School Ties

by Tamsen Parker

  “Is she smart?”

  “Yeah, she’s the smartest girl in our class. She won the spelling bee.”

  “Is there anything Wonder Woman can’t do? She sounds perfect.”

  “She’s short and she doesn’t run fast so she’s not good at basketball.”

  “You pick her for your team anyway?”

  His forehead got all wrinkled like he wasn’t sure what the right answer was. “Yeah?”

  “Good man. Does she like you?”

  “I don’t know. She might think I’m stupid.”

  Caleb makes okay grades. Mostly Bs, the occasional A and a sprinkling of Cs. He’s not the smartest kid but he works hard. Brains aren’t going to be his saving grace anyway. He’s got this knack for getting people to like him. I don’t know what it is about him, but even the meanest, get-off-my-lawn crank seems to have a soft spot for my brother. Kid’s got sun shining out of his ass or something.

  “If she thinks you’re stupid, she’s not as smart as you think.”

  “Is there a girl you like?” I should say no, but his face is bright and eager. He’s spilled on his crush, so why shouldn’t I?

  “Kind of.”

  “Are you going to ask her to be your girlfriend?”

  “I don’t have time for a girlfriend.” It’s true and an easier answer than “I can’t, she’s my teacher.” Caleb’s head might explode. I wouldn’t blame him. His current teacher is one I had, too. Mrs. Ellis is nice, but she could be our grandmother. Definitely not girlfriend material.

  “How much time does it take? All you have to do is be nicer to her than you are to anyone else and eat lunch with her.”

  I’ve never wished so hard I were ten again. But I’m not and life’s more complicated than that. But . . . “Speaking of eating, sounds like dinner’s ready.”

  By “dinner’s ready,” I’d meant Dad had stopped yelling and Mom had stopped crying. Later, I’d hear them through the thin walls while Caleb snored obliviously. Fucking. I didn’t want Caleb to hear him using her, that she lets him. How can she let him?

  I’d buried my head under my pillow, tried to go to sleep. Failing that, thought of Erin. How I’d never do that to her. How I’d be different. How if she’d let me, I’d deserve it. Earn it. Finally it had stopped and I’d heard my dad’s heavy uneven footfalls headed to the bathroom. Happy Thanksgiving from the Shepherds.

  But now I’m hauling up the steps of Ford to let myself into my room, preparing myself to put all my stuff away. I usually get pissed off while I’m doing this because it’s after a six-hour drive in the car with my dad, who’s been sullen at best or a raging asshole at worst. This time he’d been silent, which was fine by me. But instead of meditating on what a dick my dad can be, I find myself thinking of Erin. I wonder if my fleece is going to smell like her, like flowers, when she gives it back tomorrow.

  Chapter Four

  I’m looking over my calendar for the first time in weeks. Winter break has been welcome; a chance to decompress and finish planning for spring. My classes are all caught up on their material, but spring semester is going to be a long haul. Especially for my seniors who have to get ready for the AP exams right when their maturity and attention level is tanking. Not to mention I’m worried about a few of them.

  Most of my kids are doing well, As and Bs. I don’t trouble myself too much about most of the Cs. They’re smart but lazy. I’ve offered help more than once and my encouragement is unflagging, but if they’re not prepared to work for it, I’m not going to drag them up the mountain like some mathematical Sherpa. The rest of the kids—particularly the ones who are struggling—deserve my effort and attention way more than the ones who are so confident in their parents’ ability to buy their way into a good college they don’t care.

  I make a list of the kids I need to talk to, draft emails I’ll send them once they’re back on campus. When my draft folder is full to bursting, I flip through my calendar to make sure there aren’t any looming deadlines before the kids get back in a few days.

  As I flip through the last week, something catches my eye. A red dot. It’s subtle, not meant to be seen or mean anything to anyone but me, but it’s there. A little red dot that may as well be a giant strobe light exploding from the page. That tiny red dot says I should’ve gotten my period a couple of days ago. It’s totally out of character for me to have missed that, but perhaps I’ve been so entrenched in the vacation routine I’ve set up for myself, I’ve been on auto-pilot.

  Late. A word that strikes fear in a single woman’s heart like no other. My cycle’s always been so steady you could set a German train schedule to it. Two days is a big deal. Huge.

  A shudder runs through me and I clutch at my abdomen. No way. No freaking way. I grab my keys and I’m about to run out to my car in my flip-flops and cut-off sweatshirt, but an image of Shep flashes through my mind, tipped head and stern glare. Don’t you dare.

  Though it’s silly—Shep can’t see me and even if he could, I’m the adult here—I take five minutes to grab my parka and put on socks and shoes before vaulting down the stairs and out to my Civic. It’s freezing, and I’m thankful I had the good sense to listen to the specter of Shep as I shiver in my car, waiting for the heat to turn on and warm me.

  I guide my car through the silent streets of campus and head two towns over to a drug store, paying cash for a pregnancy test. My face turns a vivid shade of red when the cashier, an older woman, eyes my ring finger and its distinct lack of ring. I may as well have a scarlet “A” tattooed on my forehead. I wave off the bag that’s too thin to hide its contents anyway and shove the box inside my coat. I hustle out to my car and shake the whole way home though it’s heated up by now.

  Once there, I go through the rigmarole everyone’s familiar with. The indignity of having to pee on a stick adds to the doomsday feeling that’s sinking my belly.

  Please, please, be on the fritz, cycle. I haven’t felt sick, my breasts aren’t tender, I haven’t had cravings. Clearly, I. Am. Not. Pregnant. But when I look at the test after the requisite five minutes, there it is, as I knew it would be. Two blue lines, less welcome than even that red dot.

  I’m pregnant.

  Erin

  I’ve stood outside this door before. Not a lot, a couple of times. But now I know every inch of it. Every divot in the corkboard, the corner broken off the plaque announcing it as “Faculty Apartment 2,” the white paint chipped off revealing various colors this door’s been painted before. Dark brown, hospital green, and a startling seventies orange.

  It’s been almost a week since I made my discovery and I’ve been dreading this conversation. I got to avoid it for a few days because Will was in New Jersey with his family and this isn’t the kind of news I want to deliver by phone, but he’s back. I was hoping to talk to him before the boys swarmed the place, but he didn’t arrive on campus until the last minute. Now the hallway is thrumming with adolescent noises of boys catching up with each other after a month away and done for the moment with the minutiae of studying. It’s hard to get back into the swing of things.

  I flush when a door on the hall opens and Seung Park, a well-mannered sophomore who looks like a Korean pop star, emerges.

  “Are you looking for someone, Miss Brewster?”

  It’s unusual though not unheard of for faculty to be in dorms other than their own. My cheeks burn hot as I point a thumb at the door. “Believe I’ve found him. Thank you, Mr. Park.”

  With that, I really have to knock. So I turn, metaphorically straighten my big-girl pants and raise a hand, only to be almost bowled over by a Will Chase in a hurry.

  “Erin. What’re you doing here?” He sounds more surprised than he ought. It’s possible color rises in his cheeks, though it’s hard to say with his reddish-brown beard obscuring most of his face.

  “I’m sorry. Uh, can I come in?”

  He checks h
is watch and shifts his weight, frowning. Where are you in such a hurry to get to, Mr. Chase?

  “It’s important,” I offer, hoping he won’t make me say anything else, knowing another door could open at any second. That would be my luck, too.

  He steps back from the threshold and sweeps an arm inside. “By all means. Let me make a phone call first.”

  After shutting the door and leaving me in the middle of his small sitting room, he disappears down the hall. I stand there, not wanting to take any liberties, looking around and trying not to eavesdrop on the conversation taking place on the other side of a door.

  But it’s a tiny space, smaller than mine, and I catch some words: “Leaving . . . fault she can’t . . . at my door . . . soon as I can.”

  There’s a minute before his door swings open again. When it does, it’s to a Will who’s more familiar. A few steps and he’s in the living room, hands at my elbows, offering me a broad smile.

  “Erin, angel, what’re you doing standing here in your coat?” He ducks his head and pecks my cheek, hands coming to my zipper and tugging it down. He pushes it over my shoulders and flings my freed parka over the arm of the couch. Not bothering with my scarf, he pulls on my belt loops until the fronts of our bodies are flush. “It’s good to see you. I missed you.”

  Pleasure blooms in my chest but it’s quashed by the fleeting memory of the phone call I heard. “You could’ve called.”

  “I wish I could have. My family is insanity at the holidays. My mom needs help with things around the house, my nephew’s failing his seventh grade Shakespeare unit so my sister insisted I intervene, they dragged me to a million parties. It was awful. Forgive me. I would’ve much rather been curled up in front of a fire with you. You believe me, don’t you?”

  The firm hold he’s got on my pants is convincing and his dulcet tones, deep with desire, don’t indicate he’s telling anything but the truth. I’m loath to wreck what I’m guessing would be a halfway decent roll in the hay, but I can’t let him continue to kiss my jaw.

  “Will—”

  “Yes, angel?”

  His attentions don’t stop so I wedge my hands between us, palms flat on his chest, and push until he backs up. “We need to talk.”

  “Next time we go on break, I swear I’ll call. Don’t be like that. Now, come on—”

  He kisses me again, hoping to end the conversation. I screw my eyes shut because I have to work up my nerve to say this. I never will if he’s making advances.

  “Will, I’m pregnant.”

  His lips drop from my skin, leaving the faint burn of the scritch of his beard on my cheek.

  “What?”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  He stares at me for a few seconds before half his face scrunches up and a laugh puffs from between his lips.

  “That’s not funny.”

  “I don’t think so either, but it’s true.”

  I can’t look at him. Instead, my eyes rove all over his apartment; his books, family photos, paintings.

  “Are you sure it’s mine?”

  Seriously? “Yeah. I haven’t been with anyone but you since . . .”

  I don’t want to finish that sentence. Since my junior year in college. I’ve had boyfriends since then, been on dates, but no one I’d trusted enough to have sex with. Now I know why. I hate, hate, that I’ve slept with a man who thinks I’d have been with anyone else.

  “How many people have you slept with this semester?” I’ve asked it as an absentminded joke, but when his eyes bug and his breath catches, I know the answer isn’t one. I guess we never said we were exclusive, but I’d thought . . . I’m such an idiot. And I want to believe his “Just you, angel” so badly.

  “That’s less than ideal. But luckily we live in blue-state America. You don’t have dark room duty Friday and Andy can run rehearsal without me. We’ll go to Planned Parenthood in Somerville and get this, uh, taken care of. No problem.”

  The fact that he knows where the closest Planned Parenthood is doesn’t inspire confidence, but that’s not my biggest problem.

  “I don’t want to take care of it.”

  His hands grip my arms in a way that makes me yelp and his face goes rock hard.

  “What do you mean?” His head is cocked threateningly and his words are murderously sharp, so my words are meek when I say, “I don’t want to get an abortion. I . . . I’m going to keep the baby.”

  He shoves me back as his fingers explode off of me. “The hell you are!”

  I stumble and fall hard onto the coffee table. Luckily the ugly wood thing supports my weight as Will looms over me. While I’ve dreamed of being overpowered by a man, physically moved and controlled, it’s never looked like this. This is frightening, not sexy.

  “There is no fucking way. You’re getting rid of it.”

  “Will, you need to quiet down. The boys will hear you.” I’ve dropped my own tone to just above a whisper in hopes he’ll follow suit, but he’s like a man possessed. He grabs my arm and hefts me up.

  “Fuck waiting until Friday. Let’s go, right now. Clean up this fucking disaster.”

  “You’re not being reasonable. Even if I were to agree, which I don’t, nothing’s open. No one could see me. You need an appointment. And you don’t have to have anything to do with it. I’m not giving you a choice here, so I don’t expect anything from you.”

  His fingers are digging hard into my flesh, but it doesn’t turn me on like it usually does. The hardness in his face isn’t the kind that could set me on fire and this isn’t a game or an act. He’s pissed.

  He thrusts my arm away and starts pacing. I wait for him to say something, rubbing where I’ll have bruises coming up in the morning, and wonder what his next move is going to be. He walks with hard, long strides back and forth in the tiny space and my eyes follow his lean form from one side of the room to the other and back like I’m watching a tennis match.

  “Will—”

  “Get out, Erin.”

  “But—”

  “I said. Get. The fuck. Out.” He’s yelling, but with the most perfect enunciation. I don’t want the boys to hear anything more than they already have, so I put my hands up in surrender.

  “Okay, I’ll leave.” I take a step toward the couch where he threw my parka, but he bellows, “Now!”

  “Okay.”

  It’s going to be a cold walk with no coat, but there’s no way I’m putting myself in front of that charging bull again. I back up until my heels hit the wall and then pull the door open, slipping out and down the back staircase, tears welling in my eyes.

  I don’t know how I thought that was going to go, but not like that. God, not like that.

  Shep

  I’m slaving over my Latin homework when a movement out the window catches my eye. Someone’s running across the green. It’s too late for a student to be out and it’s freezing cold. Who the hell—

  That’s when I know. It’s Erin. Why is she out? And she’s coming from Gefflin. Why would she be in—

  Mr. Chase is the dorm affiliate for Gefflin. I’ve seen him flirt with her and watched her blush when he does, but I’ve also see him flirt with pretty much anything that has tits. If it weren’t so obvious she’s not special to him, I’d like to think I’d be green with envy that he’s allowed to flirt with her instead of filled with a red burning rage. He’s a dick who doesn’t deserve to stand within a hundred feet of a girl like Erin.

  I can’t have her, but damned if he’s going to. Now she’s running across campus in the dead of night with no goddamn coat on. Again. Does the girl want to get sick? While I wouldn’t mind nursing her back to health—putting her to bed, passing a cool hand over her feverish forehead and hand-feeding her so she wouldn’t refuse to eat—that’s not an option. I don’t want her to be miserable, laid up alone with the flu or pneumonia or whateve
r the hell she could catch running around campus in the middle of winter without a goddamn coat on.

  Erin’s a grown-up, has taken care of herself for years, but I’d like to knock some sense into her. Her little form scrambles across the green. She doesn’t bother to keep to the paths zigzagging the dead grass, but takes the most direct route. When she yanks the door to Oliver open, I watch her climb up the stairs through the frost-cornered windows, rubbing her arms until she reaches the third-floor landing. She’s gone through the swinging door that leads to the hallway when there’s pounding at my door.

  “Shep-Shep-Shepherd!”

  “Yeah, Lucky.”

  Lucky pokes his shaggy head into my room. “What’s your deal, man? You look like you’re having as much trouble with this translation as I am. It’s a bitch, amirite?”

  The translation isn’t hard and I know from a glance at Lucky’s book I’m a good thirty lines ahead of him, but I wouldn’t mind the company to suffer through the rest of it. I gesture at the navy blue butterfly chair that passes for guest seating and turn back to my desk. It’ll get my mind off of Erin at least, and the wildly inappropriate thoughts I have about her.

  “Yeah, it’s a bitch all right.”

  Chapter Five

  Erin

  The email had been terse:

  Erin,

  Please report to my office after seventh period.

  Everett

  I suppose he could want to check in. It’s been a while since we’ve had a heart-to-heart over how things are going. Once the school year is in full swing, it’s hard to find time to breathe, never mind chitchat over tea.

  I write back to confirm that I’ll be there and don’t think much of it until the end of the day. But when I see Will’s tweed-clad shoulders leaning up against the wood-paneled wall, my stomach leaps into my throat.

  He turns and our eyes meet; our expressions of horror mirror images. What we’re both thinking is Oh no.