Unteachable(8)
Author: Leah Raeder

He stopped in front of the hood. His hand tightened on the strap of his messenger bag, his knuckles white spurs.

“Do you need to talk?” he said in a muted voice.

I shook my head, slowly.

His chest rose and fell with a deep breath. He went to the driver side, unlocked it. Stood there unmoving.

“We can’t do this,” he said, but it sounded like he was talking to himself.

I hopped off the hood and he got in the car. But he just sat there, keys glinting in a limp hand. Then he turned and looked at me through the passenger window.

My eyes skipped to the dashboard. Somehow, in my daze, I hadn’t noticed it. The stupid velvet pony with its too-human eyes. I looked back at Mr. Wilke.

There was something very boyish about him at that moment, despite the five o’clock shadow, the blue rivers of veins mapping the back of his hand, the entire adult world he was part of. He looked lost. Maybe it was hypocritical, but the boyishness I barely tolerated in guys my age was exactly what drew me to him. He was like me: not fully part of the adult or child world. An exile, watching wistfully from the outside.

Something sharp and cold struck my shoulder.

A car drove past, a face turning to us.

We were utterly still.

Another icy dagger, this time hitting the crown of my head.

Then it all came at once, the sky exploding into water.

Thank you Jesus.

Mr. Wilke sat there watching me. He didn’t take his eyes off mine for a second, even when my hair plastered itself to my face and my shirt turned to cling film, and I stood motionless, expressionless, knowing I was going to win.

He leaned over and opened the door.

I got in.

Rain drummed on metal, a hundred wild heartbeats surrounding us. Mist came off my skin as if I was some ethereal creature. Our bodies faced forward, our faces angled toward each other.

“You kept it,” I said.

A long pause before he said, “It smelled like you.”

Everything solid in me evaporated, leaving only breath. I weighed nothing.

He started the car. I felt the engine rumble in my belly. I was a very thin, transparent piece of skin, everything going right through me. A sheet of nerve endings. I pressed my palms to the seat and drank in the smell: the old leather of the seats, the new leather of his skin, and, startlingly, me. My presence suffused his car. Rain and orange oil, the creamy body lotion that was coming off on the seat. I wiped wet hair out of my face and Mr. Wilke caught my hand.

I waited, wide-eyed, ready for anything.

His fingers curled around mine, painfully. His whole arm was rigid. Tension corded up into his neck, his jaw.

No words. Just that crushing grip.

He let go.

“Where do you live?”

It rained ruthlessly. I had no sense of time passing, of moving through space, only the zircon curtain clattering against the windows and the heat of his body so close to mine. I knew he was barely paying attention either because he almost ran a red. He slammed the brakes so hard the tires screeched and I caught myself on the dashboard, his arm tangling with mine.

“Killing us both is one way to solve it,” I said.

He drove more carefully, his hands strangling the wheel.

The closer we got to my street, the faster something accelerated inside of me, a terrifying urgency. How could I stall? How could I wring more out of this moment before it was over?

He parked several houses down from mine. I didn’t tell him to, and there was room in front of my house. My heart stuttered.

Car interior. Afternoon, heavy rain. Two people turn to each other. Raindrops crawl over the windows and paint shadows across their faces.

Action.

“Evan,” I said.

It was the first time I’d said his name since that night. It hit him like an electric shock, opening his eyes wider, stiffening his muscles. There was power in it and I wanted to play with that power. But not yet.

“I’m sorry I left that night,” I said.

Him and the pony looked at me sadly. I felt a childish urge to hug it.

“Why did you go?” he said.

There was no choice here of putting on the armor. This man had already seen the real me.

“Because I was scared,” I said. “Because you made me feel like being myself wasn’t such a bad thing. Like it might even be special. I didn’t know how to deal with it, and I panicked.”

I grimaced, hearing my words.

“This sounds stupid.”

My left hand lay on the seat. He covered it with his.

“No, it doesn’t. You’re being honest, so I’ll be honest, too.” His fingers contracted. “This feels wrong, Maise. I’m your teacher. It’s not just about getting caught. It’s how our lives will get screwed up even if no one finds out. Sneaking around, secrecy, paranoia—”

“You’re seriously underestimating how much I like espionage. And it’s just until school ends.”

“Is that how you want to spend your senior year?”

“I don’t want to spend it wondering what could have been.”

His expression turned morose, inward-looking.

“Evan,” I said again, and he focused on me. “If I hadn’t left that night, if this kept going…would you still think we should stop now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you really want to stop?”

“No,” he said softly.

There was no desperate collision of bodies this time. We moved in small increments, my fingers lacing through his, my neck craning toward him. My gaze fixed itself on his jaw, the place just under his lower lip where sandy stubble graded into smooth skin. His free hand came up and touched my mouth, traced it, fingertips pushing in, against my teeth. Again I grimaced. I saw him through my wet eyelashes, blurrily. Unbearable. All this restraint, everything furled and reined in, while the rain came down with pure wrath.

A car roared past, throwing up a tsunami against his door.

We both started. It must have broken the trance, because then his arms were around me and I was on my knees, kissing him, pressing his back to the window. I tasted glassy rain and my own wet hair tangling across my face. He didn’t stop me to fix the shot. He wanted me as I was, raw, unedited. His hand ran up the back of my bare leg, his fingers stroking the inside of my thigh. I gasped against his mouth. Lost a sandal. Rubbed my face against his jaw, hard, feeling the grit. Mark me, I thought. Give me something to take away with me. Something I can touch when I’m alone, remembering this.

When we stopped to breathe he took my face between his hands. “You don’t know what you do to me. I can’t look at you in that classroom.”

“You look at me all the time.”

“And do horrible things to you in my head.”

My blood was wildfire. I felt my swollen mouth, my sharp teeth digging into my lip, my dreamy half-shut eyes, and knew what I looked like to him. “Do them to me,” I said. “Take me somewhere.”

He gave a long, long sigh. His lips were bright red from my attentions. “I want to. You have no idea how much I want to.” Two fingers on my chin, pinching gently. “This is moving very fast. We should think it through. Think about how to be less conspicuous.”

My face lit up with dark glee. “I can be discreet. I can be Harriet the f**king Spy.”

His hands moved to my ribs. Palms cupping my br**sts, rubbing my wet shirt into my skin. It chafed, but I didn’t want him to stop. I wanted this. Imprint yourself on me, I thought. It felt like he held all of me, gathered there next to my heart, small enough to fit in his hands.

“I wish I could take you away,” he said in a rough, eerie whisper.

I shivered. “How am I supposed to make it through the weekend?”

“I was wondering the same thing.”

We kissed for a while, soft, sweet goodbye kisses. We traded numbers. We touched each other’s faces, hands. The glass had gone opaque, glowing with fuzzy spots of color, the way a camera blurs background lights. We kissed again. I tried to think of another excuse to stay in his car, and he smiled, reading my thoughts.

“I don’t know what I’m doing with you,” he said.

“That’s okay,” I said. “Just don’t stop.”

I stood in the rain, watching his car go. A string tied to it looped around my heart and pulled tighter and tighter until it sheared clean through.

—3—

At seven Saturday morning I woke to Mom’s voice, a raven screech ravaged from cheap alcohol and cigarettes.

“Babe! I made breakfast. Let’s go shopping.”

I pulled my pillow over my face, wondering if I had the discipline to suffocate myself.

“Get up, lazybones.”

Curtain swish. Holocaust sunlight ignited my bed, seeping through the pillow.

“Go away,” I groaned. I’d been having a weird dream about being chased through a cornfield by a wild dog. I couldn’t see it when I looked back, just the ripple through the stalks. But when it growled I felt its breath on my neck, hot and toxic.

By “made breakfast,” she meant bought McDonald’s. At least it wasn’t her usual liquid meal. I scarfed an egg sandwich and observed the woman who gave birth to me. Sunlight was not kind to her face. Her eyeshadow looked greasy, not covering the dark circles so much as completing them. Her lipstick was thick and tacky. No one still wore magenta except ironically.

Once upon a time, this witchy skeletal creature was a teenage girl, like me. Her eyes were a clear peridot, her skin poreless alabaster. She was beautiful. Men and boys worshiped her.

I shuddered. I had the disturbing sense of looking into a mirror that showed the future.

“What do you need to shop for?” I said.

“For you, silly.”

I eyed her suspiciously. “You never buy me things.”

“It was a good week. We got some extra cash.”

Translation: I sold a lot of meth to kids your age.

“And you’re going to spend it on me.” Not a question. A tentative statement.

“I can’t stand looking at them ratty clothes. You need something nice.”

Them ratty clothes were good enough for Mr. Wilke, I thought.

“You can just give me the money,” I said. “I’ll buy them myself.”

Please, Jesus, don’t go with me.

Mom smiled. Her porcelain caps shone brilliantly. The majority of her teeth were fake, the real ones rotted out by meth. “If I got to pay to spend time with you, I will.”

Zip, thunk. Arrow right in the heart. It sank deep, quivering. I knew this woman loved me in some delusional way. I just preferred when we both ignored that fact.

She chain-smoked in the van. I hung halfway out the window, texting Wesley. Please kill me. Girls’ day out with Mom.

He texted back, Who’s the girl?

Good old Wesley.

We drove through sleepy Carbondale, green lawns and campus commons, to the University Mall. Ice cold AC, that soda pop smell in the slightly carbonated air. Mom took me straight to American Eagle. We passed a rack of pre-torn, pre-faded jean shorts, indistinguishable from what I was wearing except for the price tag. I raised an eyebrow. Translation: told you so.

“Get what you like,” Mom said. She held a mesh tank against her boobs, turning left and right.