Unteachable(24)
Author: Leah Raeder

“I can feel my neurons dying. This week was boring as shit.”

I laughed. “Trade you my week.”

He glanced at me guardedly. “What happened?”

I told him about Mom and Mr. Rivero, and his eyes got progressively bigger until he looked like an anime character. When I got to the part about St. Louis, I told him that, too. Not the details, but the gist. I’m seeing an older man. I’m ecstatic and terrified at the same time. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, because the truth is, I wasn’t ready to accept it myself. It’s only now starting to feel real.

We reached the reservoir then, which gave us an excuse to let the conversation die. I dropped my bag and followed Wesley up the ladder. Our legs dangled off the platform, and when he lit up the familiar smell of sulfur and cloves made my throat sting.

“Fair’s closing soon,” he said.

“Maybe I have time to die on a rollercoaster before I get shot.” I paused. “Maybe they’ll shoot me on a rollercoaster.”

Wesley ashed an arc of sparks into the night. “That would actually be kind of awesome.”

“The end of my life would be ‘kind of awesome?’”

“You really think they’re coming for you?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I over-dramatize.”

“You? No.”

I stabbed a finger into his ribs. “But I think Gary’s going to ask me to do something I don’t want to do.”

“What if he does?”

“I don’t know. Maybe there’s an after-school special that says what to do when a druglord propositions you.”

Wesley frowned. “What’s an after-school special?”

I started laughing, and it caught like wildfire, sweeping through me. God, what a ridiculous world. I lay back, giddy, laughing at the sky. Wesley raised his eyebrows, but a grin crept over his mouth.

“Are you in love with me?” I said impulsively.

The grin fell. He managed to maintain eye contact, but he looked like he was staring at a wild dog, hoping it wouldn’t bite. “I don’t know. I just like you.”

“Still?”

“I dunno. Yeah.”

I sat up. “I can deal with that, if you can. And if you can respect me being in a relationship.”

He averted his face.

I touched his hand, carefully. Not too intimate, but not some half-assed there-there pat, either. Would he understand? Usually the thought process for a seventeen-year-old boy went girl touching me > omg > boner. But if he wanted me to treat him as an equal, he’d need to deal with complicated, uncomfortable adult feelings, too.

“I like you,” I said, “as a friend. And I kind of like flirting with you, too, but I like flirting with everyone. That’s who I am. You get it, right? Because that stuff about filming me—it weirds me out. I can’t be your manic pixie dream girl. I can’t be the girl who teaches you how to open your heart and embrace life and all that bullshit, because I’m trying to figure out how to do that myself. I need a manic pixie dream boy of my own.”

I let go of his hand and he stared at me, and I worried that this was pointless, that I was trying to explain quantum mechanics to someone who thought gravity was just apples falling. But then he nodded, slowly.

“That actually makes a lot of sense,” he said. “I never thought about it like that.”

“That girls are human, too?”

“That you’re human.”

I flicked his ear. He chuckled. And just like that, we were friends again.

We stayed up in the crow’s nest for a while, shooting the shit. I texted Evan so he wouldn’t think I’d run into an axe murderer, and Wesley watched. Not my phone, but my face, my body language.

“What it’s like with him?” he said quietly.

I lay back on the planks, bouncing my heels on the edge. “Intense,” I finally said.

“Good or bad?”

“Good. Amazingly good. And also weird, and scary, and beautiful. All at the same time, in equal measure.”

“Are you in love with him?”

I rolled my head on the plank to look at Wesley. “I don’t think I know what being in love is yet. But this is different than anything I’ve ever felt.”

“What’s it feel like?”

“Remember when you thought I was jumping off to kill myself?”

He winced.

“It’s like that,” I said. “But no one catches you. You’re just hanging over infinity.”

—7—

October was the longest month. Not in days, but in the way the hours dragged as we tilted farther away from the sun, the shadows stretching longer and longer, curving thin blue fingers over the earth. There was an Indian summer, a blush of heat and a warm wind stirring the gold foil leaves. One hot afternoon I jumped into Wesley’s pool with all my clothes on, the water deliciously cool beneath the skin of sunlight on the surface. He took his shirt off and jumped in after me, particolored leaves swirling around us like kaleidoscope pieces. Siobhan stopped by to laugh and offer towels. Wesley tried to pull her in, and she casually threatened to remove him from her will. When we climbed out there was the obligatory pause when we saw each other soaking wet, his long hairless torso glazed with water, my shirt molded to my boobs. I smiled; he didn’t. Siobhan helped dry my hair and caught my hand, raising the ring to the falling sun. I couldn’t read the look she gave me. It seemed deeply knowing.

At first Evan and I were careful, saving everything for the weekends. No making out between classes. No trysts in motels. He called every night, and when I wasn’t talking to him I sent him the absolute filthiest texts I’d ever sent in my life. That second weekend at the loft, we only ventured outdoors once. We spent two days straight hav**g s*x and watching movies and talking and laughing and kissing in a hazy, dreamy montage, until finally we stumbled out into the indigo twilight, delirious and exhausted, blinking at the lights and cars and the speed of life as if we’d just come out of a hundred-year sleep. We bought Italian ice and walked along the riverfront, watching the boat lights drift like floating candles, marveling at the bridges stretching across that thick, strong vein of water. The Mississippi was calm but the calm was snake-like, a vast power momentarily relaxed.

October 19th was Evan’s birthday. The night he turned thirty-three, we ate sushi at a place near the Cathedral Basilica. The cathedral looked like an illustration from a storybook, almost every inch of it lined with mosaic tiles scintillating in the candlelight. I wore the sundress he’d seen in that shop window, and eyeshadow, and flat little-girl shoes, refusing to be pigeonholed into an age group. He wore his pinstripe shirt and tie, looking more like Mr. Wilke than Evan. It was the first time I’d had sushi, and the only real conclusion I drew was that it was very sensual. Like eating something still alive. When we staggered into the haunted elevator later, tipsy on sake, I did something else for the first time: I gave him a blowjob. His body melted in my hands, his fingers running through my hair softly, so softly, every part of him boyish and submissive except for the hard dick in my mouth. Another experience that was purely sensual. I swallowed when he came, warm saltiness in the back of my throat, the faint taste of the sea. He pulled me up and kissed me, and I said, “Happy birthday, Mr. Wilke.”

I told Wesley I wanted to work on my own project for Film Studies, and he agreed. But we shot videos together, too, just for the f**k of it: Hiyam holding court with the Mean Girls, causing one of them to run off in tears. Two boys, both in varsity football, kissing under the bleachers, muscular silhouettes merging against the deep purple sky. I wasn’t the only one with a secret. In the grand scheme of things, my secret wasn’t even as dangerous as some of theirs. One day at lunch, half the cafeteria ran out into the hall, and we caught the tail end of a fight in front of a locker where someone had scrawled COCK SUCKING FAG in Sharpie.

Some days I lied to Wesley and skipped lunch. I locked Evan’s classroom door so I could touch him. Only touch. We never had sex in school—that would be too insane, obviously. I had standards for my insanity. But I kissed him and ran my hands over his body, the hardness against his leg, until he said, “Don’t make me do this.” “Do what?” I said, and he answered, “Something I’ll regret.” So I started over, touching his face, his lips, kissing him, and we tormented each other until the bell rang.

Some nights he called me and I biked to his apartment, let myself in with the key he gave me, darting quick glances over my shoulder, and met him in his dark bedroom where we took our clothes off without speaking and f**ked like it was the last time, quiet and desperate, breathing in each other’s ears as we exorcised the demons inside us. When it was done I would kiss him and leave without a word, looking over my shoulder again as I biked home, my brain on high alert but my heart calm. In my own bed I lay staring at the monster shadows on the ceiling, clawing, seething. Sometimes I saw watchers in them. Sometimes I saw myself.

“Do you still have a crush on Mr. Wilke?” Wesley asked, and I just looked at him, expressionless.

In mirrors, I saw someone new. A feral girl with electric eyes. She was beautiful, her mouth lush and maroon, her skin glowing like moonlit alabaster, but there was something a little off about her. At certain angles, her bones showed through the skin. Shadows made hollows in her ribs and cheeks. She was starving for something, and the more she ate of it, the thinner she became.

“What if you’re wrong?” I asked Wesley. “What if the dopamine rush doesn’t end? What if it keeps coming and coming until—”

What? What came next? I thought of Mom lying on the living room floor.

The more you took, the more you needed. And you’d keep taking more and more and more until you overdosed.

I’d failed my promise to confront a fear during September, unless starting a relationship with someone I actually cared about counted. If not, October was going to count double.

So I sat at the kitchen table, waiting for Mom.

I’d come prepared: bank statement, printout of the trust paperwork, and my house keys, all neatly arranged before me. Upstairs, my bags were packed. I’d left the new clothes in the closet.

Turned out I needn’t have bothered. As soon as she walked in on me wearing my Very Special Episode face, she dropped her purse on the floor, sank into a chair, and started bawling.

For God’s sake, I thought.

I stared at the laminate tabletop, counting the cigarette burns. Something slithery twisted in my chest. Look at the cabinet doors. Picture what’s behind them: stale soda crackers, peanut butter, marijuana. I was probably the only kid at school completely uninterested in drugs. Jesus, her face looked like a wax dummy melting. Don’t give in. Don’t give in.

I gritted my teeth, scooted my chair back, and fetched the paper towels.

“I’m so sorry, babe,” she blubbered. The paper towel took half her face with it: magenta clown mouth, centipede eyelashes. “I f**ked up. I really did.”

Be hard and cold as steel, I told myself. “You knew why Mr. Rivero wanted to see me.”