“No,” he says softly. “No, I should get back home.”
“Fine.” I push out of my chair so hard it squeaks against the floor, like nails across a chalkboard. My nails on his chalkboard.
He watches as I slide my arms into my coat and heft my purse to my shoulder. “How long have you been at that job?”
I lift my shoulders, my brain snagged on a memory of his fingers in my mouth, chalk dust on my tongue. “I don’t know,” I say faintly. “Awhile.”
“It’s been too long,” he says. “You should love what you do. Don’t settle for less.”
“It’s fine. It’s a job.”
“But you were made for more than that,” he says. “You were so bright. You were brilliant. I thought you were going to publish a novel at twenty, take over the world. Have you tried writing lately?”
I shake my head.
“God, what a waste. I wish you would.”
I press my lips together. “Sorry I’m a disappointment.”
“Come on, don’t do that.” He stands, cups my face in his hands and lowers his voice to a murmur as he tries to settle me down. “I’ll come stay with you soon,” he says. “I promise.”
We exchange a close-lipped kiss goodbye, and the barista at the counter keeps counting the tip jar, the old man by the window continues his crossword puzzle. Him kissing me used to be fodder for rumors that spread like wildfire. Now when we touch each other, the world doesn’t even notice. I know there should be freedom in that, but to me it only feels like loss.
At home after work, I lie in bed with my phone, reading over the message Taylor Birch sent me before posting the accusations against Strane. Hi Vanessa, I’m not sure if you know anything about me, but you and I are in the strange position of sharing an experience, something that, for me, was traumatic and I’m guessing it was the same for you. X-ing out of the window, I bring up her profile but nothing new is posted, so I scroll through the old content: photos of her on vacation in San Francisco, eating Mission burritos, a selfie with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background, photos of her at home in her apartment, crushed velvet couch, gleaming hardwood floors, and leafy houseplants. I scroll further back to photos of her in a pink pussy hat from the Women’s March, eating a doughnut as big as her head, and posing with friends at a bar downtown in a photo captioned Browick reunion!
I move to my own profile, try to see myself through her eyes. I know she checks on me; a year ago, she liked one of my photos, an accidental double tap she immediately undid, but I still saw the notification. I took a screenshot and sent it to Strane, along with I guess she can’t let go, but he didn’t respond, uninterested in the nuances of social media, the smug sense of triumph that comes when a lurker shows her hand. Or maybe he didn’t even understand what I meant. I forget sometimes exactly how old he is; I used to think the gap between us would shrink as I grew older, but it’s still as wide as it’s ever been.
Hours pass while I dig deeper on my phone, logging into my old photo hosting accounts and scrolling back in time, 2017 to 2010 to 2007 to 2002—the year I first bought a digital camera, the year I turned seventeen. My breath catches as the photo set I’m looking for finally loads: me with my hair in braids, wearing a sundress and knee socks, standing before a grove of birch trees. In one photo, I’m lifting the skirt of my dress, flashing pale thighs. In another, I’m turned away from the camera, looking over my shoulder. The quality of the photos is low, but they’re still lovely, the birches a monochrome backdrop against the pinks and blues of the dress, my copper hair.
I open my last texts with Strane, copy and paste the photos into a new message. Not sure if I ever showed these to you. I think I’m 17 here.
I know he would’ve gone to bed hours ago but I hit “send” anyway, watch the text deliver. I stay awake till dawn, swiping through photos of my teenage face and body. Every once in a while I check if the text to Strane has changed from “delivered” to “read.” There’s a chance he could wake in the night and, half asleep, check his phone only to find my teenage self, a digital ghost. Don’t forget her.
Sometimes it feels like that’s all I’m doing every time I reach out—trying to haunt, to drag him back in time, asking him to tell me again what happened. Make me understand it once and for all. Because I’m still stuck here. I can’t move on.
2000
One Friday night per month, a dance is held in the dining hall. With the tables cleared away and the lights dimmed, it’s a scene that could be set in any other high school. There’s the hired DJ, a cluster of people dancing in the middle of the floor, and the shy kids huddled around the perimeter, divided by gender. Some teachers are there, too. As chaperones, they mill about, maintaining their distance, paying less attention to us than to each other.
This is the Halloween dance, so people are wearing costumes and two giant buckets of candy sit by the double doors. Most costumes are lazy—boys in jeans and white T-shirts calling themselves James Dean, girls in pleated miniskirts and pigtails calling themselves Britney Spears—but a few have gone to elaborate lengths with supplies bought downtown. One girl moves through the dining hall as a dragon with spiny wings and a train of blue-green scales, trailed by her boyfriend, a knight in cardboard armor stinking of spray paint. A boy in a suit waves a fake cigar in girls’ faces, laughing behind a rubber Bill Clinton mask. Meanwhile, I’m a half-hearted cat, black dress and black tights, drawn-on whiskers and cardboard ears thrown together in ten minutes. I came only to see Mr. Strane. He’s working as a chaperone.
Usually, I never go to the dances. Everything about them makes me cringe—the bad music, the embarrassing DJ with his goatee and frosted tips, the kids pretending not to stare at the couples grinding against each other. I’m forcing myself to suffer through this one because it’s been a week. A whole week since Mr. Strane touched me, since he put his hand on my leg and told me he could tell we were similar, two people who like dark things. Since then? Nothing. When I spoke in class, his eyes darted to the table like he couldn’t bear to look at me. During creative writing club he gathered his things and left Jesse and me alone (“Department meeting,” he explained, but if it was a department meeting, why did he need his coat and everything in his briefcase?), and later when I sought him out during faculty service hour, his door was closed, the classroom dark behind textured glass.
So I’m impatient, maybe even desperate. I want something to happen and that seems more likely at an event like this where boundaries are temporarily blurred, students and teachers thrust together in a dimly lit room. I don’t really care what the something else might be—another touch, a compliment. It doesn’t matter so long as it tells me what he wants, what this is, if it’s anything at all.
I eat a fun-size candy bar in tiny bites and watch the couples dance to a slow song, swaying around the floor like bottles in a pool of water. At one point, Jenny strides across the room wearing a satin dress that vaguely resembles a kimono, chopsticks shoved through her nubby ponytail. For a moment she seems to be headed straight for me and I freeze, chocolate melting on my tongue, but then Tom emerges from behind her wearing his normal clothes, jeans and a Beck T-shirt, not even attempting a costume. He touches her shoulder; Jenny jerks away. The music is too loud to eavesdrop, but it’s obvious they’re fighting and that it’s bad. Jenny’s chin wobbles, her eyes screw shut. When Tom touches his fingers to her arm, she plants a hand flat on his chest and shoves him so strongly he stumbles backward. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen them fight.