I bypassed my locker completely, taking the stairs two at time all the way to Jody’s classroom. She wore a maroon pantsuit today. What was with the Republican wardrobe? She probably believed the clothes made her appear more serious, but this one was a little too big at her shoulders, making her look like she shopped in her older sister’s closet, which I actually found absurdly cute. I enjoyed the way her appearance melted my heart just a little.
“Good morning, Stevie,” Jody said with a halfhearted enthusiasm. Her eyes crinkled slightly but didn’t sparkle the way I knew they could. “Are you here for our daily dose of cryptic conversation followed by an abrupt emotional withdrawal?”
I laughed nervously. “I guess I deserve that. I meant what I said yesterday. I don’t want to be a burden to you, but I also thought about what you said about using my voice.”
“And what did you decide?” she asked with a wry smile. “Are you going to use it for good or evil?”
“I don’t know if I’m qualified to make value judgments, but I do want to use my voice for the truth, or at least my truth, so I’m going to say what I think you already know.”
She took a sharp intake of breath and seemed to hold it.
“I’m gay, and I know you are too.” The words poured out in a rush. “I think that’s what scared you in the locker room last week, and I understand why. I’ve been pretty scared this week too.”
She exhaled loudly. “You’re right. It’s scary to say, especially here, but I prefer having it out there, and I’m proud of you for having the courage to face it.”
“Me too,” I said honestly. I’d felt immeasurably better after opening up to Kelsey yesterday, and now I felt almost ecstatic to have Jody regard me with the admiration currently emanating from her. She walked around to the front of her desk, once again removing the physical manifestation of her professional barriers.
“Are you okay?” she asked kindly. “Do you need any resources?”
“No, I’m good.”
“So, this isn’t a new development?”
“No, I’ve known for years, or I mean like a long time.”
“What about your parents? Have you told them?”
“Not yet.” I brushed off the question. “There’s no need.”
“Are you afraid of their reactions? If you’re worried about safety—”
“No, not at all. They’ll be fine.”
She furrowed her brow. “Then why not tell them and let them help you?”
“I don’t need any help. Telling them now will only worry them. I want them to enjoy my last few months of living at home.”
“They’ll worry about you being out in Darlington?”
“Of course they would. Just look at your own reaction. You’re worried about me already. What if I slip up? What if I lose the pronoun game? What if someone else puts it together the way you did? There are very real consequences, but living in fear won’t solve any of them.”
“I’ll admit I do worry about gay and lesbian students here, but I have a hard time imagining you making a silly mistake. You’re too controlled.”
“I’ve made plenty of mistakes, but coming out won’t be one of them. I’ve got a plan. I’m headed to New York. I’ll find many more supportive communities there, especially at NYU—gay student groups and gay-and-lesbian-studies courses. I’ll study lesbian lit and political theater. I’ll come out on my own terms, in a place where I’ll get the best possible reactions.”
Jody still looked proud, but the now-familiar sadness returned to the corners of her mouth and eyes. “You’re very mature. You’re handling a lot for an eighteen-year-old, and yet you seem to have it all together.”
“Not everything,” I admitted, “but my sexual orientation isn’t a central conflict in my life right now, and I don’t want it to be one in yours either.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You have to worry about school and work and major life decisions. I don’t want you to expend another ounce of energy worrying about my well-being.”
“You’re extremely sensitive to other people’s plights. It’s very noble of you.”
“It’s not noble. It’s realistic. This isn’t a safe place for a gay teacher. I know this town. I know these people. I lived here for eighteen years.”
Her mouth curved up in amusement. “Your whole life?”
“No. I mean yes, eighteen years is my whole life. What I’m trying to say is I want to help you.”
“Stevie.” Her teacher tone returned. “I’m your teacher. I’m here to help you, not the other way around.”
“Well, excuse me. Are we working on the banking model of pedagogy?”
Her eyes narrowed “Have you taken a course in liberation pedagogy?”
“No.” Not yet. “I’m just saying yesterday, you asked me to use my voice to help the larger community, and I want to do that by helping you.”
She toyed with a strand of fair hair resting on her shoulder. “You have lots of ways to help your community—”
“But we both know why I don’t speak freely. I just thought if I could help you learn the system, the unwritten rules here, then you could help me give voice to my ideas. We could learn from each other.”
Jody looked past me to the classroom, from the desks to the whiteboard to the bookcases. Did she see her dreams spread out before her? Did she feel so close to everything she’d worked for? Or had she begun to see the minefield of traps and pitfalls laid for her here? “I can’t believe I’ve only been doing this for two months and I’m already overwhelmed.”
I wanted to pull her into my arms. I wanted to carry her away with me. I wanted to save her from years of feeling this way. Instead I just nodded for her to continue.
“Mr. Owens is a nice guy. He approved all my plans before I started, but now he’s checked out. He’s got three months until he retires, and I think he accepted a student teacher so he could get an early start. He’s supposed to supervise me, but I haven’t even seen him since last Wednesday.”
“Okay,” I said calmly. “First of all, you’re doing fine.”
“I don’t want to do fine. I want to do well. I want to make a difference, but I’ve got so much to learn, and I’m not sure I can do it alone.”
“Then let this be your first lesson. You’re already so much better than you know, and you’re not alone.”
She shook her head, but she looked like she wanted to smile. “I wanted that to be my line.”
“It is.” I grinned. “I stole it. It’s a major theater faux pas, I know. Next time I promise I’ll let you say it, okay?”
Her shoulders bounced in a silent laugh. “Okay.”
“Now, we’ve only got a few minutes before the bell. Let’s talk about your lesson plans. We’re discussing The Things They Carried, right?”
“Yes. I’m starting to think I was overly ambitious in choosing it, but it’s one of my favorites and raises so many important issues for high-school seniors.”
“I agree. It blew my mind the first time I read it.”
“Really? You’ve read it before? When?”
Shit, every time I got comfortable with her, I fell back into adult mode. Was that a sign we belonged together in another time? “I read it last summer. It’s what made me want to write like that.”
“Like what?”
“I want to make worlds feel so real you see their truth even when faced with blunt statements about their fiction. I want to write novels and plays where people see their most mundane impulses amid the surreal. I want to take the most stark realities and shape them into a magic mirror on the wall of people’s minds.” I stopped ranting in order to breathe and realized I’d just poured my heart’s deepest aspirations out to Jody, who now watched me with a renewed color in her cheeks and a rekindled light in her eyes. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to hijack your lesson plan.”
“No, please don’t apologize. That’s exactly what I needed to hear. You reminded me why I wanted to teach this book in the first place.”
I grinned in spite of the fact I probably shouldn’t have just reaffirmed her desire to teach while trying to get her to run away with me. I couldn’t help but be happy to see her so pleased. “Good. Carry that into class with you this morning.”
“Thank you, Stevie.”
I shrugged her off.
She touched my shoulder briefly, then looked a little chagrined for doing so. “I mean it, sincerely. Thank you. And for what it’s worth, I think you’ll be an amazing writer.”
My chest swelled with pride both for this moment, and for all the moments, our moments, still to come. “Thank you.”
*
I buzzed through the day. I greeted Señora Wallace in Spanish and took a turn conjugating a few verbs I’d relearned the night before. In trigonometry I took notes for the first time ever. In typing, I finished early, then set up a Hotmail account for Kelsey and sent her an e-mail telling her to buy stock in Google and Apple. She deleted it, but not before she got a good laugh. Several people turned to look at us, and I heard one student remark she’d never heard Kelsey laugh in the two years she’d been in Darlington.
I drove Nikki to Encarnacion’s for lunch and paid for us to split a whole pizza. Maybe I should have done so sooner because Encarnacion’s pizza offered the strongest argument yet against this ordeal being a dream. Thin crust, a sweet and rich sauce, and cheese so thick it stuck to everything it touched. Dreams never tasted this good.
My fear of being found out lessened with each passing minute. With Nikki’s effervescent personality, I barely had to talk at all during lunch. Instead I took the time to listen to her for maybe the first time ever. She fit Darlington, and it fit her, but not in the close-minded or judgmental way. I sent up a silent prayer that her future really would be the one Rory recounted for her.
Back at school, I used my study hall to actually study and used my bench-warming time in gym to reread The Things They Carried. I made notes on things I could mention to impress Jody and glanced at my watch every few pages, counting the minutes until I’d see her again. Time transformed from purgatory to almost transcendental when in her presence. When I lost myself in her eyes, I almost felt like I wasn’t stuck at all, as if you could have put us down in any time and any space without changing the way we connected. Those were the experiences I needed to create more of. After feeling lost and confused for so long, I craved the moments that gave purpose to this puzzle I was living.
By the time I got to theater class, I was almost enjoying myself. I’d had my first good day in over a week, and I had more time with Jody to look forward to. Our eyes met as soon as I strolled through her classroom door, and she smiled. I hoped no one else was paying attention because I probably looked like a crush-struck fool as I raised my hand in a little wave of greeting before ducking into my seat. Being an enamored schoolgirl certainly had its upsides. For instance, the way my heart did a little stutter step in my chest when Jody took the floor and called for the class’s attention.
“You all have been working hard to learn your monologues this week, and I want to commend you on your progress. Memorization is a great first step in the acting process, so give yourselves a big pat on the back,” Jody said, her smile exuberant. “Now you’re ready for the next step in the assignment.”
“We haven’t performed them yet,” one of the students said nervously.
“I know, and you will perform them, but not the words. You’re going to go deeper and perform the meaning.”
“What, like an interpretative dance?” one of the guys asked.
“No, that’ll be your final exam.” Jody’s playful side sparked another twinge of joy in me. “For this week’s task, you’re going to perform the subtext of the monologue. You’re going to stand up and not tell us the character’s actual lines but what they mean, what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling.”
I lowered my head and pretended to take notes in an attempt to hide my admiration. Jody was brilliant. She wouldn’t be happy with a simple regurgitation of someone else’s words. She wanted us to really know our parts, to understand what drove our characters. I made a mental note to try the exercise with some of the characters in my own play. Did their words truly reflect the essence of what I hoped to convey to the audience?
“That’s not fair.” Deelia sounded every bit like a petulant child. “We spent three days memorizing, and now you change the assignment on us?”
“The assignment hasn’t changed,” Jody explained calmly. “This has always been the end goal, but you can’t dig into the subtext until you’ve built an adequate understanding of the text.”
“My mom has been practicing with me every night, and she won’t be happy to hear you tricked us into learning something we didn’t have to know.”
“Well.” Jody sighed, a deep crease etching her forehead. “I don’t think learning is ever something to regret, even if it doesn’t yield immediate results. But in the context of this assignment, you couldn’t effectively do the second part without completing the first. I’m sorry if I didn’t communicate that this would be an ongoing project.”
I ground my teeth together to keep from snapping at Deelia for being such an ignorant little twit or yelling at Jody to stop apologizing to her.
“Can’t we just take a quiz or something?” one of the other students asked. “When we read books or plays in other classes, they always give us a quiz to prove we did the reading.”
“I have faith in you. I assume you’ve done the reading,” Jody said, clearly trying to stay positive. “That’s why I’m asking for more from you. I want to challenge you to go beyond reading. I want you to learn, to comprehend, to internalize these lessons.”
“A quiz would be easier to grade,” another student added, causing me to snort. Of course a quiz would be easier to grade. That’s why the other teachers assigned them. They didn’t require any complex thought on the part of anyone involved.
“Yes, it would be.” Jody agreed halfheartedly. “But we’re not on the path of least resistance. We’re going to move forward with our lesson on subtext.”
I sat back and watched helplessly as Jody used Romeo’s balcony monologue as an example for our subtext assignment. The students didn’t help her. She had to pull them along every step of the way, nudging and pushing for possible interpretations of each sentence. I wanted to offer more support, but I was so angry I decided to keep my mouth shut except when called on. I hated to see the little bastards kill her joy, but I hoped this experience could help her realize she didn’t belong here.
She’d fare much better in New York. She could teach at a magnet school or a performing-arts academy. She could work with students who actually wanted to learn instead of kids who wanted a shiny sticker at the top of their tests. Hell, she could work with me. With my skills as a writer and her understanding of the arts, she could make me a better playwright. She could direct my plays. We’d be unstoppable together.
I felt a momentary pang of regret for the students like me, the students who would never get a shot at seeing this assignment or this teacher. But did a handful of kids over the course of several decades outweigh all the assholes she’d have to face in the interim?
*
I couldn’t get over the transition in Jody throughout the course of the day. She’d gone from cautious to open to exuberant to dejected, and my own emotions rode the roller coaster along with her. I was, once again, completely exhausted by the time I survived another family dinner. Thankfully, I’d completed most of my homework and could crash early. I had my hand on the doorknob to the basement when my dad halted my escape with a question I’d never expected to hear directed at me again.
“Stevie, did you do your chores?”
“Uh, what chores?”
He didn’t look amused. “I think you’re feeling well enough to start helping out around the house again.”
“Sure, what needs to be done?”
“The trash needs to go out.”
“Okay.”
“And the dishwasher needs loaded.”
“No problem.” I wasn’t a child. I wouldn’t argue.
“And the baseboards need to be dusted.”
“What?”
“Stevie,” he said in his most paternal voice.
“Dad, no one looks at the baseboards.” Okay, maybe I would argue.
“It’s not about other people. It’s about taking a little pride in your home. Trust me, when you have a place of your own, you’ll understand.”
“I won’t,” I said seriously.
He shook his head and tossed me a dust rag. “You say that now, but you’ll feel differently in ten years.”
I bit my lip to keep from shouting I knew for certain that wasn’t true. I’d lived in my current apartment for almost two years now, and I’d only ever scrubbed the damn baseboards when he and Mom visited a year ago. Sure, I did dishes and laundry and took out the trash, but for all I knew I could be growing my own colony of penicillin on my baseboards. Come to think of it, maybe that’s why my allergies had gotten so bad last winter.
As I set to work wiping the dust off the woodwork around our house, my mind wandered to my other life. Did winter still have a grip on New York? Spring had been teasing us with the occasional warm breeze. When I’d left a week ago, I’d actually seen some snowdrops blooming in the community garden near my loft. I missed New York. Winter was a bitch, and summer could damn near kill you, but spring and fall were stunning. The city came to life. Music streamed from open windows. Neighbors sat on front stoops. People went out of their way to amble through parks and gardens. Would Jody like it there?
I’d yet to let myself fully believe Kelsey’s time-travel theory, but even if it wasn’t logical, I enjoyed fantasizing about the prospect. Say for a minute I wasn’t just working to make this dream more pleasant, and I actually could change our destiny. Would we transport back together? If we’d been together all along, I might never have come back to Darlington. She certainly wouldn’t have served on any arts committees here. Would I wake up in our shared apartment in New York? Would I have memories of the last ten years of us together?
And what would be the catalyst for that quantum leap? Would we have some major defining moment to set our feet on a different path? Would it be like a fairy tale where one kiss could seal our futures? Would I wake up to a whole new world the moment her lips touched mine? I threw the dust rag in the corner and got ready for bed while internally chiding myself for entertaining such sappy sentimentality.
Then again, as long as I was considering the possibility of time travel, fairy tales weren’t far off. Maybe a kiss could wake us. And honestly, was there a nicer way to be awoken? I drifted to sleep wondering if considering a life-shattering kiss with Jody made me Sleeping Beauty or Prince Charming.