My Dark Vanessa(50)

“How do you feel about the test next Friday?” she asks.

“Same as I’ve felt about every other test.”

“Vanessa! What is this attitude? This isn’t you. Sit up straight, be respectful.” She reaches forward and raps her pencil against my notebook that I still haven’t opened. I sigh and push myself up out of my slouch, open the notebook.

“Should we go over the Pythagorean theorem again?” she asks.

“If you think I need it.”

She takes off her glasses and sticks them up in her spun-sugar hair. “These sessions should not be me telling you what to do. What you need, we cover, ok? But I need you to meet me . . .” She gestures with one hand, groping for the word. “Halfway.”

At the end of the session, I scramble to gather my things, wanting to get across campus to the humanities building so I can see Strane before his faculty meeting, but Mrs. Antonova stops me.

“Vanessa,” she says, “I wanted to ask you.”

I chew on the inside of my cheek while she collects her textbook, binder, tote bag.

“How are your other classes going?” she asks, pulling her pashmina off the back of the chair. She wraps it around her shoulders, combs the fringe with her fingers. It feels like she’s moving slowly on purpose.

“They’re fine.”

She holds the classroom door open for me and asks, “What about your English grade?”

I grip my textbook tighter. “It’s fine.”

As we walk down the hallway, I pretend not to notice how she watches me. “I ask because I hear you spend a lot of time in Mr. Strane’s room,” she says. “Is that right?”

I swallow hard, counting each footstep. “I guess.”

“You were in the creative writing club, but that meets only in the fall, yes? And English is a strength for you, so it can’t be that you need the extra help.”

I lift my shoulders, my best impression of nonchalance. “He and I are friends.”

Mrs. Antonova studies me, deep wrinkles forming between her drawn-on eyebrows. “Friends,” she repeats. “Does he tell you this? That you and him are friends?”

We round the corner, the double doors within sight now. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Antonova. I have a lot of homework,” I say, trotting down the hallway, opening one of the double doors, and skipping down the steps. Over my shoulder, I thank her for all her help.



I don’t tell Strane about Mrs. Antonova’s questions, because I worry if I do, he’ll say we need to be more careful and we already made plans for me to come over to his house on accepted student day, a Saturday of wide-eyed eighth graders and their parents wandering around campus in packs. Strane says it’s a good night to do something clandestine, that special events inevitably bring confusion and things can slip through the cracks more easily.

At ten, I do the same routine as last time: check in with Ms. Thompson for curfew and sneak out the back stairwell with the broken alarm. As I run across campus, I hear noises coming from the dining hall—delivery trucks, metal slamming shut, men’s voices through the dark. Strane’s station wagon waits again with the headlights off in the faculty lot by the humanities building. He seems vulnerable waiting for me in his car, trapped in a little box. When I tap on the window, he jumps and presses a hand to his chest, and for a moment I just stand there, watching him through the window and thinking, He could have a heart attack. He could die.

At his house, I sit at the kitchen counter, banging my heels against the chair legs while he makes scrambled eggs and toast. I’m pretty sure eggs are the only thing he knows how to cook.

“Do you think anyone suspects something’s going on with us?” I ask.

He gives me a surprised look. “Why do you ask?”

I shrug. “I dunno.”

The toaster dings; the toast pops up. The slices are too dark, practically burnt, but I don’t say anything. He spoons eggs on top of the toast and sets the plate in front of me.

“No, I don’t think anyone’s suspicious.” He takes a beer from the fridge and drinks while he watches me eat. “Do you want people to be suspicious?”

I take a big bite to buy time before answering. Some questions he asks me are normal and some are tests. This one sounds like a test. Swallowing, I say, “I want them to know I’m special to you.”

He smiles, reaches for my plate and picks up a piece of egg with his fingers, tosses it in his mouth. “Trust me,” he says, “they definitely know that.”

He surprises me with a movie for us to watch—Lolita, the old Kubrick one. It feels like his way of apologizing for saying I take the novel too literally. While we watch, he lets me drink a beer, and after, when we go to bed and I wear the strawberry pajamas again, I’m so floaty that when he asks me to get on my hands and knees so he can go down on me from behind, I don’t act embarrassed at all, I just do it. After the sex is finished, he goes into the living room and brings back the Polaroid camera.

“Don’t get dressed yet,” he says.

I hold my arms over my chest and shake my head, my eyes wide.

Smiling gently, he reassures me it’ll be for his eyes only. “I want to remember this moment,” he says. “The way you look right now.”

He takes the pictures. Afterward, I wrap myself in the comforter and Strane lays the photos across the mattress. Together we watch them develop, the bed and my body emerging from the dark. “My god, look at you,” Strane says, his eyes darting from one to the other. He’s entranced, transfixed.