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 f**k 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 f**king 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.”