Unteachable(31)
Author: Leah Raeder

“It’s a metaphor, genius.”

“It had parts of other movies in it. Is that even legal?”

“Fair use. Like a remix.”

“I think those parts were what she was feeling. Like, the dinosaurs were about being afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Being found out.” This from Hiyam.

“Found out about what?”

Hiyam glanced at me and didn’t say anything.

“What do you think about the collage technique?” Evan said.

“It was kind of like a music video,” Rebecca said.

“Yeah,” someone agreed. “It made me think how when I walk around with headphones on, my whole life becomes this music video.”

Laughter again, appreciative.

“I’m in a band,” a skater guy said. “If you ever want to do one for real. We’ll pay.”

I shrugged and smiled coolly. Translation: hell yes.

The discussion continued for a while, but I lost track. I couldn’t stop staring at Evan and Wesley. Neither had looked my way even once, and Wesley hadn’t said a word about my project. Did he think it was awful? Was he jealous of what I’d confessed? Jesus, what?

Evan stood up and went to the board. He graded tougher than I expected, but as long as you showed a modicum of understanding about something he’d taught, you passed. There were only two A’s so far: Hiyam’s Yellow Dust and Rebecca’s When I Learn To Fly. I watched Evan write Dear You and pause with the marker hovering and then write something fast, decisively. He turned around and finally looked at me.

Grade: A.

“Beautiful work, Ms. O’Malley,” he said. “You have a true passion for this. Hold on to it, cultivate it, and it’ll take you far.”

His voice only quavered slightly, not enough for anyone else to notice. But I glowed ultraviolet inside.

I took my seat in a daze. For the first time since this crazy thing between us started, I felt okay about it. Yeah, we were sitting five feet apart and didn’t dare glance at each other, and I could practically hear Hiyam swishing her tail with nefarious intent, but it was all okay. I was in love with him. And he knew. And he was in love with me.

That was enough.

“Time for our final victim,” Evan said. “Wesley Brown.”

Someone hit the lights. Evan was two empty desks away from me, and when the lights dropped he flashed me a small smile. I smiled back. The ring on my finger seemed to pulse in time with my heart.

Wesley didn’t introduce his film. He just clicked play.

A black-and-white shot, extreme bokeh, blurry overlapping discs of light. The camera slowly focuses on a girl sitting at a picnic table with a—

Oh my god. It was me. The night of the carnival, the first night, before I’d even met Wesley Brown. You couldn’t see my face, but I knew those clothes, that body, that dark hair flying when the girl threw her head back to drain the last of her beer, the can winking with moonlight.

Evan recognized me, too. His shoulders stiffened in my peripheral vision.

The title comes up on a black frame, with some austere, brooding piano music:

OBSESSION.

Jesus Christ, I thought. Okay, yes, I’d just declared my love for somebody with my own film, but that was reciprocal. Wesley shouldn’t be doing this. We’d talked about it. And how the hell did he get that shot?

Cut to the interior of the carnival. The camera hovers at the back of the rollercoaster, watching it fill up. All the seats are taken except the front car. The girl walks toward it, turns around for a moment, then gets in. A man joins her. You can’t see their faces.

Cut to the water gun race, the girl’s foot running up an old fat guy’s leg.

Cut to silhouettes kissing in a Chevy Monte Carlo.

(Cut to me in class, my heart a fist of ice, realizing this is not about Wesley’s obsession with me.)

Cut to the girl disappearing down the road on her bike in a blur of moon-pale skin and night flower hair.

Cut to—

I stopped processing it at some point. I stared at the screen, my insides churning like broken glass. He never showed our faces. Every frame was artfully cropped, focusing on hands, legs, the backs of our heads. Mostly on my hands. It was a whole f**king film about sign language, really. The tension, worry, and desire I expressed with my hands. And it continued into the school year. Me waiting on the hood of Evan’s car. Our hands clasping briefly in the hall. Both of us leaving his class together after fourth-period make-out sessions. You couldn’t read any incriminating details—Wesley was oh so careful to edit those out—but if you went to this school, you knew it was here. And you knew it was a teacher and student. And you knew that the student was obsessed with the teacher, always waiting, wanting, twisting herself into knots with it. There were scenes I didn’t even remember: me seeming forlorn and angry, kicking my bike over, flinging crab apples at a brick wall, sitting on a curb with my head in my hands. When did that happen? It was like watching a stranger.

Final shot: Halloween night in Siobhan’s car. I stare out the window, compulsively twisting the ring on my finger, over and over and over and over.

Piano trails off. Hard cut to black. Credits.

Someone flipped the lights on and I imagined myself standing up with a gun.

Evan didn’t even get a chance to prompt discussion.

“Whoa,” a guy said.

“Yeah,” said someone else.

“So, like,” a girl said, “what is your genre? Because that looked really, really…real.”

“Docudrama,” Wesley answered in monotone.

You f**king liar, I thought.

“So it’s made up?”

“Reenactment.”

“That’s going on? At Riverland?”

“They’re actors.”

Other voices chimed in.

“But it’s based on something real.”

“Oh my god. Did that actually happen here?”

“Man, that happens all the time. Don’t be naive.”

I had not looked at Evan. I couldn’t. But his voice sounded perturbingly calm when he said, “Let’s focus on theme. Aside from the title, what kind of themes did you notice?”

I almost laughed. How can you even discuss this? I thought. Throw him out of class. Let us out early. Let me beat the shit out of him.

“Loneliness,” someone answered immediately.

“Depression.”

“Lust?”

Giggles.

“Sex.”

Every single word went through me like a voodoo pin. This is my f**king life you’re talking about, you idiots. It does not have a f**king theme.

“I think it’s about love,” Rebecca said tentatively, “but, kind of messed up.”

“You know that’s a teacher, right?” a guy said.

“So?”

“So, that’s like, pedo.”

Rebecca made a sound of disgust.

“No it’s not,” someone else said. “At my old school this girl was seeing a teacher, and when she turned eighteen they got married.”

“Gross.”

“I’d totally do it with a hot teacher,” a guy said, and a girl said, “Ms. Bisette?”

People laughed.

I felt like I was going to vomit. I started to stand and Evan shot me a warning glance. Drawing attention to myself was probably a bad idea.

“Class,” he said in that smooth actor’s voice, “let’s focus on the work.” He turned to Wesley then, and my heart pounded. “Wesley has told a story very effectively without any dialogue, or even seeing the actors’ faces. Why do you think he chose that direction?”

Because he’s a f**king coward, I thought.

“To show it could be anyone.”

“To hide their identities.”

“I think it’s so we focus on the emotions,” Rebecca said.

“What emotions? It’s about infatuation.”

“You can still feel things when you’re infatuated.”

“I don’t think she’s infatuated,” Rebecca said. “I think she really loves him.”

“How do you know?” a guy said. “Have you been with a teacher?”

Laughter.

“Focus,” Evan said.

“She’s right.”

Hiyam’s voice. Icicle straight to my heart.

“I think it is about love,” Hiyam said. “I’d like to know what Maise thinks, since hers was about being in love with a teacher, too.”

I turned to her. The whole class was looking at me. I couldn’t speak. Suddenly I was aware of the ring, the f**king ring right there on my hand. I couldn’t hide it now, they were all staring. God, don’t see it, I prayed. Don’t see this thing I’ve been waving right under your f**king noses.

“Well?” Hiyam said.

“Hiyam,” Evan said. “Bullying.”

“It’s an honest question.”

“She doesn’t have to answer.”

“I’ll answer her f**king question,” I said.

No one gasped, but there was a sudden, reverberating silence.

“I think it’s easy to judge someone you don’t know anything about,” I said. “Like before I saw your film, I thought you were nothing but a spoiled cokehead. Now I know it’s not your parents’ fault.”

“Maise,” Evan breathed behind me, low and alarmed.

I turned to Wesley, who sat on the dais at the back of the room, in shadow.

“And I thought you were a good person. But now I know you’re a f**king psycho.”

“Maise,” Evan said sharply, like a whip crack.

No one moved. It was dead still.

“Leave the class.”

It was as if I’d been struck. I turned to him, numb, furious, hurt. He met my eyes for a moment and then looked away.

I stood up and walked out. I didn’t slam the door, but I stalked straight across the hall and kicked open the boys’ bathroom, and when a guy at a urinal looked at me in shock, I growled, “Get out.”

I paced. I stood with my palms on either side of a sink, feeling like I could rip it out of the wall. I turned on the cold water and splashed it on my face. Tried to drink some but ended up spitting it at the mirror. Then I paced some more.

I didn’t have long to wait. The bell rang, and I stepped out and watched the kids leaving, flocking into small groups, whispering frantically.

When I saw Wesley I walked up to him, grabbed his shirt in my fist, and twisted as hard as I could.

“What the hell?” he said.

“You want to do this here, or you want to do it in private?” I barely recognized my voice. It was flat and gritty, sulfurous. The drag of a match head before it burst into flame. Other kids were staring.

Wesley eyed me anxiously for a second. Then he followed me to the boys’ bathroom. When he walked in I kicked the garbage can in front of the door and spun around fast, swinging. He caught my arm. He was bigger and stronger than me and I hated him for that.

“Let me hit you,” I said.

“You’re crazy.”

“You’re a f**king traitor. You stupid a**hole. How could you do this to me?”

He stared at me wide-eyed, as if surprised. “You’re blowing it way out of proportion.”