My friend Deb and I play penis in choir class. It goes like this: I say penis, and then Deb says penis louder, and then I say penis even louder, and in theory, we keep going until we get caught. We don’t ever get caught, mostly because we end up giggling before we can finish our game. We’re altos and stand in the back row, and we play while everyone else is singing. Also, our choir director is too busy mooning over Alexia, the blond soprano in the first row, to bother with much of anything else. He and Alexia are dating. It’s supposed to be a secret, but this is a small school, and just about everyone has seen them at the mall holding hands.
“It’s so gross,” Deb says, and I nod along. “I mean, he has buck teeth and wears those gay vests,” she says.
I don’t tell her that part of me signed up for voice lessons with him after school because I imagined being the student who got seduced. Like in a romance novel, I could be the student whose talents, whose beauty, had gone unrecognized until now. She wouldn’t understand anyway. She’s thin and white and redheaded.
A few weeks later, we find a heart drawn in pencil on one of the music stands, with “Alexia + Mr. Henley” written inside. You can see it against the black lacquer of the music stand only if the light hits the graphite just so. I find myself wondering whether she calls him Mr. Henley when they’re alone together. I can’t even imagine what his first name is.