My Dark Vanessa(9)

Without looking up, Jesse says, “I’ve been doing checks. It’s what we used last year.” He gestures to the papers he’s already gone through; on the upper right corner of each there’s a tiny check, check-minus, or check-plus. Mr. Strane raises his eyebrows, obviously annoyed, but Jesse doesn’t notice. His eyes are fixed on the poem he’s reading.

“Whatever method you two decide on is fine,” Mr. Strane says. He smiles at me, winks. As he gets up, he pats my shoulder.

With Mr. Strane across the classroom, back behind his desk, I pull a submission from the stack, a short story titled “The Worst Day of Her Life,” by Zoe Green. Zoe was in my algebra class last year. She sat behind me and laughed whenever Seth McLeod called me Big Red as though it were the funniest thing she’d ever heard. I shake my head and try to push the bias out of my mind. This is why Mr. Strane said not to look at the names.

Her story is about a girl in a hospital waiting room whose grandmother dies, and I’m bored by the end of the first paragraph. Jesse catches me flipping to check how many pages there are and in a low voice says, “You really don’t have to read the whole thing if it’s bad. I edited the lit journal last year when Mrs. Bloom was the faculty advisor and she didn’t care.”

My eyes dart to Mr. Strane sitting behind his desk, bent over his own stack of papers. Shrugging, I say, “I’ll keep reading. It’s ok.”

Jesse squints at the page in my hands. “Zoe Green? Isn’t that the girl who lost it during the debate tournament last year?” It was—Zoe, assigned to argue for the death penalty, broke down in tears during the final round when her opponent, Jackson Kelly, called her position racist and immoral, which probably wouldn’t have rattled her so badly if Jackson weren’t black. After Jackson was declared the tournament winner, Zoe said she’d felt personally attacked by his rebuttal, which was against the debate rules, so they ended up sharing first place, which was bullshit and everyone knew it.

Jesse leans forward and pulls Zoe’s story out of my hands, marks a check-minus on the right-hand corner, and tosses it in the “no” pile. “Voilà,” he says.

For the rest of the hour while Jesse and I read, Mr. Strane grades papers at his desk at the back of the room, occasionally leaving to make photocopies or get water for the coffeemaker. At one point, he peels an orange and its scent fills the room. At the end of the hour, as I stand to leave, Mr. Strane asks if I’ll come to the next meeting.

“I’m not sure,” I say. “I’m still trying out different things.”

He smiles and waits until Jesse leaves the room before saying, “I guess this doesn’t offer much for you socially.”

“Oh, that doesn’t bother me,” I say. “I’m not exactly a super social person anyway.”

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t know. I guess I just don’t have a ton of friends.”

He nods thoughtfully. “I understand what you mean. I like to be by myself, too.”

My first impulse is to say no, I don’t like being by myself at all, but maybe he’s right. Maybe I’m actually a loner by choice, preferring my own company.

“Well, I used to be best friends with Jenny Murphy,” I say. “From English class.” The words tumble out, catch me off guard. It’s more than I’ve ever told a teacher, especially a man, but the way he watches me—soft-eyed smile, chin resting on his hand—makes me want to talk, to show myself off.

“Ah,” he says. “The little Queen of the Nile.” When I frown, confused, he explains that he means her bobbed haircut, that it makes her look like Cleopatra, and as he says this, I feel a prick of something in my stomach, like jealousy but meaner.

“I don’t think her hair looks that good,” I say.

Mr. Strane smirks. “So you used to be friends. What changed?”

“She started going out with Tom Hudson.”

He thinks for a moment. “The boy with the sideburns.”

I nod, thinking of how teachers must recognize and categorize us in their minds. I wonder what he might associate with me if someone mentioned Vanessa Wye. The girl with the red hair. That girl who is always alone.

“So you suffered a betrayal,” he says, meaning by Jenny.

It’s something I haven’t considered before and warmth fills my chest at the idea. I suffered. It wasn’t that I drove her away by feeling too much or getting too attached. No, I was wronged.

He gets up and walks to the chalkboard, starts erasing the notes left over from class. “What made you want to try out the club? Weak spot on your résumé?”

I nod; it seems ok to be honest with him. “Mrs. Antonova said I should. I do like to write, though.”

“What do you write?”

“Poems, mostly. They’re not good or anything.”

Mr. Strane smiles over his shoulder in a way that is somehow both kind and condescending. “I’d like to read some of your work.”

My brain catches on the way he says “your work,” as though the things I write are worth taking seriously. “Sure,” I say. “If you really want to.”

“I do want to,” he says. “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”

At that, I feel my face flush. My worst habit, according to my mother, is how I deflect compliments with self-deprecation. I need to learn how to accept praise. It boils down to confidence, she says, or lack thereof.