Teach Me (2 page)

in the crackling forest

Sunday morning.

I used to hate Sundays, first cousin to black-and-blue Mondays. But instead of jittery and crazed, today I wake up strangely peaceful.

Today the birds are chirping like lunatics and pooping the patio purple and white. The sun is a gigantic nectarine. Black holes, beware. There is no suction today.

Today my insanity has curved so far back in on itself, I’ve clambered out of my emotional gravity well.

I have a plan.

Today is the day of my teacher’s wedding.

Today Mr. Mann and Alicia Sprunk, his darling little Bride to Be—the White Dwarf I saw in the wedding announcement in the newspaper—will be joined in Holy Bondage. I used to hate weddings too. Loathed, despised, abominated. Now I’m going to one and I can’t wait.

I tell Mom I’m going to the mall. She trusts me so much; they both do. I could tell them anything—they would believe it. I have so many Good Girl Points built up. But I’m burning through them dangerously fast.

She follows me outside, eyes desperately hopeful, hair like half-boiled spaghetti.

“Are you going with someone, darling?”

“Wilkie Collins,” I say.

“Oh, good!” she says a little hysterically. “Have I met him, sweetheart? Is he in one of your classes?”

“No.”

“Why don’t I come with you? I’ve got your prom dress all picked out at Dillard’s. Wilkie might like to see it too. Does he have a date for the dance?”

Wilkie Collins is my car.

He farts teal smoke. His doors stick. His heat doesn’t work unless you jiggle two wires together in a precise, calibrated, impossible-to-duplicate way. But he has never let me down.

Swoosh.

May used to be my favorite month.

School is dying, flowers are blooming, windows are open. I drive very fast and safely to the Crackling Forest. It’s an L-shaped strip of woods just off the interstate. It used to be part of a forest, but now it’s a patch of surrounded, abandoned, wasted Alabama wildness behind the Firestone Holy Tire Palace.

I grab the gym bag I’ve packed for this special occasion from Wilkie’s spongy trunk and step into the trees. This piece of woods smells of oil, not bark. Things crackle here. Leaves, gum wrappers, burger boxes. Used condominiums.

That’s what Schuyler calls them.

My heart bangs. I miss him so much. There are so many things I need to tell him. But what would he think of me now?

I yank my clothes off and stuff them in the bag. The moment I’m down to my underwear, the grinding roar of a diesel truck rushes at me. It whines higher and higher as the sound waves crash against my body. Then the sound gets low and drawn out as the sound waves stretch away again. This is called the Doppler Effect. It happens with stars and galaxies too. Only then it’s called the Red Shift, meaning light waves moving away from you shift to the red end of the visible spectrum.

It’s thrilling standing here utterly exposed in this unexposed space. My own skin turns me on. I remember Mr. Mann’s weight on my legs. I remember his warm breath on my shoulder.

Stop it.

I have a theory: Life is a Doppler Effect.

In the beginning, the Life Waves rush up on you, all high-pitched and energetic, then stretch away, moaning lower and lower. You were supposed to be a hero, a movie star, Bill Gates.

In love forever.

But the Life Waves passed you by.

I pull on a dead woman’s long froofy dress I bought at the Goodwill store. It’s covered with huge purple flowers. I raise my arms in the I-give-up position; the dress settles over my shoulders. The collar looks like a lace doily. No slip, and the material is so sheer, I’m sure you can see my tiny black bra in the sunlight. The one Mr. Mann bought for me when he got tired of looking at white.

I ball up my bunchy hair with some of Dad’s mongo NASA paper clips. Next, a wide garden hat that has an industrially manufactured feather the color of lilacs attached to its brim. The shade is perfectly wrong against the flowers on my dress. I am a Woman Utterly Without Taste.

This begins my real transformation.

The minute the hat touches my head, it’s like that old egg-cracking gag Dad likes to pull. He knocks two fists gently against the top of my skull, then opens his fingers and draws an imaginary yolk down my hair. Just like that, I feel my new personality slipping over me, a soft, invisible, eggy rain.

I use Mom’s compact to apply the makeup. I pause when I touch my neck just below the line of my jaw. This is exactly the place Mr. Mann kissed me the first time we knew—what did we know? This is how Emily Dickinson said it:

 
THAT I did always love, I bring thee proof

The shoes are Mom’s worst pumps from the bottom of her cedar closet. Ghastly lavender. Brutally tight on my size-ten feet. Good. They make me feel pinched and prickly, tightly wound, all a piece. Last are the gloves. They come to my elbows. It takes every ounce of upper-body strength I have to drag them on. The munchkin fingertips are pointed enough to poke out eyes.

I come out from the Crackling Forest, ankles turning painfully. I’ve never worn heels before. I slide into Wilkie Collins and consult the handmade map on the seat beside me: Latham Methodist Church on Lilly Flagg Road.

I pull out on the highway and turn southeast.

eating paul

I did it.

It’s over. I survived.

But I can’t stop shaking.

Driving back from the wedding, I clench the steering wheel tightly and stare straight ahead. I might burst into flame. I might explode. I need to scream loudly. I don’t.

What does Mr. Mann think of me now? After what I just did? How can he possibly explain it to his new wife? Is he furious? Amazed? Horrified? Ashamed?

I wonder if he will come to me now.

And what about me? As Dad would say, do a Systems Check:

Am I happy? Miserable? Terrified? Triumphant? About to projectile vomit the Corn Pops I ate this morning?

Yes.

Cold cream is the worst.

I feel like a baked potato. Back in the Crackling Forest, standing under the flapping leaves, I furiously scrub my face. But this is good: it not only cleans my skin, it helps reboot my emotions. My clothes are warm from being in the trunk. As I change back into my real self, I watch the Firestone Holy Tire Palace through a gap in the branches. A man in a blue uniform turns a tire lovingly in his hands, brushes it over with water from a hose, impales it on a pinnacle of red steel.

Men make the world for themselves, I think. And then they go away.

I don’t know where these words come from.

Back at the house, we make Paul Newman spaghetti. I tell Mom Wilkie is fine.

It’s a beginning.

ecstatic time machine

Scream.

“Look who’s here, darling!” Mom yells.

The last bite of Paul catches in my throat. Someone is standing with her in the Victorian Room. Mr. Mann? My hands curl into fists. Kill him. Run into his arms.

It’s only Schuyler.

Schuyler!

Please. Not tonight of all nights. What do I do? What do I say?

But the pang in my chest instantly tells me how much I’ve missed him. His mind, his laugh, his eyes.

I miss his hair.

Tonight it’s bent all in one direction. So thick, it holds whatever shape it’s been pressed into. Our eighth-grade English teacher, Ms. Gonzalez, once said, “With hair that beautiful, you should’ve been a girl.” We were in the middle of a test on Robert Frost, the room quiet as Ganymede. Schuyler wanted to put laxative gum in her candy jar.

Schuyler wants to do a lot of things. That’s how we’re different, I guess.

Wanting and doing.

He’s slouching uncertainly next to the sofa as if he doesn’t know what to say, what to ask me.

I was a head taller than Schuyler back in seventh grade. One of our teachers called us Eek and Meek. Thanks a lot, Mr. Rombokas. But Schuyler’s finally caught up with me these last few months. It’s made him a little more fumbly-stumbly. I have a theory: Tall = shy. But I can also see the imprint of the future man.

“Hey.”

“Hi.”

The moment feels like the naked part of a dream. Or the first bite of a weird new casserole. My face is still throbbing. Can he tell? Mom thankfully comes in and blows up the silence:

“Put on some pj’s, Schuyler, we’ll have a pajama party!”

I stare. I just now realize Mom’s got on her old-lady-can’t-hang-past-seven nightgown and fuzzy pink Kmart slippers. She’s a Dr. Seuss character. She touches Schuyler’s arm—“Let me fix you something to eat, honey”—and shuffle duffle muzzle muffs off to the kitchen.

Schuyler frowns.

It’s the way his face is shaped. People always think he’s mad at them.

Is he mad at me?

“I know you saw me coming out of calculus,” he says.

“Yeah.”

“This has got to stop, Nine. You don’t call me back, you duck out at lunch, you ignore—”

“Okay.”

He brightens. I’m the only one besides his mom who could tell: his ears go up.

“Just like that?” he says. “You’re not going to tell me what’s been going on?”

“Nope.”

He looks me over for clues. “Okay. You’re dying. You’re hooked on Ecstasy. You’re
Mariette in Ecstasy
.”

“I’m tired.”

The ears droop. When one of us throws out an obscure reference, the other is supposed to immediately regurgitate the source.

“Come on,” he says. “
Mariette in Ecstasy
. Book about a gonzo nun.”

I turn away and slump on the sofa. My cat, Kitty Nation, knows when I’m feeling lost, hurt. He jumps in my lap and starts kneading my stomach with his paws. “Don’t make me think tonight,” I say. “I can’t.”

“Not possible,” he says.

As usual, he’s right.

I’m hot-wired for thought. And right now I’m thinking just how badly I need him to go. He’s too important to me. I’m too used to telling him things. I can’t hold it in much longer without him finding out.

Say something. Anything but that.

“Wait a minute,” I say.

Schuyler despises cars. His parents refuse to drive him anywhere except work until he gets his license. He’s tried three times. I even lent him Wilkie Collins. Now he’s spooked about it, cursed.

“So how’d you get here?” I say.

“Whaddya know, there’s this thing called a cab service. You pay them, they haul you anywhere you want to go. No extra charge for the hip-hop ambiance. So where’s your dad?”

I nod wearily at the hall. “Dreaming of xenon injectors.”

He plunks down beside me. I’m excruciatingly aware of the pleasant man-boy scent on his T-shirt. I scrunch away as far as I can, pulling Kitty Nation to me like an orange pillow.

“What’s wrong, you contagious or something?”

“I’m just—just.” I refuse to explain myself. How can he know he’s the last person I need to see tonight? After the wedding, after seeing Mr. Mann again, I’m tired. I’m sad. Worse.

I’m explosively frustrated. Yeah, that kind.

Schuyler tries to get in through a different window.

“Hey! They fixed the streaming audio at the Kansas City Ghost Club last night. We heard a million bumps in the abandoned morgue. Mirabile dictu! You’ve got to check it out.”

Schuyler’s invented a prissy psychic who chats with True Believers on the net. Name: Darkwillow Nightseer. No joke. He drives the ghost hunters rabid pretending to spot all sorts of phony ecto crap on their ghost cams. They’ve banned his URL twice.

Now that I’ve passed over to the Other Side, his virginal enthusiasm creeps me.

“I don’t feel like anything,” I say. “Not tonight.”

“But why, what ’s—”

Chuffing footsteps send us back into Mom mode.

“It’s ready, Schuyler dear.”

The Lorax escorts us into the kitchen, knees creaking like saddles. We watch Schuyler lap up a plate of spaghetti and talk about nothing much. Until:

“Are you going to the prom, Schuyler?” Mom says.

My foot twitches uncontrollably. If I didn’t love her so much, I’d kick her dear little shins in two.

Schuyler frowns and glances sideways at me.

“Not really, Miz Livingston. Nobody psychotic enough to say yes.”

Mom smiles. After all her worries about me lately, I realize she loves having Schuyler here. This is a rare moment of security, a return to a simpler time when I was practically perfect in her eyes. A time she could better understand. “Well, I know of a certain darling girl—” she says.

“Mom!”

“All right.” She sighs and gets up from the table. “It’s past my bedtime. See you night owls in the morning.”

We watch her go until the bathroom door shuts and we hear water sandblasting the sink.

“Anybody ask you?” Schuyler says, looking at me probingly again.

“They better not. Hey, I’m beat. Can I run you home?”

I grab my keys before he can answer.

We’re quiet on the way to his house. I refuse to tell him anything about Mr. Mann or the wedding. In retaliation, Schuyler finds a program on public radio he knows I hate. Now we’re submerged in blubbery moans posing as Space Music.

“Please turn that off,” I say.

He cranks up the volume threateningly.

“Nope. Not until you swear things are going to be regular again.”

“If that whale gets enough fiber, sure.”

“Come on, Nine.”

I shrug helplessly. “What’s regular, Schuyler? I don’t know anymore.” This couldn’t be more true. Everything I thought, believed, trusted—

“You can start by at least not pretending like I don’t exist,” Schuyler says when we get to his house.

I do my best to manufacture a smile. “That’s a double negative. I will do as you say. Pretend like you exist.”

“Come on, Nine.”

His eyes are melting.

I pull into the driveway and touch his arm, heart stinging.

“Look, Schuyler. I’m sorry. It’s not you; it’s me. Okay? It’s my problem. I’ll let you know when I can tell you everything. Just . . . not yet. Soon, really. Please don’t give up on me.” I waggle my fingers through his crazy hair. His forehead is hot. “But thanks for coming over.”

I hope he believes me.

He hangs in my window and makes me promise to call:

“I’ve got ideas!”

Unless it’s a time machine all gassed up and set for six months ago, forget it.