Unteachable

by Leah Raeder

  I knew instantly, unequivocally. Evan Wilke. Starting his new job as a teacher at Riverland High.

  My teacher.

  10:15-11:45, Intro to the End of the World.

  He raised his head and swept a generic, acknowledging smile over the room, starting with the far side. It took all of two seconds to reach me but I felt it coming like thunder, sensing my imminent doom and yet paralyzed, unable to run.

  He reached me and paused. His face fell. Not into dismay—all expression went out of it. Shock.

  A kid nudged me aside and walked in. I stood stupidly in the doorway. It felt like a series of small eternities, but it was only seconds.

  Evan stared at me dazedly. I think he was confused. I don’t think he realized I was a student yet. I made myself step in and took the seat nearest the door.

  His mouth opened slightly.

  What did we do wrong, Your Honor?

  I was eighteen. He wasn’t my teacher yet.

  I drank. Everyone drinks.

  He purchased alcohol for me. I lied about my age. Not his fault.

  I rest my case.

  My eyes were open, but I wasn’t conscious of having seen anything for a minute. A gray-out, Mom called it. You didn’t pass out but you just…weren’t there for a while.

  The room was starting to fill up.

  Evan shuffled papers around his desk. Then he stood there, staring at the surface, only his eyes moving, a rapid back-and-forth like REM.

  Was this a dream? It felt distinctly nightmarish.

  He straightened and walked toward the door, pausing beside me.

  “Can I see you outside?”

  Soft, discreet. No hint of emotion.

  I stood without looking at him. I hadn’t brought anything to this class. I thought I had everything I needed in my head.

  He waited in the sun. Kids streamed past in and out of a bathroom. All their noise seemed fuzzy and far away, behind glass.

  I’d imagined what I’d do if I ever saw him again. Rush into his arms. Apologize for skipping out. Touch his face. Kiss him, kiss him.

  Instead we stood with two feet of solid sunlight between us.

  “Maise,” he said.

  My head rose as if his voice had lifted it.

  “Is that your real name?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am so sorry.”

  I wasn’t prepared for this. I’d expected anger. You lied to me. You ran off. “Why?” I said.

  He only shook his head.

  “I’m eighteen,” I said quickly. Darted a glance at the kids around us. No one seemed to see anything out of the ordinary—just a teacher talking to a student. “I was eighteen then, too. So—don’t, you know. Be sorry.”

  “Are you okay?”

  I think I’m starting to be. “Yeah.”

  He rocked on his toes. It made him seem young. God, how old was he, anyway? I figured past his twenties, but I had no real fucking idea. Two feet of sunlight wasn’t enough to block out that suede smell, tame and subtle now, but unmistakable.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “You tell me what you want. You can transfer to another class. Or I can—I can submit my resignation, right now. I’ll do it. Just give the word.”

  He was talking crazy, and it made my heart expand like a balloon. You’re guilty. Flustered. You know this will be a disaster if we pretend like nothing happened. Because you still feel something.

  The warning bell rang. One minute.

  Evan didn’t move. His gaze focused unerringly on me.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” I whispered, conscious of the emptying hall. “And I don’t want to transfer to another class.”

  “Maise,” he said. Just my name.

  “And I’m the one who’s sorry. I shouldn’t have left like that.”

  Thirty seconds. Lockers slammed. Footsteps hurried.

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” he said.

  “It’ll be fine.” I swallowed every bit of spit in my mouth to add, “Mr. Wilke.”

  We were staring at each other when the final bell rang. Together, we walked back into class.

  #

  It was both the longest and shortest hour and a half of my life, and at the end of it all I remembered was him saying, “See you Thursday,” and eyeing me a heartbeat longer than anyone else.

  #

  Wesley gaped at me. “Holy shit.”

  I guess he was staring at my boobs. I’d totally forgotten them. I’d forgotten my entire body. It was just this cloud of blood floating beneath me, an occasional warmth.

  “I see what that lady meant now,” Wesley said. “You’re very talented.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” I said lazily. I could not stop grinning.

  “What are you so happy about?”

  I pushed my gigantic smile at him, knowing how my face looked: rapturous, flushed, the sort of pupil-dilating ecstasy that makes guys lose it. I didn’t care if it was teasing. I gave zero fucks. “Life,” I said. “Being alive.”

  “Creepy.”

  I laughed, and spun my lunch tray on the slide counter. A tater tot went sailing into oblivion.

  Mr. fucking Wilke.

  At the beginning, you’re happy to simply be near them. To look. To bask. It’s a gift fallen from heaven, accidentally nudged off a golden table, still glimmering with stardust.

  I didn’t have insane ideas about janitor closets and locked doors yet.

  I was just happy.

  Wesley took out his phone while we ate and started filming. It’s expensive, records in HD. I was so high on myself I let him. I leaned against the cafeteria window, squinting, looking for Mr. Wilke’s car. It gave me an obscene thrill. My sweat was in that car. I’d come in that car. It was there somewhere, in the middle of all this wholesome kiddie shit.

  My skin seemed to inflate with blood. I felt everything pressing against me: air, voices, eyes. Like being on X. I wanted to touch everything, be touched everywhere. I wanted everyone to know how alive I was.

  Wesley watched me through his phone camera.

  “What are you looking at?” I said.

  “Escaped mental patient.”

  I loomed close to the lens. He tried to edge away. “Joke’s on you,” I said. “I never escaped. This is the asylum.”

  “You’re fucking crazy,” he said admiringly.

  “Just you wait.”

  #

  On my way home I saw Mr. Wilke’s car in the lot, from a distance. I stood in the gravel, eyes out of focus, remembering how the leather stuck to my bare skin, until someone honked. I don’t remember biking home. I don’t remember anything. Was it even a day, or merely an interval of sunlight and bells and doors until I was alone, Mom out on a sale, the house blissfully quiet and dark? I took a bath for the first time in forever. Pinned my hair up, found an old bottle of orange oil. We always have candles. Count on a drug house for candles. I lit a few and slipped into water so hot it could strip me to the bone. Dragged a loofah along my shins, my upper arms, slow as sin. My skin needed stimulation.

  My everything needed stimulation.

  When I get myself off, it’s usually a utilitarian thing. Sex logic. The shortest path to what I want.

  Not tonight.

  I parted my knees, let a hand trail along my thigh and settle where gravity decided. My eyes closed. The memories came flooding back. The gritty, scratchy feel of his face against my breasts. That soft hot mouth pulling at my nipples. I sank lower in the tub, letting the weight of the water cover me, crush me, like his body had. Ran a finger over my lips beneath the water. It wasn’t the same. I craved the hardness of him, that smoky leathery smell, that overwhelming sense of masculinity all around me, forcing its way inside of me. Candlelight flickered at my eyelids. I touched myself the same way, lightly, flickeringly, warm water swirling around my fingertip. It could almost have been a tongue. I remembered him teasing me with the head of his dick, making me tell him my name first. I breathed faster. Bit my lip. Slip
ped my finger inside. Water lapped at the porcelain, a wet smack like skin. God, if only he was the one fucking me right now. This was his finger, I thought. Not mine. This was him, shoving me against the classroom wall, his hand inside my underwear, his finger snaking inside me, fucking me as I grew tighter around him. His thumb circling my clit without touching the tip. His finger sliding in to the knuckle, stiff and quick, that I took as deeply as I could, that made me ache in a place tucked so far inside it didn’t seem real, the root of me. His finger fucking me and filling my belly with heat that built higher and higher until I couldn’t contain it anymore and it spilled over in a white-hot rush. His hand making me come, making my thighs tighten and my voice cry out and my honey spread all over him, giving myself up to the water, to this man in my head.

  #

  Tuesday.

  Carrot sticks and cream cheese.

  Me spending way too much fucking time checking my hair between periods in case of an Evan sighting.

  My P.E. teacher: “Yes, I’m a lesbian. No, that is not a job requirement.”

  Wesley filming a fight in the hall. Blood gushing from a guy’s nose, a long red creature that kept crawling and crawling out, endless.

  A sudden, cold rain drenching me on the way home. My invincible skin not even feeling it.

  Wednesday.

  The familiar smell of clove cigarettes.

  A girl in history asking if I wanted to work on a report together.

  Lingering storm clouds, turning the world below into zinc and aluminum.

  Wesley showing me a video of a homeless guy downtown who kept crossing the same intersection, back and forth, back and forth.

  Thursday.

  #

  He looked up when I walked in. I waited and let a few other kids go in first, so I could walk in alone. So he could look up nervously and see me and break into a smile, that smile I remembered from the car, the small, private one. He looked down quickly at his desk, but his lips were still curved.

  “Maise.”

  What the fuck was Wesley doing in my class?

  “What the hell?” I said.

  He pouted. “Nice to see you too.”

  I sat down next to him and shot anxious looks between him and Mr. Wilke. Could he know? Was it some kind of intervention?

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I was on the waiting list. Someone dropped.”

  “Oh.”

  The disappointment in my voice didn’t go unnoticed. Wesley kicked the desk in front of him. I tested the edge of a fingernail with my teeth, a bad habit.

  Worlds colliding. This never ended well on sitcoms.

  “I just wasn’t expecting to see you here,” I said.

  “Clearly.”

  He didn’t look at me. I looked at my desk. Someone had carved RIHANNA = SLUT. I thought about adding CHRIS BROWN = DOMESTIC ABUSER, but Mr. Wilke probably would’ve caught me before I finished.

  I was not going to entertain the insane detention fantasy that instantly popped into my mind.

  All my stoked-up happiness had evaporated. I wasn’t the self-made teacher-seducing minx who’d walked in. I was a banal teenage girl with depressingly typical problems.

  I glanced up at Mr. Wilke. It was like he had Maise radar: his eyes rose to mine immediately. Or maybe he’d been looking at me more often than I realized. I remembered the bathtub and blushed, but didn’t look away. I can do this, I thought. I can’t touch you but I can eye-fuck you. He wore his collar open today, his hair a little mussed, and I wondered if it was for me. I let my eyes move over him, shoulders to waist, then a slow return. His stayed steady on mine.

  Movement in my peripheral vision. Wesley, training a video camera on me.

  “Jesus,” I snapped, whirling away. “Will you fucking ask me first?”

  “I was capturing a moment.”

  My heart throbbed in my throat. “What moment?”

  “Homicidal rage.”

  Despite myself, I laughed, relieved. Wesley was not a bad guy. Socially awkward, probably a virgin, possibly latching on to me in an unhealthy way. But right then, that sort of teenage boy angst was comforting. Familiar. A simple toy I could pick up and understand, instantly. Ballast against Mr. Wilke and whatever was happening between us.

  The final bell rang.

  My teacher stood up, smiling. An open, ordinary smile. He spoke to us, asked questions, spent more time listening to our answers than he lectured. Showed us film clips on YouTube, tropes that popped up time and time again. Grinned and nodded enthusiastically when we began to recognize them for ourselves. Asked about our favorite directors, actors, composers. I managed to answer like a normal human being. I got into a debate with a guy about whether Alien was a feminist movie. Wesley pointed out that Ripley was originally written as a man, and someone called him Wesleypedia (brilliant), and Mr. Wilke let me go on a five-minute rant about Hollywood infantilizing women and not giving us a female-helmed Die Hard. He listened to us earnestly, his face filled with curiosity, amusement, respect. He was smarter than us but not smug. He shared his intelligence like a secret, making us conspirators in it. I could feel the whole class falling in love with him.

  And every time his eyes touched me, the air jolted.

  Heat lightning.

  #

  I’d started to follow Wesley out of class when Mr. Wilke called my name.

  Wesley raised his eyebrows. I shrugged, pretending to have no idea what it was about. “I’ll catch up. Buy me a taco.”

  “You’ve got five minutes until I eat it.”

  “Pig.”

  I was dragging it out. I was nervous. This could be something amazing, or this could be the turning-in-my-resignation/you’ll-be-better-off speech.

  And this would absolutely be the first time I’d been alone with him since the night we met.

  I turned around. He stood behind his desk, a solid obstacle preventing untoward contact between teacher and student.

  “Close the door.”

  My heart did a kickflip.

  I closed it, lingered over the lock, left it open. Walked slowly toward his desk, wondering where I should stop. My knees hit cool steel.

  “Hi,” he said.

  We hadn’t talked until now. All that stuff in class had been between other selves.

  “Hi.”

  He seemed about to say something rehearsed, eyebrows up, mouth ajar, but he just looked at me and it melted away. And he kept looking.

  “Is this weird for you?” he said finally.

  “Yes. Is it weird for you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  The corner of his mouth lifted. My stomach mimicked it. My center of gravity grew wings and took off.

  “I keep hoping this is some elaborate practical joke,” he said.

  I swallowed. “Life is an elaborate practical joke.”

  “How do we make this work?”

  My eyes widened.

  “Shit,” he said, laughing. “I didn’t—I mean, how do we have a class together without it being weird?”

  “I don’t think that’s possible.”

  “If it ever gets too weird for you, tell me. Anything you need, I’ll do it. No questions asked.”

  I hated that he was treating me like a victim. Someone he needed to make reparations to.

  “What about you?” I said, propping my hip against the desk, folding my arms. “What happens if it gets too weird for you? You just get to pack up and leave?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “What is it like?”

  “And it’s already too weird for me,” he said, ignoring my question. “I have no memory of this week. There was the moment you walked into my class, and there’s now. Nothing else.”

  My mouth opened, an involuntary breath coming free.

  “But I don’t want to impose that shit on you. It’s not your problem.”

  “Impose,” I said.

  He winced. Put a hand on his desk, leaned into
it. The space between us was finding ways to close, even with solid objects intervening.

  “I don’t want to screw your life up, Maise.”

  “Do you have a class fourth period?”

  “No.”

  I unfolded my arms and before he could do anything, I took that open collar in my hands, lifted on my toes, and kissed him across the aircraft carrier he called a desk. He didn’t fight. He kissed me back, oh so lightly, lips barely parting. Careful. He tasted like mint creme, kind of like Bailey’s. His face felt somehow rougher without stubble.

  “This is dangerous,” he said against my mouth.

  “I know,” I said.

  He pulled me onto his desk and I swung my legs across to his side. We never stopped kissing. One hand at the back of my neck, the other gliding between my thighs. My legs tightened but my mouth opened in response, as if my wires had crossed. I thrust my hands into that hair I’d wanted to mess up so badly. I was short of breath but kept kissing him anyway, not getting enough of that creamy mint, those lips that were somehow firm and yielding at the same time, opening me, parting me. Giddily I thought, have you been eating mints on the off chance this would happen? Have you been obsessing about this as much as I have?

  A knock at the door.

  Hands instantly demagnetized. I hopped off his desk, smoothed my shorts. He dropped into his chair and crossed his legs. “Yes?” he called, deep and steady.

  I stepped back to an appropriate distance, but our eyes never left each other.

  Thank fucking god, it was just some random kid. “You got the projector in here?”

  “No,” Mr. Wilke said. “It’s in 208.”

  “Sorry.” The door closed.

  We both breathed audibly.

  “We can’t do this here,” he said.

  “Where can we do it?”

  He laughed. “Nowhere,” he said, but his words were at odds with his eyes.

  “Don’t give me the fake Boy Scout routine,” I said. “You’re sitting there with a hard-on.”

  My bravado was slightly spoiled by my breathless delivery. The way he looked at me from under his eyebrows, slightly sheepish, slightly intense, turned every girl part in me to jelly. I clenched my hands to keep them from idle evil.