cafeteria on corndog nugget day. And on tater tot day. And once for delicious strawberry milk. I wore the same khakis and blue polo two days in a row and no one commented, but I did laundry that night any way. Ms. Bennet hung tough, still alive. Reginald Willis carried on from his soapbox. No more Silva sightings.

  Friday morning at breakfast, the August boys ate to the music of Manny’s hammer in the basement.

  “What’s he doing now?”

  “Putting in new stair railing,” Dad said. “He’s churning through the entire handyman list.”

  “Hispanics. Taking all our jobs.”

  “Speaking of, when does his start? At the marshal’s office?”

  “Monday,” I said.

  “Shame. Cheap labor.”

  Manny hadn’t moved out. His stuff sat in our spare bedroom, but he slept on my floor. Pistol at the ready.

  I had a date tomorrow evening with Ronnie. That thought kept me warm all the way to school. That and the summer heat. Temperatures would reach ninety-nine today. Too hot for clouds. I parked in the teacher’s lot. My car still bore bullet holes from an encounter a year earlier which, oddly enough, occurred in a school parking lot. To date, no women had swooned over the vehicular scars, and that struck me as unusual.

  Between second and third period, I witnessed a felony. Drug distribution. A light-skinned black kid with a red backpack went into the men’s communal restroom. From my door, I had a view straight down the restroom’s hallway entrance. Red Backpack greeting another kid, executed an elegant handshake, and made the swap. Drugs for cash. Not hard to spot, because they did their best to look innocent. Truly innocent people never care about looking innocent.

  Red Backpack continued down the hallway. Reginald Willis patted him on the shoulder without looking at him. “Run along, children, for idle hands are the devil’s workshop! Keep those eyes inside your head, Mr. Kirk! Hurry on, young women. Look’atcha, dressed up for these jokers.”

  The drug purchaser came into my room. White kid named Trevor. He walked to a chair in the back corner, sat, and looked at no one. Stared out the window. Drugs in his pocket or maybe backpack.

  So many options. All of them fun.

  But I did nothing. Not yet. I was after bigger fish.

  For thirty minutes I taught Fahrenheit 451 and symbolism until the lunch bell, at which the students filed out and charged the cafeteria. Leaving their backpacks.

  Here fishy fishy.

  I checked Trevor’s backpack. No drugs. He had a pocket knife, which was against school policy, but so what. I could have the school’s resource officers frisk Trevor but, again, so what. Probably over half the school population would try weed before graduation, and chances were good that’s what Trevor had. No need to hurl pebbles at a tsunami.

  Red Backpack, however, interested me. Distribution is different than consumption.

  At the end of the day, I packed up but paused at the door.

  Maybe…?

  I followed a hunch and sat down at Trevor’s desk. Looked around. He was in the corner, near the wall of windows. No immediate hiding spots. I scrutinized the desktop surface and struck gold.

  Students were leaving notes for each other by writing in pencil on the desk. Tiny letters in the corner.

  Dice 4 sale.

  $$ ??

  20 per

  Tmrw?

  Dice was slang for cocaine. Twenty dollars per rock, fairly standard. Some of it was smudged out, but inexpertly so. Written by students in the same class or alternating classes, which would indicate a two-day written conversation between Trevor and another student later in the day.

  Perhaps Trevor was distributing after all. Getting the dice from Red Backpack and filtering it out through his classes?

  I checked the windowsills. Nearby books. Wall vent. Under the desk’s writing surface. Nothing. Finally I ran my hands under the chair. Bingo. Hidden beneath, out of sight, was a cardboard tube duck-taped to the seat. Felt like a toilet paper roll. Empty.

  The delivery system? Red Backpack gives it to Trevor, and Trevor hides it so he won’t get busted? Or leaves it here for his friend to retrieve in a later class? They could leave both money and cocaine under th
e chair. Simple and effective.

  I guess the drug community wasn’t using Apple Pay yet.

  * * *

  I went to the football game that night. Patrick Henry played Glen Allen High, and was winning 21-0 at the half.

  There’s something immediate and powerful about a football game. Like injecting pure America into your veins, in all its glory and sin. Bright lights. Screaming fans. Proud parents. Rampant teenage insecurities. Pounding drums.

  Manny came with me. He was such an attractive man, handsome to the point of beautiful, that teachers and students I didn’t know came up to chat with me. And then organically transitioned to him. Two middle school boys thought he was famed soccer hero Cristiano Ronaldo.

  “Good grief, amigo,” he said when we had a moment of quiet. “I can’t tell, these are high school girls or runway models?”

  “Every girl looks good these days. Magazines, access to cheap stylish clothes, hair straighteners, and dieting. I find it sad.”

  “How do you keep pure thoughts?”

  “Because they’re kids and I’m not gross.”

  “You a better man than me.”

  “Agreed,” I said.

  “Should be a dress code.”

  “Is at school. Else the boys would never accomplish a thing.”

  “Ah, young love.”

  “Ain’t love, you silly Spaniard.”

  “I was referring to that lovely señorita by the fence.” He nodded toward a collection of girls near the end zone.

  “She’s a senior. Probably not eighteen. Maybe you should stare straight upwards.”

  “I’m no teacher,” he said. “And if she’s eighteen, I can look.”

  “You’re thirty.”

  “No harm looking.”

  “Eh.” I waffled my hand.

  “You’re a Puritan.”

  “There he is.” I shouted over the crowd’s roar. Red Backpack had wandered into view. Next to the bleachers, hanging with a crowd.

  “Want me to solicit some delicious snow, señor?”

  “Nah. I’m playing the long game. Plus, you are suspicious in appearance. He’d make you as a cop.”

  “Bust that ass, and you can return to investigative work.”

  “That’s what I’m doing now,” I said.

  “Don’t look it. You are standing still, hombre.”

  “My ways are mysterious. Besides, he’s not the one I’m after.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “And don’t forget it.”

  Chapter Nine

  Ronnie lived at the Roanoke River House, two miles from Chateau d’August. The River House was a historic brick building modernized into industrial apartments for urban debutantes, and situated beside the river and the Roanoke Greenway.

  I picked her up at seven. She got in and crossed her legs before I could even open my car door.

  Her fingers slid between mine.

  “I hold hands on the first date,” she said.

  She smiled. Spectacularly.

  Mackenzie August, defender of liberty and tough guy extraordinaire, had trouble breathing for a moment. She wore a red cold-shoulder blouse with crocheted neck, jean shorts, and sandals with heels. It was not an immodest outfit. And yet looking at her felt scandalous.

  “Let’s get out of town. Head toward Bent Mountain.”

  “Bent Mountain Bistro,” I said.

  “That’s the one. Wanna?”

  “By all means.”

  “You’re too big for an Accord, Mackenzie. How tall are you?” she asked.

  “Not sure. Do you know how much you weigh?”

  She laughed. “You’re a naughty evil man.”

  I pushed through the gears and we motored southwest toward Floyd. Her hand stayed on mine and I didn’t crash, a minor miracle. Brambleton Road wound up the side of Bent Mountain, giving us the best view in Roanoke.

  The bistro’s floors were wood and so were the table and stools. She ordered roasted chicken fettuccini, and I had the poor mountain spaghetti. Beers for both of us.

  She had a way of speaking that bordered on laughter. Like we were in on a private joke.

  “I did research on you,” she said.

  “A worthwhile endeavor.”

  “You worked the North murders in Los Angeles.”

  “That was me. And my partner,” I said. “And eventually everyone else.”

  “I followed that news story religiously,” she said.

  “Lot less fun from the inside.”

  “I wanted to prosecute. I’d just gotten out of law school.”

  “Lucky. I was getting yelled at by my suspects, and the victims’ families, and my supervisor, and the mayor. And reporters.”

  She waved for another drink and asked for a martini. I got water this time. Her food was half gone and she pushed the rest my way.

  She said, “The guy you shot last year? I read he kidnapped your son.”

  “Indeed he had. Which is why he died so messily.”

  “Because I have a trained intellect and a graduate degree, I was able to deduce another fact about you; you have a son.”

  “Wow. You’re good.”

  “Is that why you don’t go out much?” she asked.

  “Big part. He’s one of those needy toddlers who requires supervision. Why don’t you?”

  “A lot of complicated reasons. Primarily, I’m boring.”

  “A woman will lie about anything,” I said. “You don’t strike me as boring.”

  “That’s a sexist quote. And possibly true. Like I said, I’m complicated. A disaster.”

  “A single dad living with his father isn’t?”

  She laughed, and I imagine an angel got its wings. “Fair. You’re a mess too. But your dark secret is only rated PG. I’ve got three doozies.”

  “Three secrets? Heavens. Maybe you’d better walk home.”

  She winked. “You won’t survive me to find out what they are.”

  “On which date do you reveal you’re a vampire?”

  “The tenth. But by then I’ll be watching sad movies on Netflix and eating ice cream alone. Listen, Mackenzie. This can’t get serious. I’m not looking for a soul mate or anything. I was lonely, you looked lonely and handsome, so I got your number. That’s it, okay? Two lonely people out to dinner.”

  “At the very minimum, I insist on a second date. Positively insist. I didn’t even do my hair tonight.”

  Her fingers found mine again. “Yes. A second date. I’m still lonely. Do you cook?”

  “I do.”

  “You may cook me dinner at your earlier convenience.”

  “Earliest?”

  “Like I said, you’re handsome.”

  The check was brought. I paid. She left cash for a tip.

  I held the car door for her. She lingered a moment, close under my chin, those big bluish hazel eyes shining with the parking lot lamp, and then ducked into my car. She was tall for a girl, which meant just my size.

  Whoa, regroup, Mackenzie. Stop staring. You’re just standing there with the door open.

  On the way home, she said, “I majored in nursing at first. Can you picture me in nursing scrubs?”

  “Gladly. Why’d you quit?”

  “My father made me. And the scrubs got too heavy, if that makes sense. Wasn’t for me. Did you major in law enforcement?”

  “And English. Double major,” I said.

  “A football player who can read? Bet you were a dreamboat on campus,” she said.

  “I barely made it out alive. And a cute blonde law student who can mix drinks? That would not be an unpopular combination.”

  “So I’m cute?”

  “Was speaking hypothetically,” I said.

  “Nope. You can’t take it back. I’m cute.”

  I thought of other places we could go, and rattled off several. Bob Dylan was in town. Or we could listen to the band at her restaurant. Or ice cream. Or whatever. It was only nine.

  She wanted to go home. But sh
e didn’t look happy about it. She fell quiet.

  At the River House she said, “Thank you, Mackenzie. This was nice.”

  “My view was better than yours.”

  “I can’t invite you in,” she said.

  “Understood. I wasn’t expecting an invite.”

  “Would you like to fool around in the car? I’m flexible.”

  I laughed.

  “What a perfect laugh,” she said. “Very masculine and also happy. But I was teasing. You cannot have me in the car.”

  “Good. Because I’m not into girls who fool around in cars on first dates.”

  “Why on earth not? Isn’t that exactly what you’d be into?”

  “Those girls have issues I can’t cope with.”

  “Guess you’ll have to take me out on a second.”

  “Only as an act of charity.”

  She smiled. Because I’m hilarious.

  “I can’t figure you out, Mackenzie. Good-looking guy. Good reputation. Mixed martial arts fighter, so you’ve got the dangerous bad boy thing. A little rough around the edges. But you don’t date much. You didn’t get drunk. No dirty jokes. No leering. Haven’t felt me up. You seem so…serious.”

  “I’m not serious. More like determined.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to do life right.”

  “Who is to say what’s the right way?” she asked.

  “Not me. I hit bottom, so now I’m doing the opposite of what I used to do. That’s it.”

  “It’s not about morals?”

  “More like simple survival. Morals implies I know the right and wrong ways to act, which puts me in position to judge others. I’d rather not have the responsibility.”

  Her eyes were still big. She was leaning toward me but it wasn’t suggestive. She was lost in thought. The air between us felt thin, like a vacuum. My advances would not be unwelcome. I got out and opened her door. She stepped onto the sidewalk.

  “You’re really not going to attempt?” she asked. “To get your way upstairs?”

  “I’m patient. You look worth waiting for.”

  She flushed red, and I almost did too.

  I said, “I’ll call you.”

  She winked.

  “Soon. I’m not so patient.”

  She disappeared through the door.

  Chapter Ten