Teach Me

by R. A. Nelson

  Home page music: “Fear,” by Disturbed. The streaming audio cranked to Maximum Crackle, listening for every little spectral knock. The club boasts EMF arrays, night vision, heat vision, thermal captures, all that energy, night after night, thrown out into the Void—

  And nothing ever happens.

  People from all over the country have capped hundreds of images from the ghost cams. Check the archives. An indistinct smudge—it’s somebody’s head. A fuzzy ball of light—a tormented soul trapped on the astral plane. But if you come here often enough, you finally begin to realize—

  Nothing ever happens.

  Maybe that’s why I’m here.

  I need this dreary dead-end place of the dead to teach me not to get my hopes up. That no matter how excited I get about things, how focused, how obsessed, ultimately—

  Nothing ever happens.

  “Look at the piano,” Schuyler says.

  He points at a battered upright squatting in the corner on one of the ghost cams.

  “What about it?”

  “It’s moved since yesterday. I swear. I think Darkwillow Nightseer needs to let his Spirit Brothers know.” His fingers fly across the keyboard.

  I slump wearily across his shoulders, put my chin on his collarbone. I can feel his chest muscles move as he types. “That’s easy for you to say. It’ll be my IP address that gets deep fried this time.”

  “Aw, I promise to play nice.”

  I sigh. “Oh, go ahead. Who cares.”

  “What’s bugging you?”

  Mr. Mann.

  Like the ghost hunters, I’m a believer in something nobody else can see.

  “Nothing,” I say. “Maybe I’m just too old for this.”

  What’s happening here?

  This isn’t like me. I was happy. I was focused.

  Kitty Nation follows me as I walk over and flop on my bed, watching Mars hurtling toward my window, getting closer and closer. I’m trying to remember the last time I did something crazy.

  Two years ago.

  We were having a snowball fight in front of Schuyler’s house. We don’t get snow here very often; the battle lasted for hours, it was so much fun. Finally the streetlamps came on, making the road sparkle. It was freezing cold, both of us so tired we could barely stand. We met under a light. I touched his cheek. It was frozen.

  I can’t explain what happened next.

  If I could, I would say something like this: When I touched his face, a new kind of language came up inside me. A language made of ordinary words hooked together like molecules to make new ones: smokecozyfire, whitehappyfrost.

  I kissed him.

  Just leaned over and did it. I was just so happy at that moment, I guess I had to do something with it or burst. Why can’t every single piece of your life work that way?

  It was my first and only kiss. We didn’t talk about it. Didn’t say anything at all. We never kissed again.

  The truth? I’m scared. He’s too important for that. Boyfriends are people you break up with. Friends like Schuyler you keep forever.

  So where does that leave Mr. Mann?

  “Hey! Look at this!” Schuyler’s shaking with laughter.

  Mandymoo reports she has just seen Kurt Cobain on a lightbulb.

  Kill me.

  angle of his light

  Career Day.

  No poets.

  Even astronomers and astrophysicists are scarce. So, what else, I hang out with the engineers. I can’t help but notice the mortician draws the largest crowd. CSI must be the hottest show on TV.

  Drone, drone, blech. Is this what we have to look forward to? The world of adults feels like a universe that has reached the end of its expansion and is inexorably collapsing back in on itself.

  Where is he?

  Have I scared him into hiding? Pushed him too fast? Too far? Am I nuts? Imagining a connection that was never there?

  After school I cruise by Sunlake, but his windows are dark. Somewhere galaxies are colliding, stars are bursting into thermonuclear flame. But there’s all that space in between. Ultimately everything that exists is somehow alone.

  At the Ground-Up Cow Face Burgers his table is bereft. I’m worse. I pull all the sesame seeds off a bun one at a time and mope like a sick kitten. Schuyler threatens to brand me with the chicken tongs.

  Don’t go crazy.

  It’ll be okay. But I can’t stop. Can’t stop thinking about the way he stands. How he twists his mouth when he’s listening to something interesting. The dimple on his cheek. How he walks in long, deliberate strides.

  His legs.

  What do they look like inside his pants?

  We’ve spent so much time together, talked so much. But there are still so many things I don’t know. His parents? Alive or dead? Childhood. Painful or happy? Chest. Hairy or smooth?

  What does he look like when he sleeps?

  I touch my face, examine the imperfect reflection on the metal door where we keep the burger boxes.

  Am I pretty enough?

  It’s hot in here. I could spontaneously combust. I run my fingers along the line of my jaw, pretending it’s his. His arms would be warm around my shoulders. What’s it like to look into those impossible eyes when our lips are touching?

  “Carolina.”

  I jump a little bit. Mr. Mann is standing next to Wilkie Collins when I clock out. His clothes are black. His hands are inside his pockets as if he doesn’t trust them. I’m astonished and overjoyed.

  I’m not sure I know what to say. I’m just so happy he’s here. “You’re here,” I say without thinking. “Why didn’t you come inside?”

  He doesn’t answer. I tell myself I know why. Schuyler’s gone home early. Mr. Mann has been waiting for just this time when we could be alone. Alone together.

  “I’m sorry about the other day,” he says. “I was worried about something, preoccupied.”

  “I thought so.”

  I watch him, wondering what do we do next. Stand here? Talk? Don’t talk? Go somewhere in his car? It’s happening, I realize. Oh my God. He’s helping me climb.

  I have to ask it:

  “Are you still worried?”

  “Yeah. No. Well, of course I am. I don’t know.”

  All our familiarity counts for nothing now. This is a new country we are building between ourselves. After this, after waiting for me here like this, nothing can be seen as accidental, unintended. What does he want? Is it the same thing I want?

  The night is cool, perfect for talking, but at first we don’t talk. We lean side by side in the shadows, touching Wilkie’s trim. Across the way Threatt and Country scoot by with the french fry grease. We hunch into the darkness as they empty the mess into a plank door padlocked in the asphalt. When they’re gone, we walk over. The door is painted with a message:

  “Anybody stealing the grease.”

  “Why?”

  I’m so thankful for something to talk about that is not connected to us, my relief almost makes me light-headed. “They sell it to cosmetics companies. They use it to make lipstick, junk like that.”

  The incandescent eyes widen. “Are you serious? Damn. Makes you think twice, doesn’t it?”

  “Good thing I don’t wear any.” What am I saying! In case—in case—just maybe. You want to—no, stop. Slow down. “Schuyler would dock you a quarter, by the way.”

  “Why?”

  “We have an agreement to pay each other if we cuss. Schuyler says cussing is lazy. It’s for people with lightweight vocabularies and fewer options.”

  “He doesn’t much like me, does he?”

  I’m saying too much, speaking too fast, but I can’t help it. “Schuyler doesn’t much like anybody. He can be pretty grandiose sometimes. I got him this job. He won’t even try to get his license. His parents have to drive him if I don’t. But he’s amazing if you give him a chance.”

  He reaches over, touches the top of my hand.

  “So are you.”

  my personal planet


  Drive.

  I follow.

  We’re moving slower than I would like. Maybe he’s afraid of losing me.

  We haven’t said where we’re going, but it’s in the opposite direction of Sunlake. Everything around me is alive, bursting with feeling, meaning. But I’m a little sad for the other cars, their destinations.

  I can’t believe this is happening. But somehow I can.

  We turn off the parkway, enter a service road. It’s easy to see where we are going now. A massive wall of gray-and-crimson buildings pushes itself in front of us: the Wal-Mart Rule the World Super Center. I’m surprised. Not as many shoppers this late, but it still feels a little too public.

  Ah.

  Now I see where he’s going. We circle around back to auto repair and park away from the lights next to a line of stunted trees. I’m on the left, he’s on the right. We sit.

  First Act of Societal Defiance: getting into his car.

  This is not as simple as it sounds.

  Stepping out, touching the silver handle of his door, hauling it open, heavy in my hands—each action shimmers in my brain like an aurora borealis. His car could be touched with St. Elmo’s fire. It’s not a car, but a ship at sea in some far northern place. Taking me somewhere.

  Sit down.

  “Hello,” he says, as if we haven’t been talking for the last couple of hours.

  “Hi.”

  But everything is new. The interior makes me dizzy for a moment, the exciting scent of his concentrated presence. There’s a stack of papers on the floor; he reaches down self-consciously while I hold my feet up and tosses the stuff in the back. I look, making the moment last. There’s some kind of case on the backseat. I don’t know what it is; he never brings anything but slides and printouts to class.

  Seeing the teacher sticker on the windshield in reverse, the way he sees it every morning, makes me feel a little weird; this place is amazingly forbidden. I’ve broken and entered.

  “Does this make you feel uncomfortable?” he says.

  I don’t want to answer the question. I turn to look at him.

  “It’s okay. I like it.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s okay. Really.”

  I’m not sure what to do. I’m waiting for him. He seems to be waiting too. Maybe I should say something.

  “Are you an atheist?” Too much. Way, way too much.

  “No. No, I don’t think so. No.”

  “So you believe in an afterlife?”

  “Sure.”

  I like that he doesn’t hesitate on that one. Bonus points: he doesn’t question my question. I talk quickly, suddenly afraid of thinking.

  “Nothing against atheists. But, I mean, look at the world.”

  He smiles. “But an atheist might say the world is evidence there is no God.”

  “I’m talking about nature.” I point my fingers at the strip of woods straddling a culvert where a stream used to run. “The real world. You have to believe in God to believe in trees.”

  “Oh.”

  Be quiet. I settle back in the seat. I’m talking too much.

  “So, your family, do you go to church?” he says.

  “No. We used to when I was little. We’re Methodists. I think my parents finally just got tired. All that extra stuff you have to do when you belong to a church. Fund-raising for stuff that doesn’t really matter, plus all the social junk. So I kind of have my own thing.”

  “Church? Or religion.”

  “I don’t know what you’d call it. It’s really important to me. Being spiritual. It’s just that—it ’s just I feel closer to it in a forest, under the stars, than I do in a building.”

  “Yeah. I understand that. Me too.”

  If I gulp air any faster, I’ll be hiccoughing. But I can’t stop; stopping might let in too much.

  “See, I have this theory. In the afterlife we’re all gods. So after I die, I’ll come back to Earth and stitch together all the overlooked, abandoned pieces of city forest into an Undiscovered Country. Then I can be its king.” He’s supposed to laugh at this last little part, but when it comes out, it doesn’t sound like something funny.

  “King Carolina. I like that.” He touches my hand—it ’s the first time he’s touched me since I got in his car. It sends a delicious shiver up my back. “I don’t like to think about you dying.”

  God.

  For the millionth time I secretly guess his age. I would ask, but asking would bring the difference into it. Let’s say twenty-seven. I’ll be eighteen soon, so when he’s seventy-nine, I’ll be seventy. Practically no difference at all.

  “Boys?” he says.

  I suddenly realize he’s asking a question.

  “A few should be allowed to live.”

  He laughs. “No, I mean, you don’t have a boyfriend, do you?”

  “I know what you meant. Maybe I just don’t know how to answer the question. I have a friend who’s a boy; you’ve met him. That’s about it.”

  “Do you date much?”

  What should I tell him? That I haven’t been on a date my whole senior year? That I haven’t wanted to? That the sum total of my experience with the opposite sex consists of a few fumbled moments with Schuyler in the snow?

  I study the Wal-Mart wall. “I’m afraid of stopping,” I say.

  “Stopping?”

  “I don’t know if I can explain.”

  “Try.”

  Now I am getting light-headed, drunk on contact with his skin. “Stopping my life,” I say. “Stopping my dreams. I think maybe—I think I’m afraid sex will strand me with some stupid guy who won’t understand me, won’t let me do the things I’ve come here to do. I—”

  “It’s okay,” Mr. Mann says.

  As desperately as I want him to hold me, it helps that we are just sitting here first. That he has this perfect chance, but he’s showing control. The door can still be opened. I can still get out, walk away.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’ve never done anything like this before. Ever. I don’t want you to think—”

  “I know. I know.” He looks at me. “It’s okay. I’m not like this, either. I mean, I’ve never done this before. Well, not with a—not with someone from school. I’m not like that. I want you to know that. You’re just so . . . different.”

  Gulp. “I hope that’s good.”

  “Different? Sure. Different is good. Different is—goddamn amazing.”

  It’s too much. I pause to take a breath.

  “It’s not that—that I didn’t have chances with guys. It’s just so important, you know? Who it is, why you do what you do. I think everybody’s here for a reason. We’re not supposed to waste our lives just messing around. There are too many fantastic, amazing things to do. You can’t screw it up.”

  He smiles with his eyes. “How’d you get so intense?”

  I think about it. I remember the message on his answering machine. “I’m like Mark Twain.”

  “Twain?”

  “He said he was born excited. I understand that. That’s me. I don’t waste time on people who aren’t. I can’t. I have this Master Plan.”

  “What? Tell me about it.”

  “You’ll think it’s crazy.”

  “No, I won’t.” He holds up three fingers like a Boy Scout, making me smile. Making me safe. “I promise,” he says. “Tell me.”

  “I’m going to—” Should I really say it? Make it real? Take another breath. “I’m going to discover things people have never seen. Unbelievable things. Beautiful things that will change everything we know about the universe. Where it came from, where it’s going. What it is. Who we are. Someday they’ll all want me, and then—”

  He leans over, puts a finger to my mouth.

  “It’s all right. I believe you.”

  Is that what I’m trying to do? Make him believe?

  What if I’m messing it all up?

  What if I’m too strange, too stupid, too smart? What if I’ve let too much of myself
out? What if the inner, secret Me is a brick in a wall I’m building between us? Maybe he wants someone else. Someone more, someone less, someone braver, stronger, weaker, wilder, crazy, pretty, sane—

  Suddenly he circles my shoulders with his arm, pulls me to him. It’s happening. It’s happening. I close my eyes, letting go, letting go, letting go.

  We stop. Still holding.

  “Bucket seats suck,” he says.

  Yes.

  We move to Wilkie Collins.

  The reverberating screech of the passenger door momentarily keeps us apart. Now the moment is new all over again. I’m embarrassed. The dusty seats, the french fry smell. Still, we slide our hips together. His arm settles around my shoulders again. I feel the heat of his torso. I’m instantly overloaded. My non-corporeal body blows out to the edges of the galaxy, swallowing a billion billion stars.

  I open my eyes and look into his.

  I am here.

  This is what I’ve wanted. Everything is breaking open. Everything I’ve revolved about, my core. Everything is crumbling, opening. It’s going to happen, it is. His arms are pulling me up to the last, sweet place. Cracking my imagination like a mold that was wrong and small.

  Yes.

  Our faces come together. Like people meeting in a hallway, we can’t figure out which way to lean. His eyes are shiny. What does he see in mine? What does he see in me?

  I feel a choking coming in my throat. “You could have anyone. Anyone.”

  “Your mind,” he whispers, eyes moving as if to intercept my thoughts.

  “I’m yours?”

  “Mind-duh. With a d. It’s luminous. It dazzles me. I wish I could describe how you make me feel. I’m supposed to be good with words. But I’m speechless. Lost.”

  But how could he be? How could he be all of those things that I am?

  “God,” I say. “You—it’s everything. I’m coming apart, I’m coming to pieces—”

  He kisses me.

  Until this moment, this time, until my mouth opens against his opening mouth, until his tongue touches mine, gentle, alive—it has always been something that might only be a thought, a wisp of fantasy, a dream. Something that might never happen.

  Now it’s very real and I can’t stop feeling that it’s real. The sensations I didn’t know to expect are there, magnified, huge. I didn’t know I would hear the blood moving through my ears. I didn’t know a blue light would turn on in my head, beginning with a tiny dot and growing to become a circle. I didn’t know everything would happen slow and fast.