At first everyone jokes about the election never ending, but it stops being funny when the Florida recount goes into full swing. Mr. Sheldon spends most days with his feet propped up on his desk, but now he springs to life, drawing sprawling webs on the chalkboard meant to illustrate the many ways democracy can fail. During one class he lectures us on all the different kinds of chads—hanging, fat, pregnant—while we try not to laugh and shoot looks at Chad Gagnon.
Meanwhile in American lit, we read A River Runs Through It and Mr. Strane tells us his own stories of growing up in Montana—ranches and real-life cowboys, dogs eaten by grizzlies, mountains so big they block out the sun. I try to imagine him as a boy, but I can’t even picture what he’d look like without a beard. After A River Runs Through It, we start on Robert Frost and Mr. Strane recites “The Road Not Taken” from memory. He says we shouldn’t feel uplifted by the poem, that Frost’s message is widely misunderstood. The poem isn’t meant to be a celebration of going against the grain but rather an ironic performance about the futility of choice. He says that by believing our lives have endless possibilities, we stave off the horrifying truth that to live is merely to move forward through time while an internal clock counts down to a final, fatal moment.
“We’re born, we live, we die,” he says, “and the choices we make in the middle, all those things we agonize over day after day, none of those matter in the end.”
No one says anything to counter his argument, not even Hannah Levesque, who is super Catholic and presumably believes that the choices we make actually matter quite a bit in the end. She only stares at him with her lips slightly parted, dumbstruck.
Mr. Strane passes out copies of another Frost poem, “Putting in the Seed,” and tells us to read this one silently to ourselves, and after we finish doing that, he tells us to do it again. “But this time, as you read it,” he says, “I want you to think about sex.”
It takes a second to sink in, for furrowed brows to give way to flushed cheeks, but once it does Mr. Strane surveys the palpable embarrassment with a smile.
Only I’m not embarrassed. The mention of sex smacks me across the face and makes my body run hot. Maybe this is about me. Maybe this is his next move.
“Are you saying this poem is about sex?” Jenny asks.
“I’m saying that it deserves to be read closely and with an open mind,” Mr. Strane says. “And let’s be honest here, I’m not asking any of you to think about something you don’t already spend a significant amount of time contemplating. Now get to it.” He claps his hands to signal we should start.
On the second read through the poem, with sex at the forefront of my mind, I do notice things I didn’t before: the details of white soft petals, smooth bean and wrinkled pea, the final image of an arched body. Even the phrase “putting in the seed” is obviously suggestive.
“What do you think of it now?” Mr. Strane stands with his back to the chalkboard, one foot crossed over the other. We say nothing, but our silence only proves him right, that the poem is about sex after all.
He waits and his eyes travel the room, seem to look at every student except for me. Tom takes a breath, about to speak, but the bell rings and Mr. Strane shakes his head at us as though disappointed.
“You’re all puritans,” he says, waving his hand in dismissal.
As we leave the classroom and start down the hallway, Tom says, “What the hell was that?” and with a brisk authority that makes me seethe, Jenny says, “He’s a huge misogynist. My sister warned me.”
Later, Jesse doesn’t show at creative writing club and the classroom feels enormous with just me and Mr. Strane. I sit at the seminar table and he behind his desk, each of us staring at the other across a vast continent.
“There isn’t much for you to do today,” he says. “The lit journal is in good shape. We can start copyediting when Jesse’s here to help.”
“Should I go?”
“Not if you want to stay.”
Of course I want to stay. I take my notebook from my backpack and open it to the poem I drafted the night before.
“What did you think of class today?” he asks. The low sun cuts through the now-skeletal red maple tree and into the classroom. Behind his desk, Mr. Strane is a shadow.
Before I can answer, he adds, “I ask because I saw your face. You looked like a startled little fawn. I expected the rest of them to be scandalized, but not you.”
So he was looking at me. Scandalized. I think of Jenny calling him a misogynist, how narrow-minded and ordinary she sounded. I’m not like that. I don’t ever want to be that.
“I wasn’t. I liked the class.” I shield my eyes so I can make out his features, his tender-condescending smile. I haven’t seen that smile in weeks.
“I’m relieved,” he says. “I was starting to wonder if I’d been wrong about you.”
My breath catches at the thought of being so close to a serious misstep. One wrong reaction on my part could wreck this whole thing.
He reaches down then and opens his bottom desk drawer, pulls out a book, and my ears prick like a dog’s. Pavlovian—we learned about that in my psychology elective last spring.
“Is that for me?” I ask.
He makes a face, like he isn’t sure. “If I lend you this, you have to promise me not to let anyone know it was me who gave it to you.”
I crane my neck, try to read the book’s title. “Is it illegal or something?”
He laughs—really laughs, like when I called Sylvia Plath self-absorbed. “Vanessa, how do you always manage to have the perfect response even to things you don’t understand?”
I scowl at that. I don’t like the idea of him thinking there are things I don’t understand. “What’s the book?”
He brings it over, the cover still hidden. I grab it as soon as he sets it down. Flipping the paperback over, I see a pair of skinny legs in ankle socks and saddle shoes, a pleated skirt ending above two knobby knees. In big white letters across the legs: Lolita. I’ve heard the term somewhere before—an article about Fiona Apple, I think, a description of her as “Lolita-esque,” meaning sexy and too young. I now understand why he laughed when I asked if the book was illegal.
“It’s not poetry,” he says, “but poetic prose. You’ll appreciate the language, if nothing else.”
I feel him watching me as I turn the novel over and skim the description. This is obviously another test.
“Looks interesting.” I drop the book into my backpack and turn to my notebook. “Thanks.”
“Let me know what you think of it.”
“I will.”
“And if anyone catches you with it, you didn’t get it from me.”
Rolling my eyes, I say, “I know how to keep a secret.” That isn’t necessarily true—before him, I hadn’t ever had a real secret—but I know what he needs to hear. It’s like he said, I always have the perfect response.
* * *
Thanksgiving break. Five days of showers that last until the hot water runs out, of scrutinizing myself in front of the full-length mirror on the back of my bedroom door, plucking my eyebrows until Mom hides the tweezers, of trying to get the puppy to love me as much as Dad. I go for hikes every day, wearing a blaze-orange vest as I trek up the granite bluff that looms over the lake. Caves pock the face of it, crevices in the rock big enough for hawks to nest in and animals to hide.