You'd Be Home Now (28)

And I catch him, out of the corner of my eye, at the baseball table by the wall. They’re all laughing about something.

Did they see what happened with me and Lucy Kerr? A couple of girls are there, too. One girl puts her hand on Gage’s arm. He moves smoothly, almost imperceptibly, so that her hand falls away.

If Gage was my boyfriend, I would be sitting there. Lucy Kerr would never say things to me. Gage and his shiny perfection would protect me from everyone.

I will him to glance over, look at me, anything. Acknowledge me.

He doesn’t.

But I notice someone else, over by the exit doors.

Daniel Wankel. Leaning against the wall in his black sport coat, the same jacket he wears even in the coldest of months, fingerless gloves, black-and-gray scarf wound around his neck, even though it’s September and still warm.

He missed most of fall and spring semester last year. There were whispers about why he went away. Got drunk, fell in the river, sent to rehab. I heard pray the gay away. I heard he bit the shop teacher. I heard he went nuts.

Daniel Wankel’s face is steady, watching me. And then he smiles. But it isn’t a happy Hey how ya doin smile.

It’s more like Sucks to be you.





15


IN MR. WATSON’S LIT class, I take a seat in the back, by the window. I like being by the windows. The flowers are nice outside and if there’s a breeze, I like to look at the leaves in the trees weaving back and forth. I wonder how Joey is doing. I checked for him in the hallways after lunch but didn’t see him. I send him a quick text while Watson is fussing about at the whiteboard.


Hope you’re good



I still feel a little shaky after what happened with Lucy Kerr in the cafeteria. Maybe I should eat lunch in the library from now on.

“Good afternoon, gentle people,” Mr. Watson says, writing his name on the whiteboard at the front of the room. “Welcome to American Classics, where we’ll delve deep into works that define our culture. The reading list went up on the student portal two weeks ago, so I hope—”

Liza Hernandez raises her hand.

He pauses. “Yes, Liza. Lovely to see you again.”

Watson is kind of a crusty old guy. Navy-blue tie, white button-up shirt. Black shoes. Why do men’s eyebrows get so bushy and wild when they grow old? It’s like he’s got two crazy caterpillars crawling across his forehead.

    “Why did you assign a book about a pedophile?” Liza’s voice is clipped and strong. She’s sitting a few rows in front of me on the right.

Someone snickers. A couple of kids shuffle in their seats. I’m glad she said it, though. I know what that book’s about and it sounds gross and I’ve been avoiding reading it since it doesn’t come until further in the semester.

“Excuse me?” Watson’s caterpillars crease together.

“Lolita. By Nabokov. Am I pronouncing that right?”

“You are.” He writes it on the board. Says it out loud, slowly, for all of us.

“It’s a book about a man who sexually assaults a girl.”

“Oh, shit,” someone says. “Here we go.”

Watson blinks rapidly. You can tell he’s really working to get some words out. Finally, he says, “Well, I hesitate to use those words or to say that’s the subject of the book, as a whole.”

Mandy Hinkle’s sitting next to Liza. She clears her throat. “It is actually the whole subject of the book. He preys on her and her mom, who’s like totally loopy and out of it, for the entire book. And then, like, another old guy comes along and basically does the same thing to her.”

“I think that guy kidnapped her, didn’t he?” says Amani McKinney. “I couldn’t tell. This book is weird and creepy and the writer made it seem like maybe she liked it? But technically, you can’t consent under the age of eighteen and besides, isn’t she, like, twelve when everything starts?”

“My point is,” Liza says, “this is a really problematic book about the assault of a child by an adult, some hellacious gaslighting, and there could be, you never know, some people in this very room who may be sexual assault survivors. Did you ever think of that?”

    “It would be different,” Mandy Hinkle adds, “if the book was about a survivor’s experience. But this is not that, at all.”

The room gets very quiet. I wait. You can never tell how some teachers are going to react to pushback. The old “my way or the highway” thing. We have a bunch of yellers at Heywood, but I haven’t had a class with Watson yet, so I don’t know what he’ll do. I would rather not have any yelling, but I also don’t want to read this book, either, and I’m glad Liza said something.

Mr. Watson lays down his Magic Marker. He taps his desktop once, twice, three times, before speaking.

“Firstly,” he says. “Let me commend those of you who have read the book already—”

“I watched the movie,” Max deVos says. “There was a sexy chick. Does watching the movie count?”

Mandy Hinkle says, “There were two movies and no.”

“Secondly,” Mr. Watson says, louder.

I wince. This might be the start of the yelling.

“The book is an important introduction to literary technique, structure, allusion, the unreliable narrator. There are many ways to discuss this book and perhaps your ideas are ones we can explore.”