Unteachable(34)
Author: Leah Raeder

“I have a daughter your age,” he said. “If any man did that to her, I’d kill him.”

Some dads make threats to prove they’re doing their job of caring. In Mr. Rivero’s case, I’m pretty sure he meant it literally.

“Do you believe me now?” I said.

“Do I believe you’re trustworthy? No.” He tapped a finger on the table. “Trust is something you earn by actions, not words. But I do believe you can keep your mouth shut, and that suits me.” He signaled the waiter again, and said, “I never talk business while I’m hungry, Maise. So let’s eat.”

I made it through the entire day without reading Evan’s texts. But that night in bed, I felt like a million wires were hooked into my skin, pulling me in every direction. I slipped a hoodie on and climbed onto the gentle slope of the roof outside my window, laying back on the shingles, Garbage’s “Beloved Freak” on repeat in my earbuds. Ice at the base of my neck, exploding hydrogen and new galaxies being born a hundred billion miles above me.

I couldn’t risk Hiyam’s threat. It was over between us, just like that, in one apocalyptic afternoon.

My fist hit the shingles and fire shot up my nerves. I raised my hand: blood welled black in the starlight. Then I screamed at the sky, wordless, meaningless, raw animal pain, and the stars shook with light.

Fuck all of this, I thought. Fuck how I’ve lost everything good in my life. Fuck how everyone uses me, abandons me, throws me away. Fuck how I use them and abandon them because I don’t know any better.

Tonight we were supposed to be in Chicago, in the great silver city by the lake.

Fuck you, Wesley. And f**k you Mom, and f**k you Dad, and f**k you Hiyam.

Fuck you, Siobhan, for not teaching your son better.

And f**k you, Evan. Fuck you for being my teacher. Fuck you for letting me fall in love with you. Fuck you for existing.

I couldn’t lay still any longer. I stood, balancing precariously in my socks on the freezing shingles, and crept to the edge to look at the starlit yard below, a duotone landscape of blue shadow and white frost, my ghost-bodied breath swirling over the emptiness. The grass looked soft, like dark velvet. The odds of dying from a twenty-foot fall were pretty low. Why not? I thought. Why not just let go, trust the earth to catch me? Why not take the risk of getting a subdural hematoma and dying in my sleep? Sweet dreams forever, little girl.

You have a lion’s heart. You aren’t afraid to live.

Goddamn him. He was right.

I sat on the roof’s edge, my legs dangling over the yard, my heart hanging over infinity, and sang to myself and the silent night.

That week, I buried myself in college apps and ignored my phone. The only person I planned to answer was Gary. Evan texted, called, emailed, and on Wednesday finally showed up at the house. I walked onto the porch in my socks and pajamas and told him, without crying, that I couldn’t see him anymore. He asked in a soft, heart-breaking voice if I wanted to go talk somewhere and I declined in what might have been coherent English and closed the door. I made it all the way to my room, to my desk, shaking the whole time, before I lost it.

Wednesday and Thursday were a blur. I was a quantum haze of probability. The likeliness of a girl crying her heart out.

On Friday I broke down and walked to his apartment, but his car was gone. I waited for hours in the cold, refusing to call, at first very Serious and Stoic but eventually so bored I made snow angels and threw slushballs at his balcony. For some reason I was fixated on the idea of explaining everything to him in person. Calling seemed too needy.

This was the kind of logic I was operating on: none.

I went back Saturday morning and his car was still gone. He had to be in St. Louis.

Gary had given me a small stipend for “business expenses.” I took a cab to Carbondale and spent the day in the mall, watching the ashen, dead-eyed Christmas shoppers with my headphones on, waiting for the midnight Greyhound.

I kept falling asleep on the bus, drifting in and out of a reverie of reunion, apologizing, telling him about the blackmail, figuring out some brilliant plan where we could still be together. Mostly I focused on how it would feel to touch him again, to be held by warm solid smoke. I tried to think of his face but it was all shadow and fog. When I got off in STL I felt like I was walking on the moon, everything freezing and too bright, my body floating over the pavement. I shivered the entire taxi ride. I could see the loft lights from the street, and a huge weight rolled off of me.

Thank you, Jesus.

I ran to the elevator, my breath clouding inside the cage. My heart beat wildly as I opened the front door.

Movie cliché: I walk in on him with another woman.

Reality: I walk in on a stranger with another woman.

A guy I’d never seen before looked up at me in shock from the couch. Behind him, a woman turned away, straightening her dress.

“Oh,” I said, standing there like an idiot. “I’m sorry.”

The guy got up and moved toward me swiftly. Short, around my height. He was Asian, tanned, spiky black hair, light goatee. And totally ripped, muscle bulging beneath his tight silk shirt and jeans.

“Can I help you?” he said with strained politeness.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “I was looking for Evan.”

The man frowned. “Who?”

“It’s the weekend,” I said helplessly, starting to back up. “We’re usually here. I thought—”

A light went on in the guy’s eyes. “Oh, shit. You’re Eric’s girlfriend. Right?”

I stopped backing up. In my head, every single neuron swiveled a spotlight on that word.

Eric.

“Right,” I said slowly. “Eric Wilke.”

And I heard Evan’s voice in my head saying, Now I was her only child.

The guy’s posture relaxed. “He said he was going out of town this weekend. I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“We must have miscommunicated,” I said glibly, amazed at my poise when my brain was screeching with static. “I’m sorry to interrupt your evening.”

The woman came up behind the guy, touching his arm. “Park?”

“It’s okay, honey,” Asian Guy said. “Just a mix-up. This is my buddy’s girlfriend…”

He raised his eyebrows at me.

“Maise,” I said. “I’m sorry, I—”

“Come in,” he said, stepping aside. “Please. I’m Park. Jun-yeong, but everyone calls me Park. This is Kara.”

Kara, bleach-blond and tan, her boobs squeezing out of her tube dress like toothpaste, kept her eyes on me. I must have looked pitiful, shivering and bedraggled, drained from days of weeping and bone-breaking angst like some consumptive Victorian her**ne, but still she stared at me as if I might run off with her boyfriend any minute.

Focus on Kara and her ridiculous boobs. Focus on anything but the horror building in me.

Park led me to the kitchen. “Cocoa,” he said, “tea, coffee? Or there’s some bourbon—” He turned around and gave me a funny look. “Are you old enough to drink?”

“Twenty-one,” I said smoothly.

Kara raised her eyebrows. Kara didn’t look much older than twenty-one herself.

“What’s your poison?” Park said.

“Tea, please.” I desperately wanted alcohol, but getting drunk around strangers was never smart.

Kara’s phone rang. She left the kitchen to answer it.

“I’m really sorry,” I told Park. My voice sounded like an answering machine, tinny and small. “I didn’t mean to ruin your evening.”

“Actually,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper, “let’s hope that’s a ‘friend’ who has an ‘emergency.’” He widened his eyes.

Kara called him over. He set a mug on the counter.

“Excuse me.”

I warmed my hands on the cup. My head felt like a shattered mug that had been inexpertly glued back together, and now it was leaking something scalding.

“I’ve got to go,” Kara hissed, loud enough for me to hear. “Jen’s having an emergency. And I’m not into babysitting teenagers.”

“Okay, honey. I’m sorry about this. I’ll call.”

Kissing sounds. Kara moaned—for my benefit, I thought. The door closed, and Park reappeared in the kitchen, rolling his eyes in relief.

“You don’t like your girlfriend?” I said.

“I’ve been trying to break it off for like, three weeks.”

“How long have you been seeing her?”

“Three weeks.”

I laughed, maybe too harshly.

Park poured himself a rum and Coke and sat one stool away from me. “Things going bad with you and Eric?”

God, it was like a bullet in the chest every time. “What makes you say that?”

“Well, you showed up without him. And you didn’t know he’s in Chicago this weekend.”

Chicago. Chicago.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” I said emptily.

Park took a drink, looked at me, took another drink, and then said, “How old are you really?”

“Eighteen.”

“Shit,” he said. “High school?”

This gave me a feeling of mortal dread. “Does it matter?”

He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “What did you call him, when you came in?”

“Who?” I said. “Eric?” Maybe he’d forget.

“You called him something else.”

I turned to face this stranger. I could smell his cologne, hard and clean and slightly alcoholic. Despite being built like a brick shithouse, there was something innocent and soft in his face. It made me not want to lie to him.

“I called him Evan,” I said.

Park’s eyes scanned me rapidly. “Are you in trouble?”

“What trouble?”

“Are you pregnant?”

I’m pretty sure my eyebrows briefly touched the roof. “No. Jesus, what kind of question is that?”

“Sorry. Had to ask.” Park took another drink. “Did you drive up here?”

“Greyhound.”

He nodded. “Okay. It’s pretty late. I’m going to head home. I have another place downtown. You can stay here tonight.” He took his phone out. “I’ll give you my number. Just in case.”

He even made sure I had enough money to get home in the morning. So much for The Friend being “kind of a douchebag.” Another lie, I guess. When Park looked at me, there was something sad in his eyes. I refused to see it as pity.

Then I was alone in this apartment where I had fallen in love with a man who didn’t exist.

At first I curled up in bed, but I felt like I was going to vomit. So I dragged a blanket to the couch, but we’d had sex there, too. And in the bathroom, and the kitchen, and pretty much everywhere in this f**king place.

I stared to cry, standing in the middle of the loft, surrounded by memories.

No. Fuck that.

I booted the PC in the small office area. Guest login. Browser window. Google search: eric wilke westchester illinois.

His face.

A hundred different photos of him, thirtysomething, twentysomething, teensomething. Him in high school: debate team, drama club (not lying about being a nerd). College at NU (also not a lie). Then back to high school, to teach. Awards. Honors. Regional competitions. And for what? What class did he teach?