I set down Pale Fire so she can see the cover. “It’s not homework. Or, I guess it kind of is. It’s for Mr. Strane.”
She gives me a smile, irritatingly benign. “You have Mr. Strane for English?”
“Yup.” I look up through my eyelashes. “He’s never talked to you about me?”
The wrinkles in her forehead deepen. The look lasts only for a second. If I wasn’t on high alert, I wouldn’t even notice it. “Can’t say that he has,” she says.
“That’s surprising,” I say. “He and I are pretty close.”
I watch the suspicion bloom on her face, a sense of something amiss.
The next afternoon while Strane is at a faculty meeting, I sit behind his desk, something I would never dare to do otherwise. The door is closed, no witnesses to see me thumb through his piles of ungraded assignments and lesson plans and pull open the long, skinny desk drawer that has the weird stuff in it: an opened bag of gumdrops, a pendant of St. Christopher on a broken chain, a bottle of antidiarrhea medicine that I shove to the back in disgust.
There usually isn’t anything interesting on his computer, only a file of class documents and his rarely used school email, but when I interrupt the screensaver, an alert pops up on the task bar: (1) New Message from [email protected]. I click it open. The email is responding to another, three total in the chain.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Student Concern
Hi Jake . . . I’d like to talk to you about this in person but thought I’d send an email . . . might be good to put this in writing anyway. I had an odd interaction with Vanessa Wye the other night that involved you. She was doing some homework for your class and mentioned that you and she are “close.” It was how she said it . . . gave me a sense of some resentment there . . . even possessiveness? Definitely seems like she’s got a crush on you . . . something to be aware of. I know you said she hangs around your classroom. Just be careful :) Melissa
From: [email protected]
Subject: re: Student Concern
Melissa,
Appreciate the heads up. I’ll keep an eye on it.
JS
From: [email protected]
Subject: re: re: Student Concern
No problem . . . hope I didn’t overstep . . . just picked up a vibe. Have a good break if I don’t see you :) Melissa
I click out of the email chain, marking the most recent one from Ms. Thompson as unread. The curtness of his response makes me laugh out loud, as does Ms. Thompson’s nervousness, her little smiley faces, the dot-dot-dots stringing together incomplete sentences. It occurs to me that maybe she isn’t a smart person, or at least not as smart as me. I’ve never thought that about a teacher before.
Strane returns from the faculty meeting in a bad mood, drops his yellow legal pad on his desk and lets out a half sigh, half groan. “This place is going to hell,” he mutters. Squinting at the computer monitor, he asks, “Did you touch this?” I shake my head. “Hmm.” He grabs the mouse, clicks around. “Might need to put a password on this thing.”
At the end of faculty service hour, when he’s packing his briefcase, I say in a tone so painfully blasé it doesn’t even sound like me, “You know Ms. Thompson is my dorm parent, right?”
I busy myself with putting on my coat so I don’t have to look at him while he chooses his answer.
“I do know that,” he says.
I drag my zipper up to my throat. “So, you and her are friends?”
“Sure.”
“Because I remember seeing you together at the Halloween dance.” I peek over at him, watch him wipe his glasses on his tie, put them back on.
“So you did read my email,” he says. When I don’t say anything, he crosses his arms and gives me one of his teacher looks. Cut the bullshit.
“Were you more than friends?” I ask.
“Vanessa.”
“I’m just asking a question.”
“You are,” he agrees, “but it’s a loaded question.”
I pull my zipper up and down a few times. “I don’t really care either way. It would just be nice to know.”
“And why is that?”
“Because what if she senses there’s something going on with you and me? She might get jealous and—”
“And what?”
“I don’t know. Retaliate?”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“She wrote those emails.”
Strane leans back in his chair. “I think the best solution to this problem is for you not to read my email.”
I roll my eyes. He’s being evasive, which means the truth isn’t what I want to hear, and probably means he and Ms. Thompson were more than friends. They probably had sex.
I throw my backpack over one shoulder. “You know, I’ve seen her without makeup. She’s not that pretty. Also, she’s kind of fat.”
“Come on,” he chides, “that’s not nice.”
I glower at him. Of course it isn’t nice; that’s the whole point. “I’m leaving now. I guess I’ll see you in a week.”
Before I open the classroom door, he says, “You shouldn’t be jealous.”
“I’m not jealous.”
“You are.”
“I’m not.”
He stands, moves around his desk and across the classroom toward me. He reaches over my shoulder and flips off the lights, takes my face in his hands, kisses my forehead. “Ok,” he says softly. “Ok, you’re not jealous.”
I let him pull me in, my cheek resting against the middle of his chest. His heart echoes in my ear.
“I’m not envious of whatever dalliances you might’ve had before me,” he says.
Dalliances. I mouth the word, wonder if it means what I hope it does—that even if he did do things with Ms. Thompson, he isn’t doing them anymore, and whatever he did with her was never serious, not like what he’s doing with me.
“I can’t help what I did before I met you,” he says, “and neither can you.”
For me, there’s nothing before him, nothing at all, but I know that’s not the point. This is about him needing something from me. Not quite forgiveness, more like absolution, or maybe apathy. He needs me not to care about the things he’s done.
“Ok,” I say. “I won’t be jealous anymore.” It feels so generous, like I’m making a sacrifice for him. I’ve never felt so adult.
* * *
Last summer when I was at the height of my sulking, Mom tried to give me a pep talk about boys. She didn’t understand what had actually happened with Jenny. She thought it had all been about Tom, that I’d liked him, that he’d chosen Jenny over me or something equally clichéd. It takes time for boys to see anything beyond what’s right in front of them, she’d said, and then launched into some allegory about apples falling from trees and boys going for the easy-to-pick apples first but eventually learning that the best apples take a little more work. I wanted none of it.