My mouth opened, an involuntary breath coming free.
“But I don’t want to impose that shit on you. It’s not your problem.”
“Impose,” I said.
He winced. Put a hand on his desk, leaned into it. The space between us was finding ways to close, even with solid objects intervening.
“I don’t want to screw your life up, Maise.”
“Do you have a class fourth period?”
“No.”
I unfolded my arms and before he could do anything, I took that open collar in my hands, lifted on my toes, and kissed him across the aircraft carrier he called a desk. He didn’t fight. He kissed me back, oh so lightly, lips barely parting. Careful. He tasted like mint creme, kind of like Bailey’s. His face felt somehow rougher without stubble.
“This is dangerous,” he said against my mouth.
“I know,” I said.
He pulled me onto his desk and I swung my legs across to his side. We never stopped kissing. One hand at the back of my neck, the other gliding between my thighs. My legs tightened but my mouth opened in response, as if my wires had crossed. I thrust my hands into that hair I’d wanted to mess up so badly. I was short of breath but kept kissing him anyway, not getting enough of that creamy mint, those lips that were somehow firm and yielding at the same time, opening me, parting me. Giddily I thought, have you been eating mints on the off chance this would happen? Have you been obsessing about this as much as I have?
A knock at the door.
Hands instantly demagnetized. I hopped off his desk, smoothed my shorts. He dropped into his chair and crossed his legs. “Yes?” he called, deep and steady.
I stepped back to an appropriate distance, but our eyes never left each other.
Thank f**king god, it was just some random kid. “You got the projector in here?”
“No,” Mr. Wilke said. “It’s in 208.”
“Sorry.” The door closed.
We both breathed audibly.
“We can’t do this here,” he said.
“Where can we do it?”
He laughed. “Nowhere,” he said, but his words were at odds with his eyes.
“Don’t give me the fake Boy Scout routine,” I said. “You’re sitting there with a hard-on.”
My bravado was slightly spoiled by my breathless delivery. The way he looked at me from under his eyebrows, slightly sheepish, slightly intense, turned every girl part in me to jelly. I clenched my hands to keep them from idle evil.
“What happens now?” I said.
“I don’t know, Maise.”
Say my name. God, keep saying it.
“You won’t break me,” I said, my voice low. “I’m not a doll. I’m not fragile. And you can’t possibly screw my life up any more than it is.”
That furrowed look, the mournful angel observing human tragedy. “It’s not just about damage control. It should be more than that.”
“Then give me more,” I said.
The fourth period bell rang.
I walked out, but my heart stayed right there where I’d planted it, a tender little seed waiting for sun.
Friday looked like rain. That sneaky summer rain that waits for a still moment and sucks the air out of the world Backdraft-style and explodes the sky into water. For the first time in eons, Mom drove me to school. We sat in the van like strangers on a plane, making awkward small talk.
“You still talk to Melissa?”
“Who?”
“That Melissa girl you went around with. The blonde.”
“I haven’t talked to her since freshman year.”
“Oh.”
Traffic light. Yellow. Red.
“Got lunch money?”
“Yeah.”
“Where you get it?”
“Turned a trick.”
“Watch your fuckin’ mouth.”
Green.
“Can you get out here? I got a pickup.”
I opened the door wordlessly.
“Babe.”
I looked at my mother. She had my face, under crayon makeup. She had the hick accent I’d ironed out of my voice. She had the dead-end future I would never, ever have.
“Let’s go out this weekend. You and me.”
Drop dead.
“I’m going to be late,” I said.
“Love you.”
I slammed the door. Pictured it closing on her face. The clown stamp she’d leave on the glass.
You wondered why I lied to you, Mr. Wilke? Because I’m never going to be her.
“We’re going to do things differently in this class,” he said.
I sat next to Wesley, my attention drifting outside. A big old granddaddy black oak shivered in a sudden breeze, a thousand leaves clicking dryly, like castanets. The smell of gunsmoke drifted through the open windows. The world was tense and desaturated, waiting for the catharsis of rain. I knew exactly how it felt.
Wesley filmed Mr. Wilke. Mr. Wilke said it was okay, as long as he had the subject’s permission. Permission was very important.
Remember that.
“I’m not a believer in tests or quizzes or any of that bullshit,” our teacher said. Bullshit got my attention. I turned to him. Casual today, jeans and a plaid tee. He wore glasses sometimes, simple plastic frames, the narrow lenses emphasizing that crinkling thing his eyes did.
I was not the only girl in class who noticed this. Hiyam, a girl with skin the color of butterscotch toffee and hair like liquid midnight, kept crossing her legs this way, then that.
Wesley held the camera on Mr. Wilke, but he was looking at Hiyam now.
I rolled my eyes.
“I’m only giving you one assignment this semester,” Mr. Wilke continued. “You’re going to make a short film. Any genre, any style, any subject. It can be a documentary about your three-legged cat. It can be a classic sci-fi genre film.” His eyes touched me, and I blushed. “Whatever. It’s up to you. Minimum three minutes long, max ten. You can group up or tackle it solo. I strongly encourage you to group—that’s how most films get made.”
He leaned against his desk. I thought about that body laying atop mine on the long front seat of his car. Hiyam yawned, stretching her arms above her head. Cleavage shot.
Wesley dropped his camera.
“I’m so not working with you,” I murmured.
“However,” Mr. Wilke said, looking straight at me, raising all the blood to my skin, “if you’re some kind of mad genius auteur, you can go it alone. It’s all up to you.”
Hiyam narrowed her eyes at me, like a cat.
“This project is due by winter break. We’ll watch and grade them together. You may not ask me any questions about it. I’ve told you all you need to know. If you weren’t paying attention, I’ll post a copy to our class folder online.”
“Hear that, butterfingers?” I told Wesley.
He grinned. “Wanna be partners?”
“No.”
“I’ve already got an idea for ours. It’ll be sick.”
This boy, I swear.
I dallied when the bell rang, hoping Wesley would leave without me, but he waited, faithful, puppyish. On the way out the door I glanced back. Mr. Wilke watched me, his face angled partially away, shadowed. Our gazes struck like flint and steel. And I realized that gunsmoke smell wasn’t ozone. It was us. We burned.
Wesley ate my chicken nuggets as I stared into the parking lot, moon-eyed. Here and there a dash of rain shot down, a meteor streak of water. The sky clenched, desperately holding itself in. There’s something so terrible about wanting something you’ve already had. You know exactly what you’re missing. Your body knows precisely how to shape itself around the ache, the hollowness that wants to be filled.
Jesus Christ, this was only the end of the first week of school. No f**king way would I make it to winter break, let alone June.
“Hey Maise.”
I glanced at Wesley miserably.
You know, he wasn’t terrible-looking. He had character. Deep-set eyes, bruise blue, intense. Shaggy dark hair that always looked windblown. Big Adam’s apple, big mouth that flexed easily into a lupine grin. If he ever gained any weight or body hair, I might’ve—no, I still wouldn’t. But other girls would.
“What?” I said.
“You’ve got a crush on that teacher.”
My belly tightened. Crush was understatement of the year. But it might be good to know how it looked to an outsider. “Why do you think that?”
“Cuz you’ve been walking around with that I-want-to-be-fucked face all day.”
I laughed, and sat across from him, plucking a nugget from his tray. It looked vaguely like a deformed rooster. “Hiyam likes him too.”
Wesley made a disgusted sound.
I dipped into the honey mustard. “You don’t think he’s hot?”
“He’s a million years old.”
“You are so childish.”
“Would you seriously f**k a guy that old?”
Decision time. Do I let Wesley know the real me, or do I make up a persona for him, a suit of armor I can take on and off? As if there was a choice. As if I wasn’t burning up inside with this. Every time I opened my mouth, flame licked up my throat. I could have razed villages, kidnapped princesses.
“Yeah,” I said. “I would.”
His eyebrows went up. He leaned forward. “Have you? With a guy that old.”
I smiled enigmatically and ate my nugget.
“Holy shit.”
“You don’t even know what old is,” I said. “Mr. Wilke is probably like, thirty. That’s nothing.”
“He was in high school before we were born.”
My heart paused. Little factoids like that cut right to the bone of reality. “So?”
“So, he was probably f**king high school girls when we were little kids.”
“Why do you have to be gross?” I said, and shoved his tray at him. “You are such a boy.”
Wesley blinked at me. I think he understood what I actually meant. Not, You are so male. Rather, You are so young. He was still seventeen, a December birthday, but the gulf between us was more than five months. It was generations.
“What makes you such an authority?” he said.
I shook my head and stood up, the armor going on. But I didn’t want it to end like this. “I’ll be your partner,” I said. “If you still want me to.”
Wesley shrugged, eyes on the tray. “Yeah.”
“Good.”
We needed something, I thought. A thing we could do to show we hadn’t meant to hurt each other. On impulse, I flicked his earlobe. He jumped so hard the table rattled, and I laughed.
“By the way,” I said, “we’re officially friends now.”
I was waiting at his car when he came out. Most teachers stay late on Friday, catching up on papers, making plans to hit the bars together. Mr. Wilke headed for his car exactly fifteen minutes after the last bell.
I could tell when he saw me, the hitch in his step, the quick, guilty scan for witnesses. In the student lot kids yelled and honked as they took off for the weekend, but the faculty lot was quiet. I sat on the hood of his car, one foot propped on the fender beside it. A tiny, distorted version of myself swirled in the hubcap chrome: a Southern Snow White, all skim milk legs below my cutoffs, red toenails and sandals. The silver sky wrinkled with storm clouds.