Unteachable(16)
Author: Leah Raeder

Somehow I communicated the existence of the spare key taped beneath the mailbox. Then I was on my couch in a living room that smelled like cigarettes and unsavory men. The hallway light slanted across Evan’s face, an amber stripe showing stubble and soft lips. He smoothed my hair.

“You are really drunk,” he said, almost wonderingly.

“Wesley kissed me.”

His hand slowed. “Seriously?”

“He’s in love with me. I didn’t know. It’s horrible.”

Evan smiled. “I can see why.”

I had enough wits to know he was making fun. “You—” I cut off, sitting up. A comet that had been accelerating inside my belly decided it was ready to crash into Earth. I clapped a hand to my mouth.

We made it to the bathroom just in time for the show.

Things I never expected to do my senior year: kiss my best friend, f**k my teacher, let said teacher hold my hair while I puked my guts out.

Thankfully, I was so drunk by then I barely knew what was happening. Cold linoleum, colder ceramic. Mouthwash, swirl and spit. Evan made me sip water that I promptly threw back up and he made me keep sipping until it stayed down. I felt a thousand years old, a set of bones wired together with rags and ancient sinew. He carried me back to the couch.

“Where’s your mom?”

“Who f**king cares.”

“I don’t want to freak her out.”

My eyes kept trying to drift shut. He was a fuzzy shadow against the warm hall light. “Are you staying?”

“Until I’m sure you don’t have alcohol poisoning.”

My eyes closed. “This isn’t how…” I trailed off.

He stroked my hair again. “Sleep.”

For a while, I did. Woke with my chest burning, the house dark. Evan sat on the end of the couch with my legs in his lap. I thought he was asleep but when I shifted, he looked at me. I was still pretty drunk.

“I kissed Wesley back,” I whispered. “I don’t know why. I’m sorry.”

I caught the edge of a smile in the dark. “It’s okay.”

“It felt wrong. I’m not in love with him.”

I couldn’t make out Evan’s face, but I heard his breath. His hand curled around mine, lifted it, brought it to his mouth.

“I’m—”

“Shhh,” he said. “You’re drunk.”

“Not that drunk,” I said, but my eyes had already closed, my brain slowly erasing itself into unconsciousness.

Later that night I woke again, and the hallway light was back on. A shadow stood in it.

“Who are you?” it said in my mother’s voice.

“I’m her friend. My name is Evan.”

“She okay?”

“Yeah. She is.”

The shadow watched us for a moment longer. Then the light turned out.

I woke alone on the couch under a slab of late September sun. My head was a fireball, my body mummified. It took a while before I could think about anything except how much I wanted to die.

Then: panic.

What the hell had I said last night? I knew what I’d been trying to say while Evan hovered over me like a guardian angel, but had I actually said it?

I sat up, and the world took a good five seconds to recalibrate to our new viewing angle. I groaned.

On the coffee table before me, a folded piece of paper with my name on it. Inside, his handwriting, flowing and elegant, the letters not quite closed.

I haven’t been fair to you, and I didn’t realize how much stress I’ve been putting you under. Maybe I didn’t want to realize it. You deserve better than this. You deserve better than being Harriet the f**king Spy. Sorry if this sounds dramatic—this isn’t a breakup letter.

Jesus, I thought, my heart pounding, maybe you should’ve started with that.

This is me saying I’m going to do better. I want you to be happy, Maise. You mean more to me than you know. Seeing you miserable and drunk breaks my heart. I want to make you as happy as you were that first night when we got off that crazy death ride together. I want you to be that free again.

The paper trembled in my hands.

I have an old friend who owns some property in St. Louis. He might be willing to sublet us a loft for the weekends. If you’re feeling better Sunday, I’d love to take you to the city.

My heart was going like mad again, but this time with joy.

You’ve done something to me, too. I can’t get enough of you. You’re in my blood like holy wine. And before you think that’s cheesy, that’s Joni Mitchell. Google her, young Padawan.

I laughed and cringed at the same time.

Okay, I should probably go. I don’t want to stop, though. I can’t stop with you. Come with me to St. Louis. Let’s find happiness.

I read it three times before I folded it up and stuck it in my bra. Not quite inside my heart, but that was okay. The words were already engraved there.

—5—

My bare feet propped on the dashboard, sun blazing in my heart-shaped glasses (I bought a pair before we left), singing along at the top of my lungs to Modest Mouse’s “Float On” as we drove up I-55: this was going to be an awesome day.

Things I learned about my teacher: He had pretty good taste in music, despite being born in 1980. He could cook and had been dying to cook for me. He was terrified of geese. (“Bad experience in a petting zoo.” “How old were you?” “Twenty-six.” I laughed.) He’d never been married, but was briefly engaged. (“College mistake. She cheated on me with her psych professor.” Awkward smile. Subject change.) He cried every time he watched Casablanca. (“We’ll watch it sometime.” He’d said that already. I think it made him nervous.)

Hot asphalt cut through woods so green they looked unreal. At the end of summer everything swelled with life, almost grotesque, bloated and overripe. The sky was so full and pregnant you could punch a hole in it and douse the world with blue paint. I’d been to St. Louis as a kid for a Cards game, but had only a vague memory of a giant pretzel I held with both hands and Mom letting me sip her beer, my nose wrinkling. I watched for the Arch like a hawk, occasionally sitting up at a silvery glint in the distance.

“Is that it?” I said.

Evan just smiled.

We followed I-55 up the Mississippi, through lazy suburbs rolling into city blocks. Finally the Arch appeared, like magic: a huge silver ribbon arcing over the skyline, stropped with white licks of sunlight. It looked like a handle on the world, as if God could reach down and pick us up and fling us into deep space.

Then we were in the city proper. St. Louis was a knot of rivers tied into a loose horseshoe heart. Sun baked the streets, everything glazed with light and soaking with color. Skyscrapers scaled in mirrored glass tinted sky blue. Old red brick factories. A boulevard with an artery of thick lush green running down the middle. People everywhere, wearing shades and drowsy smiles. I couldn’t peel my face off the window.

“Hungry?” Evan said.

We found a restaurant with a patio. He took my hand when we got out of the car and I froze, instinct kicking in.

“No one knows us here,” he said.

I relaxed, but a tiny live wire still vibrated somewhere in me.

We ordered scallops and a bottle of white wine and I had the most adult meal of my life. I savored the sweet buttery meat, the dry clarity of the wine. Evan fed me scallops by hand, his fingertips brushing my lips, my teeth lightly scraping his skin, goosebumps racing up the backs of my arms and legs, and then he leaned over and kissed me in front of everyone. My heart didn’t know where to settle in my chest. It still felt like we held a secret, but at the same time I was beginning to accept this openness. I ran a hand over his thigh under the wrought-iron table and his muscle tensed. His eyes, usually so changeable, burned gas flame blue.

After lunch we walked around downtown, Evan’s arm casually circling my waist. Another first in my adult life: window-shopping with my boyfriend.

Was he my boyfriend? Secret lover? Person abusing his position of authority or trust?

“You’d look amazing in that,” he said, eyeing a diaphanous sundress, sheer and breezy.

A few stores down, I said, “You’d look amazing in that,” nodding at a store clerk stripping a mannequin.

Evan gave me that sly smile that I felt as a warmth deep in my belly.

I glanced at our reflection in the plate glass as we walked on. If only you could see this, Wesley, I thought. I’m not ashamed at all.

We stopped to listen to a guy busking with an acoustic guitar and a voice like liquid velvet. His skin shone russet-brown in the sun. He sang without seeming to care whether anyone listened, his eyes half-closed, his smile private and inward. I felt like a voyeur watching, but couldn’t look away. That’s how I wanted to be. Creating something beautiful without caring who noticed. Doing it for myself, for sheer joy.

When the guy started singing the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Maps” I nearly lost it. I pulled out a bill without looking at it and dropped it into his guitar case. His smile flickered at me for a moment, then receded back into itself.

I walked away, trying to swallow the tightness in my throat.

“What was that about?” Evan said when he caught up.

I shook my head. How do you explain that everything is too beautiful for words?

If Wesley had been here, he would’ve filmed the moment, captured it. Raising the camera was his first impulse; mine was to feel, to let the world crash against my skin.

What if I was wrong about what I wanted to do with my life? What if I really just wanted to live, and hadn’t truly come alive until I met Evan?

I stood in the middle of downtown St. Louis, staring at sun-beaten concrete.

“Maise.”

I raised my face.

He didn’t say anything else. We stood there as people streamed around us, like we had in the hallway at school. My brain simmered with wine and summer heat. I felt lost.

Evan did something he couldn’t have done back home. He wrapped his arms around me, pressing my face against his.

When we returned to the car I felt lighter, unburdened. We drove up to the Tivoli Theatre, an old-time movie house with a huge neon sign and a legit marquee. Stepping inside took us straight back to the Golden Age: velvet ropes and red carpet, classic Hollywood posters. The auditorium looked like a ball room with chandeliers dripping from vaulted ceilings, rows of plush seats, even a curtain over the screen. I stared at everything, starry-eyed. Evan watched me.

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

He smiled. “Tell me about it.”

Remember the rollercoaster?

I zoned out during the film, which was a lot of vague, dreamy dialogue anyway. I was thinking about how far I’d come in five weeks, and how far I would go until I reached an ending of some kind, and Evan’s hand, warm and solid, holding mine.

I was quiet in the car on the way to meet The Friend.

“He’s sort of a douche,” Evan said apologetically. “You won’t miss anything.”

Because they were going to meet in a club, where I couldn’t go, because I was eighteen. Because I was pretending to be an adult in his world full of actual adults.

He left me with his car. “Two hours, I promise. Not a minute more.”