First Man (12 page)

Laura let out a bark of laughter. “She certainly has you down in that respect. I’ve been grading my freshman tougher the past year just to prepare them for you!” Her expression sobered. “I don’t believe that she needs practice for a moment, Adam, but even more, I don’t believe she thinks
she
needs practice.” At my blank expression she added, “You’re young, and you’re good looking. You haven’t been teaching very long, so I doubt you’ve dealt with this yet, but it happens.”

“What are you trying to imply?”

“I’m not implying a thing, Adam. I’m saying it. If I had to guess, I’d say the girl has a crush on you, and this is her plan to get you alone.”

It was my turn to laugh. “You can’t honestly be serious. I’m almost twice her age!”

Laura smiled faintly, but it failed to reach her eyes. “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m just an old woman who reads too many romance novels. Maybe the girl isn’t as overconfident as she lets on, and she really does believe she needs extra help.” She put her hand on mine, its skin dry and rough from years of long winters. “But maybe I’m not wrong. Just watch yourself, Adam.”

I put Laura’s warning out of my mind. The thought that Ember or any of my students might be harboring a secret lust for me seemed beyond ludicrous. Her warnings had come out of concern for me, and I was grateful for that, but I was completely sure that Ember wanted nothing more from me than a chance to make her project a reality.

As for myself, it had never even crossed my mind that spending so much time alone with a student could be seen as unseemly. I’d never harbored any inappropriate thoughts about any of my students. On the contrary, I’d been disgusted when I overheard the coaches leering over a few of the more well-endowed cheerleaders. I might have turned to teaching out of desperation and a mere desire to keep busy, but I had grown to love this job and I took it seriously.

The prospect of advising Ember on her project invigorated me. In the beginning, I’d found comfort in the routine of teaching. I’d relied on lectures and papers, repeating the same speeches to each class, using more rote memorization than creativity. Three years of the same books and the same discussions had me longing for something different.

I’d neglected my own scholarly work out of a mixture of bitterness and apathy. Returning to the specialty I’d immersed myself in for so long had seemed unthinkable in the early days after Lily’s death. As months slipped into years, I grew complacent. Lily had wanted me to grow roots, not stagnate.

This project was just the thing I needed to break out of my ennui and get back to myself. Content that Laura was just being overly cautious and even more of a cynic than myself, I unlocked the door to my classroom and set about preparing for the next batch of students.

SPARK

Ember

T
he independent study was an idle impulse in the beginning. I’d gotten the printout of my schedule in the last days of the fall semester and gaps filled it. I’d taken eight classes constantly, filling my schedule with anthropology, sociology, art, poetry. I’d written papers about early colonial influence on indigenous societies and painted shaky self-portraits, all in the interest of filling my days.

I hated study halls. Being forced to sit at a cafeteria table and pretend to study whatever the monitor deemed acceptable wasn’t my idea of a productive use of my time. That’s what I told myself, but the truth was study halls just made me a stationary target.

A lot of the fervor around me might have died down, but that still didn’t mean I wanted to take the risk of being stuck at a table with my tormentors for an hour each day.

I’d run through every elective that even remotely fit my interests. Theater and dance were both still open, but the required recitals with mandatory student attendance quickly quashed those possibilities. Psychology had potential insights into my personality that I wasn’t interested in knowing.

The only choice left was to try to create a class, and I never considered anyone other than Mr. Edwards as my facilitator. After a semester in his class I’d grown to respect and admire his intelligence, and I’m not ashamed to say that my fascination of him had grown into a full blown crush.

I didn’t have any real illusions that I could seduce him. I knew that in the real world, the chances of enticing my English teacher with my feminine whiles was pretty close to zero, but in the beginning, I didn’t care. Mr. Edwards stood for the future, for graduation and college and leaving this small town behind in the snow and mud.

When I walked into his office with a stack of books teetering in my arms and an idea in my head, the thought that he could say no didn’t even occur to me.

I’d blurted out my proposal, knowing it sounded rehearsed and not caring terribly much. Mr. Edwards had seemed impressed if not a bit bewildered about my reasons for wanting to start the project.

I’d left his office grinning at my success. He’d been right in his assessment. I didn’t need the credit or the practice. Two years with a stunted social life gave me plenty of time to study. It wasn’t something I needed, but, for once, I was taking what I wanted without taking no for an answer.

The independent study quickly became the focus of my day. The truth in any American high school was once the college acceptance letters were sent out, unless you were striving for valedictorian or ended up wait-listed at your first choice school, everyone’s grades took a bit of a dive. Caring about a perfect score in calculus of physics seemed a lot less important once I had that nice, thick envelope from BU sitting on my desk.

I still worked diligently in the classes that I genuinely liked. English received my full attention, and I’d always enjoyed history and French, but math and science definitely slipped. For all the teachers liked to warn us that “colleges can still take back your acceptance if your grades drop too much,” we all knew it would take absolute academic failure to get the schools to say no to those fat tuition checks our parents would be writing.

So I skipped a few homework assignments in calculus and gave my lab reports only the most cursory attention in physics and barely noticed my grade drop from an A- to a solid B. My head was firmly entranced in Joseph Campbell’s world of mythology, and my stack of source materials grew larger each day.

Far from just being an hour of reading under his supervision each day, my meetings with Mr. Edwards were filled with lively discussion. He heaped more reading upon me, handing over copies of excerpts from obscure British fantasy novels and sections from Bulfinch’s Mythology.

Any other teacher would have stuck to the role of simple facilitator, keeping an eye on me and grading my work without actually reading alongside me, but not Mr. Edwards. He devoured the course material with an enthusiasm that matched my own, always eager to bring in additional sources to increase my understanding of the material, even if they never made it into the final paper.

“In the universes created by the authors of these books, fantasy
is
reality, and, intentional or not, they are perpetuating a tradition that dates back to the days before writing existed.” Mr. Edwards fell into the lecturing mode out of habit, seeming to almost be speaking to himself as he flipped through a paperback copy of
Mists of Avalon
. “The myth of the great hero triumphing over whatever evils were set before him has become so much a part of humanity’s collective unconscious that nearly every work of literature or film follows this archetype on at least some level.”

Glancing up from the passage detailing Morgaine’s priestess training, I added, “I’d almost be curious to try this with other types of genre fiction. Fantasy’s an obvious choice to parallel with mythology since most of the books tend to involve quests and epic battles, but I wonder if the same would work with horror or historical fiction.” I paused, my mind wondering how I’d be able to work the plots of
The Shining
or
Pet Semetary
into the hero’s journey.

Mr. Edwards laughed, and I remember having to bite my tongue to keep from blurting out, “You should do that more often.”

“Let’s finish one genre before you start integrating every subject you can think of into this project,” he said, reigning my ideas back in. “It’s not a bad idea by any means, but you have more than enough material just with fantasy.” He gestured to the constantly growing mountain of thick books that had taken up residency on his desk. “It’s not as though you selected a subject that lends itself to short fiction.”

I couldn’t help agreeing. My mythology texts were the shortest by a large margin, and even those clocked in at about 400 pages. I was a voracious reader, but the ever-growing stack was beginning to look daunting, even to myself.

“I think focusing on
The Lord of the Rings
for a fair portion of the paper is a good idea,” Mr. Edwards said. “You could easily get bogged down with far too many universes and end up writing a paper that’s too disjointed if you don’t specialize.”

I nodded in agreement, having come to the same conclusion myself. My mind started to wander as Mr. Edwards listed off a few other books he recommended I reference.

Our daily sessions had been going on for two weeks already, and with each passing day, I was seeing him less and less as a teacher and more and more as a co-collaborator in this paper.

One glance at his desk told me that I wasn’t exactly alone in that assessment. Post-it notes peppered to surface of his desk, covered in his spidery scrawl.

“Game of Thrones? Too long for one semester, find excerpts re: Tyrion.,”

“Harry Potter – possible discussion re: myths used as behavioral tools for children.”

The notes went on and on.