by Haley Walsh
“Whoa!” said Skyler, covering his eyes.
Keith hadn’t even moved from his place, burrowed under the covers, when he grumbled, “She’s naked, isn’t she? She does that.”
Tamika stopped at Skyler’s side of the bed and stood there, one hand on her hip, breasts jutting upward over a slim body and flat stomach. “Baby, you know I got nothing to hide.”
Skyler lifted the sheet to cover his face. “But I wish you would,” he said meekly.
“Oh, you gay men parade around all the time with your dicks out, and one dyke comes through with her breasts and bush and you go all faint. Baby, you gotta grow up.”
“Okay,” murmured Skyler, hoping that was the proper response. But still she stood there, like a defiant Greek statue. All she needed was the helmet and spear. Finally, she ticked her head, muttering, and flounced away into the bathroom—not shutting the door as she did her business! Skyler cringed down into the bed, the duvet now over his head.
He tried to cover his ears. “Tell me when it’s over,” he squeaked. Sidney was brassy but never this brassy.
Keith chuckled. “She’s…something.”
“Yeah,” said his muffled voice from under the bedding. “Something.”
Keith’s friends decided to stay for the home game Friday night to watch Keith in action. But after that, they kissed both of them good-bye and wished them good luck until the wedding day, a little more than a month away.
Skyler thought about this joining of friends and family—two people bringing such diverse groups together into a whole new community. It seemed like a lot of responsibility. It felt important, big, scary. Sidney would slap him out of it, and he could hear her voice in his head berating him: Don’t worry about it so much. Jesus Christ, you’d think you controlled the world!
But still, it was a big thing. And mostly…he didn’t want to screw it up.
Chapter Six
RIFFLING THROUGH ALL THE RSVPS, SKYLER DUTIFULLY checked them off his lists. He was gratified that so many people wanted to come to his wedding. All the teachers, and Mr. and Mrs. Sherman had said they were coming. Most of the GSA kids. Relatives he hadn’t expected. But more than that…gifts started arriving on his doorstep. He’d registered Keith and him at a few places and lo and behold, people were actually buying the stuff. He began stalking the registry website, watching as one by one, things began to disappear from the list once purchased. Keith even closed his laptop on him once and shook his head disapprovingly. After all, it wasn’t about the gifts and the party…Was it? No! It was about him and Keith.
But it was also a little about the party. Skyler loved parties, especially when he could dance at them. And dammit, it was a celebration!
But there was also a honeymoon, too, and Keith had kept his word that it was a surprise and there was no budging him. Even buttering up Philip proved impossible.
“Come on, Philip!” Skyler wheedled one day before class. “I gotta know!”
“Nope. I have a sacred trust with Keith and I will not break it.”
“Just a hint. Are we headed for the airport? What kind of clothes are you going to be packing?” Philip continued, expression unchanged, making Skyler’s coffee. “I have fifty bucks in my wallet and it’s yours.” Philip turned a disdainful eye on him. “Ah, jeez!”
“You might as well give up. You know I’ll never tell.”
“Will I at least like it?”
There was finally a crack in his façade. He offered a secret smile. “You’re going to love it.”
He threw back his head and waggled his fists in the air. “Philip!”
“Nope. Here’s your Ethiopian. Have a nice day, sir. Now move along.” The last was whispered out of the side of his mouth as other patrons began to stare.
Jutting out his lower lip in a pout, Skyler grabbed his coffee and sulked out the door.
Wedding plans and a secret honeymoon weighed heavily on his mind, but he tried hard not to let it affect his work. He dutifully taught his classes, and when it got to the last class of the day with his favorite students, he felt himself relax a little, even as he passed out their marked-up tests.
“You guys did pretty well,” he said, walking down the aisles and handing out the sheets of paper. “There are a few of you having a bit of trouble. So, what I’m going to do, is have you move your desks into two circles. The first circle are the students who ‘got it’ and the other will be the ones who need a bit more guidance.” He called out names, and, led by Amber, they pushed their desks into the first circle. It included Ravi Chaudhri, Heather, Drew, Becky, Elei Sapani, Rick, and a few other students. The students remaining dragged themselves with heavy expressions into the second circle, including Alex, Stewart, and Tyler.
“The reject circle,” drawled Tyler. “So great to be here.”
“I never said that,” said Skyler. “I said you just needed more guidance. Now Amber, if you could lead your group in the reading and assignment—quietly—on page thirty-seven, I’ll work over here.” Skyler threw a leg over one of the empty desks and sat down, passing out worksheets. “You guys, I never want you to feel inferior to anyone. Some people just understand quicker than others. I mean, you should see me try to throw a football.”
They laughed half-heartedly.
“Now, really. It’s just about explaining the work in a different way until it clicks in your head, right? I guarantee that you will understand this. Remember, this is very specific stuff. Composition is about being able to be precise in your language, in the words you choose. Now you guys do it all the time when you text each other, right? You use as few words as possible to get your point across. Your brain already works that way, so all we have to do is key into that. To that end, we are going to do an exercise. There is a topic at the top of each of your papers. And I want you to write these as if you are Tweeting—in a hundred and forty characters or less—the topic and opening statement. There are three numbered spaces under each topic, so I want you to try your topic in three tweets. I even gave you a hundred and forty boxes for each character. I’m giving you five minutes. Go!”
Some dove right in, while others, like Alex, lingered, staring at the paper. Skyler watched the faces of his students, eyes narrowed, teeth digging into lips in concentration. They gripped their pens, crossed out, erased if they were using pencils. Stewart even mimed thumbing an imaginary keyboard, staring into space before he wrote down his sentences.
“Time!” called Skyler. “Okay. Read me what you’ve got. Stewart, start us out and let’s go around the circle. It doesn’t matter if you were a genius right away or still didn’t get it. That’s what we’re here for.”
Stewart read his offerings and didn’t do half badly. It went around, landing on Alex, who had only managed one sentence.
“That’s not a bad start you guys. Give me some ideas about the topic. What was it about? Alex?”
He stared numbly at his paper and shrugged. “I didn’t really get to finish.”
“Just one?”
He shook his head. But Skyler could see he had gotten a little something down on his page. He let it go and called on the next one.
Five minutes before class ended, he told everyone to return their desks to their original positions. There was the usual noise of chair legs scraping and screeching, and kids talking among themselves.
“Okay, settle down. You have homework. It’s on the board.” The bell rang and he swept his arm out to encompass them. “You are dismissed. Oh, Alex? Could you stay a second?”
Students plugged themselves into their phones, loaded backpacks, and shuffled their way out the door. Rick hung back to wait with Alex until Skyler said, “Could you wait outside for us, Mr. Flores. I’d like to do teacher stuff with Alex for a minute.”
“No problem, Mr. Foxe. Or will that soon be ‘Mr. Fletcher’?”
Flustered, Skyler shoved him gently forward. “No! No, it won’t. Wait outside, please. Scoot. And could you please close the door after you?”
With an entire wall made out of mullioned windows, Skyler never worried about calls of impropriety. Anyone could walk by and look through. It was sometimes distracting for his students, however, though kids weren’t supposed to linger in the halls near occupied classrooms. But at certain moments, like this one, he appreciated that extra bit of protection for himself.
Alex clutched the straps of his backpack and dragged it along the floor, slouching before Skyler’s desk.
“Have a seat, Mr. Ryan.”
“What did I do now?”
“You didn’t do anything…Did you?”
“No.”
Skyler leaned back against the front of his desk and folded his arms in front of him. He studied the stocky teen, recalling Alex’s way of participating in class, of his hard work at the teen police academy, even though his report-writing scores were low…and a thought began percolating in his mind.
“Alex…could you read what’s on the board for me?”
Alex stared at the whiteboard and moved his lips silently.
“No, Alex. Could you read it aloud?”
“Mr. Foxe! I’m not some kid.”
“Indulge me.”
In a stilted tone, Alex began. “Read…the…ch-chapter …on…writing…about…lit—lit—uh…lit-er…” He paused, staring at the board, face coloring a deep, blotchy red.
“That’s enough, Alex. I’ve been thinking about this for some time. Has anyone at school ever mentioned to you before that you might be dyslexic?”
“Someone said something like that once when I was a freshman.”
Wow. Skyler had been shooting in the dark. My skills at perception must be exceptional! But his self-congratulation was brief. “Did you get any classes or special tutoring about it? I never noticed anything in your file.”
“No. My mom was supposed to talk to the counsellor but she never did.”
He dropped his face into his hand for a moment, wiping down to his chin. Alex’s parents were a piece of work, all right. He had spoken to them exactly once in two years and that was on the phone, urging them to come down to the school to talk to him, but they had said that Alex was just a slow kid and there was nothing to be done for him. They barely knew he was even involved with football or the teen police academy. He wanted to strangle them.
“Do you know what dyslexic is?”
The teen shook his head on his thick neck.
“Well, it has nothing to do with your intelligence. You are just as smart as the next guy.”
“Not if that next guy is Amber.”
“Not everyone can be an Amber. But dyslexia is something else again. Plenty of really famous people have been dyslexic. Steven Spielberg, Mohammed Ali, Magic Johnson, to name a few. It only means that your brain has trouble interpreting patterns of letters and word order. It has nothing to do with being slow. You aren’t slow. Look at you on the team. You figure out plays and how to do things all the time. There’s nothing wrong with you at all. Just this little glitch.”
“Great.” He hung his head, staring at the floor.
“The good news is we can work on it. Even Rick can help you, if you want.”
His head popped up and hope seemed to shine in his eyes. “He can?”
“Sure he can. You can learn a few simple tricks and workarounds, and then practice what you learn. I bet your grades will improve everywhere. Do you realize how far you’ve come even with this disability? That makes you pretty smart, Alex.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Do you know what phonics is?”
He shook his head again.
“It’s sounding out words, each letter. Because your brain doesn’t connect the look of a letter with its sound, you can’t read as well. But if you memorize certain words and what they look like and associate their sound, you can begin to read better.”
“You mean all this time I thought I was stupid and it’s just because my brain is a little whacked? How come they never told me that before?”
Skyler sighed, annoyed and angry. Why had they let this kid down after they tested him? He planned to ask that of Mr. Sherman. “I don’t know, Alex, but we are going to fix it.”
“You sure are earning your wings, Mr. Foxe.”
Skyler preened. “You think I’d look good with wings?”
Alex laughed, mood seeming lighter by the minute. “Yeah, you would. Big, white, beautiful wings.”
Skyler laughed. “Get outta here, you. Have Rick email me and I’ll talk to you both about what you guys can do. I’ll send him a few website links and you can get started at home.”
Alex rose. He had a tentative expression, as if he wasn’t sure of his good luck. “Thanks, Mr. Foxe. I mean it. Thanks.”
Before the boy launched himself to hug him, Skyler edged away to the other side of his desk. No sense tempting the rumor mill in front of the big window wall.
Before he went to see Mr. Sherman, he’d finally found those records, and according to the brief report, Alex had a mild case of it, and had limped along, unconsciously creating his own tricks to get by all these years. He really was a sharp kid. He just needed that extra boost.
He cornered Mr. Sherman in his office before he left the school and talked at length about Alex Ryan, something the principal seemed weary of, until Skyler laid it out. Alex had been a handful for the last two years he’d attended James Polk High, and he’d warmed a seat plenty of times in the principal’s office, but Mr. Sherman also knew he’d been through a lot, what with the former coaching staff and their illegal activities. It hadn’t been the kid’s fault. He’d been swept up in it like so many others.
Mr. Sherman promised to help, though there was little in the budget, he’d said. Skyler already had a list of websites he’d researched ahead of time, knowing full well the school district was shy of funds where it counted. Football always had enough, though, he grumbled to himself. But then he felt guilty. He knew that Keith wouldn’t willingly take necessary funds away from students who really needed them. And Alex had really needed football, too, as a home and family replacement. Besides, he knew he could get Keith on board to help out Alex with his dyslexia.
“I’ll inform his other teachers, Mr. Foxe,” said Sherman. “I appreciate you taking such care with Alex Ryan. I know he hasn’t always been an easy young man to deal with. You seem to have found out a lot of things about him. I was especially happy to see the note from the Teen Police Academy instructor. It looks like you’ve turned the course for Mr. Ryan for the better.”
“I consider it my primary job. It’s not just test scores and homework.”
“Indeed it is not. Have a good day, Mr. Foxe. Oh…and my wife said she’s looking forward to your wedding.” He grinned, an unusual expression for the usually stern principal.
“Oh, uh, yeah.” Skyler realized with some disquiet that he always reacted to mention of his impending nuptials with tongue-tied anxiety.
But thoughts of his spotting Alex Ryan’s last significant learning problem had him cheering up as he drove home, and he walked jauntily from his car to his front stoop, wedding anxieties forgotten. Maybe it was those wings, he mused. Climbing the stairs to his apartment, he spied more packages left on the landing. This was one aspect of the wedding that didn’t cause any anxiety at all. “We’re really cleaning up,” he muttered. He’d already sent out numerous thank you notes, and was pleased with the thoughtful gifts from his friends and relatives.
There were two packages from UPS and one large lumpy envelope with a ton of stamps pasted to the front. But no return address.
He unlocked the door, went inside to set down his satchel at the hall tree, and returned out to the landing to bring in the packages.
He set them down in the living room but was intrigued by the pudgy envelope. Turning it over offered no clues about the sender. Strange that there was no return address. He felt its lumps. Nothing recognizable. It was addressed to Skyler alone with big block letters across the front reading “Personal”. He shrugged and t
ore it open.
Something sizzled and smoked and he instinctively tossed it away from him. But nothing else happened. Toeing it with his foot, he leaned down to look at it. A strong smell of almonds emanated from it and he thought for a moment it might be soap or bath salts, but instead, there were wires and silver foil and hunks of what looked like modelling clay. “What the heck is this?” He opened it wide to look inside to see if anything could give him a clue but there were only the things he’d already seen. One of those musical cards? “Weird.” He tossed it to the dining room table, dismissing it as he proceeded to open the other packages.
After that, he sat down to work on marking papers. And when Keith arrived home later, he sighed and dropped his bag by the door. Skyler had long ago given up trying to instruct him to leave it elsewhere.
Keith clomped over to him, and even though he was sweaty from football practice, Skyler thought Keith smelled marvellous. He lifted his face to receive a kiss while seated at his desk.
“How was your day?” said Keith.
“Pretty good. I think I’ve made a breakthrough with Alex Ryan.”
“Oh?” Keith was stripping off his shirt in preparation for taking a shower, which momentarily distracted Skyler to silence. “Go on,” said Keith, oblivious.
“Oh, uh. Well, it looks as if he’s a bit dyslexic.”
Keith stopped. “Really?”
“Yeah. I think this might be another thing holding him back. I’ve put together some lessons, and Rick and I are going to work with him.”
“English Lit Man to the rescue,” said Keith with a smile.
Skyler smiled back, puffing up a bit. “Just doing my job, citizen.”
“So what are you doing over there? As if I didn’t know.”
“I’m trying to figure out the music—”
“Does it all have to be Motown? Not that I don’t like that. It’s just…not every occasion needs to be an episode of Soul Train.”