“Aim a little higher than that, Charlie. Fuck knows I don’t have any savings for you to plunder.” I felt a jolt of delight every time he swore in front of me—like he was including me as an adult, an equal.
“You really want me to ask you something personal?” My heart was pounding so hard now I was surprised my voice wasn’t shaking.
He was still looking at the ceiling, watching the ball as it arced up and down. “Sure. Why not? Three questions.”
“Three,” I said. I looked at my hands; they’d left damp palm prints on the table.
“Think of me as the shittiest genie ever. Instead of endless riches and immortality, you get the meaningless personal details of some schlub of a high school teacher.”
“You’re not—” I said, and stopped myself.
He looked at me. “I am, kiddo. But go ahead.”
“All right. Just give me a minute.” What could I possibly ask him? I knew what I wanted to ask—Do you ever think about me when I’m not here? Do you think about me at all? Do you think about Lila?—but I couldn’t think of anything appropriate.
“Oh,” he said, “and no questions about when I lost my virginity. There is a limit to how much I’m willing to humiliate myself in front of you.”
“All right,” I said, though it threw me to hear him mention himself in a sexual context. Finally I said, “How much do you make a year?”
He laughed. “What did I just say about my lack of savings? What’s the next question?”
“You didn’t answer!”
“I didn’t say I would answer them. Just that you could ask.”
“Ugh,” I said. I got up and started pacing the room, trying to think of another question. The windows were black, and I watched my reflection follow me, looking sick and sweaty. Were my eyes really that hollow? “Some game.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got, Chuck.”
“Why do you call me Chuck?”
“Is that one of your questions?”
“Yeah,” I said, sitting down on the window ledge, “sure.”
“It’s just a nickname.”
I pressed my finger onto my nose and made a noise like a buzzer. “Sorry, you’ll have to do better than that.”
He stared at the ball as if it would provide an answer. “Honestly, I’m not sure. It just fit you somehow.” He smiled up at me. The lines around his eyes crinkled.
“I looked like a man?” I said, trying to put some power behind my voice so it didn’t come out in a whisper.
“No, of course not. But you didn’t feel like a Charlotte to me.”
I made a face. “I don’t feel like a Charlotte either.”
“Maybe you’ll grow into it,” he said. He squeezed the ball so that his fingertips turned white. “I overheard you talking to Lila as you guys walked in and you struck me right away as really sharp. I meet a lot of new people every year, but it’s not—” He paused and started again. “I guess I wanted to give you a stamp.”
I could barely get the words out. “A stamp?”
“Something that made you stand out. Marked you out. Even if I didn’t really know I was doing that at the time.”
I was silent. Had he really just said that? I hadn’t imagined it?
“Oh,” I said finally.
He turned to look at me. “I hope that didn’t sound creepy and patriarchal. I just want you to know I think you’re…” Wonderful. Beautiful. Incandescent. Really, really amusing. “…going to go on to better things than this.”
“Thanks,” I said, giving him half a smile. “That only sounds a little creepy.”
He laughed softly. “Minorly creepy is sometimes the best I can hope for. So what’s the next question?”
“Oh,” I said. I couldn’t think. “God, I don’t know. Um, so you’re not married?”
He laughed. “No,” he said. “But I was.”
“I mean like to a person.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Come on,” I said. “I thought you weren’t going to bullshit me.”
“I’m not bullshitting you,” he said.
“I know you think I’m gullible, but—”
He laughed again, a nervous sound like a cough. “It was not…Anyway, it didn’t last, so…”
“Wait. You’re serious? When was this?”
He smiled and looked down. “Just after my senior year of high school. She was…You know that girl Rachel I just mentioned?”
“I’m familiar, yes.”
“I didn’t tell her about the prank, but word that I’d done it got out. She thought it was idiotic, but we started talking more often, and then we became good friends, and then eventually we ended up together. She was funny and smart and—you would have liked her—and she was the first girl who ever showed interest in me and, well…” He shrugged like that filled in all the rest. “And, uh…we were young and stupid and after a little while I got scared and left her.” There was silence. He looked down at the ball, which he was running back and forth under his palm. “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t know why I told you all that.”
“It’s okay,” I said automatically so he wouldn’t feel uncomfortable, though I had no idea how I felt about it. Were we still bantering? How did he want me to react? How was I supposed to react?
After a minute he stretched his arms back and inhaled deeply. “Anyway, it was a long time ago and I was an idiot, prone to overreaction. You can see not much has changed.” He brought his arms down and drummed his fingers on the table like he was tapping a new theme. “So what about you? Ever been married?”
“Uh,” I said. At least now I knew what I was supposed to say. “Once, when I was five, to my stuffed horse, Captain Oats.”
“Didn’t last?”
I shook my head. “My mom accidentally donated him to Goodwill. But we’d been growing apart for a long time.”
“Sad,” he said. He picked up the ball and tossed it to me. “So what’s your last question?”
I was so surprised that I let the ball sail past. I heard it thwock onto the floor behind me. “Oh,” I said. “I thought I’d asked three already.”
“I didn’t answer the first, so I’ll let it slide,” he said.
I looked at him. Why was he changing the rules? What did he want me to ask? “Right,” I said. “Okay.”
“Take your time.”
Now that he’d given me a glimpse into his life, I wanted to know everything. I wanted to ask more about Rachel, about his past, about whether I meant as little to him as it seemed like I should. His life was so much bigger than mine.
But then I knew what I wanted to ask him. I knew that I couldn’t, that I’d never be able to face him again if I did. But it pounded in my head again and again, and it crowded out every other thought.
“You look like you’ve got something in mind,” he said.
“Mm,” I said.
“Ask me anything. Really.” His eyes were bright blue. I hated him for goading me—as if he knew what I wanted to ask and he was trying to pull it from me.
I was going to ask him. I didn’t want to, or at least I knew I shouldn’t want to, but suddenly I knew I would.
“Do you—do you think I’m pretty?” I said. My voice was barely above a whisper. I looked down at my hands. The pause was endless.
Finally he spoke. “Charlie, I can’t—” He looked horribly vulnerable—young and confused. For a second I was disgusted by him. “I wish…”
I stood up abruptly; I hated that he was seeing me like this, that he knew how much I cared about his answer.
“I guess not,” I said. I’d known he wouldn’t say it. No one would ever say it.
“No, that’s not—” He started to stand, but I shied away. He held his hands up, surrendering. “Okay. Sorry. You know I can’t—”
“I shouldn’t have asked,” I said, before he could say something awful. “It was inappropriate.”
“No, no, it was…” He trailed off.
“I’m sorry,” I said
. I didn’t look at him again. I hoped the next time I did he’d be gone.
Finally he rallied. “Chuck,” he said, his voice deeper and more confident. He was my teacher again. I felt a disappointing amount of relief. “Did I ever tell you to read Philip Larkin?”
I was so surprised that I laughed. “No. You skipped right from Heller to Shakespeare.”
“Right,” he said. “Well, I’m saying it now. Read Larkin. ‘This Be the Verse.’ ”
“All right,” I said.
“I’ve got to get home. Thank you for staying. I really appreciate it.” He stood awkwardly, nearly tipping over until he balanced himself on a table. His chair clattered to the floor behind him and he had to stoop to retrieve it. “I’ll see you on Monday, okay?”
“Okay.” I froze by the window, waiting for him to leave.
“Okay,” he said. He hesitated a moment. He moved toward me half a step, but when I backed up and sat down, he stopped. “Okay. Good night, Charlie.”
I waited to leave until I couldn’t hear his footsteps anymore, until I imagined he’d left the building, crossed the parking lot, gotten into his car, sat with his forehead on the steering wheel for a good ten minutes, checked his phone for messages, reached into the glove compartment for an Advil, found the bottle empty, and finally drove off. Then I heaved myself onto my shaking legs and went home.
—
When I got to my room, I looked up “This Be the Verse” online. I read it once quickly, hoping something would jump out at me, then another time, slower, when it didn’t. “What does this have to do with anything?” I said out loud, and then I slammed my laptop shut and threw myself on my bed and cried.
When I arrived at his class on Monday, I slid into my seat with my head down. I didn’t check whether he’d seen me.
“You okay?” Lila said. “I didn’t hear from you all weekend.”
“Fine,” I said. “Just busy.” I’d decided I couldn’t tell her what had happened. It was too humiliating for her to know that I’d not only embarrassed myself by asking him such a stupid question but, even worse, that he’d rejected me for asking it. For her a rejection was a setback, but for me it was a verdict.
“Jason dragged me to a party this friend of his was having,” she said. “He acted like such a moron, I nearly broke up with him.”
“I thought you weren’t together,” I said.
“Yeah, well,” she said, “he got drunk and decided it would be hot for me and this girl he knows to kiss.”
I glanced at her. “Did you?”
She sighed in a put-upon sort of way. “I thought about it, I won’t lie. I was pretty drunk, and she was cute.”
“But?”
“Jason ended up…We got distracted.”
“Ah,” I said. “No breakup, then.”
She smirked. “No.”
“So this was basically your excuse to brag to me that you nearly kissed a girl.”
“I’m not going to say it was,” she said. “But I won’t say it wasn’t either.”
“Great,” I said. I thought of telling her what had happened with Drummond: He was begging me, but I told him we couldn’t; he’s my teacher and it would be too wrong. What would everyone say? But the gap between that and reality seemed too depressingly wide to think about.
When the bell rang, Drummond didn’t move from behind his desk. The class kept chatting. I doodled in my notebook, trying to blend myself into the paper.
Finally he said, “Okay, guys. I think it’s time for a dramatic reading.” When everyone groaned, he said, “It’s this or a quiz. Which do you want?”
After a pause, Dev said, “Can I be Regan?”
Drummond sighed. “We’re going to run out of female parts before you get tired of playing them. I see you forgot to bring your corset again.”
Dev laughed. “It’s at the cleaner’s, dude. I’m not a slob.”
“I have a spare if you need it,” Katie said.
“That’s at my house,” Sean said.
It pained me to hear Drummond joking around with them. Wasn’t he as upset as I was? Hadn’t he also contemplated staying in bed for a month with immaculately acquired mono? As soon as I couldn’t try to make him laugh, I didn’t want anyone to.
“All right, who else?” Drummond said. “If you don’t choose for yourself, I may assign you Edmund.”
I kept my head down while people volunteered. Soon only one part was left. I willed Drummond to be afraid to speak to me. He wasn’t.
“Charlie?” he said. “Feel like being Cordelia today?”
I looked straight at him. His eyes were hard. He was in one of his authoritative moods, that made him seem adult and unreachable. Normally I would have agreed, but this time I set my mouth and shook my head. I would run out of the room before I’d read a part that day. His eyes softened and for a terrifying moment I was afraid he was going to say something in front of the whole class. But he turned away, and finally he asked Katie.
I glanced at him periodically while everyone was reading aloud. He never looked at me, but he didn’t seem like he was avoiding me either; it was only because he usually caught my eye during class that I knew something was wrong. But I got a small thrill knowing I’d affected him: I’d punished him and it had worked.
After school I thought about going straight home but decided it would look even more like he’d upset me if I didn’t show up for the paper. He was talking to Frank when I went in, and as I sat down at the other side of the room, they both laughed and Frank shoved him.
I flipped open my notebook to the page I’d been drawing on in class. It was full of pictures of trees with knotted branches. I frowned at it.
I heard him coming but I didn’t look up. He dragged a chair over so he was across the table from me. I tried not to let my hands shake.
“Chuck,” he said. “How are you doing?”
“Great.”
“You writing about our future adventures?”
“No.”
“Not even The Plums of Europe?”
“No, not even…” I looked at his hands, and then out the windows, avoiding his gaze. I let a silence pass. Then I said, “What would I write about if I were?”
“Well, I don’t know.” I could feel him watching me, but I still didn’t move. “Let’s pretend,” he said. My heart bobbled. “It’s twenty years from now and I’m holed up in a garret somewhere muttering about the concept of the sublime in Wuthering Heights.”
I tried not to smile. I didn’t say anything.
“You kids drove me to drink.” He paused, waiting for me to pick up the story. When I didn’t say anything, he said, “Which wasn’t difficult, admittedly. I got addicted to roofied Tang. Gateway drug.”
I tapped my pen on my notebook and cleared my throat. “You went mad like Heathcliff.”
“Sometimes I go wandering on the wild hills of Chatham Valley. Those edges they sometimes miss when they mow every week.”
“Wearing a cloak made out of an ergonomic backrest you got on a teacher discount from Staples.”
“Telling the lifeguards at the pool that they smell like they’re made of disappointment.”
“Showering with half-empty cans of Fanta.”
“You come upon me one day. You have terrible memories of this, the most worthless and wasted year of your educational life, and you think of leaving me there to rot.”
I paused. “But I don’t. I give you a copy of The Plums of Europe.”
“It changes my life,” he said. “I’m freed of destitution and I only mildly stink.”
“Back to normal, then.”
He smiled, then looked down. “I’m sorry,” he said.
I didn’t say anything. “What’s the sublime?” I asked finally.
“The idea of something being simultaneously beautiful and terrifying.”
“Like Frank?”
He laughed hard, and I laughed too.
“If you’re going to lie to yourself about our future, you
could make yours a little better,” I said eventually.
He shrugged. “Something to believe in, right?” He waited until I was looking at him before he said, “Thank you for putting up with me.”
We watched each other for a long moment. As he stood, he put his hand on my head and pressed on it gently. A wave of heat rolled down my body.
“Keep that brain safe,” he said. “You’ll need it eventually.”
“Dick,” I said.
Asha had become my default partner for our team activities in gym. She was more athletic than I was, quick and observant, but more importantly, she was kind and she never blamed me when I missed a shot. Lila had always showed off in gym, and while she didn’t laugh at me, she’d sometimes say things like “Get it together, Porter,” or “Eyes on the ball.” I’d been relieved when we’d gotten different schedules.
Asha and I were badminton partners now. We got paired with different boys every week, and that day, Valentine’s Day, we had Mike.
For the first few minutes, he wouldn’t meet my eyes. Dev was his partner, and I worried that Mike would embarrass me in front of him and Asha. But Mike was quiet and didn’t look at me.
Asha sent a shuttlecock into the air. It came to me, and I was so nervous that I missed an easy shot.
“This is not making me trust your opinion on sports, Charlie,” Dev said.
I smiled, afraid to say much in front of Mike.
“You’re one to talk,” Asha said. “You let that air ball go by a couple minutes ago.”
“That was out!” Dev said. “Charlie, come on, back me up here.”
I hesitated. Mike was walking toward the other end of the court. “Not after you insulted my badminton abilities so viciously.”
Dev laughed. “I guess I deserve that.”
Asha scooped up the shuttlecock and served again. Mike dove for it awkwardly and missed. He glanced at me and I looked away.
“You have a valentine tonight, don’t you, Ash?” Dev said.
I would have frozen at the question, but Asha looked at me as if she was used to it.
“You giving me the leftover chocolates you don’t like doesn’t count as a valentine,” she said.
“Mom always gets the ones with nuts,” he said.
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